Restart life

Chapter 357 0344 [The Era of Reshuffling for Video Websites Has Arrived]

After finishing the premiere of "Summer of Little Monsters", Chen Guiliang did not leave Shanghai immediately, but instead took the opportunity to visit Tudou.com.

Tudou.com's office address is no longer a rented residential house.

Wang Wei personally went downstairs to greet Chen Guiliang's visit, but his eyes and expression were somewhat strange.

He had just gotten divorced not long ago.

Seeing Chen Guiliang reminds me of the agreement I signed with him during the initial fundraising—marriage must be notified to the board of directors in advance.

"No need to go upstairs, let's just find a place to have a drink," Chen Guiliang said.

"Let's have some coffee," Wang Wei suggested.

The two found a coffee shop and sat down to talk about the current state of the video industry.

Wang Wei said, "We must delete all pirated content within this year, otherwise we may be shut down for rectification. But Youku is watching us closely, so we at Tudou.com dare not be the first to delete pirated content."

"This is indeed a bit difficult," Chen Guiliang said, expressing his understanding.

The first batch of online video licenses has been issued, primarily to companies affiliated with state-owned media outlets, such as CCTV International and Shanghai Media Group's video websites. Even the predecessor of Mango TV has obtained an online video license.

As for private enterprises, only four have obtained licenses so far.

The first one is called Jidong.com, which consistently ranks ninth or tenth in traffic. However, all of their videos are legitimate, and they are presented as a positive example.

However, it certainly can't be considered an industry benchmark, because Jidong.com doesn't specialize in video production. Its main business is news, and many of its videos are news videos.

The other three also have their own focuses, and none of them are UGC websites.

Tudou and Youku are now locked in a duopoly, both aware that they must rectify the issue of pirated content. However, they are afraid that if they rectify it too early, their competitors will steal users and traffic, leading to mutual hesitation and a reluctance to take action.

Wang Wei continued, "There's another formidable competitor, LeEco. Since last year, it has been spending a fortune buying legitimate content and then distributing it to other websites. LeEco's own traffic is weak, but it's accumulating more and more copyrights and can even make money by distributing them."

This business model is difficult for Tudou.com to imitate because Tudou prioritizes traffic and would never distribute the copyrights it owns.

How crazy was LeEco's hoarding of copyrights?
Not only did they use the funds they raised to buy legitimate copies, they even took out bank loans to buy legitimate copies!

Chen Guiliang suggested, "Let's negotiate with Youku and have everyone delete the pirated content together. Continuing to drag this out isn't a solution."

Wang Wei shook his head: "It's not just Youku, there are a bunch of UGC video websites behind them. They're just waiting for us to delete the pirated content so they can take the opportunity to grab users and traffic and grow bigger."

The most typical example is 56.com, which shut down for more than a month for rectification in order to obtain a video license. After resuming operations, all its users had left, and it never recovered.

Chen Guiliang said, "Tudou.com is different; you bought so many copyrights."

Wang Wei looked somewhat embarrassed.

After securing Series B funding, he did indeed heed Chen Guiliang's advice and spent money purchasing a large number of copyrights. However, as the website grew larger and operating costs increased, while fundraising became increasingly difficult, he gradually reduced his investment in copyright purchases.

Wang Wei now deeply regrets his actions. If he had known this would happen, he would have stockpiled more copyrights, even if he was facing financial difficulties.

Wang Wei said, "Both Youku and I have just received huge amounts of funding, so it's impossible to make immediate changes now. We need to secure more copyrights first. Film and television copyrights are getting more and more expensive!"

Previously cheap online streaming rights have now become highly sought-after.

Film and television companies are waiting for the best price to sell; one or two negotiations are not enough to secure a deal, and each company will compare prices from at least three different vendors before agreeing to sell.

The craziest one was LeEco, which poured tens of millions of yuan into financing and then took out bank loans to continue buying!
Zhang Chaoyang has also entered the fray, leveraging his connections in the film and television industry to acquire copyrights faster and cheaper. Once Sohu has stockpiled enough copyrights, he plans to launch an "anti-piracy alliance," and will target his former subordinate (Youku) with a 100 million yuan compensation claim.

