Since they are reborn, they must be supported by the school beauties.

Chapter 209 They can't be raised in the same pond.

Qin Jianshe hadn't expected Lu Zhixing to be so direct.

Isn't everyone playing a game of unspoken understanding?

You know I have money, and I know you know I have money. You also know that when I say I don't have money, I'm lying to you. But we're all adults, so it's enough that we know what's going on. Why do we have to point it out?
Helpless, he could only continue to play dumb and vaguely said, "Oh dear, Lao Lu, you don't know, I really don't have that much money on hand. Most of the tens of millions I invested were borrowed, and I've paid a lot of interest."

Lu Zhixing smiled and didn't press the matter further. He simply said, "I'm not teasing you anymore, Lao Qin. As a friend, I'm genuinely happy to see you making money. Remember to treat me to a meal when you go to Jiangcheng."

Qin Jianshe chuckled and said, "That's for sure!"

After exchanging a few pleasantries, Lu Zhixing hung up the phone.

Xiao Suqin, who was standing nearby, quickly asked him, "Chen Cheng's company was sold to Lao Qin?"

"Correct."

Lu Zhixing exclaimed, "Eight million four hundred thousand? My god, this thing has really skyrocketed in value."

Xiao Suqin said, "Since Chen Cheng has already made his move, he might have already seen the peak. Is it too risky for Lao Qin to invest more than ten million at this time?"

Lu Zhixing shook his head: "I don't know about that. Xiao Chen might have seen the peak, but these things, once they peak, will at most trade sideways and shouldn't fall, right?"

Xiao Suqin said, "It's hard to say. After all, it was artificially inflated. If there are any fluctuations, the price will definitely fall. You can remind Lao Qin to be careful and not to blindly chase the high price."

Lu Zhixing scoffed, "Tch, I'm not going to remind him. Knowing his personality, he'll probably think I'm afraid he'll make money and want to persuade him to leave quickly. He likes people to flatter him and talk to him, so I'm not going to make myself uncomfortable."

"Too."

Xiao Suqin nodded and sighed, "Everyone has their own opportunities, and who knows, it might really make him a fortune. It all depends on his luck."
-
When Chen Cheng met Lu Youyou, she had dressed up specially.

At the end of October, the weather was getting a little cool. Lu Youyou wore a long, oversized white sweater, hiding her small hands and pert bottom inside, revealing her two slender legs.

Upon seeing Chen Cheng, Lu Youyou had a smile on her face. She quickly walked a few steps to him and asked expectantly, "Why did you suddenly call me to dinner?"

Lu Youyou was hoping that Chen Cheng would say something like "I miss you" or "I want to see you," but Chen Cheng said bluntly, "I'm selling the company, so I'll treat you to dinner to celebrate."

"Really?"

Lu Youyou quickly asked, "How much did you sell it for?"

"Eight million four hundred thousand."

Chen Cheng made a startling statement. Seeing Lu Youyou's astonished expression, he smiled and said, "You'll never guess who I sold the company to!"

Lu Youyou laughed and said, "Among the people we both know, besides my dad, the only one who could come up with more than eight million to buy your taxi company is probably Qin Xiaobo's dad. My dad definitely wouldn't buy the company from you, so it can't be Qin Xiaobo's dad, right?"

Chen Cheng was stunned for a moment before saying, "You're too smart..."

Lu Youyou asked in surprise, "It really is him?"

Chen Cheng nodded and said, "Where is the hot pot restaurant you mentioned? Let's talk about it as we walk."

Lu Youyou laughed and said, "Come on, this way."

As she spoke, she turned left and walked out first, then asked Chen Cheng beside her, "How did Qin Xiaobo's father get in touch with you?"

Chen Cheng said, "He's recently set his sights on this business, invested a lot of money, and is still collecting quotas everywhere. My company has a lot of quotas, and we need to sell them all at once, so I thought I'd ask a scalper to help me find potential buyers. I didn't expect him to offer the highest price."

