Yandex suffered serious losses due to the failed restart of KinoPoisk, three comments on the situation

“Megamind” wrote that on October 8, “Yandex” demonstrated a renewed site about cinema - “KinoPoisk”. The main page of the service has become a personalized showcase of films and serials.

In addition to changes in the design of the site, there have been changes in its concept. KinoPoisk was to become an online movie theater and video content aggregator. Partners of the service were Amadeiatek , ivi.ru , Megogo , Tvzavr , Pladform , VGTRK , CTC Media , Rutube , Ayyo Movies .

However, the updated version of the service was criticized by numerous users and even its creator Vitaly Tatsiy. Dissatisfied users created a petition demanding the return of the old version of the portal. After that, the management restored the previous design, but supposedly only for a while.
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The updated version of the Kinopoisk.ru website lasted only four days, and Yandex lost tens of millions of rubles. But is it possible to find advantages in this situation?

Old version and new concept

Yandex acquired the Internet portal KinoPoisk from its founders Vitaly Tatsiy and Dmitry Sukhanov (they together owned about 60%) and the French group AlloCine at the end of 2013 for $ 80 million (about 2.6 billion rubles at that time). It was assumed that the site would move from the content model to the service one: to the news, ratings, information about the premieres and cinema schedules, the functionality of the online cinema, as well as a recommender system was added.

The new model also suggested that users would be able to search and watch movies without leaving the site kinopoisk.ru, and the show will be carried out by one of the “real” Internet cinemas - partners of KinoPoisk. The partners should have received part of the audience of the resource, and in return they should share with Yandex the income from paid subscriptions or part of their advertising revenue.

However, the monthly audience of the old version of KinoPoisk, according to TNS Russia, decreased from 20.8 to 15.2 million people from January to August 2015.

According to Sukhanov, the concept of the online cinema aggregator was “sold” to Yandex along with KinoPoisk. On the old version of the site there were even buttons to go to the partner sites. “We waited for it to be a modern site with all the features that were before, plus new cool stuff. We had a list of new features for the years ahead. But in the end, the site stood “monument” for two years, during which even the errors were not corrected, “ said Sukhanov RBC.

How the move turned into a restart

Yandex was involved in restarting since 2013 — a specially created team worked on the project, which also included people from KinoPoisk’s “old”, and left the founders of the service as consultants, according to a Yandex representative, Yulia Babikova. “At first, it was about technological integration, about moving the project to Yandex data centers, then we started to redraw the new KinoPoisk and, in fact, develop to restart,” says Dmitry Stepanov, head of media services at Yandex.

Sukhanov claims that no one consulted with them: “For the first time, a new product was shown to me on September 25 through the company's PR manager.” According to him, he told the Yandex team about errors found in the beta version of the new site, but he was sure that by the announced restart date, by October 8, they could not be fixed.

“Some people faced technical problems with the site, many did not see their ratings and movie lists on the new service, some users did not find the information and opportunities they were used to during the years of using KinoPoisk. We apologize for these problems. Thank you all for your feedback, suggestions and fair criticism, ”said KinoPoiska website on October 12, four days after an unsuccessful restart.

To be continued

Yandex will continue to work on a new KinoPoisk on a separate domain, beta.kinopoisk.ru, until it is possible to eliminate all the problems and comments from users. “Therefore, we admitted our mistake, apologized and decided to return the“ old ”KinoPoisk,” Stepanov reported. A source close to the management of Yandex stressed that the managers liked the new KinoPoisk, but public opinion must be respected.

UPD 1: “Starting today, I become the head of the Kinopoisk team and move away from other tasks related to Yandex’s marketing communications and the development of other services,” Stepanov said.

Olga Mansurova, who previously headed Kinopoisk, decided to leave the company.

Former manager of the Mail.Ru Group cinema service, Anton Frolov, estimates the total cost of the project - the work of developers, managers, and designers - at 15–20 million rubles. A top manager of another Russian Internet company believes that costs could be as much as 40–50 million rubles.

In the opinion of the creator of the Mediametriks service, head of the Internet Development Institute, German Klimenko, by returning the old version of KinoPoisk, Yandex actually signed that it did not understand its audience and for two years did what it did not need. After returning to the old version of the company, it will be very difficult in terms of reputation to prove later that the new product is worth it, he said.

A top manager of a large Russian technology company in a conversation with RBC notes that Yandex would probably be worth testing the beta version of the new KinoPoisk to a wide audience right from the start.

The most expensive anti-advertising

Many first went to the "KinoPoisk" due to the scandal erupted around him. And some still have not even heard of him. So, from this point of view, the money for restarting was not wasted.

Founder and director of the design studio "Turbomilk" Denis Kortunov : "And I have never used it before. I learned about the site only after the scandal. ”

The founder of blogs Dirty.ru and Leprozorium Jovan Savovich: "I have no particular comments, I have never used them, nothing to say."

Summing up

Anton Gladkoborodov, the founder of Coub service, commented on the situation:

It is difficult to give any comment after everyone has already spoken, especially after “Yandex” itself admitted an error with the launch. Yes, and look for other people's mistakes is much easier than their own. I would not crawl into the details of the product itself and stopped at a couple of major product errors.

Of course, you can not change the product entirely - only gradually evolving. Almost always, especially in complex products, a complete change of product is tantamount to death. Of course, you can not roll out the product at all, you need to run on a small part of the audience and look at how the audience behaves.

But at the same time, we can recall several really successful restarts of even very large services. For example, Facebook Messenger, which caused a flurry of criticism, but in the end turned out to be one of the main products of Facebook. Or restarting the design of the Lenta.ru was difficult, but in the end it turned out to be the right decision.

Perhaps rolling back the old version of KinoPoisk was a bigger mistake. Sometimes you need to take risky steps. We have read articles about successful pivot thousands of times. In my opinion, it was necessary to leave a new version and start working on it, correct mistakes, work with the audience, because the launch of the project is just the beginning of work.