Will capital be defiled when it enters the pure holy land of the second dimension?

Recently, major news platforms almost simultaneously broke the news that Bilibili received investment from Tencent. According to the news, the market value of Bilibili was valued at US$1.5 billion with this round of financing.

As soon as the news came out, ACG-related Weibo posts were flooded with words such as "operational explosion", "Yiguo Pills", and "Chief Executive Runaway". It doesn't matter if you don't understand what these words mean. You just need to know that in the minds of fragile ACG audiences, B Station's financing is not something to be happy about, but rather a disaster. A few months ago, when A Station received US$50 million in Series A financing from Youku, the same situation occurred on Weibo and in the A Station comment area. Interestingly, at that time, the webmaster of B Station was still crying about the loss of several hundred million yuan on his private Weibo, winning a lot of sympathetic votes. You know, it was the problem of A Station's capital turnover that led to multiple changes of ownership. The instability of the server and the lack of maintenance of video content provided opportunities for the latecomer B Station.

Commercial capital enters the ACG market, BAT starts a game in the ACG world, but ordinary viewers are the ones who get hurt? "The purity of the ACG world has been destroyed!" Such a naive statement is really ridiculous, but whether capital can change the temperament of a niche website is indeed worth discussing.

Unfounded worry

The Chinese audience has been spoiled by free lunches. Not only can they not continue to provide free lunches, but they can't even use other people's money to provide free lunches. Conclusion - Bilibili is doomed. Only with the investment and financing of large enterprises can fresh blood be injected. Video websites like Bilibili have more access points and more funds to purchase copyrights, which should be a cause for celebration. Now it is just financing and not controlled. Why not use it if it is free? Some ACG audiences came out crying and shouting after hearing some news, which is really unnecessary.

B站 is a Tencent shareholder, and will certainly be incorporated into Tencent's profit system, but it should not be forced to change its own characteristics, such as no ads and focus on two-dimensional entertainment. Tencent is a veteran player in the capital game, and has a clearer understanding of market positioning and various interest relationships than anyone else. B站 is ad-free, which is a major feature. The concentration of the two-dimensional community cannot be cultivated in a day or two. The reputation value obtained by B站 can compete with the advertising revenue of other video websites. At the same time, the rumor that B站 received financing and the webmaster left was also refuted after the webmaster 9bishi of B站 posted on Weibo.

Flowers in the Mist

9bishi posted a microblog after the news release on various platforms, saying, "After reading a certain company's PR article, I felt like someone told me one night that the universe is square. I think the universe will not become square within 120 years." He also posted a picture of "bullshit." However, the photo he posted later was pointed out by sharp-eyed netizens that he was in UBS Hong Kong and was suspected of going public.

Everyone knows how much water there is in the financing news of Internet companies. It is not until the listing and the disclosure of real data that the onlookers can see who are bragging and who are pretending to be fat.

According to a data analyst, in the last round of financing of Station B, the listed company Shanda Games disclosed a valuation of 1.7 billion, which is far more than 1.5 billion. If there is a new round of financing from Tencent, the valuation should be significantly increased, estimated to be around 3 billion. So there is a conspiracy theory: All this is a conspiracy of Station A. Station A took the initiative to announce its valuation of 200 million US dollars in the last round of financing, and the investor behind it used similar news operations to claim that Station B’s valuation was 1.5 billion yuan, so Station A pulled itself to the same level as Station B’s valuation.

Where to go from here

The community is a very important part of AcFun and Bilibili. To maintain the temperament of the two-dimensional website, they can only "keep screening users": find the balance between commercialization and users. This reminds me of Flickr, which was destroyed by Yahoo. This high-quality photo website was destroyed after being acquired by Yahoo. On the contrary, Facebook is still led by Mark Zuckerberg. After being acquired, Facebook still has a strong atmosphere of geek culture.

"If a lot of users come from outside and drive away the previous users, the community will soon be over." It is inevitable that Station A and Station B will enter the public eye. As platforms in the two-dimensional ecosystem, it is better to resolve the competition between Station A and Station B than to create it. It is only a matter of time for BAT capital to enter the two-dimensional world. Maybe in the near future, there will be news about the merger of Station A and Station B. It is also entirely possible?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.