Rebirth 2010: I taught Mr. Lei how to make a mobile phone

Chapter 722 New Year and New Beginning

The seven days of the Spring Festival pass in a flash.

When Lee Boo-jin appeared at the Capital International Airport again, the mask could not hide the charm she revealed in her fleeting glance. Her every move added a bit of maturity, just like a flower watered by rain and dew, even more graceful than before.

At the same time, Chen Mo, who was clear-headed and had no distractions, leaned against the wall and threw the sheets into the trash can. There was no way to wash them, so he could only replace the bed with a new one.

According to national regulations, the Spring Festival holiday should be from New Year's Eve to the sixth day of the first lunar month.

But the Bi'an Group "knowingly breaks the law" - their holiday extends from New Year's Eve to after the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunar month.

The seven-day statutory holiday was extended to sixteen days. If the time for non-local employees to return home early is taken into account, some employees can even enjoy an extra-long holiday of nearly twenty days.

This can be considered "heresy" in the Internet technology industry, but it has become an unshakable tradition on the other side.

Half a month before the Spring Festival every year, various departments gradually enter a "closed version" state.

What does this mean? All online channels are completely closed. Unless there is a major failure that requires emergency repair and the top person in charge of each department needs to go through the special approval process, all updates will have to wait until work resumes after the holidays.

While most employees are enjoying family time at home, more than a thousand Bi'an employees are still sticking to their posts to maintain the basic operation of various business lines.

Unless there are special circumstances and you need to contact relevant employees for remote support, generally we adhere to the principle of "holiday is holiday" and don't disturb them.

These on-duty employees are rotated every year. It seems hard work, but in fact many people flock to it. Because although they miss the Spring Festival reunion with their parents, when the main group returns, they can still take staggered vacations - with triple salary for the seven days of Spring Festival and double salary thereafter, and reunite with their families.

Because of this, the anti-corruption mechanism in the other side is particularly special, relying not on family members but on employees.

Chen Mo used tangible benefits to gain the loyalty of his employees.

These employees truly regard the other side as their home and protect Chen Mo like an older brother.

On the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, when ordinary employees were still on vacation, all senior executives at the director level and above of Bi'an had already arrived at their posts.

The energetic Chen Mo started his annual routine of "sweeping the building" to wish a happy new year early in the morning.

After all, it is really not easy for these employees to stay on duty and ensure that the group's business is not affected and runs smoothly during the Spring Festival.

Accompanied by Xu Peixin, vice president of human resources, he personally presented red envelopes to each employee on duty. After all, it was unrealistic and inefficient to give red envelopes to tens of thousands of employees, but more than a thousand would be fine.

The amount in the red envelope was not large, just a brand new 100-yuan note, but the thought behind it was great.

Chen Mo held a stack of red envelopes in his hand. Every time he arrived at a floor, he would be cheered by everyone. Then they would quickly put down their work and sit in a row to receive small red envelopes from the boss.

Many E-Ren employees were not satisfied after receiving the red envelopes and insisted on taking photos with Chen Mo. The latter accepted the requests and enjoyed it.

When taking photos with girls, the 1.80-meter-tall Chen Mo half-crouched considerately, and even leaned back on purpose, saying with a smile, "This way of taking photos makes your face look smaller."

This down-to-earth action made everyone laugh and invisibly brought Chen Mo closer to everyone.

In the past, as the business of Bi'an continued to develop and grow in scale, Chen Mo's reputation among employees was unparalleled. In the past, he could only be seen at annual meetings and intranet forums, but after this red envelope distribution, many older employees found that the boss seemed to be the same boss and not much had changed.

After finishing the afternoon floor sweep, Chen Mo finally had time to review the pile of work reports.

The first one is the Douyin business briefing sent by Zhang Yiming, which is about Douyin
At the same time, in the top-floor office of the Baidu Building just across the street, Robin Li was staring at the latest data report with a grim face.

Last year's 10 billion yuan Spring Festival Gala marketing campaign ended dismally with a seven-day uninstall rate of 88.7% and a new user retention rate of less than 2%.

This massive marketing campaign eventually became a laughing stock in the industry. Apart from the bland comment that "Baidu's technology is indeed strong and it can withstand the impact of Spring Festival Gala traffic", it achieved almost nothing.

It feels like a nouveau riche who has worked hard for many years to save up all his money just to have a night with an oiran, but when he wakes up he finds that everything is like a mirage, leaving him with nothing but emptiness.

The TikTok data in front of Robin Li at this moment is like a loud slap in the face:

Number of red envelope interactions on New Year’s Eve: 203 billion times (far exceeding Baidu’s 2015 billion times in 110).

Tik Tok DAU (daily active users) peak: over 1 million.

Download volume surges: App Store downloads exceeded 50 times in a single day, ranking first on the free list.

The number of Douyin users linked to WeChat Pay has increased by over 2000 million.

Why can WeChat and Alipay sponsor the Spring Festival Gala, and now even Douyin can be a huge success? Why can't we? This is unscientific!
Especially since this year's Spring Festival Gala sponsorship fee hit a new low in recent years, no one was optimistic about it, but Douyin actually performed well.

Li Yanhong's clenched fists were shaking slightly, but a fire of unwillingness was burning in his eyes.

Short videos are good, we need to make them.

Baidu must enter the short video field. Not to mention competing with TikTok, at least it cannot fall behind.

At present, the short video track has been initially determined: Douyin and Kuaishou are competing for supremacy, Tencent Weishi is half dead, and the rest of the players are even less influential. However, Robin Li keenly discovered that these platforms have ignored the core competitiveness of content - knowledge value.

