Cyber ​​Elephant: A New Life of Yidian Zixun

In November 1983 , the American science fiction magazine " Amazing Stories " published a short story written by Bruce Bethke. No one could have imagined at the time that the term created by this novel would later usher in an era of science fiction.

The name of the novel is "Cyberpunk", and its Chinese translation is "Cyberpunk".

In the next few decades, with the continuous emergence of a series of excellent works of literature, film and television, animation, and games such as "Neuromancer", "The Matrix", "Ghost in the Shell", and "Cyberpunk 2077", the word "cyber", which means machine control, has gradually evolved into a synonym for the future. In the technology and Internet industries, many companies have incorporated the word "cyber" into the names of companies or products - such as Tesla's Cybertruck - to express a sense of technology.

But for enterprises, "cyber" represents more than just high technology. Its deeper level contains more vision for the future, such as Yidian Zixun's "cyber".

Recently, Beijing Smile Angel Children's Hospital and Yidian Zixun jointly held a charity dinner in Beijing called "2021 Echo of Love", which is a charity event focusing on children with cleft lip and palate. In addition to a series of public welfare initiatives at the dinner, the industry also captured another piece of information: a prefix was added to "Yidian Zixun" - Cyber ​​Elephant Group.

This is the latest upgrade of Yidian Zixun. This charity dinner can be regarded as the first official and public appearance of "Cyber ​​Elephant Group", but it is not an upgrade ceremony of Cyber ​​Elephant Group.

A few hours before the dinner started, Yang Yuxiang, executive president of Cyber ​​Elephant Group and CEO of Yidian Zixun, explained to Leifeng.com in his Beijing office: The company has been renamed Cyber ​​Elephant internally for a long time, but there are no plans to hold a ceremony. The main idea is to achieve some results first before doing anything else.

First from right: Yang Yuxiang, Executive President of Cyber ​​Elephant Group and CEO of Yidian Zixun

Just like the futuristic sense of "cyber", Yidian Zixun was upgraded to Cyber ​​Elephant Group with an eye to the future and to make some changes.

Although Yidian Zixun has been at the forefront of the information flow platform industry for many years, the market environment in the past two years has shown that the development of the information flow industry has slowed down significantly. Simply guarding Yidian Zixun is obviously no longer a good choice, and the company needs to inject fresh blood. Yang Yuxiang said that upgrading is also a future change. In essence, he wants to transform Yidian Zixun from a company brand to a product brand, build or acquire other product lines around information flow, and then slowly jump out of "only information flow" and gradually form its own product matrix, and this matrix needs a new group to carry it.

Judging from the current popular culture, the name "Cyber ​​Elephant" is a good one. Yang Yuxiang also talked about the origin of this name:

In this way, the two seemingly incompatible words "Cyber" and "Elephant" were combined into a new brand upgrade for Yidian Zixun Company. Yidian Zixun officially became a product brand in the Cyber ​​Elephant Group, and more products betting on the future followed.

In addition to core businesses such as content aggregation and information flow, Cyber ​​Elephant Group has opened up several new tracks. Yang Yuxiang briefly introduced the layout of several tracks to Leifeng.com. These have already been started internally but have never been announced to the outside world.

Cyber ​​Elephant’s first new track is: social.

At the Yanran Charity Dinner that just ended, Cyber ​​Elephant Group donated an NFT digital encrypted art work - "Jelly", which is also the name of Cyber ​​Elephant's first social product, a young and familiar social app.

When it comes to social entrepreneurship, many people will ask, isn’t this track over and there are no more opportunities? Especially in the field of acquaintance social networking, Tencent has clearly won!

Yang Yuxiang has his own understanding of this doubt: It is true that WeChat currently dominates the social networking among acquaintances, but from another perspective, it is precisely because there is only WeChat that the competition is not so fierce. It is just like in nature, where there are behemoths like dinosaurs, but there are also tigers, lions, and ants, and all kinds of creatures can survive.

WeChat is no longer a social product in the conventional sense. With more than one billion users, it is like a life infrastructure. For the sake of stability and efficiency, some compromises must be made. What Jelly will do next is to put "expression" first, allowing young acquaintances to express themselves better and more diversely. This is an important direction different from WeChat.

At present, a team of several hundred people has been working on the development of Jelly for more than a year, and it will be released at the end of the year. When Leifeng.com asked what size Jelly he hoped it would be, Yang Yuxiang said that it was meaningless to give a specific number. Tens of millions of DAU at the beginning would be a great leap forward in the Internet style. I just hope it can be a sustainable large product.

