Reborn on the Internet: Starting with Games

Chapter 401 Financing is not just playing house

As of the end of March, Century Weibo’s monthly active coverage exceeded 3 million, and the daily number of new Weibo posts exceeded 3000 million.

In February, money was used to attract celebrities, and in March, public opinion was used to build momentum for promotion.

Traffic is exploding, leading the entire network. Will there be fewer advertisers?Countless well-known brands are waving their money, clamoring to settle in, and want to take the first sip of soup.

On April 4, Weibo launched a blogging enterprise incentive platform. On this platform, bloggers and enterprises can choose in two directions to discuss cooperation. If I have traffic, you will have money, and both parties hit it off immediately.

This also marks the official start of commercialization of Weibo.

Some bloggers with considerable fan base and influence, in addition to maintaining their style of posting on Weibo, also include some business recommendations and soft advertising on Weibo.

The Weibo sales model was officially launched.

Nowadays, major news on current affairs, sports, entertainment, games, etc. often appear first on Century Weibo. Over time, netizens have developed the habit of going to Weibo first if they want to know about various major news events.

Sometimes I can even catch up with the live broadcast, which gives me a sense of immersion and participation.

In the same month, Overseas Twitter was officially established. After its launch, it was slapped hard before it could figure out the market. Comments on the website accused it of plagiarizing China Century Weibo.

Here, "Overseas Twitter is suspected of plagiarizing Century Weibo" broke into Weibo's hot search list.

It aroused heated discussion, but most people are basically happy and proud. Look, even foreigners are copying us.

This time it was not Chen Hao’s intervention behind the scenes, but the spontaneous behavior of netizens.

Now the hot list has its own set of very complex algorithms without manual intervention, which finally calculates a popularity value and sorts it.

Century Weibo started to get on the right track. Chen Hao emphatically told Li Wu that the speech control mechanism must be cautious. All illegal content involving politics, violence, pornography, etc. will be deleted and warned. If it occurs again, it will be directly banned.

Because he didn't want to follow in the footsteps of Sina, who was often called to drink tea and have a heart-to-heart talk.

Weibo is Chen Hao’s focus in the first quarter, and there is still one tail left, which is Wang Xing’s campus.

When Xiaonei.com appeared, he didn't buy it. Money was one thing, and on the other hand, going from 0 to 1 was the most difficult stage for a website. Chen Hao didn't have the energy to take care of such a small thing, but if he let the people below do it, it would easily go astray.

So let people grow wildly, and at the same time cultivate the market of student groups. Once it reaches 1, it will be a very simple matter to expand 1 to 100. Just add fuel to the flames based on inertia.

In the world of the Internet, if you find a rising star, the best way to destroy it is not to defeat it, but to spend money to acquire it.

Looking at the emails sent from Public Opinion, I can see that the fruit is almost ripe and it’s almost time to take action.

This April, not only the overseas Twitter network was established, but domestic returnees Zhang Fan and his wife founded the Zhanzhu.com, and Thousand Oaks' 4Q campus network was established successively.

There is no way, they also want to do national social networking, but the plate is too big for them to eat. The most important thing is that there are two obstacles in the way, Century Weibo and QQ Space, and no one dares to use their hands to get in the way.

We can only take the route of surrounding the city from the countryside and start from the vertical field, so both Zhang Fan and his wife and Chen Yizhou have set their sights on campus socializing.

College students accept new things quickly and have a huge population base. They are the most mature social group.

Moreover, the campus network is currently booming, and a path has been paved for them in the front.

Zhang Fan and his wife's seat-occupancy network is uniquely endowed with the support of government education resources.

Behind the 5Q campus network is Thousand Oaks Interactive Group. This is not the point. The point is Chen Yizhou, the boss of Thousand Oaks.

Chen Yizhou, like Zhang Chaoyang and Robin Li, is one of the representatives of the Turtle School of Internet entrepreneurship at the end of the last century.

Majoring in Computer Science in the Department of Physics of Wuhan University, he is a classmate of Lei Jun.

Later, he studied abroad, received a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MBA from the Stanford Business School. In 99, he returned to China and founded ChinaRen, which is the largest youth community in China and has become the number one Internet brand in China.

By the turn of the millennium, the Internet bubble was coming, ChinaRen was acquired by Sohu, and Chen Yizhou became the vice president of Sohu. After staying there for two years, he came out to found Qianoak Interactive.

At that time, Chen Yizhou's statement to the outside world was that since he was not a major shareholder and could not make the final decision, it was not interesting to stay in the office every day.

Chen Yizhou is also a talented person. After founding Qianoak Interactive, he recruited nearly 96/1 of the 3 students from the Department of Computer Science of Beijing University under his command, and worked together to do great things.

This group of students later became very famous, including Wang Xiaochuan from Sogou, Zhou Feng, CEO of NetEase Youdao, Xu Chaojun, CEO of Shanda and other big names.

After seeing the rise of the school network, he also thought about acquiring the other party.

Wang Xing has been experiencing both pain and happiness in the past few months.

On the one hand, the school network is developing in full swing and now has millions of real student users.

On the other hand, the monthly server expenses of tens of thousands made him somewhat stretched, and he was gradually running out of food and ammunition. It was really unreasonable to ask for money from his family again this time.

Time and time again, my family almost thought that I was not starting a business, but was addicted to gambling.

Although he is his own father, Wang Xing still wants to save face.

Wang Huiwen and Lai Binqiang, together with several newly recruited partners, continued to be responsible for the operation of the school network, while Wang Xing began a long road to financing.

Wang Xing can still make products, but financing is really bumpy. Hard work pays off, not to mention that it is really effective.

At this time, Sequoia Capital, which had just entered the country, extended an olive branch to Wang Xing and wanted to invest in Xiaonei Network.

Wang Xing and the others were so excited that they couldn't sleep all night, and they quickly scrambled to make a business plan. It was called a plan, but it was actually just one page.

When they arrived at the Sequoia Capital Building, the three of them left their plans in the taxi they came from.

The three people were in a hurry and wrote on the spot.

Then during the negotiation process, the two sides looked at each other with big eyes and small eyes. Basically, the people from Sequoia Capital asked a question and the three Wang Xing brothers answered.

There was an episode in the middle, during which the door of the negotiation conference room opened, and a man in red came in and looked at it for a few times, and then went out.

This person was none other than the later Cardinal, Zhou Hongyi.

Originally, he was chatting with Shen Nanpeng of Sequoia Capital, and by chance he wanted to see the projects they invested in. Mainly, he wanted to see whether the other party was successful.

After Wang Xing and others left, Zhou Hongyi said to several people from Sequoia Capital, "I looked at these three guys with cold faces and dull eyes. The school network will not last long."

Since then, on-campus financing negotiations have fallen through.

Some time later, Wang Xing contacted an investment institution in the United States, and the financing amount was only 100 million. As a result, they sent people all the way to the country to not only visit the school, but also Tencent and Thousand Oaks Interactive. It was necessary to compare goods. .

This is a luxurious office building with several thousand square meters of large rooms and a large number of employees.

What about on campus?The rented private house, a few computers, this office environment, just these three melons and two dates, they just went home without saying a word.

Financing failed again, and the school's cash flow could only support one month.

Just when he was about to run out of ammunition and food, Wang Xing received a call from Chen Yizhou.

"1000 million, Thousand Oaks wants to buy the school!"

(End of this chapter)