September was very muggy.
In the evening, Chen Pingjiang drove Yanyan to Tianjing Lake for a stroll.
Tianjing Lake was neither too big nor too small; circling the lake measured two or three kilometers.
In the evening, as dusk was settling, a breeze blew across the lake, rippling the autumn waters while gently lifting Yanyan's hair tips and skirt hem.
She wore a simple, pure white dress, with her hair half-tied, a wisp of dark hair falling over each shoulder, like Chang'e under the moon.
Even with the dimming light making it hard to see her face clearly, she still attracted the gaze of many passersby.
"Have you finalized your internship? Last time I heard your mom say she found you an internship?"
Chen Pingjiang asked.
Yanyan shook her head, looking at him:
"I'm studying sports journalism, she wants me to work at her newspaper office, but I don't want to go. Didn't I say before that I would intern at your company? Is it inconvenient?"
"Convenient, why would it be inconvenient."
Chen Pingjiang said, but in his heart, he was figuring out how to minimize Yanyan and Ge Mengshi's encounters.
Thinking of Ge Mengshi, Chen Pingjiang could only shake his head to himself.
In any case, Yanyan was the most suitable marriage partner for him in every aspect.
Back home in the evening, Chen Pingjiang and Yanyan lay on the same bed, chatting idly and occasionally cuddling.
"Sleeping here tonight?"
Chen Pingjiang whispered close to Yanyan's ear.
The warm breath tickled her ear, making Yanyan feel a little itchy.
Their earlier playful teasing had already made her cheeks flush, and with Chen Pingjiang's further flirtation, her eyes instantly became a little watery.
Just as Yanyan hesitated, Chen Pingjiang intensified his advance:
"Don't worry, we're just sleeping together, I won't do anything. Besides, my parents are still in the next bedroom."
Chen Pingjiang had only intended to "emphasize" that he was harmless, but he didn't expect that the mention of "parents" would instantly make Yanyan's eyes clear.
"Wait… wait until we go back, let's not sleep together tonight."
Chen Pingjiang saw Yanyan's restraint and embarrassment, and immediately wanted to slap himself.
......
The world only knows Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo, but few know that, strictly speaking, "Fanfou" was the first domestic Weibo.
Before Chen Pingjiang's Weibo went online, there were already six or seven early microblogging companies on the market, represented by "Hainie", "Fanfou", "Jiwai", and "Zuosha".
However, these companies weren't doing very well, and the founder of the most famous among them, "Fanfou", was our familiar Wang Xing.
Yes, it's the Wang Xing who founded "Xiaonei.com" before founding Meituan.
He founded Fanfou in May 2007, much earlier than Chen Pingjiang, but its early development was very slow, and even now, it only has 200,000 registered users.
If it weren't for the turmoil in '09, which forced Fanfou to shut down, Sina might not have gained prominence, and Wang Xing might not have even founded Meituan.
When Wang Xing saw Chen Pingjiang also entering this race, his vision went dark.
Just half a month later, Sina and Tencent entered, which made him feel like dying.
These two companies came in sniffing out Chen Pingjiang's scent.
In the office, Wang Xing grumbled:
"This Chen Pingjiang, when I do SNS, he does SNS; when I do blogs, he does them too."
To this, Chen Pingjiang responded:
"Tencent only knows how to copy. I make social games, you make them too; I make Weibo, you make it too."
It's all a big copy!
What was unexpected was that even Zhang Chaoyang's Sohu and Ding Sanshi's NetEase also damn entered this race.
The most interesting thing is!
Tencent previously had a product called Tencent Taotao, which was benchmarked against Fanfou, a blog; Sina also had Sina Blog.
Tencent even had a skirmish with Fanfou earlier this year!
But Tencent itself didn't pay too much attention to the Taotao product, resulting in its inability to ever take off.
Now that Chen Pingjiang suddenly plunged into this race, out of trust in Chen Pingjiang, Tencent and Sina hurriedly launched their own Weibo platforms.
Originally, both Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo were not set to launch until August-September 2009; now they were suddenly launched much earlier.
With these internet giants entering the fray, it directly pronounced Fanfou's death sentence; it wouldn't even have to wait until '09 to be forcibly shut down.
No money to spend, no users to attract, it simply couldn't compete.
Li Xi was skilled at promoting Weibo.
With clearer media characteristics and social attributes, and the traffic boost from Renren.com, Weibo, despite its low-key debut, shone brightly like a star in the night.
Leveraging the advantages accumulated by Renren.com, it quickly invited some of the platform's big Vs, celebrities, and internet celebrities to Weibo.
"This time is different from the battles of SNS social platforms. Neither Xiaonei.com nor Kaixin.com can compare to Tencent and Sina.
