My home is located in a small five-line city in the south of the Yangtze River — — In Y city, except for my long-term wandering outside, my parents and two younger brothers all work and live in Y city. Therefore, the Internet impression of Y city is mainly based on the summary of the social relations at home.
Let’s briefly introduce the basic situation of Y city. It is one of the smallest prefecture-level cities in this province, with a population of more than one million, which is a relatively small prefecture-level city. The resident population of the municipal area is estimated to be around 300,000. Because the area and population are relatively small, the total GDP is not large. In 2016, the GDP was less than 70 billion yuan, ranking in the bottom of the province, but the per capita GDP has exceeded 60,000 yuan, ranking in the top three, even slightly higher than that of Chongqing in the same year. The main pillar industries of Y city are non-ferrous metals, tourism and logistics. In addition, e-commerce and Internet of Things are also one of the emerging industries that the government is supporting.
There is no airport in Y city, and the most convenient way of transportation from Beijing to Y city is by train. There’s only one high-speed train journey for 8.5 hours, which is very hard for people with lumbar muscle strain, so I prefer the express train with sleeper. This express arrived in Y city at 4 o’clock in the morning. My parents were always worried when I went home a few years ago. The bus hasn’t run yet, many taxis in the railway station kill passengers or refuse to carry them, and there are unsafe factors in black cars. But now they are no longer worried, because with Didi, I just need to call a taxi when I leave the station, and usually an express train arrives in a minute or two, which is very convenient and safe.
The arrival of Didi has made many black cars quietly turn positive, and the service efficiency and service attitude have improved a lot, greatly facilitating the lives of citizens. City Y is a small city, and the public transportation adopts the one-vote system in 2 yuan. However, a trip by car on the Internet is usually within 10 yuan, and it costs quite as much for three or four people to travel and take public transportation, so it is cost-effective. Surprisingly, the price of taxis during the Spring Festival is basically the same as usual. It is probably related to the fact that most drivers are locals. There are not many drivers who stopped during the Spring Festival, and the supply and demand are relatively balanced.
However, the rise of the online car has caused people who invest in taxis to lose a lot of books. My friend, Lao Chen, came home from other places more than two years ago to develop. He felt that it didn’t matter if he was doing other business, and he had no resources. So he even spent nearly 400,000 yuan on a license plate and a new car to buy an individual taxi (taxis in Y city are mostly individuals), which depreciated to 178,000 yuan in more than a year. Years ago, when friends got together and talked about it, he was heartbroken and regretted buying it a year earlier. Instead, he might as well run directly afterwards.
Online car rental is just an example of the Internet changing Y city, and bike-sharing is the representative of the update. Although bike-sharing has become a cancer of wasting public resources in the north, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, it seems that the overall social welfare has been improved in Y city because the number of each household is relatively rational.
Hello Bicycle officially landed in September 2017, but the actual operation may be earlier than the first half of the year. It should be the first brand to enter Y City, and the current volume is also the largest. Ofo entered a little later, and the amount of input was only one-third of Harrow’s, but it grew rapidly. It seems that mobike has just entered this small five-lane city, and the current number is not even as much as that of government public bicycles, which may be due to the fact that the vehicles arranged for delivery have not yet been put in place. Judging from the current situation, Alipay, as the common traffic portal of Harrow and ofo, may be the biggest winner behind it.
Because it is convenient to get it back and the rent is cheap, bike-sharing without piles quickly replaced the government public bicycles to win the market. Because of the small city area, many people’s commuting distance is only three or four kilometers. bike-sharing in Y City is not the last-mile bus connection scheme like a big city, but a solution for urban travel and a useful supplement to the public transport system. With the rapid development of urbanization, the lag of public transport system inevitably leads to blind spots in coverage, so bike-sharing has become a means of transportation for many people to go to school or work. The destructive behavior that has been criticized repeatedly in first-tier cities seems to be very rare in this small city at present. At least I have not encountered a faulty car in the course of several experiences. I hope that Harrow, ofo and mobike will not bring vicious competition behaviors such as over-delivery from the first-tier cities to the small five-tier places below.
