You Were Told to Design Software, But You Created Tiktok?!

284: Section 284It was also already on its last legs.

Chapter 208: An Already Doomed Failure, Penguin’s Strategic Misstep!

In fact, the day after the event ended, many Penguin Waimai employees already understood that this software had failed.

It was impossible for daily active users to increase in the following days.

After all, in the few days after the event ended, many Penguin Waimai users still had unused Red Envelopes for takeaway, so they continued to use Penguin Waimai.

As the Red Envelopes were continuously used up in the following days, the number of users would actually decrease further.

In addition,

many employees noticed that in the period after the event ended, the remaining few million users of Penguin Waimai mostly ordered from private shops, not Penguin Big Cafeteria.

And before,

when Penguin Big Cafeteria still had huge discounts and benefits, the proportion of users ordering from Penguin Big Cafeteria every day accounted for ninety percent of the total daily active users. This means that, previously, most Penguin Waimai users were indeed drawn by Penguin Big Cafeteria, but there was also a significant reason related to huge benefits and discounts.

When such activities disappeared, the number of Penguin Waimai users who continued to order from Penguin Big Cafeteria in the past two days accounted for only twenty percent of the current Penguin Waimai daily active users.

This huge proportional discrepancy almost directly proved that the online cafeteria launched by Penguin was a function already destined to be quite a failure.

However,

because Pony Ma still held a sliver of hope for Penguin Waimai, no Penguin Group employee dared to tell him about it in the following days.

It was only after Pony Ma personally saw Penguin Waimai’s daily active users drop below five million a few days later that he finally accepted the fact that Penguin Waimai had failed.

And this outcome,

in fact, was already decided from the very beginning when Penguin Waimai chose the online cafeteria path.

Besides convenience, cost-effectiveness is also a very important attribute for takeaway.

Because all efforts were focused on Penguin Big Cafeteria, the number of merchants on Penguin Waimai was already far less than Ele.me and Meituan Takeaway, which was a huge drawback.

Not to mention,

the overall price of Penguin Big Cafeteria without discounts was already a bit expensive.

For example,

a common braised pork dish ordered from Penguin Big Cafeteria on average cost ten yuan more than ordering from other restaurants, even when considering coupons.

However, this price was indeed calculated based on operational costs, as the costs for Penguin Big Cafeteria had to include various online operational and promotional costs, making the overall costs indeed higher than other ordinary shops.

This was a situation Penguin Waimai could not change.

Previously,

Penguin Waimai internally believed that users would accept slightly higher prices due to the quality of the dishes.

But the facts after the event gave them completely opposite results.

At the same time,

because other private merchant shops were not prioritized, not only were their numbers small on Penguin Waimai, but most of them did not have upgraded Red Envelopes.

Whereas with similar services like Meituan Takeaway and Ele.me, these shops could basically increase the Red Envelope prices by another one or two yuan.

Combining all these reasons,

the failure of Penguin Waimai was almost already predetermined.

And by the time Penguin Waimai noticed this due to the sharp drop in daily active users, it was already too late.

They could no longer take any countermeasures; if the dishes in the cafeteria were to be lowered in price, then the quality and portion size of the dishes would decrease, which might temporarily increase users in the first few days, but would lead to an even more exaggerated plummet afterward.

As for increasing other private shops, it is also very difficult now.

Most of the takeaway shops on the market have already signed contracts with Meituan and Ele.me, and Penguin Waimai is now unable to poach these merchants.

Therefore,

for the current Penguin Waimai,

they have almost only one thing left to do.

That is,

watch Penguin Waimai gradually head towards destruction.

In this Thousand Group Battle, Penguin Group’s initial ambition was too great; it not only wanted to swallow the group-buying market but also aimed to profit in the takeaway market.

But the final result was that Penguin suffered huge losses and failures in this competition, both in the group-buying and takeaway fields.

If Penguin had, from the beginning, chosen to focus on a single track like Ali Group, and accepted the fact that it could not surpass Meituan, taking a more stable and gradual approach, it might have been able to gain a foothold in a certain area... But now, with Penguin Waimai’s failure already inevitable, all words are superfluous.

At the same time,

because the outside world was also very concerned about Penguin Waimai’s current performance,

very quickly, other internet users discovered something was amiss.

For several days in a row, Penguin Waimai had no further activity, nor did it re-publish the number of daily active users after the event ended.

You should know that before,

many internet practitioners had predicted that if Penguin Waimai’s daily active users after the event could stabilize above thirty million, Penguin Waimai would definitely announce this information immediately to humiliate Wang Mo.

But four or five days had passed, and Penguin Waimai still hadn’t made any moves.

This silence itself was very telling.

On the fifth day after Penguin Waimai’s event ended,

an internal leak from Penguin Waimai directly soared to the top of the weibo hot search.

In this hot search,

an internal source from Penguin Waimai claimed that the current daily active users of Penguin Waimai had already dropped to four million.

As soon as this number was released,

it instantly stunned many people.

Many had guessed that Penguin Waimai’s silence was due to poor performance, but they never expected it to be this bad.

However, regarding this result, many users still raised doubts, as it was just a rumor.

”Impossible, absolutely impossible to be that low, how could daily active users decrease tenfold in a few days? That’s too exaggerated.”

’I don’t believe it either, Penguin Waimai’s strength shouldn’t be that poor.’

”Although I haven’t used Penguin Waimai since the event ended, this number is indeed a bit exaggerated; it should at least be twenty million, or if not twenty million, then ten million should still be there.”

”@Penguin Waimai, aren’t you going to say something yourselves?”

Because this number was really too exaggerated, many users did not choose to believe it at first.

And just an hour after this hot search appeared,

a Weibo big V blogger directly posted evidence that could prove this number.

Chapter 209: The Collapse of Penguin Waimai, The Potential of Shared Bicycles!

Among countless speculations regarding Penguin Waimai’s daily active users,

a tech-focused big V blogger posted Penguin Waimai’s Baidu Index, revealing that this number had indeed decreased by more than tenfold since Penguin Waimai’s event launched.

The Baidu Index is one of the best indicators to prove the popularity of a certain event or software.

When a certain software or event has high popularity during a certain period, the number of times they are searched on Baidu generally increases proportionally.

After all, Baidu is currently the search software with the largest market share in Yan Country, and it also has its own Baidu Hot List.