Zhang Chaoyang, founder, chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Sohu, released a circle of friends, denied the news of Sohu's delisting, said that the decision-making power did not depend on the company itself, and said that some we media "sing bad about Sohu and ridicule the live physics class is unnecessary". About a week ago, on April 12 local time, the securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) added another 12 China concept companies to the "pre delisting" list, which is the fourth batch of China concept companies to be included in the list since March. At the same time, the SEC claimed that the deadline for the above 12 companies to submit their defense was May 3 local time. On April 13, Sohu (NASDAQ: Sohu) announced that on April 12, the company was included in the provisional identification list based on the foreign company Accountability Act (hfcaa) by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the company did not intend to raise an objection to the provisional identification of the sec. In addition, the announcement also said that for the company's American Depositary Shares may be delisted from Nasdaq, the company has been exploring alternative action plans, but has not determined the possible actions. As soon as the news of denying delisting came out, it immediately aroused the attention of public opinion to Sohu, Zhang Chaoyang and the live broadcast of their physics class. The number of people online for the first time exceeded 1.4 million, # Zhang Chaoyang's physics class # topic was once on the hot search, with a reading volume of more than 160 million, which is "real fire" compared with the previous live broadcast of English class. More and more business people enter the knowledge live track. Who will occupy the tide? Zhang Chaoyang's physics class is on fire: from the first generation of Internet godfather to the popularity of live broadcast network The earliest generation of Internet users will remember the glory of the early generation of Internet giants before the rise of bat and shuaikuai. Sohu's highlight moment was from 1998 to 2008. At that time, Sohu first established a portal model with navigation, classification and search functions. In 2005, after fierce bidding competition, Sohu won the qualification of Internet sponsor of Beijing Olympic Games with us $30 million. Its popularity and traffic reached the peak, driving the stock price up. In addition to leading Sohu's listing, Sohu has also incubated two listed companies, Changyou and Sogou. Sohu Video, founded in 2004 at the same time as LETV, was once the first company in China to purchase the copyright of film and television dramas, and took the lead in introducing well-known American dramas such as "house of cards", "lost" and self-made dramas such as "loser man", which laid the basic model for the development of long video websites. Sohu Video and portal business complement each other and jointly establish their influence in the media field. Since then, the "portal three swordsmen" have gradually moved away. With the rapid rise of we media and information flow mode, the decline of portal websites, and Netease's transformation into the game field. Sina launched the internal beta version of Weibo in 2009, taking the lead in the layout of mobile Internet. Sohu missed the opportunity of mobile Internet, gradually withdrew from the sky high price copyright burning war between video websites, and turned to the strategy of "small and beautiful". In recent years, Sohu has frequently been in the spotlight. In April 2020, Sohu announced that it would complete the privatization of Changyou, the holding subsidiary of its game business, three days later, which would become a wholly-owned private company of Sohu. In 2021, Sogou, the trump business hatched by Sohu, announced the completion of the merger with Tencent. After the merger, Sogou will become an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Tencent and complete delisting. In March, Sohu video announced cooperation with the jitter. The latter obtained two authorized authorization of all the homemade films and TV works by Sohu. The latter is mostly classic works, long tail effect and emotional value. The main significance is to promote the long and short video competition for the first time to break the ice and promote the two tiktok standardization. For a long time, Sohu has been known as the "Huangpu Military Academy" in the Internet industry in China, and Zhang Chaoyang is regarded as the "godfather of the Internet" of the early generation. Wang Jiyu, founder of Sohu live, is one of the founders of Sohu Youku, and one of the founders of Sohu y6. According to Q4 and the annual financial report of 2021, Sohu's total annual revenue was US $836 million, a year-on-year increase of 11%. The net profit of non GAAP (non GAAP) was US $79 million, a year-on-year increase of 54.9%. In addition to the revenue from the sale of Sogou, its profits mainly come from advertising and game business. This old Internet company has witnessed the rise and fall of many outlets of the Internet. Up to now, the public image of Zhang Chaoyang, the founder deeply bound with it, is also changing. His image of wanton life in his early years has become "teacher Zhang" in the live broadcasting room, and his frequent business style in front of the stage is also different from many hidden entrepreneurs behind the scenes, becoming the most important business card of Sohu. The color of his personal live broadcast has also been continuously strengthened, and the live studio has also become a window for contemporary Internet users to intuitively recognize the celebrity. In October 2015, Sohu's Qianfan live broadcast went online. In 2016, Zhang Chaoyang's English class was launched. Up to now, there have been thousands of live broadcasts, with an average of about 200 a year. The live variety "Charles's good things sharing" focuses on lifestyle sharing and "slow live" delivery. "Zhang Chaoyang's physics class" opened its first session in November last year and was broadcast live at 12:00 every Friday and Sunday. Up to now, it has carried out nearly 40 sessions, and has gone offline twice recently to meet students from Qingbei. Its first offline lesson attracts sponsorship from Samsung