And this is exactly the area where Baidu excels.

A brand new idea is taking shape in my mind: to create a short video platform focusing on popular science knowledge and life skills, relying on Baidu's powerful search traffic to divert traffic, and organically integrating short video information flow with graphic and text content.

Li Yanhong turned back to his desk and stared at the enviable data report.
“Let’s call it ‘Good-looking Video’.”

Here, Chen Mo tapped the table with his fingertips at a fixed frequency. He glanced at the operational data report of Douyin and nodded slightly.

The transcript was pretty good and not surprising, meeting his previous expectations.

Then I looked through the online media reports about TikTok’s sponsorship and trends.

The headline of Caixin.com is eye-catching: "TikTok has completed the transition from an entertainment platform to a super app through the Spring Festival Gala."

LatePost focuses on the sinking market: "Douyin Express successfully entered the third- and fourth-tier cities with the help of the Spring Festival Gala."

36Kr also conducted an in-depth report: "After the Spring Festival Gala red envelope campaign, the number of Douyin and WeChat payment users surged, and the scale may exceed that of Alipay."

Even the usually reserved second-rate daily newspaper published a commentary: "New media empowerment: short videos give the traditional Spring Festival Gala a new lease of life."

Douyin became the exclusive interactive partner of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala, and achieved significant business growth and enhanced brand influence through red envelope interaction, brand exposure and traffic import.

It not only brings a short-term traffic explosion, but also realizes a closed-loop strategy in the three fields of e-commerce, payment, and social networking through linkage with WeChat and JD.com, thereby achieving long-term business value growth.

Overall, this billion-dollar Spring Festival Gala marketing plan is perfect.

Today, Douyin has firmly taken the top spot in the short video market, leaving its former rival Kuaishou far behind.

As for Kuaishou being acquired by Alibaba, Jack Ma took advantage of the opportunity last year because he had limited energy and had no time to take care of other things. However, instead of worrying about how to catch up with Douyin, it is better to look at Tencent's Weishi behind it.

Chen Mo had asked the technical department below to research this product before. After Tencent's transformation, the genes of this product also underwent some changes. It imitated Douyin in terms of algorithm, first improving its internal strength, and then combining it with its own social strengths.

The advantage of this is that even if it can't catch up with Douyin, there will be no big problem in getting a share of the short video market.

As for healthy business competition, Chen Mo’s idea has always been that everyone is welcome to come and make money together based on their own abilities.

The plan for a day lies in the morning, and the plan for a year lies in the spring.

At the beginning of the new year, everything is new.

From the end of the Spring Festival holiday to the Lantern Festival, Chen Mo devoted himself to his work, as if he was isolated from the outside world.

In front of the floor-to-ceiling window of the office, his figure could be seen concentrating on thinking in the dim morning light; late at night, the solitary lamp was still bright.

Even though Leng Ning and Qi Mengmeng returned one after another, it failed to shake his concentration on work in the slightest.

At this moment, he is like a chess player, arranging his troops on the chessboard, and first sorting out and making suggestions on the peripheral business.

First of all, he still focuses on ByteDance:
Given the rapid development momentum of TikTok last year and its extensive exposure during the Spring Festival Gala, its valuation could have reached around US$200 billion, according to estimates by the finance department.

In ByteDance's current equity structure, Beyond Ventures holds a 51% stake. After several rounds of financing and dilution, Zhang Yiming's shareholding ratio has dropped to 27%. The remaining shares are held by early investors such as Morningside Venture Capital, Shunwei Capital, and Source Code Capital.

Although Chen Mo has a veto and the right to speak, the daily operations are still basically handled by Zhang Yiming's founding team.

It is worth noting that ByteDance’s most important product today is no longer Toutiao, which has successfully explored a commercialization model, but Douyin, which has come from behind.

The current TikTok is also very different from what it was at the beginning. It is no longer an independent platform, but a business ecosystem that has established close ties with JD.com, SF Express, WeChat, etc.

Zhi Yiming: We can start the C round of financing this year and introduce strategic investors from state-owned enterprises; at the same time, we must handle the balance of interests between the anchors and the platforms, and focus on promoting products through e-commerce.

In terms of content, to Chen Tong: We need to promote the horizontal integration of long and short videos, music and novels, and layout in the field of audio novels. For example, we can consider investing in platforms such as蜻蜓FM and 希玛雅FM to make up for the shortcomings in audio content.

Cultural and Creative Industry:

With the success of Monkey King’s peripheral products, the Bi’an Group has tasted the first wave of sweetness from IP monetization. The current market situation is very good, and this is still a blue ocean market that has not yet been fully developed.

Because the top players that have been involved before, such as Kayou and Pop Mart, have already been acquired by Bianhua.

To Mengmeng: This year's development can adopt a two-pronged strategy. Vertically, we will conduct in-depth development on the existing content platforms of the Bi'an Group, such as Battle Through the Heavens, Douluo Continent, World of Glory, Heroes of the Swordsman, Legend of Glory and other IPs.

At the same time, it expanded horizontally and cooperated with well-known overseas animation IPs, such as obtaining the authorized development rights of IPs such as Ultraman, My Little Pony, and Naruto.

As for Ele.me and taxi-hailing businesses, given that competitors in the field are currently relatively abiding by the rules, the next focus will be to continue optimizing the existing model and initiate subsequent financing and listing plans once the business becomes more mature.

After reviewing the business of the subsidiaries, Chen Mo also adjusted and planned the core business within the group.
(End of this chapter)