The major internet giants have remained quiet for half a year.

I originally intended to say that the vibrant era of public relations for large internet giants has drawn to a close, but after a second thought, that statement feels a bit overdone. This is more of a transformation: the players are still the familiar faces we know, their names remain unchanged, but their core mindsets have shifted, evolving from the internet to mobile internet, and now to AI. Storytellers have always been indispensable, and the parties that fund these stories have never gone away.

The rain in Hangzhou has not stopped for quite a while recently. Walking in the rain makes people easily recall past memories. I stood on an upper floor overlooking West Wenyi Road, where vehicles and pedestrians streamed back and forth. More than a decade ago, before Alibaba moved here, there was almost nothing in this area.

At noon, in our small group chat, I talked about an old story with Xie Pu. Many years ago, I had a childhood sweetheart romance that ended quietly. The person just drifted away as we walked, and I never knew where they went. I also did not bother to ask, just like when autumn comes, leaves turn yellow and naturally fall off, drifting with the wind.

Years later, I realized that when a person or an event is about to leave your life completely, it usually departs silently without saying any goodbye. The same applies to eras: when an era is about to end, people living in it are often completely unaware of what is happening.

The entire internet circle is eerily quiet. The press conferences that used to be held every few days are gone, the PR practitioners we used to meet frequently have drifted apart, the paid writing assignments for making a living are getting fewer and fewer, the trending topics that used to dominate rankings all day long have vanished. Even the e-commerce industry that used to be full of disputes has suddenly gone silent. Alibaba no longer speaks out, JD has become quiet. All these changes took place in the first half of 2026, from spring to summer. It is just like countless lively village entrances in China in the old days: young people moved away one by one, the elderly passed away one by one, and the village entrance no longer has any hustle and bustle.

Even many PR staff at large internet companies who used to be extremely busy every day now have time to go on vacation around the world this summer. Some colleagues who used to work nonstop all year round even messaged me on WeChat saying, "I'm lying on the beach in Saipan, don't bother me."

We suddenly realize that the vigorous public relations era of large internet companies seems to be coming to an end, but we are reluctant to face this reality.

Our generation are all beneficiaries of the rise of the internet. It is the internet that gives us the opportunity for information equality, allowing us to move out of small towns. We gained our own cognition, wealth and social status in the process of the internet's development.

From 2000 to 2026, the internet industry has always been the most active sector in China's economy, taking up the largest share of trending topics and news coverage, and giving birth to a large number of the most well-known enterprises and entrepreneurs. It has truly evolved from an emerging industry to a fundamental part of people's livelihood. It is no exaggeration to say that media organizations that make a living from internet companies in China have enjoyed 16 years of easy and prosperous days. During these 16 years, PR teams and media outlets in the internet industry supported each other's growth, countless people achieved financial freedom, and now enjoy life in California, Europe, Japan and Southeast Asia. This is the dividend of the era.

However, every era will eventually mature, and even fade away. The internet industry today has obviously become a traditional industry.

The fierce local life battle in the second half of 2025 is most likely the last battle in the history of the internet industry.

Starting from this point, all major tech companies have come to realize that the internet has become a complete stock market. No matter how much effort they put in, it is very difficult to create new incremental growth. Even if they seize other companies' market share and defeat Meituan, it will not change the overall situation. That is why we saw the most sluggish 618 shopping festival in 2026. Without any surprise, the subsequent Double 11 shopping festival will most likely be equally lackluster.

Just as rain falls naturally and a widow may remarry as she wishes, there is nothing we can do when an era is about to end. Life has to go on, and we still need to make a living. Instead of complaining and being nostalgic, we might as well think about how to adapt to the new era. During the transition from the internet to mobile internet, some people fell behind, but most people managed to catch up. In this seemingly pessimistic situation, we can still find some positive factors: the protagonists of the upcoming AI era will still be internet companies.

