I can become stronger by paying salaries. I have one billion employees!

Chapter 609 Returning Home, Taking Down Ah Li! Seize Ma Liyun by the throat and encircle and annihilate Ah Li!

The following morning, the top news lists on the three major portal websites, Douyin, Toutiao, and Weibo were almost entirely dominated by reports of JD.com's IPO.

After more than a decade of hard work, Liu Qiangdong finally went public, and his net worth jumped to over 60 billion US dollars.

If converted to Chinese Yuan, it would be over 300 billion, enough to rank among the top ten richest people in China.

"Go back to China and take down Ahri!"

After securing $30 billion in funding from its IPO, this idea immediately came to mind for Liangzai Dong.

There's no way around it; JD.com has been severely suppressed by Ahri in recent years.

In various high-end occasions, Ma Liyun often says that Ali's mission is "to cultivate more investors and make it easier for everyone to do business."

This "pump and dump" tactic completely crushed Dong.

He wanted to see if Lao Ma would still dare to act arrogantly when Dong and Pinbei joined forces to defeat Ali.

As for whether relying on Pinduoduo counts as part of his own strength, Liangzai Dong has no qualms about it.

“I call him Brother Sen. We’re all family. We’re brothers when we fight tigers, and fathers and sons go to war together.”

Liu Qiangdong pondered to himself.

At the same time, practitioners in the domestic e-commerce industry discovered that Douyin and Kuaishou had added e-commerce to their existing food delivery and group buying offerings. They realized that the upcoming 618 shopping festival would become the largest competition in history.

JD.com has just gone public and urgently needs a stellar financial report to prove to investors that JD.com's stock price is severely undervalued and that it has unlimited potential.

Needless to say, Pinduoduo could overshadow Ali during the 618 shopping festival, securing two victories in a row. This would inevitably dampen Ali's stock price surge on its IPO day.

With the added pressure from Kuaishou Flash Sale, Douyin, and Kuaishou Mall, Chen Yansen has already got Ma Liyun by the throat. Once he tightens his grip, the e-commerce industry will usher in a new king.

In the eyes of netizens, Ahri has become a bit "arrogant" this year.

Instead of investing enough money and energy in its core business, it focused on instant messaging and cloud services.

Looking at Pinbei's development, it has been advancing rapidly. The performance of its 10 billion yuan subsidy channel has soared, its cross-border business is booming, and its daily transaction volume has exceeded 3 billion yuan.

With the support of Douyin and Kuaishou, Pinbei's revenue will reach a new level.

In contrast, Alibaba is at a disadvantage in every aspect.

UC Browser, which was acquired by Jack Ma for a hefty sum, is seeing its market share steadily eroded by Lingxi, 360, and QQ Browser.

Despite strategic investment, Weibo's daily active users plummeted by 3000 million due to pressure from platforms like Toutiao, WeChat, and Douyin.

One is going uphill, the other is going downhill.

In particular, Pinbei, backed by Senlian Capital and Tencent, can easily acquire massive amounts of low-cost traffic.

In this respect, Ahri is far inferior.

at the same time.

In a male dormitory room at Luzhou University of Technology, Fang Mingzhi activated his access to the product showcase feature shortly after it went live.

The first rule for applying for this feature clearly requires that applicants have at least 1000 followers.

But he has nothing to worry about, because as one of the first bloggers on Douyin, he has accumulated more than 300 million fans in the past year by covering Xu Song's old songs.

Several MCN agencies outside the school even offered him a million-dollar signing fee, wanting to sign him to their names.

However, after carefully reviewing the contract, Fang Mingzhi shook his head and refused.

He was originally a student majoring in financial management, and also minored in economic law and civil and commercial law. He could spot the "pitfalls" in the contract terms at a glance, which were even more numerous than the dragon scales on the horse in school.

签？
Sign my ass!
Anyone who signs this is a complete idiot!
You can take on some ads on Star Chart and add app promotion links below your videos. You're not bound by contracts and you can earn a decent amount of money. Isn't that great?

With a "ding" sound!
A crisp notification sound came from the phone.

Has someone placed an order?
So fast!
Fang Mingzhi was slightly taken aback. He had just randomly selected a few items, which seemed to be all instant noodles, drinks, and toilet paper—the standard three-piece set for a typical otaku.

"Ding—! Ding ding—! Ding ding ding—!"

In an instant, the notification sounds of in-system text messages began to ring incessantly.

Fang Mingzhi's lips curled up higher and higher, he couldn't suppress it at all. Who would complain about having too much money?

"Pfft"!
The dormitory door was pushed open from the outside; it was Chai, my roommate.