In terms of mobile network, regardless of signal coverage or speed, Y city is not inferior to first-tier cities such as Beishangguangshen and Shenzhen. As a user of China Unicom for many years, I still want to spit it out again. Although the overall signal coverage and intensity are slightly better than that of Imperial Capital, it is still far worse than that of mobile and telecommunications. Usually, my mobile phone signal stays at 3 frames. Fortunately, restaurants, shopping malls, hotels and other commercial places will basically provide free wireless WIFI. At present, there is no free urban public wireless WIFI, which makes this city, which has claimed to be the main Internet of Things new economy in recent years, somewhat embarrassed.
When it comes to the Internet, we can’t avoid talking about mobile phones. After all, this is a mobile Internet era based on smart phones. What is the popularity of smart phones? In the words of my niece in primary school, it seems that there is no one in the class who doesn’t have a mobile phone. Contrary to our impression that students use QQ more, she said that everyone basically uses WeChat. Dadi is a teacher in a middle school in Y city, but his students prefer to contact him by QQ. It is likely that primary school students are greatly influenced by their parents to use WeChat, but when they grow up in middle school, rebellious psychology plays a role in choosing QQ.
The situation of family members using mobile phone brands is as follows: My father didn’t have a mobile phone because of hearing, but he only had a positioning watch, and my mother used Huawei Glory. My eldest brother treated himself to an iPhone X for the New Year and gave the original iPhone 6 to his daughter. His wife used OPPO, and my younger brother’s mobile phone was Nubia.
This family sample is representative in Y city, but it is obviously not accurate and comprehensive enough. So I asked my two younger brothers to describe the impression of the mobile phone brand of acquaintances around me. Their perceptions are different. Dadi thinks that people around them use Huawei the most, followed by OPPO, then Apple and VIVO, and then Xiaomi. The younger brother feels that the number of VIVO mobile phones is the largest, followed by Apple mobile phones, and its possession is close to 30%, followed by OPPO, Huawei and Xiaomi. Moreover, Apple users mostly use series 6 and 7 models, and the new models 8 and X introduced last year are relatively rare, and the proportion of women is significantly higher than that of men. It is worth noting that Samsung, Nokia, Motorcycle, Lenovo, ZTE, Meizu and other famous brands have almost disappeared from people’s memory.
When I changed my mother’s smartphone three or four years ago, she expressed strong opposition at that time. The reason is that the function of the full touch-screen mobile phone is too complicated to use, or the function machine is convenient to answer and make calls, and the volume is loud enough to hear clearly after charging for several days. But now she can’t live without her smartphone.
Wechat is mother’s most important mobile phone application and a tool for her to contact colleagues, relatives and friends. Because of my father’s work in his early years, my family left my hometown, and most of my relatives were not in Y city, and WeChat has replaced phone calls as the main way to pay New Year greetings during the Spring Festival. Old people even began to teach their peers in their hometown how to chat through WeChat video, such as my aunt and aunt.
In addition to WeChat, she also installed jelly beans and national K songs in her mobile phone, which are all danced by the old people in square dance every day. The leading aunt and mother call her the head of the group, but they actually lead the dance, teach them some new dances and help them download related applications. In addition to the square dance, the old people also like singing and entertainment very much, so the national karaoke and candied beans have become complementary products. My mother can’t sing, but she appreciates the works of old friends very much. She puts a few paragraphs from time to time in her spare time, and likes them one by one and even shares them with friends and WeChat groups.
Generally, mothers and old friends dance square dance in the basketball court in the community, and occasionally go for a walk in the stadium more than one kilometer away from home. Because there are so many people there, young people hold tripods and broadcast live on their mobile phones from time to time, and dancing and singing are particularly lively. The most famous live broadcast is a disabled art troupe, which often broadcasts live broadcasts in different places such as commercial centers, scenic spots and parks in Y city. The stadium is a very important position for them, and the live broadcast often attracts hundreds of people to watch. On the one hand, they live broadcast through the platform to get economic income from rewards, on the other hand, they also become ground promoters in Aauto Quicker to help Aauto Quicker expand its market. It is said that the head of the team is a farmer in a county-level city under Y city. Unfortunately, he was disabled by polio when he was a child. His fans in Aauto Quicker have reached 2 million, which is probably the largest online celebrity in Y city. The Art Troupe is like a small MCN, with no less than 20 disabled actors from all over the country. The number of fans of these actors in Aauto Quicker is between 100,000 and 300,000, and they should have gained the ability to realize the flow.
