Chinese Artsy Hub Douban Undergoing Major Adjustment as it Mulls Overseas IPO

2017-08-13 13:52 来源:钛媒体 line

原标题：Chinese Artsy Hub Douban Undergoing Major Adjustment as it Mulls Overseas IPO

(Chinese Version)

On August 10th, Douban, boasting the biggest library of books, films& TV series and music in China and the biggest online community of young artsy Chinese, sent a letter to users and announced that Douban Dongxi was to be closed soon.

Since its launch on September 17th, 2013, Douban Dongxi has been tagged with “beta” in its logo. As a matter of fact, this is the first e-commerce attempt in Douban’s history. From beginning to end, Douban Dongxi lasted for around three years and eleven months. According to the announcement, Douban Dongxi will become “read-only” in a week and officially closed after user contents were all transferred.

Yet, this is not the first product Douban ever closed. On August 16th, Douban Moment was closed. An insider confirmed to TMTPost that “Douban FM was also to be given up soon”.

Douban users first came to know the “tragedy” from Douban Community. Within a few hours, the news was reposted for 700 times, leaving lots of comments and complaints underneath.

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As Douban mulls for overseas IPO, it has become quite bold in business restructuring and adjustment.

As a matter of fact, Yang Bo (also known as “Abei”), founder and CEO of Douban, announced the decision as early as the beginning of this month. “This marks that Douban has entered the stage of pragmatism,” he said in the internal letter.

“We shall close some unprofitable and minor businesses, including Douban Photography, Douban Dongxi, Douban Ticket and Douban Moment. Next, we shall focus more attention on our core business,” head of Douban’s marketing and branding sector revealed to TMTPost as of press time.

For sure, “core business” here means Douban APP, Douban’s comprehensive mobile platform, and Douban Time Podcast, a paid audio content product inside Douban APP.

Against the background of Douban’s commercialization, overseas IPO, paid contents, a group of Douban’s early and loyal users, however, began to mourn for the “death” of Douban, at least the Douban they used to be familiar with.

Douban gets rid of the impression of being “too slow” and become quite “bold”, even aggressive, all of a sudden. As a matter of fact, Abei has already made it clear what constitutes Douban’s core business and what products should be given up.

As Douban closes down some of its “promising” products relentlessly, Douban has also made up its mind to give up users unwilling to change.

It seems, for the first time, that Douban is no longer frightened of criticism from its early and loyal users.

In this article, we shall try to figure out the development paths of these products and look into the destiny of these high-anticipated products in the future. After all, it’s a perfect opportunity for us to observe the transition of a time-honored product as Douban eradicates the old and foster the new.

The reasons behind the closedown of Douban Dongxi and Douban FM

Basically, Douban Dongxi works by integrating commodities Douban users shared into an online commodity exploration community and a customer guide-based e-commerce platform. As is mentioned in the launch blog of Douban Dongxi: Douban Dongxi is based on the massive discussion around clothing, food, housing and transportation. Among 380,000 Douban Groups, over 20,000 are closely related to online shopping, the largest in any category.

In fact, Douban Dongxi was once regarded as the biggest attempt of Douban towards commercialization and profitability and was likely to rise into the biggest online customer guide-based shopping platform. However, it turned out that Douban Dongxi was later reduced into the minority.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous article, Douban Dongxi is fundamentally based on an “anti-consumerism” community.

On the one hand, without an active shopping experience sharing atmosphere, Douban Dongxi simply became a platform where its “artsy” users could tag commodities and fill up their wish lists.

On the other hand, Douban Dongxi is incompatible with Douban’s guiding principle and slogan, that is, “a spiritual corner”.

Moreover, no synergistic effect can be achieved between Douban Dongxi and the hundreds of thousands of books, films & TV series and music items on Douban. In other words, Douban Dongxi can’t win much traffic from Douban. Worse still, most discussions about creative commodities were confined to Douban groups and won’t naturally be transferred to Douban Dongxi.

Likewise, although both Life is Not Blind and My Fair Lady emerged out of Douban groups, they won’t be included in Douban Reading.