Chapter 541 E-Commerce

Sure enough, not long after, news came out that the submarine cable to North America had malfunctioned, causing North American websites to be unable to access normally. The relevant personnel were working hard to repair it, and speculated that this network outage was caused. The source is civilian boats fishing in the open sea.

Fan's Network Services Company immediately published news on its business channels to confirm this rumor, and stated that this is a problem of high-end network service providers and has nothing to do with domestic service providers. It also reminded network users that in view of the current network communication The complexity of network services still has a long way to go. We should take good care of the network instead of shouting and killing as soon as there is a problem. This will only lead to no one having access to the network in the end.

In fact, the number of domestic Internet users is relatively limited now, and the Internet is basically in a state of chaos and disorder.

The American "Business Weekly" wrote in a striking headline on the cover of this year's issue, Apple is back! Jobs, who returned to Apple in the early 1990s, had accumulated enough strength after experiencing a failure. In May of this year, a product that embodies the efforts of Jobs was born. As of now, sales have reached 1.6 billion US dollars.

Starting this year, Apple has turned from a loss to a profit for the first time. It is not the only innovative product that people remember. At the beginning of the year, Microsoft quietly released overseas. Compared with the old version of s95, the new version not only adds more features, but also has higher reliability. The operation is also more convenient and faster.

Starting from this year, people's experience of multimedia and digital life seems to have become more profound.

At this time, far away in China on the other side of the ocean, an Internet practitioner was observing another change in the United States with a keen eye. This famous author wrote an article called "Portal War", which was published in the media It was fried hot.

In the article, the author introduces two new concepts that are emerging in the United States, network portals and portal wars.

A game featuring AOL L and! The war for the Internet is raging. APE, Microsoft, and established search engine companies such as Ly-S and BSP are all competing for the loyalty of online readers, which is called soul market share. The physical space seized is the first screen that netizens see when they open the browser. The mainstream media in the United States has recently named this virtual market a network portal. Websites that are chosen by netizens as their access to the Internet will have the opportunity to get a share of the rapidly growing online advertising market.

As the popularity of this article increased, the concept of portal directly affected the domestic Internet industry.

As if overnight, domestic IP network content service providers and ISP network service providers rushed to the portal website one after another.

At the beginning of the year, Sohu founder Zhang Chaoyang was still lamenting,

Don't know what to do. Now he suddenly realized it, so he launched the website on September 15th, clearly announcing that it would be China's No. 1 website. In the same year, Zhang Chaoyang was named one of the world's 50 digital heroes by Time Magazine, becoming a famous figure. Internet upstarts.

A week later, NetEase also completely revised its version, taking the first step towards the direction of a Chinese Internet portal. Other search engines such as Guangzhou Window, Lifang Online also announced their revision to ***, consciously changing or moving closer to the portal.

In fact, at this time, the so-called Internet portals in China were still in their infancy. They were all search engines or even classified directories similar to phone books.

There are currently only over one million Internet users in China, of which hundreds of thousands are computer and network professionals. But despite the insufficient number of users, all websites understand that online portals will be a major trend in future development, so seizing the opportunity is king.

At this time, Yinghaiwei, the oldest company in the country and the most promising company to become a portal, was already in turmoil. Senior managers resigned en masse, and the company faced a serious crisis. At that time, the domestic information service industry generally had a harsh living environment. By the end of last year, Yinghaiwei had invested a total of 160 million. According to the report to the board of directors, its input-output target income should be 110 million, excluding key research and publicity. The lowest estimate of the cost should be 90 million, but the actual income was only over 9 million. Due to a severe shortage of funds, the company's plans for rapid development were shelved. The income is too low and the input-output ratio is too disparate, causing Yinghaiwei to enter a vicious cycle, eventually leading to a point where even survival is a problem.

Fan Wubing has been watching this with a cold eye. He knows very well that it is not easy for an Internet company like Yinghaiwei, which has no industry background resources, unreasonable capital structure, and business model without redundant value chain design, to persist until now.

But just a week after the collective resignation of Yinghaiwei executives, Sitong Lifang merged with the overseas Chinese Internet company American Huayuan Information Company to form Sina.

In a very short period of time, Sina became the largest Chinese website in the world.

The establishment of Sina made people vaguely feel that a new Internet era was coming.

At noon, Fan Heng arrived in the capital by plane, preparing to participate in National Day-related activities in a few days. After that, he would also attend the wedding ceremony of Fan Ting and Han Chu, so he would stay in the capital for a longer time this time.

After Fan Wubing brought his father back in person, he invited the whole family to have dinner together. The family finally became popular.

Zhang Mei doesn't have too many complaints. She has been very busy in the Ministry of Education recently, and because her husband Fan Heng has a good official career, people in the ministry are very polite when they see her. If something happens to the ministers, they will not She had to listen to her opinions very carefully, so Zhang Mei felt that her life value was finally reflected.

During lunch, Dad Fan Heng looked at the group of successful sons and daughters, as well as the prospective sons-in-law and prospective daughters-in-law, and he felt a little comforted. He drank two more glasses happily, and then He asked Han Chu some casual questions, then chatted with Xiao Qiang about family matters, and then said to Fan Wubing, "Your Internet company should be okay, right?"

Fan Wubing was surprised that his father Fan Heng would care about his company, so he replied, "It will definitely not make money in the early stage. Because of the infrastructure construction, it has been losing money."

