Thread by @ruima

Alibaba CEO letter today wrote about it becoming "consumer + industrial internet" together. You probably recognize "industrial internet" from Tencent, who's made this a big direction since 2018, even wrote a book on it in 2020. But what is industrial internet?

Apparently it was coined by Frost & Sullivan in 2000. In 2014 ish I notice it's starting to be a popular word but mostly referring to IoT (sometimes still does). It becomes REALLY popular by 2017, and of course by 2019 it's pretty much ubiquitous. It includes a lot of things:

- B2B marketplaces, not just of goods but also info
- credit & financing platforms for businesses
- any kind of smart manufacturing / agriculture
- I see folks include logistics, payments too
Honestly, kinda broad, but basically tech "connecting sector value chains," so non B2C🤷‍♀️

You can find those examples in this recent chat given by one of the top policy advisors in China, I've linked to it before. He gives the logic for why the govt loves it: efficiency gains!
insider.techbuzzchina.com/c/policies-and…

I'm sure some people will somehow write this up as "see, the govt tells the companies what to do." Well, certainly the govt directs & incentivizes. But it's also good biz strategy. Alibaba previously said it's been doing industrial internet since 2015:

sohu.com/a/277080112_11…

Specifically, Alicloud & other infrastructure providers were really the first move that enabled a lot of the recent progress to be made. But also, people have been working on it a long time, just cuz you heard it recently in English doesn't mean it's a new strategy!

And oh yeah, it obviously fits nicely into the national strategy as well:

https://twitter.com/ruima/status/1420060835313971200?s=20