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Beijing (People's Daily) - Profitable yet cutthroat, China’s Internet industry has in recent years played hardball over online traffic, namely, netizens or Internet subscribers, with which their own business models can be built to earn a profit.
In practical terms, the wealth-creation power of all the Internet firms, small and big, newly established or long-standing, depends largely on the Internet traffic they hold. As such, it stands to reason they will pull all the stops to contend for traffic, thereby winning market share and becoming profitable.
The WeChat applet “let’s jump”launched on December 27, 2017 by Tencent, one of China’s leading Internet service providers, is a case in point. Without downloading and installing, it’s a game embedded in Tencent’s instant messaging service app via the html-5 game engine. In light of users’click time on the screen the chess jumps over a set distance, and the players will score if the chess lands on the box, or else the game is over. This applet has practically become a national pastime, drawing WeChat's 900 million users , who play around the clock.
Coincidentally, quiz game broadcasting is likewise highly sought-after on mainland China. First introduced by Prometheus Capital, participants of the game who correctly answer 12 questions will divide the cash prize offered by the sponsor, which can amount to 1 million yuan.
According to thepaper.cn, on January 9, the app “Cheeseman”had a quiz game broadcast, the total bonus of which reached 300,000 yuan. Over 830,000 players were attracted, with the acquisition cost of each player merely sevearal cents.
Toutiao, one of China’s news apps, has stepped into the sphere of short video and music while Baidu has adopted data crawl technology across the whole network instead of news source mechanism. Alibaba announced that its website tudou.com had transformed into a short video provider.
Fierce competition in China’s Internet industry is inevitable. But thanks to it, never before in history has China been so prosperous as it is today, ushering in a new era when old-fashioned business models are phased out. Greater vitality will be injected into China’s economy and those that cannot move or adapt will drop out.
