Restart life

Chapter 185 0182 [Professionals Creating Professional Content]

Saturday.

Chen Daxia, who has always been very frugal, has finally gotten a new phone.

He has to support his own mobile version of Weibo.

It's really unreasonable to expect users to use Weibo when you yourself don't even use a mobile phone to post.

"I want the silver one, you want the black one," Bian Guanyue said, picking and choosing.

“Okay,” Chen Guiliang said with a smile, “It’s a couple’s set.”

The two of them each bought a Nokia N70, each costing 4500 yuan.

Chen Guiliang switched to his own SIM card, sent a text message to 10086 to activate the GPRS function. He then subscribed to a monthly SMS and MMS package for Weibo, long-pressed the 0 key to enter the Mobile Dream Network, and entered the WAP address of Kaixin.com.

He wrote on Weibo: "Got a new phone, can take pictures now. My first Weibo post to commemorate this."

Click to send text and a selfie.

Just two days ago, both China Mobile and China Unicom changed their rules: for unlimited value-added services like SMS and MMS, only sending messages will be charged; receiving messages will no longer be charged. (However, in a few provinces, receiving messages will still incur charges.)
This is an absolute godsend for Weibo!

As long as Weibo users enable GPRS, they can receive text messages (in SMS format) and attached photos (in MMS format) from Weibo posts by their followers without spending a penny.

Unfortunately, this prototype of microblogging was incomplete and made it difficult to conduct large-scale interactions using mobile phones.

Its interaction process is as follows: The user focuses on a certain person → that person posts a Weibo message on their mobile phone → the user receives a text message and an MMS message.

It is entirely a one-way output and cannot generate effective feedback.

Fans can only comment or share by logging in on a computer.

Furthermore, if the person being followed posts on Weibo using a computer, their followers can only receive the text message on their mobile phones and cannot receive the photos via MMS.

"congratulations."

Ao Yanzhen received the Weibo post as a text message and immediately sent a congratulatory message back to Chen Guiliang's mobile phone.

Chen Guiliang asked, "How's it going on your end?"

Ao Yanchen replied: "It's incredibly boring. Leaders give speeches, colleagues give speeches, leaders give speeches again, colleagues give speeches again, and I give a speech too... I just signed a 'Copyright Alliance Agreement of the Internet Society of China'."

Chen Guiliang: "Thank you for your hard work."

Ao Yanchen: "I'm not chatting anymore, I have to go to the breakout session for a group meeting soon."

The 2005 China Internet Conference was being held at this time. The venue was only 8 kilometers away from Chen Guiliang's company.

Chen Guiliang did not participate in person.

He found the conference agenda utterly boring.

However, it was necessary to send someone because a bunch of leaders from the Science and Technology Association, the Ministry of Information Industry, and others were going to attend. So, Ao Yanzhen stepped in to fill in.

The bosses of major domestic internet companies share similar ideas with Chen Guiliang.

Apart from NetEase, Sina, and Sohu, other companies at most sent a vice president to participate, while Shanda and Alibaba didn't even send a vice president.

The reason why the presidents of the first three companies attended in person was because they were going to receive an award... the Industry Self-Discipline Contribution Award.

After a series of actions, Bian Guanyue excitedly said, "I also posted a Weibo, but unfortunately I can't see the reposts and comments on my phone."

"Yes, it would be great if computer and mobile web pages could be interconnected," Chen Guiliang remarked.

This technology won't emerge for another two years, until after the release of the first iPhone.

Further technological breakthroughs are not expected until after 2010!
If Chen Guiliang had the money to organize a research and development team and invest a huge amount of funds in this technology research, he might have been able to achieve a breakthrough a year or two earlier.

The two walked out of the Pacific Building side by side, and Chen Guiliang asked, "How many followers do you have on Kaixin.com?"

“More than 5000,” Bian Guanyue said with a smile, “They are all my fans, especially fans of ‘The Wind Rises’.”

Chen Guiliang boasted, "I have over 8 followers."

"I know." Bian Guanyue observes every day and cares even more about the changes in his fans than Chen Guiliang does.

"Those Things About the Ming Dynasty" has stopped updating on all forums and blogs, except for Chen Guiliang's accounts on Renren and Kaixin, where it is still being serialized as blog entries.

His 8+ followers include some who are actually free-to-read fans—the serialized content has already been published, and these free-to-read fans are too lazy to even buy pirated copies, so they just slowly follow the updates online for free.

The vast majority of the remaining fans were recommended and followed by Kaixin.com.

Lock after lock was opened, Bian Guanyue sat on the back of the bicycle, and Chen Guiliang pedaled hard and drove off.

……

Kaixin.com announced that it had secured Zhang Liangying as its spokesperson, but Sina Blog didn't seem to care.

Sina Blog's direct competitors are more than a dozen blog brands of varying sizes. The one truly feeling the pressure is Ruolin.com!
This website was founded a few months earlier than Renren.com.

At this very moment, the two founders of Ruolin.com are sitting in their office discussing something.

One of them, Chen Haoyuan, was in charge of strategy, financing, and operations.

One of them, Zou Lin, is in charge of technology, products, and marketing.

"We simply can't compete with Kaixin001," Zou Lin said. "Kaixin001 has traffic from Renren.com, a bunch of celebrities, and attracts users with games like 'Happy Farm' and 'Parking Wars.' They've only been online for a little over a month, and their user base is almost catching up with ours. We've been doing this for over a year!"

