What Bilibili stakes reveal about Alibaba’s and Tencent’s content strategies
(Image credit: Bilibili)
Alibaba announced in February that its e-commerce subsidiary Taobao acquired 24 million shares (an 8% stake) of Chinese online video platform Bilibili. Last October, Tencent increased its own investment in Bilibili to around 12%. Bilibili is renowned for its content in anime, comics, and games, and offers mobile games from third parties.
Alibaba and Tencent are both eager to win over emerging Generation Z consumers—those born between 1995 and the early 2000s. According to Bilibili’s third quarter earnings release, the Nasdaq-listed company boasted 92.7 million monthly active users, around 82% of which were born between 1990 and 2009.
China’s digital content sector, which includes video platforms, music, books, and literature, represents a growth opportunity—it is less cyclical as consumers have relatively consistent needs for entertainment content and it offers a more stable revenue stream for both Alibaba and Tencent, which have been hit by slowing e-commerce growth and a government crackdown on gaming respectively.
Alibaba has integrated emerging video platforms into its core e-commerce business. By capitalizing on the influence of key opinion leaders and original content creators, the company was able to market products on its e-commerce platforms to a wider audience, especially the young generation who engage actively in these new forms of digital media.
Alibaba’s Taobao marketplace has also teamed up with top short video app Douyin (known as TikTok outside China), which has a large base of users born after 1990s and 2000s. Under the partnership, content publishers with over one million followers on Douyin can set up external links to the Taobao marketplace, allowing app users to purchase products featured in the short videos from Taobao on the spot.
Alibaba previously partnered with Bilibili so content creators on Bilibili can display their work to a wider audience and sell peripheral anime products through Taobao. Taobao will also provide e-commerce services to Bilibili, helping the platform commercialize its video content.
Tencent, a leader in social media and gaming, already has a strong foothold in China’s online video industry with its market-leading video platform Tencent Video. The company also partnered with Bilibili to enhance exposure of Tencent’s game titles as Tencent and Bilibili jointly operate more Tencent games on Bilibili’s platform. The partnership also enables Tencent to tap into Generation Z consumers who have been moving to Douyin from Tencent’s social media app WeChat.
Alibaba and Tencent have both invested in digital content: Tencent has a comprehensive portfolio of digital content and took digital literature division China Literature and music seller Tencent Music public in the last two years. Alibaba also owns video platform Youku and music platform Xiami.com.
We expect the two companies will continue boosting their digital content capabilities and that digital content will account for an increasing share of total revenue. Figures from the companies’ latest annual reports show that digital media and entertainment represented around 8% of Alibaba’s total revenue in fiscal 2018 while the media advertising revenue, comprising revenue from Tencent Video mainly, represented around 6% of Tencent’s total revenue in fiscal 2017.
Amazon removes books promoting autism cures and vaccine misinformation
The titles suggested pseudoscientific methods such as ingesting and bathing in a potentially toxic form of bleach and taking medication meant to treat arsenic and lead poisoning.
People walk past an Amazon Books retail store in New York City on Feb. 14, 2019.Brendan McDermid / Reuters file
Amazon is removing from its online marketplace “autism cure” books that unscientifically claim children can be cured of autism with pseudoscientific methods such as ingesting and bathing in a potentially toxic form of bleach and taking medication meant to treat arsenic and lead poisoning.
Amazon confirmed Tuesday that the books “Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism” and “Fight Autism and Win” are no longer available, but declined to answer specific questions about why it had removed them or whether they were part of a larger cleanup effort, citing a policy of not commenting on individual accounts.
The move by Amazon comes on the heels of a report in Wired published Monday that criticized the retail giant for offering medically dubious books and dangerous methods for reversing autism spectrum disorder. For years, news organizations have pointed out Amazon’s practice of hosting books that promote vaccine and other health-related misinformation, but the pressure has intensified in recent weeks.
Online platforms have been reacting to increased scrutiny from lawmakers and public health advocates over the health misinformation hosted on their websites. Last week, Facebook announced it would “downrank” vaccine misinformation shared on its platform and reject advertising that spread “vaccine hoaxes.” Pinterest has opted to block all vaccine-related search results, and YouTube disabled advertising on anti-vaccination videos last month. In February, Amazon pulled anti-vaccination documentaries from its Prime Video service.
