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Recently, the long-established video website Ku6 submitted documents to the US SEC, revealing that the controlling shareholder Shanda Network has sold its 41% of Ku6 shares to Xu Xudong, the founder of Sky Profit. This is the second time Ku6 has been sold since it was sold to Shanda in 2009.
Ku6.com was founded in 2006. At that time, it was known as the "Double Cool" of Chinese video websites together with Youku, and its influence was comparable. In 2010, it entered the Nasdaq market by changing its shell, and it was in the limelight for a while. However, in just 4 years, Ku6 has fallen to this point, which is really regrettable.
At the same time, fellow video companies that were born at the same time as Ku6, such as Youku, Youku.com, and later iQiyi, all chose to undergo strategic transformation, competing for the market with various self-produced dramas, Internet TV, and other methods, actively embracing various smart terminals such as OTT TV, building their own film and television entertainment empire, and gaining a firm foothold in the market.
The battle for video enterprise transformation
During 2010, major video companies were keen to spend huge sums of money to purchase video copyrights, and were caught in a copyright war that burned money. The entire industry suffered severe bleeding, and the input-output ratio was seriously disproportionate.
To this end, many far-sighted video companies have chosen strategic transformation, gradually reducing the proportion of copyright purchases and increasing the intensity of self-made and UGC content. At the same time, some TV manufacturers have begun to prepare for the future and teamed up with OTT service providers to attract users through Internet TV business and gain a firm foothold in the future Internet TV era where content is king.
It was found that video companies that were born at the same time as Ku6, such as Youku, Youpengpule and later iQiyi, all chose to transform into the long video field, cooperate with TV manufacturers to compete for the market, actively embrace various smart terminals such as TVs, and create their own multi-screen integration strategy. Ku6 and 56.com chose UGC.
Four years have passed quickly. iQiyi, LeTV, Youku and others have embraced Internet TV, deployed in the mobile market, and launched a variety of software and hardware products to occupy the market with differentiation and quality. Ku6 is an exception. In addition to its poor performance in the UGC field, Ku6 also missed the Internet TV market and gradually drifted away from the development trend of mainstream video companies.
Of course, there are many successful transformations. Take Youpengpule as an example. At that time, Youpengpule's main business was copyright distribution of video content. Youpengpule's main business was copyright distribution. In 2009, it initiated an anti-piracy alliance with Sohu and once fought head-on with video companies such as Xunlei.
However, Youpengpule soon disappeared from the field of video websites. The company's CEO Shao Yiding admitted that from the establishment of Youpengpule in 2006 to the end of 2008, it had been groping and trying new things, and basically did not do anything right. After learning from the painful experience, the company transformed into the field of "Internet TV" in 2009, and actively deployed film and television content reserves, HD video compression technology optimization, independent research and development of HD streaming CDN transmission platform, national network support layout, and HD streaming playback firmware integration with mainstream TV, set-top box and other hardware terminal manufacturers. A lot of basic work, today, Youpengpule has become China's largest Internet TV service provider, leading the development direction of China's OTT TV.
The layout of OTT is irreversible
It is an indisputable fact that Ku6 is now facing the fate of being abandoned. After the departure of its founder and senior executives in 2012, Ku6 has long fallen out of the top video camp. Although Ku6's losses have been greatly reduced after its transformation into UGC, its scale is completely unable to compete with Youku Tudou, and it is also far from its former rivals Tencent Video and iQiyi.
Some people may think that Ku6 is constrained by the Shanda system and has no money to produce and purchase video content, so it has no choice but to do UGC. The low-priced but mixed UGC content leads to uneven video content quality, which is difficult to impress the market.
In the turbulent Internet era, how to create differentiated advantages is the key to the success or failure of video companies. Compared with the high homogeneity in the traditional hardware field, iQiyi and TCL launched TV+, Youku and Haier jointly launched 4K TV, and Skyworth and Youpengpule created OTT TV, which also allowed the industry to see a new model for the successful transformation of video companies and traditional TV manufacturers.
The decline of Ku6 is due to its focus on UGC business in recent years and attempts to promote video cloud services. However, the market response was lukewarm, and it gradually moved away from the mainstream video industry. It has been absent from mainstream video keywords such as "self-produced dramas, exclusive dramas, mobile videos, 4K programs, OTT TV" for a long time, which is regrettable.
However, companies such as Youpengpule have firmly grasped the development opportunities, and launched a number of major actions such as the "China 4K Promotion Alliance" and the 4K Research Institute to promote the OTV win-win model and actively seize the right to speak in the OTT TV industry. The heavily invested Youpeng Film and Television has become a competitive weapon for video content, and its unique OTV win-win model has become a weather vane for China's Internet TV industry.
It is believed that the rise and fall of video companies represented by Ku6 and Youpengpule is like a mirror of the development history of Chinese video websites, reflecting the difficulties of strategic transformation in the video industry. Only by actively transforming into more emerging fields such as OTT can there be a chance to achieve a counterattack. If they blindly stick to the traditional business model and miss development opportunities, they will only be forgotten by the market. 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. |