In fact, Fan Wubing's network service company has been in business for so long, and has basically recovered its costs and maintained a balance of payments. Although it is very convenient to make a profit, it only needs to increase some rental fees, but considering Domestic Internet companies are all in their infancy, so Fan Wubing thought it would be better to provide them with more help, so as to give them more space and energy for growth.

Then Fan Heng nodded and said, "Oh, are you ISP or BSP? Damn it! Fan Wubing suddenly had a look of awe on his face, and thought to himself, when will dad have time to care about the Internet? So he said, " We are an ISP, providing underlying services. The p you mentioned refers to providing network content services, just like several portals, they all belong to p. But dad, why do you suddenly care about this matter? "

"Everyone on the street is talking about e-commerce now!" Dad Fan Heng replied innocently.

Han Chu, who was chatting with Fan Kang, interrupted when he heard this, "Wu Bing, shouldn't our company also engage in e-commerce? This thing is very popular. Even if we don't engage in e-commerce, we can develop a portal." The website also has great potential. Once it is completed, it can be directly listed on Nasdaq, and it will only cost American investors’ money.”

"You can do e-commerce, but it's just a gimmick. I think doing it now is basically not much different from lying to people with your eyes open." Fan Wubing expressed his attitude, and then said, " But you can do it if you want to. In terms of technology, the company can give full support and funds are available, but you cannot use the company's name. It is best to find an agent and you will do the behind-the-scenes manipulation. If the operation is better, you can go there next year. After listing on NASDAQ, I immediately cashed in and made some pocket money.”

After listening to Fan Wubing's words, several people felt that Fan Wubing seemed to have no enthusiasm for e-commerce at all, so they asked in surprise, "Why are your ideas different from everyone else's?"

It’s no wonder that everyone disagrees with Fan Wubing’s views. The key is that the promotion of e-commerce this year has been a bit too hot. The domestic e-commerce model has basically been completely replaced by the e-commerce model in the United States. Copied it. Not only did they copy their business model, but they also exaggerated their success, so much so that even those who collected rags on the street could talk about e-commerce, and even told others that in the future, we would also collect rags online, place orders online, and then Door-to-door service is much more profitable than it is now.

In January of this year, Lianbang Software began to conduct online software sales trials in Fuzhou. That year, the site was rated as one of the top ten websites in Fujian, and became the first to use online booking in the local s98 Chinese version.

Soon after, China's first online software books sales website 8848 was officially launched, which is said to represent the height of Mount Everest. Naming it after the digital peak of Everest shows 8848’s ambition to dominate the world in e-commerce.

In September, 8848 carefully planned a seventy-two-hour network survival test. Twelve contestants were sealed into an almost empty room for seventy-two hours, with only one computer and one network cable in contact with the outside world. In this commercial farce that shocked the country, many people heard about online shopping for the first time, and many people remembered the term 8848. 8848 has become famous since then.

In fact, the reason why Fan Heng is so familiar with e-commerce is probably because he has seen the overwhelming media propaganda, and another point is that his provincial governor’s office uses optical cable access provided by Fan Wubing Company. See online News and forums are extremely convenient, and even he knows that there is a mud graphics game.

In addition to 8848's e-commerce efforts, many people who later became prominent in the Internet industry also started their own businesses at this time. At the beginning of the year, Jack Ma, who was building a website for the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing, had led his team back to Hangzhou from Beijing and established the Alibaba e-commerce website in a lakeside garden on the outskirts of the city.

In this simple house with newspaper walls, Jack Ma started an entrepreneurial speech to all the employees. He put forward three goals: first, to build a company that can survive for eighty years; second, to build an e-commerce company that serves Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises; third, to build the world's largest e-commerce company. Entered the top ten global website rankings.

Although no one has openly objected to Ma Yun's goal, everyone is still wondering.

Of course, no one expected that a year later, Ma Yun's photo would appear on the cover of the world's authoritative financial magazine "Forbes" and Alibaba would be named the world's best B2B site. Subsequently, Alibaba became the world's largest B2B e-commerce website.

In addition, Shao Yibo from Shanghai also set his sights on the e-commerce field. He and his Harvard alumni founded eBay, which was also China's first e-commerce website. Four travel fans from different industries, Shen Nanpeng, Liang Jianzhang, Ji Qi, and Fan Min, set their sights on the tourism industry and founded a website that provides online air ticket and hotel reservation services, Ctrip.com, which later became China's largest online travel service provider. Li Guoqing, who had been working in the book publishing industry for ten years, and his wife Yu Yu founded China's first online bookstore Dangdang.com.

But just as e-commerce websites were popping up like mushrooms after rain, overcoming the payment barriers of online shopping became the most pressing issue. If you want to play e-commerce, you must have four basic guarantees: an e-commerce website, smooth logistics, convenient online payment methods, and netizens who are familiar with network operations and dare to try. None of these four items can be missing.

In terms of online payment, China Merchants Bank in China played the role of the first to take the lead and took the lead in launching the OneNet online banking service in China. Since then, it has taken a step ahead and become the leader of the banking industry in the e-commerce era.

"If you think e-commerce has no future, then are these people stupid?" Fan Heng asked in some confusion, "Just some time ago, someone in the province proposed that the provincial government invest in the establishment of an e-commerce website to serve the economic construction of the province."