Farewell, Soso! Search failure is an MBA-style rout!

Titanium Media Note: On September 16th, Tencent announced its strategic shareholding in sogou. Wang Xiaochuan said that relying on sogou’s technological innovation and cooperation with Tencent’s big platform, PC search will be rapidly established, which will become the only challenge and subversive force in the industry in wireless search and social search. Ma Huateng also said that it is a bit sad to give up the brand search. But in the long run, it is most important for everyone to unite. (See related reports for details.?Wang Xiaochuan Ruyi Away from Zhou Hongyi: Future Search, Three Points in the World.?Link:https://www.tmtpost.com/63965.html、"sogou was strategically invested by Tencent, the status of controlling shareholder was preserved, and Wang Xiaochuan was also retained." Link:https://www.tmtpost.com/63946.html?)

But is the future really so optimistic? What are the lessons of the "sacrificial" search? The following is the contribution of Liu Huafang, the author of titanium media. The Soso fiasco has also become a classic case in enterprise management.

　

Tencent invested in sogou with Soso and hundreds of millions of dollars, accounting for 36.5% of the shares. Everyone is talking about the big event. Let me talk about the classic case of search market and Soso failure. Personally, I think that Soso failure is a nerd-like debacle of MBA, and the strategy of mechanical module+money+big strategy is not as pragmatic and gradual as Wang Xiaochuan’s.

　

　

The domestic search market can’t stand on its own two feet. Baidu firmly holds more than 70% of the monetizable market share, and the remaining 30% share is not enough to support the monetization of the two search engines. I don’t believe that sogou or 360 can beat Baidu or seize a lot of Baidu’s market share. The new sogou is going to seize the second place in the search market with 360 search, and the third place won’t make much money even if it is alive for a long time.

Due to the stability of the search market, the high cost of search technology and operation, the high cost of acquiring users and the high cost of developing advertising channels, there will be no three-legged situation in the search market for a long time, search is not news, and there will be no more four portal stories.

Sogou and Soso merged, and Soso’s high-value differentiated products are street view, inquiry and mobile search; Compared with Soso, sogou has a more perfect advertising sales channel and a relatively perfect alliance system. Sogou browser gives sogou some relatively low-cost traffic.

What sogou needs to face directly is not Baidu, but 360 Search. 360 Company has a wolf-like boss and tough execution. At the same time, Zhou Hongyi knows the sales channels of search advertisements like the back of his hand. Because he used to be the boss of search, the new sogou wants to face a cruel reality: with 360 Search, he seized the only ticket for monetizing search.

As a general search, the user scale determines the algorithm quality, and the algorithm quality determines the advertising accuracy. The construction of the search ecological closed loop is a work that must be completed, and the new sogou needs time to seize market share and monetize the search with 360 search.

　

　

When two big companies merge, their corporate culture, technical framework, corporate politics and market channels need to be integrated. If the integration is not good, there will be a wave of resignation, and product integration is the biggest problem. In the past, sogou was built based on Sohu user system, and some sub-products still use Sohu sub-domain. The email address of sogou enterprises is rotten to death. After accessing Tencent’s huge investment, how to connect or integrate sogou user system with Tencent’s large platform user system will be an important part of the final success of the cooperation between the two parties.

Baidu has evolved into the middle page strategy stage, which is not in the same dimension as sogou and 360 search. 360 has expanded the scale of registered users with the help of browsers, and sogou is obviously weak in this respect; Sogou brand has achieved public awareness by means of input method, but the installation channel of input method is unknown, and the proportion of installed equipment is unknown, which affects the real arrival rate of the brand; Soso Ask is a relatively complete and mature knowledge product, which can be directly used. Soso Picture Search is also good. Soso Ask can complete sogou’s knowledge search, and Soso Encyclopedia can also complete Sogou Encyclopedia. From the perspective of product integrity, Soso Many products are actually very good. Sogou’s web search and video search are better, while news search is still better than sogou’s.

　

Human factors: good search skills, but no personality.In the embrace of big Tencent, there is no sense of existence of Soso. How does Tencent’s cluster management face the following conflicts or leaks between team creativity, individuality and group cultural style? Tencent has money, but does Soso have a hunger for independent entrepreneurship? Does Soso team grow under the pressure of survival goals? In the dominant market, the rich second generation can succeed quickly, and in the inferior market, the poor people’s hard-working spirit is needed.

　

Marketing:Ma Huateng said in an interview that Soso technology is good, but it can’t be sold. Why not? Tencent has the ability to input traffic, technical ability and user scale, but the marketing of Soso has not effectively operated in the closed-loop chain of search ecology.Take the Soso Alliance as an example. In recent years, it has done the same as rotten cabbage. The shortage of search advertisements can be supplemented by tencent games advertisements. The alliance is not used to make money or divide money., but user marketing, 200,000 stations to play with you, that is, 200,000 word-of-mouth propagandists.

　

Brand public relations: I have never felt the existence of Soso brand public relations.In Soso in Xing Hongyu’s era, at least I know that Soso knows you better. Now the differentiation of Soso brand has been completely submerged and disappeared. Soso’s public relations are as soft as sheep, searching for all kinds of wars, and even Zhongsou wants to come in and brush the sense of existence, but almost no sign of Soso can be seen. The public relations department of Soso has not released the uniqueness and presence of Soso, which is a major reason for the failure of Soso. The outside world knows that Soso and the Soso team have only one channel.

　

Innovative and not creative:Why do you say that? Is it Monday morning quarterback? There are many innovations in products such as maps and street scenes, but there is no creativity in the combination of overall search products and brand strategy. Of course, some netizens will say that Liu Huafang is a bird and doesn’t know anything, so let me say a few more words:

• 1. In a fully competitive market, I think that brushing the sense of existence is the common mission of products and brands. It does not exist in the minds of netizens, and no amount of traffic is a waste.

• 2. Soso didn’t launch @soso.com e-mail: Since Tencent has a complete e-mail platform and enterprise e-mail platform at @qq.com, as the second suffix brand of Tencent e-mail, @soso.com can make Soso feel a sense of existence every day.
• 3. The big platform tied the search hand: the acquisition of discuz was accompanied by a statistical system developed by Kangsheng at that time (it should be like this). Website statistics is the closest product to the network alliance, because they are all for webmasters and publisher. Strangely, statistics are tied to social platforms, and their functions are chicken-ribbed. Statistics should be given to Soso, and it is also an important medium for Soso to carry out scale marketing.
• 4. It’s incredible that the Soso Alliance was launched so early, developed so slowly, and its strategy was so rigid. Even if its own bidding advertisements can’t be sold, it can also bring in advertising resources such as pat-on-the-net merchants. That’s what Ali’s mother did. Didn’t sogou quickly improve its bidding sales performance by relying on Ali’s advertising resources?