Yin Zhizhi
Reuters reported on September 1 that the Chinese online education platform ape tutoring for eight years, raised $ 1.2 billion in the new round of financing, increasing its valuation to about $ 13 billion.Its valuation has doubled within six months.
Although the rapid development of ape tutoring shows that the development potential of the online education platform industry is huge, it is not so simple to obtain benefits.
Senior Internet investors depending on the current crown disease epidemic is a comprehensive review of the Internet industry.Any industry that can truly replace or dominate the Internet platform will use this epidemic to get a good market expansion opportunity with the help of this epidemic.
This view is undoubtedly correct.During the non -epidemic period, even if the Internet platform has high efficiency and wants to promote the changes in users from offline consumption to Internet consumption, it must pay high promotion costs.For example, when promoting car calling software, in order to allow users to download applications and develop the habit of using application cars, Didi spent 100 million yuan in the first month (RMB, the same below, about S $ 2.8 million),Subsidies using their apps using their applied cars.In the whole year of 2014, Didi and the fast -calling vehicle application subsidized a total of about 2.4 billion yuan in the market, becoming a well -known war -burning war in the history of the Internet.
The mandatory social isolation caused by the epidemic has undoubtedly given a variety of Internet platforms a chance to promote it for free.As long as the platform can meet the needs of users, users will naturally choose to use it.
In this great review, it is difficult to find an industry like online education that has been highly hoped, but it has performed very unbearable.
Let's take a look at the results first.Reuters reports that after the crown disease epidemic has prompted people to turn to online courses, the interest in China's online education industry has risen rapidly.The report also said that the Chinese market research company IT Orange found that in the first half of this year, the startups aimed at K-12 education had raised 12.5 billion yuan, accounting for more than 60%of the total financing of the industry.
However, throughout China, none of the online education platforms and Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) websites can bear a certain scale of online teaching tasks.The mainstay of the online teaching in various schools in China is Alibaba's office software nails and major video live broadcast websites.
The problem comes. As early as the era of personal computer Internet, the platform for teachers to teach online has become the target of major investment institutions.After 10 years, in the era of mobile Internet, online teaching still fails to subvert the traditional pattern like online shopping, car calls and lifestyle?
Some people say that this is because in a large Internet country like China, the education industry is dominated by the country, so it is difficult for the Internet industry to subvert its pattern.This statement is not logical, and the extracurricular tutoring market has always been market operation in China.The current extracurricular tutoring market is still the market dominated by the overlords of offline classes such as learning and elite education.The online lesson is just a supplement to these platforms, not the main body.
Why is online education so unbearable?The key is that the classification of Internet technology is different from the classification of traditional industries.
Online education, especially online video lectures, is basically the same technology as online live dancing, singing and online video business.Such technologies do not vary depending on the content.
In other words, if online live dancing and singing and singing make money than online education, the best developers and technical resources will be left for live singing and dancing and online videos, not the online education industry.After the development of video and live broadcast, when people really need online education videos and live broadcasts, they naturally use existing videos and live broadcast platforms to meet their needs.
Compared with the online live broadcast and video industry, online education has an absolute disadvantage of industry development.First of all, live dancing and singing are entertainment, and entertainment has strong spontaneous and viscosity. For most people, especially for children, it is not spontaneous.There is no stickiness.
After a live video platform is launched, a good user experience can form stickiness. A good work causes word of mouth to spread, which will allow more users to add snowballs like snowballs and have a strong willingness to pay for rewards.Few students will be addicted to studying in class, and it is even more difficult to have a class because of good reputation, attracting students to add snowballs to pay.This is no wonder that the growth of users on the education platform is difficult.
Not only did the user grow slowly, but the user paid was also inherently insufficient.Basically, users of live and entertainment are decided to pay by themselves.As long as it is impressed by users, paid is natural and continuous.Education users are students without money. Their paid to persuade parents, and parents often hold the mentality of paying for the payment. Once the child's grade does not significantly improves, the parents have no willingness to pay;It is impossible to improve in the short term. Most parents do not understand this, and the renewal rate is naturally low.
Since online education is across the screen, there are no teachers to supervise and restrict children's learning like offline education. For most students, the effect is indeed lower than offline education.Therefore, the efficiency and effect of online education are still not as good as traditional offline training business.
These three disadvantages almost lock the basic platform of online education under the survival line.Finally, the technical team of such platforms often commit to offline education groups to do the supplementary business of education.Platform giants such as Alibaba's subverted retail industry have never appeared in the education industry.
When the needs of online education have gathered enough spontaneous learning and sticky users, it is directly absorbed by a technical platform that has already developed mature videos and live broadcasts, becoming a collection of knowledge payment content in such platforms.In this epidemic, the perfect support of the video and live broadcast platform to the educational scenario has completely proved the independent technology platform of online education, and there is no room for development.
This case gives governments, investment groups, and Internet practitioners a very important revelation.For a long time, everyone thinks that the development of the Internet is to move the traditional offline business to online.This is a very wrong cognition, because the classification of offline industries is different from the classification of industrial applications on Internet technology.If it is stiffly thought that an industry has not yet risen on the Internet, starting from the online technology of this industry, trying to become an industry platform without considering the classification logic of the technology itself, it is likely that the tragedy of online education will be encountered.This cognition is particularly important for multinational governments that are pushing to promote the Internet of the industry.
The author is the co -founder of Qinglan Intelligent Technology Research Co., Ltd.
Original Lianhe Morning Post's English Electronic Magazine Thought China (ThinkChina)
