On April 7, 2005, Xiamen held the first China Personal Website Webmasters Conference. On the cruise ship touring Kinmen and Kinmen after the conference, a webmaster proudly said: "If this ship sinks, China's Internet industry will be paralyzed. ” This is not entirely an exaggeration. Almost all the websites created by these more than 100 webmasters were ranked within Alexa’s global ranking of 2,000. At that time, the combined traffic of all Chinese individual webmasters, according to the most conservative estimate, exceeded 1/3 of the entire Internet traffic in China.
Webmasters—the most grassroots group of people in China’s Internet industry—had already become a commercial force that could not be ignored. In 2004, Cai Wensheng became the first person to receive venture capital as a webmaster. Before and after, more webmasters were standing out, including Li Xingping of hao123, Pang Shengdong of 51.com, Yao Jinbo of 58.com, and Kang Shengchuang. Think Dai Zhikang, etc. Represented by these people, a group of individual Internet webmasters seems to have suddenly surfaced. The traffic they have has become the object of competition for Taobao, Baidu, and Google. They seem to suddenly It has become a scarce resource and has become extremely important.
Unfortunately, this is just an illusion.
On July 20, 2009, Cai Wensheng, the “King of Webmasters” who initiated this initiative, told Entrepreneur: “The era of individual webmasters ended when I held my first webmaster conference. This is not It is said that there will be no webmasters in China in the future, but it is said that today it is impossible for an individual to build a website again and make it nationally famous with tens of millions of users." This judgment is undoubtedly cruel, but looking back it is fact.
If the Internet is an ocean, then webmasters are like a group of duckweeds. Although they have a lot of traffic, they mostly do it on their own and based on their own interests. They do not have unique technologies, innovative models and powerful resources, which makes them lack the ability to grow independently. This means that they must rely on an external platform in business to convert traffic into revenue, from China Mobile to Taobao, Baidu, and Google. However, for large and highly commercial platforms, traffic is only a necessary process in the primitive accumulation period. When the platform becomes its own climate, the traffic in the hands of webmasters will inevitably depreciate. In the increasingly fierce competition and increasingly strict control of the Chinese Internet world, most of the webmaster community is completely unfit.
On July 15, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the "26th China Internet Development Statistical Report" which showed that as of June 2010, the number of websites had dropped to 2.79 million (the number in January 2010 was 3.23 million ). In other words, in just six months, the total number of Chinese websites has "evaporated" by 440,000. The vast majority of them are opened by individual webmasters. Whether subjective or objective, survival of the fittest has begun.
In a sense, the webmaster not only embodies the essence of China's Internet development, but also fully embodies its shortcomings. It is no exaggeration to say that in the process of popularization and development of the Internet in China, the driving force of millions of webmasters is crucial. Just like the digital revolution in the United States, it is driven by generations of Geeks.
There are Geeks in the United States and webmasters in China. These seem to be two completely different subculture groups, but they have a huge impact on shaping their respective Internet business cultures. Geeks are freedom-loving hippies, elites with superior intelligence, cynical computer heroes who want to use technology to change the world; while webmasters are millions of grassroots in small and medium-sized cities in China, smart, active and keen, eager to change their destiny through personal struggle. They don't resist or create unrest, and they make money by digging holes in the walls and sticking to the ground. What is the same is their personal heroism and rebellion against mainstream values.
So far, American geek culture has developed for almost 50 years, starting with the earliest Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Apple II computer developer Steve Wozniak, Viaweb founder, and Y Combinator investment company co-founder From Paul Graham to later Marc Andreessen, Evan Williams, Jerry Yang, and today's Zuckerberg, generations after generations continue to give new connotations to the new word "Geek".
In China, the rise of webmaster culture has only been a decade or so. Due to the environment and its own conditions, the previous generation of webmasters has reached the end of its decline. But in the era of mobile Internet, opportunities are everywhere, and it will even excite young people more than the desktop Internet 10 years ago.
In the past two months, "Entrepreneur" has interviewed Dai Zhikang, founder of Kangsheng Chuangxiang, Cai Wensheng, founder of CNZZ, Yao Jinbo, founder of 58.com, Du Xuequian, founder of Yiting Music Network, Zhang Wei, founder of Shenzhen Boya, Lao Lao Dong Qinfeng, webmaster of Zhejiang Community, Zeng Muyang, webmaster of Blue Ideal Community, Xu Zheng, webmaster of Jiyang Community, Jiangsu, Lin Yu, general manager of Hangzhou 19th Floor Community, Guo Jijun, webmaster of k666.com and Kuadian, and Cui Yi, webmaster of Tianjin Belle Bar female website , Gao Ying, the webmaster of Chongqing Shopaholic website, and more than 10 Internet webmasters or former webmasters. We also met Max Levine, the technical founder of Paypal, the top geek representative in the United States, as well as senior Internet observers such as Xie Wen.