However, in the eyes of the two younger brothers, the proportion of people around them who play Tik Tok recently seems to be higher than that of Aauto Quicker. Today’s headlines and friends circle are two channels that have more contact with short videos of vibrato. In addition to short videos, today’s headlines are also the way they get information every day. In addition, common information apps include Tencent News, UC browser, Sohu News and other applications. Apps that people use more also include: video animation, Tencent video, Youku, and runaway comics; Games, pesticides, chess and cards, eating chicken (it is said that most people in Internet cafes in Y city play with eating chicken now), traveling frogs; Music, QQ music, Netease cloud music.
When it comes to Chinese New Year, it is inevitable to mention the routine Chinese New Year Red Packet War. My brother and sister-in-law both participated in this year’s Alipay Five Blessingg and the headline zodiac. Their red envelopes are not big, and Five Blessingg is only a little more than one yuan. The reason for participating is that everyone around them is playing with the crowd.
My brother and sister-in-law basically go out without cash, and WeChat and Alipay have become the main means of payment for daily consumption. It’s no wonder that even the vendors in the open-air vegetable market and night market are hanging two-dimensional collections. Is it still necessary to take their wallets out? This influence was even passed on to her mother. In the past, she always cashed out the red envelopes or transfers received by WeChat to the bank card. Now she has learned to go to supermarkets and vegetable markets to spend the change in WeChat directly. Due to the high frequency of WeChat, WeChat payment has become the mainstream mobile payment method in Y city. In contrast, my eldest brother may be regarded as a user who uses Alipay more. The ratio of WeChat payment to Alipay is about 6: 4. He also admitted that the proportion of his WeChat payment is still gradually increasing.
Except for bike-sharing, Alipay can overwhelm the application scenarios of WeChat payment in Y city, and living payment is one of the few. Alipay cooperated with public service departments such as water, electricity and gas earlier, and many people in Y city paid online through Alipay. WeChat’s follow-up was a little slow, and some services were not opened before, which made Alipay seize the opportunity. However, with the full access of public service interfaces such as water, electricity and gas, WeChat will have more advantages in the future.
The Spring Festival movie market is extremely hot, and it is hard to find a ticket, which is really unexpected. The fares are basically around 44 yuan, which is more than ten yuan higher than usual, even higher than the price of the Imperial Capital in the same period. It is difficult to buy movie tickets on that day except for those after 10: 30 pm. Almost all the ways to buy movie tickets online choose WeChat or Meituan. In fact, because of the platform subsidy in Taobao Film of Alipay, the ticket price of Y City during the Spring Festival is three or four yuan cheaper than that of WeChat and Meituan. It seems that the smell of wine is also afraid of the deep alley, and it is much cheaper to drink.
Alipay also has a consumer scene that overwhelms WeChat payment: online shopping. Taobao is an e-commerce APP widely used by people in Y city, but the proportion in JD.COM is much lower. Most people only think of it when they buy digital 3C products. Surprisingly, Pinduoduo also appeared in my mother’s mobile phone. She said that many aunts and big sisters around her were using it, and occasionally she would follow them to buy something cheap and practical. It seems that Pinduoduo does pose a threat to the traffic of Taobao and JD.COM, but it has yet to convince mainstream users. The two younger brothers hardly use Pinduoduo, mainly because they think things are not very reliable. My sister-in-law occasionally uses it, but it is limited to buying some fruits together.
The low proportion of JD.COM shows the fact that the share is backward, but it also means the growth potential. In fact, JD.COM has its own unique advantages: fast delivery and good service. Taobao Tmall online shopping, sellers outside the province usually take three days to deliver, while JD.COM can even reach the next day as long as one or two days. JD.COM is the only e-commerce platform that can deliver goods to your door in Y city, and its attitude is very friendly. Of course, it is a self-operated business, and my mother likes their services very much. Because the service quality and attitude of the couriers with four links and one service are generally poor, sometimes they are asked to help send them to the residential building for themselves or even very unhappy. As the saying goes, bad money drives out good money, and even SF has begun to learn the set of four links and one achievement in Y city. Not only is it not willing to send a piece or even pick it up, but it requires users to go downstairs. Domestic express delivery companies have successfully listed, but the service quality has not improved. Bosses including Wang Wei should think more.