Autism is a developmental disorder that appears in young children and for which there is no cure. Children with autism spectrum disorder display a broad range of characteristics, from difficulty interacting with peers or forming relationships to complete inability to function in school or work environments.
As of Monday, “Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism” sold for $28 and had 631 customer reviews and an average rating of 3.5 stars. The book extolled the healing power of chlorine dioxide, a form of bleach that adherents call the “Miracle Mineral Solution.” The book’s author Kerri Rivera, who lives in Mexico, claims 191 children have been cured of autism with a treatment of the chemical that the Food and Drug Administration warned can cause “severe nausea, vomiting and life-threatening low blood pressure from dehydration.”
The other removed title, “Fight Autism and Win” advises parents on chelation — an unproven treatment for autism that involves medicating a child with an antidote for mercury poisoning. The curesprings from the debunked theory that autism is caused by mercury exposure in childhood vaccines. Chelation therapy can cause serious side effects, including potentially deadly kidney damage, according to the Mayo Clinic. At the time of its removal, “Fight Autism and Win” sold for $25 and had a 4.8 star rating and 54 customer reviews.
The books’ removal was first shared Tuesday by anti-vaccine activist Larry Cook in a newsletter to followers. Cook’s Facebook advertisements — targeting pregnant women in states with measles outbreaks — were recently banned by as part of the platform’s crackdown on misinformation.
Cook attached an image that he says was sent by Amazon, explaining why the company had removed the title from his storefront.
“During our review process, we found that the subject matter of your book is in violation of our content guidelines,” the screenshot posted by Cook stated. “As a result we cannot offer this book for sale.”
Cook also profits from his Amazon storefront from which he promotes anti-vaccination content and earns commission from books bought on his recommendation.
“This title by Kerri Rivera has been on Amazon for SIX YEARS, and TODAY Amazon pulled it,” Cook continued in his newsletter. “Friends, seriously, stock up on books and DVDs right now, while you can!”
In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee submitted “Information Management: A Proposal” to CERN. Thirty years later, the web has had a revolutionary impact on the world, and Google.com is marking the occasion today with a quaint Doodle.
Visiting the Google homepage on the web, or Chrome’s New Tab page, displays the company logo in a charming and retro 8-bit style. The second ‘o’ is replaced by a beige personal computer connected by physical wire to an outlet in the red ‘o’ to the left. On initial load, when viewing from Google.com, internet packets stream into the computer to load a spinning Earth. This animation plays in a continuous loop.
Underneath the pill-shaped search field that was added last week as part of the Google Material Theme redesign is a “Happy Birthday to the World Wide Web” message. Clicking opens a Google Arts & Culture collection that reflects on the web. This editorial feature provides a brief history of its origin, how-it-works, and its rapid growth to a “5 billion person network” today.
グーグルのマテリアルテーマの再設計の一部として先週追加された錠剤のような形状の検索フィールドの下には「ワールドワイドウェブ、誕生日おめでとう」のメッセージがあります。
ウェブに投影されている Google Arts & Culture コレクションをクリックして開きましょう。
この編集機能は、その起源の大きな歴史と、現在の「50億人のネットワーク」までの急速な成長を表現しています。
There are several pictures and videos, including the original NeXTcube used by its designer — now Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
The Web would soon revolutionize life as we know it, ushering in the information age. Today, there are nearly 2 billion websites online. Whether you use it for email, homework, gaming, or checking out videos of cute puppies, chances are you can’t imagine life without the Web.
Not to be confused with the internet, which had been evolving since the 1960s, the World Wide Web is an online application built upon innovations like HTML language, URL “addresses,” and hypertext transfer protocol, or HTTP. The Web has also become a decentralized community, founded on principles of universality, consensus, and bottom-up design.
それは1960年代から進化してきたインターネットと混同しないでください。
このワールドワイドウェブは、HTML（Hyper-Text Markup Language）や、URL（Unified Resource Locator）「アドレス」、さらに HTTP（Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol）のようなイノベーションの上に成り立っているオンラインアプリケーションなのです。
ウェブは普遍性の原則と総意、そしてボトムアップな設計の上に設立された分権化コミュニティにもなりました。
decentralized - 分権化
The Google Doodle team also has a brief recap (above), with the graphic and animation available throughout most of North and South America, Europe, parts of Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific.
