There is no new media, traditional media: only media thinking and non-media thinking.

Traditional Media Transformation: Replacing Media Thinking with Product Thinking

Digital, the parent company of 3G portal, finally landed on the market. Interestingly, the most important chip for digital listing is not its most famous 3G portal.

Even if you just open an Android application market without asking people around you who are using the 3G portal today, it is difficult for you to find the 3G portal app among popular applications such as reading and news classification. Among the 360 mobile assistants with the largest download flow of Android applications, the download volume of 3G portal is only 1.8 million times, which is completely different from the first echelon. This mobile phone website, which was once famous in the WAP era and wanted to capture the three major portals, can be described as "recession" in the APP era.

As early as 2 years ago, I went to be a guest, and my brothers there already called their PC portal traditional media. Therefore, we can completely define WAP websites as "traditional media". The news APP of 3G portal evolved from this "traditional media" is obviously a "transformation failure" in terms of current achievements.

A company with Internet genes failed in the transformation process of news APP, but Nine Digital successfully transformed as a company, and a brand-new product, GO Desktop, which completely abandoned the media form, blossomed everywhere overseas. This can't help but make me think about an old question again: can the new media transformation attempt of traditional media succeed now? Where is the road?

Everyone knows that the trend is irreversible.

Internet makes content and news no longer belong to the monopoly resources of traditional media, and advertisers are always looking for the most accurate way to reach the target population. Looking abroad, the decline trend of traditional media does not even need to quote numbers. Newspapers were forced to close down and changed hands more and more. In China, the advertising revenue of newspapers has fallen sharply, and it is also well known that street newsstands are closed. In the past two years, the magazines we have cooperated with have all announced the suspension of publication, which has affected such big groups as fashion finance news. Since I bought a smart TV, I have never turned on the remote control to choose a TV station. I always watch programs directly on the APP. It is precisely because of this that more and more traditional media leaders have realized the crisis and started to talk about new media. The "traditional media decline theory" is louder than anyone else, and it has indeed strengthened more and more attempts and innovations. But the cruel thing is that for traditional media, indecision and improvement can't solve the problem, and innovation and revolution are needed to save themselves in the future. Therefore, traditional media will decline!

First of all, the culture of traditional media in China is still elite rule and leadership, which is the kingly resource to manage brand interests, while the new media pays attention to open and equal service innovation. The two are in direct conflict. The traditional media is to make a manuscript for readers to see and convey my values, while the new media is to create content for users' needs and even use a lot of user content, which is in direct conflict. In advertising, there is also a direct conflict between the distribution fraud of traditional media, the fraud of ratings and the frequent need for third-party verification data of new media. How many people can have the courage to fully transform into the company of the latter when the former can still seek a lot of benefits? Being tempted by vested interests and not entering the field of innovation is a taboo in the Internet age. Look at the weakness and incomprehension of the new media department in the traditional media, and you will know its complexity. Therefore, future recession is inevitable.

Secondly, most people in the traditional media are still literati, and their plots are greater than the thinking of businessmen. This is also the reason why many enlightened traditional media people talk more deeply about the reform of new media than new media people, but it is still difficult to surpass the traditional inertia when governing their own media, and it is difficult to completely promote innovation or give up halfway. There are institutional reasons, but there are also their own reasons. It's easy to make suggestions and set an example, but it's not easy to deny yourself who has been treated like a cow by others for a long time. Existing talents are difficult to transform in the short term, and external talents lack the mechanism to introduce, so recession is inevitable. Kang Group, which owns top magazines, dared to send a person who has been engaged in digital business for a long time to be the president of China, which made me admire very much. I don't think it's possible in China.

Third, many people have misunderstandings about new media. In my opinion, new media has never been the lifeline of traditional media. But two species with completely different genes. The way out for traditional media must be the reconstruction of a broader business model. For example, Niu of Entrepreneurship and Hua Bao put forward the concept of "service" long ago to run their own media companies. In my eyes, they are more like the CEO of the company than the editor-in-chief publisher, so the transformation is very good. There is a magazine called "Woman" in Chengdu and a magazine called "Chao" in Nanjing, so it can be regarded as an e-commerce. And more traditional media are still struggling to build websites, build apps, build Weibo WeChat, manage third-party new media companies to collect some copyright fees, and seek more protection from the government. In essence, without a clear understanding of the competition between old and new media, can we be invincible against new media?

We are going through a stage of denying ourselves and remolding ourselves, which is full of pain. But I firmly believe that only by replacing media thinking with product thinking and net income thinking with business model thinking can we create a good opportunity for continuous breakthrough. As far as this industry is concerned, "tradition" will decline, and only "innovation" can advance.

Author: Mats Wang