"Hey? Brother Chai, didn't you go on a date with your wife?" Fang Mingzhi put down his phone and joked with a wink.

"Don't even mention it, we broke up!" Brother Chai threw the plastic bag he was holding onto the table with a loud thud.

"Ah! You've been dating for three years!" Fang Mingzhi glanced at the several cans of beer that had rolled out, his face full of disbelief.

"Ah Zhi, I regret it. Come on, have a drink with me."

Chai Yu sighed, pulled the two suitcases together and put them side by side, set up a lazy table on top, and then poured beer, peanuts and braised snacks onto the table.

Seeing this, Fang Mingzhi pulled up a chair and sat down, casually asking, "We're almost graduating, why did you suddenly split up?"

“She’s about to graduate,” Chai Yu shrugged. “Her parents want her to go back to Nanjing to take the civil service exam, but I want to stay in Luzhou to develop my career.”

You know how desirable a job is at Orange Payment. The base salary is 12,000 yuan, and with overtime pay, quarterly bonuses, and subsidies, you can easily make 300,000 yuan a year. That's much better than being a civil servant, right?

“Yes, that’s right.” Fang Mingzhi touched his nose; he didn’t have much to say about these matters.

After all, he hadn't even looked for a job yet, and had been thinking about whether to open a studio and hire a professional photographer and planner to help him manage his Douyin account.

If you can work on your own, who would want to work for someone else?
"This spring recruitment season, only two people from our class received offers from Senlian Capital. Asking me to give up this opportunity and go to Nanjing with them is practically making me a live-in son-in-law!"

As Chai Yu spoke, he grabbed a can of beer and gulped it down in one big gulp.

"Ding—! Ding ding—!"

Hearing the continuous notification sounds, Chai Yu finally realized what was happening, frowned, and asked curiously, "What's that sound?"

"Douyin has updated a new feature. Bloggers with more than 1000 followers can open a product showcase. For example, a box of instant noodles costs 29.9 yuan, and the commission is 3 yuan. If a follower places an order on my personal page, I can earn 3 yuan."

Fang Mingzhi explained simply.

"Oh, I get it. It's like an e-commerce affiliate marketer. You definitely can't make 3 yuan. You also have to deduct the technical service fee and taxes from Pinduoduo Alliance."

Chai Yu replied, “I know. When I attended the creator conference last time, Douyin CEO Liang Bo revealed to us that a shopping cart feature for live streaming rooms would be launched around early May, allowing users to add product links. You know what that means, right?”

Fang Mingzhi said with a smile.

"Live-streaming sales? Isn't that just like the old TV shopping?" Chai Yu retorted.

"That's roughly the idea, so I'm thinking of hiring a few employees to handle photography, planning, and product selection, and starting my own small company."

Fang Mingzhi said.

"If we become rich and powerful, let's not forget each other." Chai Yu picked up his beer and clinked glasses with Fang Mingzhi.

Fang Mingzhi chuckled, then revealed his true colors, saying, "Brother Chai, aren't you quite familiar with the student council president of the art academy? Ask him to help introduce you to a female student who knows photography, preferably pretty and with a good figure..."

"Wait a minute! Weren't you recruiting photographers? Why are you eyeing female students?"

Chai Yu quickly called for a stop and asked curiously.

"College students, it's cheap, right?" Fang Mingzhi said with a shy smile and a shameless grin.

"You beast!" Chai Yu exclaimed, looking utterly heartbroken.

"Thank you for the compliment." Fang Mingzhi grinned slyly.

In fact, there are quite a few Douyin bloggers like Fang Mingzhi. Some choose to join MCN agencies, while others choose to form small teams, trying to get a share of the pie in the new trend of live-streaming e-commerce.

The Senlian Science and Technology Park at that time is now the headquarters building of the technology company.

CEO Liang Bo is having a meeting with Douyin's e-commerce department.

On the first day of the product showcase feature, 11.3 bloggers opened accounts, driving the number of product transactions to exceed 100 million and sales to 2917 million yuan, with snacks, daily necessities, and beauty and skin care products accounting for more than 60%.

"Users stayed on the site for 27 minutes longer than last week, which shows that the 'content + e-commerce' model is viable."

Liang Bo pointed to the line graph on the screen and said excitedly.

The operations director interjected, "Mr. Liang, quite a few users are engaging in mutual following tactics, or even paying for bot followers, all in an effort to reach the 1000-follower requirement for activation. Should we ban these accounts?"

Upon hearing this, Liang Bo pondered for a moment, then waved his hand in refusal: "We don't need to worry about it for now. The e-commerce function is just starting out, and we need to expand the scale first."

