The era of "horse racing and enclosure" by internet giants is over. On February 22, Tencent's social e-commerce business "Gosling Pinpin" was revealed to be about to be shut down. At present, the independent app of "Gosling Pinpin" has been taken off the shelf, and the wechat applet is still in operation. Tencent responded that the shutdown of "Gosling spell" was based on strategic focus considerations, and the employees of relevant teams will be transferred to other projects to choose matching positions within the group. A year ago, or even half a year ago, "strategic focus" was still a word out of touch with Chinese Internet giants. In that era when giants desperately ran horses and enclosure, "expansion", "diversification" and "cross-border" were the favorite words of all kinds of "O" in Internet companies. However, with the gradual disappearance of mobile Internet dividends and the tightening of the regulatory environment in the second half of 2021, Internet giants have begun to re sort out their business scope. Represented by Tencent, byte beating and Alibaba, more and more pioneering businesses unrelated to their main business have been shut down, abolished or sold. The "chicken ribs" abandoned by the giants are not the first and will not be the last. 01 Gosling fight, from star to shutdown Gosling spelling and official account are still less than two years old. The on-line App is still less than a year. Unlike the current low-key ending, the initial "goose spelling" has also carried the "dream" of Tencent's incoming e-commerce. Tencent's self operated e-commerce products performed mediocrely in its early years. After the 3Q war, Tencent shifted its thinking from self operation to investment cooperation. As early as 2012, Tencent tried to make up for its weakness in e-commerce by investing in jd.com; Then he took shares in pinduoduo, youzan, Weimeng and other e-commerce platforms. The emergence of the epidemic in 2020 and the outbreak of live broadcasting with goods have driven the rise of content e-commerce. Seeing the opportunity, Tencent can't help but sell to e-commerce again. In April 2020, once launched, Gosling Pinpin was regarded as a product benchmarking "pinduoduo". According to media reports, the project is one of the core innovation projects of the nbase team under Tencent PCG business group. Based on Tencent's diversified social ecology and huge user traffic, the project adopts the commodity recommendation and delivery mode relying on the user's social network. These are the "natural" advantages of gosling, and many people have expressed their optimism about its future development. However, similar to the e-commerce products Tencent has made in the past, the gosling has not made too much splash in the e-commerce market in the two years since its launch, which is in sharp contrast to the video Number launched a few months later, which won hundreds of millions of months. At the same time, with the changes in the regulatory situation, Tencent's desire to "explore" e-commerce is also decreasing. On December 23 last year, Tencent and jd.com announced that Tencent would issue about 460 million shares of jd.com to shareholders in the form of medium-term dividend, and Tencent's shareholding in jd.com would be reduced from 17% to 2.3%. As soon as the news came out, although Tencent and JD did not explain this move too much, several media analysts believed that this may be a choice made under the antitrust requirements of relevant departments. The business development was not as expected, and the adjustment of strategic focus under the regulatory situation may be the direct reason why Tencent suddenly decided to shut down Gosling Pinpin. 02 take back the "hand" Battmd has always been said by domestic Internet giants. According to public reports and statistics, geek park has successively shut down, abolished and contracted more than 20 new and old businesses since 2021. The details are shown in the figure below. Among them, education and financial products with drastic tightening of regulation last year are the "hardest hit areas". Just the day before the "Gosling Pinpin" went off the shelf, it was reported that "Wenxing online", the operator of dolphin stock app, its securities business, was sold to Hualin securities. According to a relevant person of byteco, other operating entities of byteco's securities business are also in contact with potential traders or in the process of internal shutdown, and byteco will completely divest the securities business. The news did not come suddenly. In September last year, some media reported that it planned to sell its securities business. Since the first half of 2021, it has communicated with CICC, CITIC, Fosun Group, niuguwang, Dongfang wealth, etc., of which two companies have given letters of intent. Byte also responded frankly: the company contracted its financial related business and did have a plan to sell the securities sector. In fact, according to insiders quoted by latepost later, there has not been much determination and budget to invest in dolphin stock app. The app has been online for four years, with only 133900 daily users. Therefore, the closure of securities