The most powerful AI companies in China are still Alibaba, ByteDance, Tencent and Baidu, but the logic of spending money has indeed changed. We will not see companies like DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and Zhipu AI carry out public relations campaigns in the way traditional internet companies used to do. What is the new playbook? What is the new logic of communication? If you cannot figure out this path, you and I will most likely no longer have a place in the new relationship between PR teams and media outlets in the next era.

In addition, earth-shaking changes are also taking place at the hardware level. In the internet era, most of our hardware products are To C, such as computers and mobile phones, and we pay attention to brands like Lenovo, Xiaomi, Huawei, ZTE, OPPO and vivo. But in the AI era, the real giants are CXMT, GigaDevice, Cambricon, Innolight and Eoptolink.

There are several points that I am quite certain about at the moment.

First of all, do not cling stubbornly to the traditional internet track.

Several media outlets told me that they found writing negative coverage no longer works this year. Even if they publish negative articles, enterprises will not come to negotiate, and all they receive are complaints and lawyer letters.

The scenario of boiling a frog in warm water is the most likely to happen. The practice of making a living by relying on personal connections exists in every industry, but once enterprises shift their development direction, just like what happened when the real estate era came to an end, no matter how well-connected you are, you can no longer get benefits from it.

Starting from this year, media outlets that make a living by relying on personal connections in the internet industry will face increasingly difficult days. Their income will most likely be cut in half by 2027, and they will basically have no source of income by 2028. If you still foolishly wait for traditional paid assignments around 618 and Double 11, you deserve to go hungry.

If an oil peanut has already had all its oil squeezed out, what is the point of using all your remaining strength to squeeze it even harder? It is not that you are not working hard, but that your target is wrong. All major tech companies are transforming to develop AI, but you are still stuck in the old "people, goods, scenario" narrative.

Secondly, the AI era requires a combination of grand narrative and product review narrative language.

The technology of AI is far more complex than that of the internet. The core reason why enterprises need PR and media support, besides handling negative public opinions, is for communication, or in other words, translation: to translate the jargon of enterprises into content that audiences in different fields can understand. The difficulty of translating AI-related content far exceeds that of internet-related content. Most internet products are platforms that target individual consumers, and people can understand how they work as soon as they download them. But AI has far more invisible core mechanisms behind it. All AI products look like a simple dialog box, but how different are the models running on the cloud?

Communication in the AI era is more like a combination of the review style in the digital and automotive circles and the in-depth communication that internet companies used to be good at. This new narrative language is something that traditional internet PR teams and media are not familiar with, because the traditional communication logic of internet companies never includes the practice of product review.

However, pure product review is not what internet companies want either. Grand narrative and setting the overall tone are still essential. Media outlets that can balance both two aspects are doing very well at present: they can explain technical knowledge clearly, and also make the public understand the market status and economic value of the products.

In addition, this narrative logic will divide the audience into much more refined groups. The biggest difference between AI communication and traditional internet communication is audience segmentation: content for programmers is tailored for programmers, content for investors is tailored for investors, content for media practitioners is tailored for media practitioners, content for enterprise executives is tailored for enterprise executives. Who do you not need to target? The general public. Because Qwen has already proved that once you make a good product, you can attract mass users with a cost as low as the price of a cup of milk tea. There is no need to waste extra effort on that.

I evaluated our team, and found that our biggest shortcoming at the moment is the lack of in-depth understanding of relevant technologies. This is the key difficulty we need to overcome next. Why are there gaps between different models? Whoever can explain these gaps clearly will deserve to become the top leader in this field.

Indeed, PR practitioners and media workers who do not understand technology cannot survive in the AI era by relying on empty and exaggerated statements. No wonder a colleague from Alibaba Cloud told me before that they do not recruit people without relevant professional backgrounds or from non-985/211 universities. This is no longer an era where anyone even without higher education can work in the public relations sector.

Thirdly, you need to find your survival value among hardware companies.