Even if bloggers who buy followers open a product showcase, they won't sell anything without real traffic, and they'll give up soon enough. Our current focus is on retaining compliant, high-quality bloggers, creating exemplary cases, and leveraging the head effect to revitalize the ecosystem.

He knew that the boss had Douyin do e-commerce not only to earn commissions, but also to create a closed business loop of "content → traffic → consumption," so that they would have an extra trump card when competing with Ali in the future.

"Okay, Mr. Liang." The operations director nodded in agreement.

Liang Bo raised his hand and tapped the account data of "Fang Mingzhi" on the screen, and instructed the operations director: "Analyze this blogger's case carefully. He put up the 'Otaku Three-Piece Set' in the window, and the commission exceeded 5000 yuan in just three hours. The conversion rate is 20% higher than the usual situation."

You need to extract these high-quality case studies, turn them into tutorials, and promote them to mid-tier bloggers. The operations department itself has a responsibility to empower bloggers.

The operations director quickly wrote it down: "Understood, I'll arrange for someone to handle it right away."

As soon as he finished speaking, the technical director looked up and reported, "Mr. Liang, the live-stream shopping cart function has passed the test! We have conducted comprehensive tests on all the details of the order placement process, fan-exclusive prices, coupons, and red envelopes, and all the bugs that were found have been fixed."

"Then we'll launch it ahead of schedule, starting next Monday. We'll first grant shopping cart access to top bloggers with over 10 followers in their live streams. The tech department needs to assign dedicated personnel to follow up and ensure that there won't be any issues like lag or payment failures after the launch. If the user experience is ruined, no amount of traffic will be enough to retain customers."

A glint of light flashed in Liang Bo's eyes, and he immediately made a decision.

The technical director immediately responded, "Don't worry, Mr. Liang, we have reserved three times the server bandwidth and synchronized peak handling plans with Orange Payment. Even if 100 million users place orders at the same time, the payment chain can handle it."

Liang Bo nodded slightly, then looked back at the operations director: "The support policies for top bloggers need to keep up. We should select three more bloggers with the best sales data each week and add the 'hot recommendation' tag to their videos so they can gain followers faster."

The implication is that whoever can generate revenue for the platform will gain access to more traffic resources.

"Okay, Mr. Liang, I'll go back and organize the details of the support policies right away, and send them to all the top bloggers first thing tomorrow morning," the operations director replied.

After the meeting ended, Liang Bo returned to his office and immediately called Chen Yansen.

"Brother Sen, the preliminary data for Douyin e-commerce is out. The product showcase generated nearly 3000 million yuan in sales on the first day. The live streaming shopping cart function has been tested and is planned to be opened to top bloggers with more than 10 followers next Monday. The technical team has made preparations to handle peak demand."

Liang Bo got straight to the point and spoke in unison.

"The data is better than I expected."

After hearing this, Chen Yansen leaned back in his soft executive chair and slowly began to speak.

He paused for a moment and then said, "Douyin's e-commerce sector is not only related to Jinri Technology's revenue growth rate, but it is also a crucial step for Pinduoduo."

You and Lao Huang need to work well together to fully establish a path for monetizing traffic. If you can't reach an agreement, communicate face-to-face. If you encounter anything you can't handle, tell me directly.

As the group's business expanded, each person in charge had their own agenda, including Liang Bo and Huang Zheng.

The subtext of his words was: anyone who dares to cause trouble behind my back can come and complain to me.

“Yes, boss,” Liang Bo replied immediately.

He knew perfectly well that his boss was also targeting him.

In essence, by partnering with Pinbei, Douyin is providing financial support to Pinbei, while Today Technology can only earn advertising fees and commissions.

But he dared not suggest that Douyin should independently develop its e-commerce business.

First, the boss wouldn't allow it; second, it would be like the left hand attacking the right; third, Douyin lacks e-commerce infrastructure.

the other side.

Chen Yixiao is also busy pushing forward the launch of the shopping cart function in the live streaming room and selecting candidates from the list of top bloggers.

If a brand-new business model wants to make a name for itself, it needs to set a target and let people know that live-streaming sales can make money, thereby attracting merchants, bloggers, and resources from industrial clusters.

In layman's terms, the platform needs to "create gods"!
Just then, reports of Smartisan's fabricated sales figures quickly made it into the top news.

In addition, due to the dismal actual sales of the mobile phones, Luo Yonghao also owed a lot of money to suppliers.

Someone stopped Luo Yonghao downstairs at the Smartisan headquarters and demanded payment for a debt. Upon hearing that he had no money, the person became enraged and beat Luo Yonghao, leaving him bruised and battered. This incident then went viral on social media.

"I just bought a Smartisan T2, can I return it?"

One netizen asked tentatively in the comments section.

(End of this chapter)