This time, all the participants are domestic internet giants."
During the meeting, Chen Pingjiang's expression was quite stern.
Tencent and Sina initiated projects exceptionally fast; in just about two months, their products were launched one after another.
Immediately, the domestic internet market was filled with the smoke of war.
Many internet professionals were somewhat bewildered.
It was clearly an SNS war just before; the battles between Renren.com, Xiaonei.com, and Kaixin.com hadn't even ended yet.
How did it suddenly switch channels?
The sudden battle made Chen Pingjiang curse.
It's fine that Xiao Mage entered, he's always nipping at my heels.
Why doesn't Zhang Chaoyang go be a teacher and Ding Sanshi honestly raise pigs?
What's the point of forcing their way in here?
The battle was exceptionally fierce!
Although Chen Pingjiang held a first-mover advantage and resource advantage, the other two were not bad either.
Sina Weibo, because it already had a blog, had Xu Jinglei and Han Han, who were already big Vs with over a hundred million views, and now Xu Xiaoming also appeared.
Many people probably don't know Xu Xiaoming; he is a well-known financial blogger, with over 3.9 billion clicks on his Sina Blog.
He's a formidable force.
Tencent Weibo, on the other hand, was even more aggressive, frantically waving checks around to poach celebrities to join.
They were fighting tooth and nail.
"All four major domestic portals have entered the game: NetEase, Sina, Tencent, Sohu, plus us, makes five companies. As soon as our five companies emerged, previous platforms like Fanfou quickly disappeared."
Li Xi briefed the meeting:
"Currently, in terms of market share, we are leading with 50%; Sina is second with 25%; and the remaining Weibo platforms share the other 30%."
The market was changing too fast, leaving Li Xi dumbfounded.
Chen Pingjiang nodded and said:
"NetEase and Sohu are like younger brothers; there's no need to pay too much attention to these two. Currently our opponents are Sina and Tencent, and between these two, Sina is stronger."
Miao Bingwei asked curiously:
"Shouldn't Tencent have the strongest comprehensive strength?"
"Tencent appears to have the strongest paper strength, but they didn't launch Weibo as a strategic product, but rather more to contain us, serving as a strategic defense. Its outcome is foreseeable."
Chen Pingjiang said:
"Weibo's basic functions are repeatedly just those few; it's difficult to have groundbreaking innovations. In this situation, whoever gets on board first will seize the market opportunity; it's hard for latecomers to surpass them. We currently have the first ticket to board the ship."
"Tencent itself doesn't possess the advantages that we and Sina have; it's difficult to sustain simply by throwing money at it."
Li Xi said: "Now, the ecosystems of our three companies are somewhat different. Among the celebrities who have joined our Weibo are some male stars from previous "Super Boy" and "My Hero", and "Super Girl" female stars. The rest are Olympic stars and some second and third-tier celebrities, and of course, some internet celebrities and big Vs nurtured by Renren.com."
"On Sina Weibo, writers and financial figures are prominent, especially Yao Chen, Zhao Wei, and Huang Jianxiang, who have the most fans."
"Tencent Weibo, leveraging its early presence in QQ Music, mostly features singers."
Miao Bingwei frowned:
"If that's the case, the situation is very tense. Weibo is different from Renren.com; it doesn't have social games to drive traffic, nor does it have acquaintance social networking as a foundation. It completely relies on celebrity effect to attract users. Although we took the first step, it wasn't a solid one."
Chen Pingjiang nodded:
"Indeed. Everyone is attracting celebrities to join, like opening blind boxes, competing to see who has more fans; it seems this can bring more registered users. But Tencent got one thing wrong: no matter how big a celebrity you bring in, if the celebrity or singer themselves isn't good at writing Weibo posts, updating statuses, or maintaining their presence poorly, they won't be able to keep up. While it can attract temporary attention, it will eventually be lost."
"Therefore, I think we can stop looking for celebrities to join."
As soon as Chen Pingjiang finished speaking, everyone in the conference room looked serious.
"Chairman Chen, other companies are spending a lot of money; if we give up inviting celebrities to join now, will we hand over our hard-won advantage?"
"Yes, and once we give it up, and they gain the advantage, it will be difficult to counterattack later."
Chen Pingjiang shook his head, smiling, and said:
"In that case, let me be more precise: only seek out celebrities who are willing to post and write on Weibo, and are good at it. Beyond this, our focus should be on enriching the content ecosystem and on our core business of event marketing. Finally, the most important thing is the media, and official entities!"
"I understand, your meaning is that instead of spending money in vain to poach some poorly maintained celebrities to attract temporary attention, it's better to cultivate our own grassroots big Vs and invite various new media and government agencies?"
"Yes!"
(End of chapter)