Cyber ​​Elephant’s second new track is: video.

"I think we must find a more solid fulcrum when making videos, rather than repeating ourselves," said Yang Yuxiang when talking about his video strategy.

Before the video product project was launched, there were still some voices of opposition within the company, because it was not a good time to enter the short and medium-length video market. Douyin, Kuaishou, and other video platforms already had their own moats. If a new product was made, it would most likely be a "skin-changing monster", changing the packaging and distribution. At most, it would narrow the user base and focus on young/older users, or focus on vertical categories. These are things that have been done over and over again by the market, and they are really meaningless.

Finally, everyone reached a core consensus on the video: you can do it, but you have to think clearly about what the new product can change.

With this clear purpose, the new product "Flying Scissors" was launched, and this product also has its own clear positioning: using tools as the entry point to create a video platform for one and a half to three minutes.

Judging from the current product market, there are Douyin and Kuaishou for videos of tens of seconds to one minute, Xigua and Bilibili for videos of three to five minutes to ten minutes, and medium-length videos of one and a half to three minutes are indeed a relatively blank area. However, there are many videos that take one to three minutes to explain something clearly, especially knowledge-based videos such as history and finance.

Yang Yuxiang said that from the tool perspective, short videos of dozens of seconds can be edited very well with mobile phone editing tools, while medium-length videos of about ten minutes require professional desktop-level editing tools. Videos of one and a half to three minutes are in an awkward position: they cannot use such advanced and professional technology, and short video editing tools on mobile phones are not enough. So this demand became the starting point for their video track. Internally, they have been vigorously developing and trying to build a material library and use AI technology to match materials, hoping to polish out a good tool and enter the video field.

Cyber ​​Elephant’s third track is: games.

According to Yang Yuxiang, Cyber ​​Elephant Group has merged with Longtu Games.

Friends who pay attention to the gaming industry must be familiar with Longtu Games. Longtu is one of the most powerful game developers and operating publishers in China. Many of its games are well-known, such as "Legend of the Swordsman", "Legend of Ice and Snow", and the recently launched "Ember Storm".

Through Longtu Games, Cyber ​​Elephant will also make a certain degree of layout in the game field in the future.

The three new tracks have brought new vitality to Yidian Zixun, or Cyber ​​Elephant Group.

Social networking, video, and games have all been at the forefront of Cyber ​​Elephant Group’s strategic priorities, but what about Yidian Zixun?

Yang Yuxiang said that content aggregation and distribution are still the core businesses.

From the perspective of income, because Yidian Zixun is still a product that can bring in a lot of cash flow so far, the economic base determines the superstructure. Yang Yuxiang gave a very down-to-earth example: just like when people work, the most important thing is to get the salary first, and then develop interests and hobbies. Which interests and hobbies can become core skills in the future must be based on the existing salary.

From the past to the present, Yidian Zixun is still one of the leading content aggregation apps. Whether in terms of content quality or user traffic, it is in a leading position in the industry and has huge value.

In recent years, Yidian Zixun has been constantly iterating itself, perfecting the popular high-quality algorithm recommendation technology, and improving the more humane operation mode on top of the technology. For example, in the first half of this year, in order to meet the needs of Generation Z for authoritative news clients and personalized content, Yidian Zixun has invested heavily in content. Through cooperation with mainstream media content, high-quality content support plans, "human-machine combination" personalized recommendations and other methods, Yidian Zixun has established its own unique moat in the current fierce competition of information flow, especially in terms of creator retention, by providing more dimensional support such as policies, cash, traffic, platform resources, etc., supporting subjective thinking and value output, combating homogeneity and useless information, and guiding creators and platforms to build a healthy content ecology together.

In addition, Yidian Zixun has also established its own content production system, such as Boiling Point Video. As of September 2021, Boiling Point Video has more than 10,000 core videographers worldwide, more than 10 million fans on the entire network, more than 20,000 videos produced throughout the year, and an average daily playback volume of more than 30 million on the entire network. The two original columns of the brand, "Hora Later" and "Boiling Point's Sayings", have also made their own reputations.

The success of content ecosystem construction has helped Yidianzixun consolidate its position in the industry. The next step is to help Cyber ​​Elephant Group build its own advantages in other fields as a key member of Cyber ​​Elephant.

The upgrade of Cyber ​​Elephant is a rebirth for the former Yidian Zixun. It involves the gestation of products and technologies, the persistence of the present and the vision for the future.