Who will take over the only remaining Ganji.com?

After 58.com accepted Tencent's investment and holding of nearly 20% of its shares, it broke the long-standing deadlock in the market. In addition to being able to cash out some old shareholders, more importantly, the market will undergo many changes. After the concept of classified catalogs became outdated, 58.com, as an O2O concept, embraced the giants and would enhance its ability to resist risks. Cooperation with the Tencent system may also take its own development to a higher level.

As of now, there are few medium-sized platforms that have not been acquired by giants. Only 58.com's old rival Ganji.com remains. If it is a strategic decision for giants to extract resources from the lower levels, Ganji.com will sooner or later fall into the hands of giants. Given the principle of strategic investment, it is likely that Alibaba or Baidu will acquire Ganji.com in the future.

In the past, companies like 58 and Ganji were small advertisements that met the promotion needs of small businesses. In terms of form, they were closer to users' offline lives, such as recruitment, renting, used cars, marriage and love, etc. The average customer price generated by these businesses is not high. On the Internet where traffic is very expensive, if they are done alone, the income generated may even be difficult to cover the promotion costs. Putting it into the concept of classified catalogs, and letting operators purchase traffic in bulk, can greatly reduce costs.

But despite this, if costs are not well controlled, there is still a possibility of losses. The problem with the life service market is that the benefits are dispersed and it is not easy to collect them, which does not conform to the spirit of efficient distribution of Internet traffic. To use the purchased traffic for precise distribution in order to find the most accurate target users is a test of the technical capabilities of such companies and is not easy to do. Therefore, many people say that 58 and Ganji are the dirty, hard and tiring work on the Internet, and this is the reason.

Whether it is 58.com or Ganji.com, they are very dependent on Baidu for traffic, which is equivalent to the relationship between operators and ISPs. No matter how good your ISP is, the operator still controls the traffic entrance and reaps the biggest profits. Being suppressed by Baidu has always been a hidden pain in the hearts of 58.com and Ganji. But fortunately, the classified directory has risen to O2O in those years. For the giants who are eager to enter the hot O2O field, it is a more appropriate shortcut to improve their business strength in this field through 58.com and Ganji.

Before and after 58 went public, Ganji.com's Alexa ranking plummeted, but it was later discovered that it was a technical error in the website's ranking statistics, and the ranking quickly recovered. This year, Ganji.com has once again occupied a prominent position in subways, buses, and TV ads, which made people realize that Ganji.com was not affected and is still working hard to climb up.

In fact, Ganji.com is in a much better situation than expected. This year's sales growth rate is expected to be 150%, which is ahead of 58.com's 80% growth rate. The advertising on buses, subways and TV in the past six months has also made Ganji.com's traffic almost equal to 58.com. In Baidu Index, Ganji.com is far ahead of 58.com. According to iResearch iUserTracker statistics, Ganji.com has been closely following 58.com in terms of user coverage, and the data is almost the same. Ganji.com is still 58.com's biggest rival, there is no doubt about that.

Real estate and recruitment are the respective strengths of 58.com and Ganji.com. Both parties have the intention and plan to invade each other's territory. At present, Ganji.com seems to be speeding up its pace, intending to make greater achievements in real estate and focusing on blue-collar recruitment. In March this year, Ganji.com's monthly recruitment revenue reached 80 million yuan, and there is no doubt that this business will reach 800 million yuan in revenue this year. Ganji.com's recruitment is the fastest growing among all recruitment businesses, with a significant increase, while traditional vertical recruitment vendors only recorded a ten-digit increase last year.

Judging from the data, Ganji.com is not much behind 58.com, but it is a bit far-fetched to say that it must insist on independent development and not cooperate with giants. The general trend of giants grabbing resources has already formed. In the future, medium-sized platforms will lose their independent status. Only by cooperating with giants can they develop better. However, there is suspense about who Ganji.com will cooperate with. It is worth examining this issue from the perspective of business ecology.

Among the current BAT giants, Alibaba has an advantage in e-commerce ecology, Tencent can provide social networks, and Baidu can provide traffic. On the surface, the combination of social networks and O2O is the most suitable, but it depends on whether the cooperation model is healthy. If it is only to divert traffic from social networks without other innovative methods, this kind of cooperation is difficult to sustain.

According to a report released by Monetate, a well-known American e-commerce traffic analysis agency in June this year, compared with search traffic, traffic from social media to e-commerce websites continues to perform poorly, with the average conversion rate of social website traffic being 1.08%, lagging far behind search (2.27%) and email (3.31%). The cooperation between 58.com and Tencent should focus on the user level rather than the traffic level, but since Tencent has invested in 58, the only giants Ganji.com can rely on are Alibaba and Baidu.

Alibaba's progress in O2O is a mess. Dingding.com is close to being killed, and Meituan has not helped it at all. Taodiandian, which is launched by Alibaba, is much less popular than Dianping and Nuomi.com. What's more difficult is that Alibaba itself also calls O2O a pseudo-concept, which is obviously a cognitive error. It is unclear what Alibaba's real view on O2O is. According to Alibaba's practice of acquiring a company and then letting it die, Ganji.com is unlikely to succeed.

As for Baidu, it has always been questionable whether Baidu really wants to have a gateway to O2O. However, after Baidu watched 58.com, which was built up by its own traffic, go public, it should reflect on this issue. Keywords such as recruitment and real estate in Baidu search can actually be packaged and assigned to a classified directory in the same way as Qunar. As long as the company is owned by Baidu, it is not very useful for Baidu to keep these keywords, and there is no intention to create its own classified directory.

Ganji.com, as the only company that can compete with 58.com, has a very good business foundation and user base, and can be a shortcut for giants to enter the O2O field. At present, Baidu is promoting its established strategy of connecting everything offline and shifting the focus of Internet service providers to offline. Ganji.com can undoubtedly provide great help in realizing Baidu's strategy. Therefore, it seems a reasonable destination for Ganji.com to end up with Baidu.

However, from the current development situation, Ganji.com has certain advantages in playing in the market as a non-listed company, so it is catching up very quickly. From a static point of view, the commercial value of classified directories is limited, but with the advent of the O2O era, classified directories will naturally play their unique advantages. If O2O is still in the stage of exploration and trial, then now it can only be regarded as layout and planning. The market has not solidified and there are still many variables.

Once the market situation changes, if Ganji.com can still maintain its independence and not be controlled by capital, it may have greater opportunities and will play a role as a unique force in the market. According to the current demand and popularity of O2O among traditional enterprises and merchants, this change is gradually taking shape, and it is just waiting for a critical point to explode.

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.