Alibaba Replaces Manager of Second-Hand Goods Platform Xianyu
Jin Ke, the general manager of Xianyu, a second-hand goods platform owned by Alibaba Group, was officially transferred to AliExpress last week, LatePost reported on Wednesday. At present, Alibaba Vice President Liu Bo is directly responsible for Xianyu.
Recently, Xianyu integrated its product and community departments, and set up a user product center, aimed at integrating resources and enhancing the user experience. The executive in charge of this center is Ding Jian, who joined Xianyu after this year’s Chinese Spring Festival.
Xianyu, which is known as Taobao’s second-hand goods channel, was officially launched in June 2014. At present, it has more than 300 million users, and is one of the eight apps with monthly active users (MAU) exceeding 100 million operated by Alibaba. The other platforms include Taobao, Taote, Lazada, AliExpress, AutoNavi, Youku and UC browser.
Liu Bo is the fourth person to run Xianyu in the past three years. In July 2019, Chen Lei, the former senior director of Taobao’s livestreaming and content ecology division, was transferred to Xianyu to replace Shen Weiye, who built Xianyu from scratch. Chen Lei left 14 months later, leaving Jin Ke to take over the business.
A former employee of Xianyu said that changing directors too frequently has made it difficult for the platform to accumulate resources. After serving as the general manager of Xianyu, Jin Ke cut off some projects, such as second-hand clothes and offline business. In addition, he put more resources into the official products certified by Xianyu.
Xianyu is also facing pressure regarding user growth. According to QuestMobile data, the daily active users (DAU) of Xianyu was less than 22 million before September 2020, then reached 29.04 million in March 2021, and exceeded 30 million in June 2021. However, in July 2021, its DAUs dropped to 26 million, and has been fluctuating around 26 million since then.
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The above-mentioned former employee of Xianyu said that Alibaba expected to attract more DAUs on Xianyu. However, the transaction frequency of second-hand platform’s users is limited. A person who uses second-hand app every day is more like a professional merchant. “Excessive pursuit of a goal will lead to unhealthy ecology,” the former employee added.