Chen Haoyuan said, "The user groups are still different. Our main users are business people, especially urban white-collar workers. Their users are mainly students, celebrities, fans, and ordinary netizens."

"How do we differentiate ourselves from competitors?" Zou Lin asked.

Chen Haoyuan said, "Previously, social networking was the main focus, and recruitment was secondary. In the future, recruitment will be the main focus, and social networking will be secondary. We can't compete with Kaixin.com in terms of social networking anymore; we simply can't."

Zou Lin asked, "How about we make a few social mini-games too?"

Chen Haoyuan shook his head: "Don't get distracted by making games, that's too low-level. After all, our users are business people and white-collar workers!"

Ruolin.com, a perfectly good mainstream social networking site, was forced by Chen Guiliang to transform into a recruitment website. Besides recruitment, it also facilitated networking, maintaining business relationships, expanding business opportunities, and industry exchange.

This is exactly the development path of our neighbor, SkyNet.

From the outset, Tianji.com abandoned its broad social networking attributes and focused primarily on business. Ruolin.com, forced to transform by Chen Guiliang, is essentially facing a direct confrontation with Tianji.com.

……

"There's new information!" Xie Yang led Li Fan into Chen Guiliang's office.

Chen Guiliang asked, "What new news?"

Xie Yang said, "Sina Blog has invited too many celebrities. Especially stars, more than half of whom we couldn't afford to hire. It has nothing to do with how much money we spend; celebrities don't lack that kind of money. I had someone investigate, and Li Fan quickly got results."

"Wow, Senior Sister Li is amazing!" Chen Guiliang praised.

Li Fan said, "I worked at iResearch Consulting for a few months and know a little about information analysis. I also interned at four media outlets, so I have some understanding of the media industry. Sina Blog was able to invite so many celebrities thanks to an entertainment reporter named Liu Xuan, who shares the same name as Olympic champion Liu Xuan."

"An entertainment reporter?" Chen Guiliang really didn't know.

Li Fan said, "This entertainment reporter is very famous in the industry. She used to work at a foreign bank, then as an editor at a fashion magazine, and later in charge of the magazine's film section. She frequently interviews directors, celebrities, and bosses, and is also a professional film critic."

"At the end of last year, she was recruited by Sina's entertainment division. Upon joining Sina, she was appointed as the head of reporters for the entertainment division and interviewed a large number of celebrities in a short period of time."

"Xu Jinglei, who just joined Sina Blog, is someone Liu Xuan met during an interview, and the two have now become best friends. They also have photos of themselves together, which they used to post on other blogging websites."

Xie Yang exclaimed, "You really need professionals. We couldn't even get an appointment with Xu Jinglei and Fan Bingbing, let alone invite them to Kaixin.com. But this entertainment reporter named Liu Xuan made a move, and both Xu Jinglei and Fan Bingbing agreed to go to Sina Blog!"

“Then let’s hire another professional,” Chen Guiliang said.

Such professionals are hard to find.

There are plenty of entertainment reporters and film critics, but those who can become best friends with the celebrities they interview are extremely rare.

Li Fan suggested, "Why not find a fashion magazine? They'll have connections with celebrities and know about fashion content. Kaixin.com has more and more white-collar users, so we can create more fashion topics. Introduce foreign fashion brands, basic fashion knowledge, teach people how to dress, coordinate makeup, etc. Those urban female users will definitely like it."

Chen Guiliang smiled and said, "That's fine."

Xie Yang added, "Let's hire another one... We don't need to recruit directly. We'll invite well-known military and sports journalists or editors to create accounts on Kaixin.com. For each military or sports article they write, we'll pay them a rate higher than the market rate. This way, they can gain followers and earn money from their articles, so they'll definitely be willing to cooperate long-term. There are many male netizens who like military and sports!"

Chen Guiliang thought about it carefully for a while: "Let's do it your way. Establish a system of specially invited writers instead of directly hiring employees. It's not limited to fashion, entertainment, military, or sports content; we can invite several writers from various industries to work with on a long-term basis. As for their article fees, they can be calculated and paid according to the click rate."

Sina Blog is making a big splash, and Kaixin.com is also going to compete on content.

After Xie Yang and Li Fan left, Chen Guiliang picked up the mouse and opened Sina Blog.

Celebrities are lazy, especially when they are forced to work.

Li Yuchun, Zhou Bichang, and other Super Girl contestants have deleted their Kaixin001 accounts and collectively switched to Sina Blog. It's obvious that this was orchestrated by EE-Media, who must have received money from Sina Blog.

Only Zhang Liangying, because she is the spokesperson for Kaixin.com, continues to stay on Kaixin.com.

However, the Super Girl contestants had so many activities that they simply didn't have the energy to write articles. The blogs of Li Yuchun and others were all written by their management companies, and the content was entirely promotional.

If this kind of standardized promotional article hadn't included photos, fans would probably be cursing.

Fan Bingbing's blog is similar; it's full of promotional articles that she didn't write at all.

Writers like Yu Qiuyu, Yu Hua, and Han Han are even more interesting; although they promised to open Sina blogs, they haven't posted a single article yet. Because they've been too busy.

The commotion was quite large, but the results have been minimal so far.

Xu Jinglei is the most capable; this female celebrity truly writes her own articles. She loves writing, updates very frequently, and accompanies each post with beautiful photos of herself. This earns her a huge amount of traffic on Sina Blog!

(End of this chapter)