In contrast, the service attitude of take-away delivery staff is much better than that of four-way and one-way couriers. The take-out market in Y city is basically the same as that in first-and second-tier cities. Earlier, Meituan, Hungry and Baidu take-out all spread channels through agents. After Baidu takeaway was merged into Hungry, the original customers flowed to Meituan and Hungry. The low threshold of 20 yuan delivery and 4 yuan freight per order makes the take-away market quite popular. Coupled with the regional concentration of small cities, there are fewer traffic jams, and the time limit for ordering meals is better than that of big cities. Both younger brothers prefer to use Meituan, because it is very convenient to place an order by calling a small program in WeChat. However, the younger siblings prefer to be hungry, because it has more coupons, forming a circular repurchase.
Platform, in order to avoid advertising suspicion, don’t say the name. Brother Da chose an Internet financial platform with the background of an insurance company and the financial products of a state-owned bank, with a slightly lower interest rate but a higher risk factor. Previously, Dadi had invested in the stock market, and his confidence was greatly reduced after the stock market crash, and the funds may have flowed to the insurance wealth management platform; The younger brother tried fund investment, and the return on income was unknown.
Last year, Shanxinhui and Qian Bao collapsed successively, and a large number of investors suffered serious losses, and some people in Y city also affected them. In March and April last year, my mother’s colleagues invested in Kindhearted Exchange, and she was moved to see that her colleagues began to make profits in a short time. Fortunately, I was consulted first for worrying about risks, but doing charity has a super high rate of return, which is not in line with business logic at all, and my mother was discouraged by me. Soon after, the news broke, and her colleagues lost thousands to 30 thousand yuan, which in turn envied their mother’s luck.
The other two friends who invested in Qian Bao were not so lucky. Xiao Jiang, who is engaged in the sales and maintenance business of digital 3C, has been in Qian Bao for nearly two years. His early investment has already recovered the cost, but he always feels that it is too difficult to make money in business and it is not as fast as this one, so he ventured to continue investing more than 100,000 yuan. Last November, Xiao Jiang and I talked about this matter, and I advised him to stop as soon as possible because Qian Bao could collapse at any time. He felt that Zhang Xiaobao was capable and should be able to support it for a while, and planned to earn some more money in April this year, and the result was hehe. Another friend, Xiao Li, also invested more than 80,000 yuan behind his family’s back, and he still lamented when he visited my home during the Spring Festival. Compared with the people who invest in Kindhearted Exchange, the players in Qian Bao seem to be more adventurous. These two friends are young and knowledgeable, knowing that this is a Ponzi scheme, but they are still brave enough to break in.
If there is a lack of Internet products, fresh O2O and Internet recruitment should be counted as one. In the Imperial City, I am used to using JD.COM to get home and buying food from the nearest Yonghui Supermarket. The price is fair and the quality is good, but it is a pity that Y City has not been opened yet. My younger brother just left his job at the end of the year and is going to look for a new job in the talent market after the Spring Festival. I asked him why he didn’t apply for a job online. He said that it may be that local enterprises have a low degree of internetization, and there is little information on the development of professional recruitment websites. However, many high-paying recruitment information on websites such as 58 Tongcheng is actually advertisements, but the information in the offline talent market is not comprehensive and accurate.
When my younger brother planned to go to the talent market in a few days, my friend Xiao Cheng got on the train to Guangdong on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year. He is high flyers from Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, majoring in product design. Originally, he wanted to stay in City Y with his family, but there were so few related positions in the local area, so he had to go south alone again to earn money for his newborn baby.
On the whole, if you arrive in Y city from first-and second-tier cities, there will be basically not many unaccustomed places in your daily life. Going out is to take a taxi or scan the code to ride a bike. When you go to the meal, you can use the US group to order a takeaway if you are hungry. Shopping, entertainment and consumption are also barrier-free. Not counting luxury goods, some brands in first-and second-tier cities can be found in almost Y city. For example, Y city is like Yanqing and Huairou, the suburbs of Beijing. Compared with first-and second-tier cities, its Internet foundation in all aspects actually looks pretty good, except that it lacks some space and opportunities for young people to develop, which makes it look less energetic.(This article is the first titanium media)
[titanium media author: ant worm, science and technology critic, columnist. Wechat WeChat official account: miniant-cn]