Some time ago, CXMT went public, and many PR practitioners asked me why a company with such a huge scale does not need a public relations team. The answer is simple: not needing PR now does not mean they will not need it in the future.

In my personal opinion, a large number of AI-related companies with a market value of over one trillion yuan will emerge in the next five years. These companies will face more and more media coverage, and it is no longer realistic for them to hide in the background and make profits quietly. Even if their products are not targeted at individual consumers, their huge market scale means they have to face the public, just like CATL: even though it does not manufacture any cars, everyone is paying attention to it, so it has to set up its own public relations department to carry out daily PR work.

Therefore, I believe there are huge opportunities in this field. If PR practitioners working in internet companies can get a position in this type of company in the early stage this year, I think they can take the offer without hesitation. This is a definite early bet, and if you make the right choice, you can reach the peak of your career. Does NVIDIA not need PR? Does Intel not need PR? Does AMD not need PR? The same logic applies, China will also have its own similar leading companies.

If you invest in this type of company at the early stage, and run vertical track media that focuses on them for a long time, you will also get huge returns in three to five years. Are these companies short of money? What they lack is public consensus. Once these companies establish good public recognition, their demand for PR and media services will be very huge.

But it is true that these companies still do not fully understand what public relations is today. Their only reaction when interacting with media is fear and evasion.

Fourthly, internet companies will still be the largest talent pool for China's public relations industry.

I do not think internet companies will significantly reduce the size of their PR teams in the coming period. Because the industries they are involved in are all closely related to people's livelihood. They can stop active public relations expansion, but they cannot afford the damage caused by negative public opinions. Don't Taobao and JD need staff to handle product-related issues? Doesn't Didi need staff to handle passenger-related issues? Doesn't Meituan need staff to handle delivery-related issues? These seemingly trivial issues can easily become trending topics and cause huge reputational damage to the enterprises.

In addition, with the emergence of AI, the cost of creating fake news and malicious attacks is getting lower and lower. The recent cases of Zhuzhile incident that Huawei encountered and Jieyun toilet paper incident that Xiaomi encountered are good examples. Unexpected negative public opinion events will become more and more frequent.

I judge that the number of defensive PR staff in these enterprises will even increase, such as media relations specialists and internal PR audit staff. There have been too many public relations crisis cases caused by inadequate content review in recent years. But for offensive talents in charge of content planning, many of them will flow out of internet companies. It is enough to keep a small number of top talents for this work.

In fact, this outflow trend has existed for the past two years. New energy vehicle enterprises have already absorbed a large number of these talents. Most of the PR practitioners in the entire AI industry are also transferred from internet companies. The high-end manufacturing industry that will rise in China in the future will also absorb a large number of these talents. More and more enterprises will go global, and realize that public relations is an essential function.

The current passive "happy and quiet" model that A-share listed companies are used to will be broken in three to five years. A few weeks ago, I said that Demingli should fire its secretary of the board of directors. After that, many people from other A-share listed companies complained to me about how incompetent their own board secretaries are. This unique narrative logic for A-share enterprises is already on the verge of collapse.

Finally, let me explain why many people who used to make a living from the internet industry suddenly find it difficult to make money in the AI era.

Some time ago, a large internet company I am familiar with reorganized its PR team, and some staff members were laid off. The reason is simple: they do not meet the requirements of the future communication logic. During this process, a new list of media partners was also made. Some people are on the list, while some people, even old friends, were removed from the list. The reason is also very simple: the attributes of their media do not meet the requirements of the future communication logic.

The era has changed. If we do not change, being removed from the list is inevitable. I have already prepared for being removed from the list, because I am averse to AI, and do not look forward to that era. Give me a small quiet place with no internet access, and it may also be a good choice to spend the rest of my life there. Technology may not necessarily make my life better.

The summer nights in my childhood when power was cut off, and I could look up and see the Milky Way, are memories I will never forget.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Yikou Laopao", author: Frank Yang Ding, published with authorization from 36Kr.