We believe that the era of grassroots webmasters is over, but will it be as the famous "World War II" general MacArthur said in his farewell speech in 1951: "A veteran will never die, he will only quietly retire..."
How will the webmaster spirit of the new era be born?
The third type of people
Why are the first batch of people who build websites willing to do it on the Internet? They are often people who can't let go offline. They may have communication problems. If you want to form a team, this personality will also become a shortcoming. ——Yao Jinbo
Let’s start with the basic question, who is the webmaster? What kind of crowd is this?
The word "webmaster" comes from the English "Webmaster", and its original meaning is "network administrator". It is impossible to verify who translated this technical word into webmaster. According to Dai Zhikang's recollection, in 1996 when he joined Huiduo Network, he There is this title, and many of them will become influential figures in the Internet field in the future. For example, Ma Huateng was the webmaster of Shenzhen Pony-soft website, Qiu Bojun was the webmaster of Zhuhai West Point website, and Wang Juntao (Laorong) was the webmaster of Fuzhou Webmaster, at that time, the "webmaster" seemed more like a highly skilled network knight, the contact person of the virtual world in reality. Today, when we talk about webmasters, it is more from the commercial perspective. perspective.
In the late 1990s, the Internet wave swept across China, and overseas "turtles" represented by Zhang Chaoyang became the most dazzling digital heroes in this wave. Since the new century, local elites such as Ma Huateng, Jack Ma, and Chen Tianqiao have risen steadily and continuously, becoming more powerful trendsetters. The "turtles" and "turtles" are the mainstream faces of China's Internet. They have defined the pattern and direction of China's Internet. But in addition to these two types of people, there is a third type of people in the business world of China's Internet, and they are personal webmasters.
Regardless of whether they are "turtles" or "turtles", they have already proven themselves in society before starting a business, and can even be said to belong to the elite class. Ding Lei was born in the telecommunications system, Zhang Chaoyang and Robin Li are American "turtles", and Chen Tianqiao Once a young senior executive of a state-owned enterprise, Ma Huateng became a technical director in a high-tech company, while Jack Ma was a university teacher. But individual webmasters are different. When they started surfing the Internet, they were far from being social elites. For example, Li Xingping only has a junior high school education, and his job before working in hao123 was to install computers and manage Internet cafes; Dai Zhikang failed 15 subjects in college and despised university education; Cai Wensheng dropped out of high school to start a business; Du Xueqian was expelled from school in his sophomore year; Guo Jijun was in junior high school After graduation, he worked as a fitter and a street vendor; Dong Qinfeng graduated from a vocational high school and worked an ordinary job. To put it simply, when many webmasters started working on the Internet, they were not successful in line with mainstream values, or the webmasters themselves did not like or adapt to those values.
Before 2000, it was the nascent stage of the Internet. Personal webmasters create simple web pages purely out of interest, just for communicating and displaying their interests. They have no income but are full of passion.
Dai Zhikang makes Discuz! I just think that BBS can allow people who have never met each other to communicate, and it is very fulfilling to build this kind of community software; Dong Qinfeng posted more than 70 guides on finding free spaces abroad, just hoping to give some help to novices; Zeng Muyang created Blue Ideal out of hope Give web designers a space to communicate; Xu Zheng has no worries about food and clothing in reality, and building a Jiyang community is just to satisfy his hobby of surfing the Internet; Guo Jijun is more simple, he just feels that the Internet is very free, so he applied for a free space and started it , I just like it, there is no other reason.
From 2000 to 2005, the era of reckless heroes, webmasters single-handedly and by grasping the needs of grassroots users vigorously promoted the applications and services of China's Internet, such as Li Xingping's hao123 website navigation station and Huajun's software download station. Wait, some individual webmasters with traffic began to earn a lot of money.
From 2005 to present, this is an era of comprehensive commercialization. The webmaster community began to diverge, and a small number of webmasters with the ability to evolve themselves began to obtain venture capital, form teams, and look for profit models.
On May 29, 2010, at the Fifth Internet Webmasters Conference, more than 2,500 webmasters flocked to the Great Wall Hotel on the edge of the East Third Ring Road in Beijing. This far exceeded the capacity of the venue. Even the hotel lobby and outside were crowded. to the eagerly awaited crowd. When guest speakers Tang Jun and Kai-Fu Lee arrived, they were treated like idol stars and received thunderous applause.
This made veteran Internet observer Xie Wen a little angry. "Many of the webmasters participating in the conference are not entrepreneurs at all. I feel that they have no place in the real society, but they dream about the Internet all day long and start a business like a carnival. Isn't it strange? Entrepreneurship should be It's very lonely, and it's also a lot of sacrifice. Now, why don't you just say "Why don't you make money? Why do you make money?" There are countless people in Silicon Valley who have not made any money at all, but they are still very good entrepreneurs. The consciousness is too different.”