Lu Youyou nodded slightly and said with a smile, "Congratulations to whoever bought it! You made so much money so quickly!"

Chen Cheng said modestly, "The money seems like a lot, but once it's invested in Renren.com, there's not much left."

Lu Youyou asked, "Is Renren.com really that expensive? I see you're about to become a member. Will things get better after you become a member? At least you'll see some return on your investment."

Chen Cheng nodded and said, "There will definitely be some income from memberships, but I have received reliable information that Tencent has also started its own campus network. It may be launched next week, which will definitely trigger some fierce competition. Competition will definitely cost money."

Lu Youyou asked nervously, "Isn't Tencent already quite large? If they compete with you, will they push you out of the competition?"

Chen Cheng said, "That's definitely what they hope for, but I certainly can't just sit idly by. If their Renren.com succeeds, all my investments may end up being a complete loss."

Lu Youyou said with concern, "Then you must be well prepared to deal with it, so that all your previous efforts can be in vain."

Seeing that she had a clear understanding of the problem, Chen Cheng deliberately asked her, "Do you have any good suggestions for me, such as how I should compete with them?"

Lu Youyou thought for a moment and said seriously, "I think the most important thing is to keep him catching up with you. His QQ does have a lot of users, but that doesn't mean he can definitely beat you with a product like Renren. If his product isn't as fun or as popular as yours, then he definitely won't succeed."

Chen Cheng nodded and said, "I still have a slight advantage now. But I believe that with their strength, this advantage will gradually diminish."

Lu Youyou turned her head to look at him and said, "Then you need to use your brain to think of ways to give yourself more first-mover advantage and always run faster than him. Don't forget, when you run ahead, it's not just him chasing you, some users are also chasing you. The further users follow you, the less likely they are to turn back in the future."

Chen Cheng exclaimed in amazement, "Wow, Xiao Lu, you've figured out user stickiness and loyalty!"

Lu Youyou smiled and said, "I use your Renren.com every day and I'm even planning to subscribe to support it as soon as possible. I think if Renren.com can stay ahead for a while longer, users will really be unable to live without it. In comparison, Tencent shouldn't have much of an advantage."

Chen Cheng said, "Tencent's advantage lies in its ecosystem."

What is ecology?

"Well..." Chen Cheng organized his thoughts and explained, "An ecosystem is like everyone else raising fish in aquariums, but you create your own pond. You fill the pond with water, plant plants, and cultivate a lot of beneficial algae. The plants and algae in the water can help purify the water and provide ample plankton. When you have such an ecosystem, raising fish, shrimp, crabs, and loaches becomes very simple. Some species don't even need to be raised; they'll come to you on their own."

"I understand."

Lu Youyou nodded and said, "Tencent has so many users, so it's true that everything is easier and less strenuous for them. You just said that what they've created is a pond where small fish, shrimp, and loaches can live, but marine species can't. If they encounter birds of prey in the sky, they might even use this pond as their canteen."

"Makes sense."

Chen Cheng frowned, pondered for a moment, and suddenly understood a principle.

Tencent doesn't succeed at everything. Despite having QQ and WeChat as its massive social software foundation, some products are simply not suited to take root and flourish in this environment.

Renren.com was a product he was inherently incapable of making successful.

In its previous life, Renren.com wasn't killed by Tencent, but rather it failed to find its proper niche, didn't keep up with the mobile internet, and betrayed the college student population, thus bringing about its own demise.

Originally, Xiaonei.com targeted college students and positioned itself as an ivory tower exclusively for them. It even achieved a market value of several billion US dollars based solely on this positioning.

However, Xiaonei.com was no longer satisfied with being a small and beautiful platform or serving only college students. Instead, it wanted to serve all netizens like Facebook. So, it changed its name to Renren.com, making a major strategic adjustment.

As its name suggests, Xiaonei.com focuses on campuses.

The name Renren.com is quite ambitious, implying that everyone should become a user of Renren.com.

