Last night, during the May review at the company, the concept of decentralization was mentioned, which reminded me of the classic movie "Let the Bullets Fly". I made an interesting analogy between the competition between large and small companies in the same industry and shared it with everyone.
According to the explanation on Wikipedia, decentralization is:
A new form of social relationship and content production form that has emerged in the process of Internet development. It is a new type of network content production process relative to "centralization". Unlike the early days of the Internet in the Web 1.0 era, Web 2.0 content is no longer generated by professional websites or specific groups of people, but is the result of the collective participation and equal contribution of all netizens. Anyone can express their opinions or create original content on the Internet, contributing to the production of information together.
There is a viewpoint on the Internet that I personally agree with:
The true Pandora's box of decentralization is to break down the barriers of existing Internet scenarios, decouple the centralized scenarios in social, e-commerce, and information fields, achieve decentralization in the structure of Internet "scenarios", and transfer the right to construct scenarios to individuals, thereby promoting the diversified development of scenarios.
In the above paragraph, there are three key phrases: breaking down barriers, decoupling structures, transferring rights to individuals.
When I saw these three phrases, I suddenly had an epiphany and thought of the classic movie "Let the Bullets Fly" that I recently rewatched. Although the movie reflects the essence of the era, its true meaning goes beyond that. Today, I want to talk about my feelings from a different perspective.
To put it simply, the story is about Mr. Huang, who dominates the city, and his fortress that is as solid as a rock. Zhang Mazi replaces the county magistrate and eventually breaks through the fortress by giving money and guns to the masses.
- Mr. Huang —— ByteDance and other large companies
- The city —— Video, collaborative office, and other industries
- The fortress —— Product barriers
- Zhang Mazi —— Small software companies
- Taking office —— Entering the industry
By making this analogy and combining it with the three key phrases mentioned above, some interesting ideas can be derived:
- Mr. Huang has guns, but the masses don't; Mr. Huang has money, but the masses don't.
- The centralized barriers have the right to construct "scenarios", while individual nodes don't have the right to construct "scenarios".
So, when competing with large companies, can we consider giving users "money and guns" in addition to competing in different areas, and transfer the rights of the central nodes to users in order to break the ecosystem and drive progress?
This is my secondary understanding of low-end disruption, where free is just a means, and the core lies in transferring rights to individuals!
Taking search as an example, Baidu in China can be considered a barrier, while Sogou, Toutiao, 360, WeChat, Zhihu, Weibo, and others have established their own search channels. To some extent, is this transferring the right to search to users and decoupling the PC search scenario centered around Baidu, making the search scenario more diversified?
At that moment, it was just like this moment.
Let the bullets fly for a while.
Perhaps, the internet giants are more like "Zhang Mazi", who understand how to use means such as free to transfer the central rights accumulated by small companies over the years.
Perhaps, we can be bolder...
Perhaps, it's better left unsaid...