business can not only prevent financial risks and comply with regulatory requirements, but also do no harm to its overall development. Mutual aid applications with the same nature of financial products were once the favorite of Internet giants. No matter Tencent, Alibaba / ant, didi and meituan have launched their own mutual aid products. However, in September 2020, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission issued a document "analysis and countermeasures and suggestions on illegal commercial insurance activities", pointing out that some pre charging mode platforms have formed precipitated funds and run away risks, and the external supervision is becoming more and more strict. In January 2021, "meituan mutual aid" announced its shutdown, Didi's "didi Guardian" announced its offline in October, and Ali's "mutual treasure" stopped running in January this year. With regard to the frequent "extension" of Internet platforms to other fields, some netizens once commented: "Internet platforms should not think about monopolizing everything, especially finance, education and small business and hawker baskets." A word becomes a prophecy. In the past year, the online education industry has experienced many ups and downs. After the "double reduction", the education business of major Internet manufacturers had to be closed passively or actively. On November 16 last year, Tencent happy mouse English shut down its service and barely lasted until 2022. The four major online education businesses of byte's vigorous education - "gogokid", "take a picture", "Qingbei small class" and "Tangyuan English" also issued a shutdown announcement on February 18. The same is true of community group buying. From 2020 to 2021, the group staged a "big escape", but it was only a year. The Shihui Group invested by Ali for many times shut down its business in 21 city circles across the country in August last year. At the same time, Didi's orange heart preferred has made a wide-ranging adjustment and contraction, and other enterprises that are still sticking to it have also become a lot of low-key. In addition, the layoff of byte leisure game ohayoo, the shutdown of cross-border women's independent station damonstudio, the shutdown of shrimp music under Alibaba, the suspension of trading of social e-commerce "taoxiaopu", etc. to some extent, it shows that in the fields of games, e-commerce and music, big manufacturers such as byte and Alibaba are also slowing down and turning to focus on their main core businesses. 03 rewritten "rules" Relying on strong capital strength to invest and acquire start-ups, so as to expand the company's business territory and seize market share, was once the only magic weapon for the rapid expansion of Internet giants. However, as the snowball of capital grows larger and larger, the "tentacles" of the Internet platform cover almost half of the socio-economic system. While its own influence increases, the risks behind it are also increasing. On December 24, 2020, the State Administration of Market Supervision announced that according to the report, Alibaba group had filed a case for investigation on suspected monopoly behaviors such as "one out of two" according to law. Antitrust shots began to sound, and the rules of Internet competition were broken. In January 2021, the State Administration of Market Supervision issued the revised draft of the anti monopoly law; In November, the state Anti Monopoly Bureau was officially established, and the anti-monopoly work was gradually normalized. In the past year, there were 87 cases of illegal punishment and 118 cases of "antitrust" administrative punishment in the Internet field. Ali and meituan received huge fines respectively for the implementation of "one out of two" monopoly, and the share prices of Chinese Internet enterprises plunged one after another. In the increasingly complex external environment, the "magic weapon" of the past is no longer "manifest", and it will no longer be a rational choice to spend too much energy testing cross-border business. For Internet giants, it may be a more appropriate way to orderly peel off non core, risky and poor return businesses, focus on the main core businesses and create external value. Before Tencent said "strategic focus", it was also taking back the focus of its business. When the real estate business was split in 2021, according to surging news, an investor who participated in the split of happy Lane said. According to the idea of focusing on the main business, in addition to the previous sale of securities business and the current spin off of real estate business, it will continue to spin off its vertical information businesses such as automobile and health. The era of Internet giants trying hard to add is over, and more and more giants will give up their hands in the future. The shortcut to easily expand is "blocked". In the short term, the market value of Internet giants may be affected to some extent; But focus on the main business, make the business not only bigger but also stronger, and provide better services for consumers. In the long run, it may not be a bad thing for both platforms and consumers. (Xinhua News Agency)