However, the first problem we face is that college students will definitely feel betrayed. When transforming, we must appease old users and cater to new users, and we must do both well.

If you make a mistake during this process, you may offend both new and old users, and end up pleasing neither side.

At that time, the mobile internet was just beginning its transformation, but Renren.com neglected the college student population and failed to seize this opportunity. It was slow to launch its own mobile platform and was eventually abandoned by users.

Even college students who had worked on this platform for many years abandoned it without hesitation.

Therefore, Renren.com and Xiaonei.com were not defeated by Tencent at all.

Tencent's own alumni directory, despite its vast resources, has also failed to take off.

Now, considering what Lu Youyou just said and thinking about this matter again, Chen Cheng realized that the reason Tencent failed to make its alumni directory a success was because its environment was not suitable for the survival of alumni directories.

Whether it's QQ or WeChat, they are both building large-scale social networks.

The foundation of a large social network is to include both your relatives, friends, classmates, acquaintances, and colleagues, as well as strangers online, online romantic interests, and randomly added members of the opposite sex when you're lonely.

Such large social products have a natural advantage in making many other attempts. For example, in games, whether it was the earliest QQ Games or the series of online and mobile games launched by QQ later, the social foundation laid by large social products was the key to the games' nationwide popularity. You can invite your real-life friends or online friends to play a game that you think is good at any time. This promotion speed is much faster than that of other game companies.

But then a question arises: if a large social platform puts all the people you can meet online and offline in your life together, what do you value most?
Chen Cheng felt it was a matter of privacy.

Why is it that the time limit for WeChat Moments access is getting shorter and shorter for the vast majority of people?
Because they are increasingly concerned about their privacy.

As their friends list becomes increasingly diverse, they no longer even reveal their real names or alma maters on social media.

However, Renren.com is different.

Renren is a social platform with virtually no privacy regarding user identities.

The prerequisite for playing this game is that you must disclose all your information, such as your name, school, and place of origin, so that others can find you immediately.

So how could Tencent possibly succeed in creating an alumni directory?

Let's say Zhang San has 300 QQ friends. Of these 300 people, 100 are people he knows, and the rest are online friends. Among them are many friends he brags to, online friends who just chat, and even people he has cursed, lied to, or hurt.

If you ask him to open an alumni directory at this point, and to put his real name, his alma mater, and his current school online, and also make it public to all his QQ friends, would he be willing?

He certainly wouldn't want to.

If he is unwilling, then Tencent will lose its major social advantage when developing this product, and this major social advantage may even become a burden.

QQ and Renren are like freshwater fish and saltwater fish. These two types of fish can be raised by the same person, but they cannot be raised in the same pond. It depends on whether Tencent plans to raise them in the QQ pond or open a new pond specifically for them.

Chen Cheng felt that it was more likely the former.

Once he understood this, he suddenly realized why Tencent's e-commerce business had never taken off.

Tencent has no advantage in e-commerce either, because e-commerce doesn't require social interaction at all.

You never want your QQ or WeChat friends to be able to see your purchase history, as that would expose all your privacy.

Therefore, judging from this underlying logic, Tencent's creation of an alumni directory is definitely a strategic mistake. Once this touches on the privacy of QQ users, QQ users will not support it.

Especially with QQ nowadays, more than half of everyone's friends are randomly added online chat partners through search. Because the internet is invisible and intangible, most people will use lies to package themselves when chatting online. They will completely separate their real life from online chat. If you suddenly push a real-name registered product on them, they will not like it.

If Tencent is stupid enough, it will definitely use its QQ account system after its alumni directory is launched, meaning that the QQ number is equivalent to the alumni directory account.

If Tencent is lazy enough, it will definitely choose a shortcut: push alumni friends among QQ friends. That is, if account A registers for alumni, the system may push the news of his alumni registration to all his QQ friends, thereby increasing the number of registered users of alumni as quickly as possible.

Once he activates this feature, he's essentially strapping himself with a time bomb. You don't need to nip it in the bud; it'll explode on its own!
(End of this chapter)