The experience of an international student

During our school trip to Yahoo headquarters last year, the PR person proudly pointed out that Yahoo owns the largest user base among all the internet companies. Yet what she also brought up was the fact that Yahoo's revenue was far from the largest, admitting the company was not able to fully take advantage of its large user base and convert it into revenue.

On a separate note, a recent Wall Street Journal article discussed a phenomenon that's gaining steam in China-TuanGou, which is the phonetic translation of "group shopping". It's basically people want to buy similar things sign up online and get together at the pre-specified store, so that they gain more bargaining power by forming a large group. The article compared TuanGou to its American counterpart, mobshop.com (it's been so long that I've forgotten the website's name before it changed to mobshop), trying to find out why TuanGou is successful while mobshop.com wasn't.

These two things make me think: why can't Yahoo organize things like TuanGou and make money off the activities. It's like organizing speed dating events, only they are for shopping instead. Or why can't they actually do organize speed dating events. Yahoo has a very large online dating business, why can't they take it offline and make some more money?

Of course there will be a lot of studies to do before making things like this happen. Chinese people are in nature very aggregative and community oriented, and the population density is really high in the cities. Besides group shopping, group traveling is also gaining popularity as more and more Chinese own cars. Strangers in the same online community initiate a travel plan online and get together over the weekend for a one or two days short distance trip. By the end of the weekend, they have more friends. But most Americans are spread out, and they might be less attracted to large groups. Besides, most of the group shopping and group traveling in China are organized by the internet users themselves. For Yahoo or anybody to proactively organize such events, the cost will be much higher.

Still, no matter TuanGou is suited for Yahoo or not, it opens up a different perspective for utilizing the internet as a revenue stream. So far most e-commerce activities are strictly "online"-subscription fees, online shopping, online advertising, etc, are all conducted with the users physically sitting in front of the computer that's connected to the internet. But why can't the companies find ways to gather people online and conduct the revenue generating activities offline? Just like what TuanGou or speed dating is doing. The likes of Yahoo, Microsoft, Myspace, Facebook, etc all have huge registered users and influence on them, why do they have to make money solely on playing some pictures or videos in front of their eyes and begging for money from advertisers? Why can't they do something that the users need or like so that they can get money directly out of their pockets?

So Mr. Yahoo and Mr. Facebook, maybe it's time to realize that you don't have to fully stick to the internet to keep your distinctive identity. When it comes to making money, it still comes to the good old doctrine: give people what they want, and they will pay you. The internet is just one way to do that, it's not the only way, even for an internet company.