and other brands, showing the possibility of diversified business value. Its physics course starts from classical physics and then transits to modern physics. After that, it gradually goes deep into the field of quantum mechanics, from Schrodinger equation to the quantization of harmonic oscillator model. The explanation is simple, vivid and easy to understand. In fact, Zhang Chaoyang, who has the label of "Xueba", graduated from the Department of physics of Tsinghua University. He also received a doctorate and conducted postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Today, the live broadcast has become the standard configuration of major platforms, and the head camp is clear, but it is not difficult to see that regardless of the commercialization prospect, the live broadcast of physics class is Zhang Chaoyang's real interest, which has brought back the long lost peace and happiness for the big man who suffered from depression. Those big guys who devote themselves to the live wave If the information anxiety before the Internet era is manifested in book reading, then the information desire in the Internet era is manifested in knowledge live broadcasting, live selling classes and knowledge payment. Recently, Ren Zeping, an "online popular economist", added another fire to the payment for knowledge. On April 18, Ren Zeping wrote on social media, "I have a dream to spread really useful knowledge, not anxiety; the professional economics of communication system, not fragmented noise; from '5000 points is not a dream' to 'new infrastructure', let knowledge change destiny and let knowledge create value." On the evening of April 13, 2022, Ren Zeping had a live selling class on "Zeping macro". According to the comprehensive statistics of the sales of various courses, Zeping macro enterprise store obtained a revenue of about 880000 yuan. In addition, more and more business leaders are joining the live broadcasting industry. The transformation live broadcast of business people can be roughly divided into two categories: one is the live broadcast with goods, and the other is the knowledge live broadcast. Many CEOs bring their own fan base, which can bring brand publicity and promotion effect and boost sales performance. In 2020, the hottest year of live e-commerce, Liang Jianzhang, Dong Mingzhu, Lei Jun and others all took part in the live broadcast to bring goods. In 2020, Dong Mingzhu had 13 live broadcasts and sold 47.6 billion yuan of goods. Dong Mingzhu tiktok, 22, was selected as secretary of the first year in the workplace by Meng Yutong, who was elected secretary of the first place in the workplace. He claimed to make it as "second Dong Mingzhu". GREE electric appliances registered the "Pearl feather boy selection" in tiktok, and its voice accounts account for 900 thousand of the weekly MCN. Live broadcasting seems to be the most realistic reemployment choice for entrepreneurs. Tiktok included Luo Yonghao who was once a brother who was shaking the voice and the goods, and Yu Minhong, who was under the double reduction policy and the education industry outside the city, was pressing the brakes and then helped the farmers live in the broadcasting industry. Lao Luo, who recently announced that he would fade out of making a friend live broadcast, said he would return to the scientific and technological community and enter ar products. According to the data, in the 26 live broadcasts in the past two months, Yu Minhong's Oriental selection accumulated sales of 4.5476 million yuan. Compared with the increasingly homogeneous show live broadcast and the live broadcast e-commerce that may be challenged by the quality and after-sales problems, although the knowledge live broadcast is faced with the problem of "high and low" to a certain extent, and the traffic attention is no more than the entertainment live broadcast, it obviously raises the audience threshold, strengthens the long-term value of the live broadcast content, and has more popular science nature and public welfare color, which may point to a major trend of live broadcast in the future. According to AI media consulting data, it is expected that the number of knowledge paying users in China will reach 527 million in 2022, with a market scale of about 100 billion. Baidu, B Kwai, tiktok, jitter, know the truth, watermelon video and other major content platforms have a layout for Pan knowledge live broadcast. The founder's live broadcasting needs to be combined with the platform live broadcasting system. It is more for the purpose of "bringing goods" to the knowledge live broadcasting platform behind him. Robin Li's first live show in 2020 was mainly recommended by book recommendation. It was broadcast for one hour and ten minutes in Baidu App, and the total audience exceeded 9 million 260 thousand. During the live broadcast, it broke 1 million in ten minutes and 2 million in less than 20 minutes. "Knowledge" has become a differentiated label of Baidu live broadcasting. Its "2020 Baidu live broadcasting ecological insight report" points out that Pan knowledge content live broadcasting attracts more first-line / new first-line city users aged 35-44. In November, baidu live broadcasting ranked first in terms of knowledge and services. Six years ago, Zhang Chaoyang mentioned "value live broadcasting". In November 2021, Zhang Chaoyang said that he would promote Sohu Video to build a knowledge live broadcasting platform. Statistics show that Sohu Video has initially built a knowledge live broadcasting system covering astronomy, paleontology, mathematics, optics, physics, botany, computer science, aerospace, food science, sports and human science. Repeated outbreaks have actually brought corresponding opportunities for the outbreak of knowledge live broadcasting and knowledge payment with high positive value. The large proportion of high net worth users and high willingness to pay mean that knowledge live broadcasting has its own broad business prospects. This track has not been settled yet. The anchor with topic degree has the most attention. In addition to professionalism, how to improve the content attraction and public popularity has become a problem that entrants need to think about. Can Sohu still promote the birth of the next "Zhang Chaoyang"? (Xinhua News Agency)