Chen Guiliang said, "A comedy called 'iPartment' might be about to start filming. I suggest that Tudou.com invest in it and acquire the exclusive online streaming rights, or better yet, the IP rights."

"You still follow the film and television industry?" Wang Wei asked with a smile.

Chen Guiliang said, "iPartment is an SNS website, and it has now become ByteDance's second largest competitor."

"iPartment" is indeed a website.

It initially imitated South Korea's Cyworld, but differed greatly in its social interaction methods, with users primarily being urban white-collar workers. The entire website was designed as an apartment, where these young white-collar users lived in a "shared apartment" format.

User engagement is very high!
Cyworld (China) is facing pressure from Xiaonei.com and HaiNei.com and is now struggling to continue operating. It is awaiting liquidation and withdrawal from China. Many Cyworld.com users have either migrated to HaiNei.com or gone to Love Apartment.

Currently, Love Apartment has millions of active users and nearly 2000 million registered users.

It's HaiNei.com's biggest competitor besides 51.com! (QQ Space is automatically ignored.)
Users of the Love Apartment website also created various fictional characters, along with their short stories and anecdotes, many of which were plagiarized from American sitcoms. The administrators then used these stories to orchestrate the characters' fates.

The TV series hasn't even started filming yet, but the characters and their stories have already been written for two or three years!
Chen Guiliang checks QQ Space, 51.com, and Love Apartment every month because they are all competitors.

The website administrator of "iPartment" has announced plans to produce a TV series based on the show and is currently seeking partners and investors.

Chen Guiliang added, "The director of 'Soldiers Sortie' is currently filming a new drama called 'My Chief and My Regiment.' I estimate that many people will be vying for the online rights to this drama; you could try your luck."

Wang Wei said, "I've already secured it."

"That's good," Chen Guiliang said with a smile.

Wang Wei said, "President Chen suggested that I buy the exclusive online broadcasting rights for 'Soldiers Sortie.' The show has a high number of online views. I've been in contact with the director, and when I heard he was going to make a new show, I bought the rights. Tudou.com even invested 100 million yuan in 'My Chief and My Regiment.'"

After finishing his coffee, Chen Guiliang left.

Wang Wei sat in the store for a while longer, then went back to the company and searched for "iPartment".

He chose to trust Chen Guiliang's judgment.

The main reason is that when Chen Guiliang first invested in Tudou.com, he advised him to stockpile more copyrights, and now his prediction has come true.

After registering an account and browsing various funny jokes and fictional characters created by netizens, Wang Wei felt that adapting them into a TV series would be a real business opportunity. Then he discovered that the company address of the Love Apartment website was not far from the Tudou.com company.

Tudou.com is located in Zhangjiang Science and Technology Park, while Love Apartment is located in Pudong Software Park.

Just as Wang Wei was about to rush over, he suddenly received a call from Chen Guiliang at the airport: "You can check out a website called ACFUN. There are some different and interesting things there."

What on earth is ACFUN?

Wang Wei found AcFun through a Baidu search and discovered that it was an anime website with a pirated video of "Summer of Little Monsters" on its homepage.

Damn, we have to send this website a lawyer's letter!
Wang Wei randomly clicked on a video, and the barrage of comments floating across the screen filled him with a series of question marks.

What is this?

Comments and messages from netizens can actually be directly posted into the video!
Wang Wei immediately called in several technicians to jointly analyze the operating principle of the bullet screen.

"These so-called bullet comments are not actually video streams, but rather some text data."

"Yes, to put it simply, it's external subtitles."

"This method does not consume much bandwidth; it consumes the CPU and graphics card resources of the user's computer."

"With current mainstream computer configurations, if there are too many video comments, the player will lag or even crash."

"I don't think it has any commercial value."

“I think it’s very interesting, and we can adopt it.”

"If the video crashes while playing, it will reduce the user experience."

"You could set a limit on the number of bullet comments. You could remind players that too many bullet comments will cause the game to crash, and then let players choose from four modes based on their computer configuration: no bullet comments, sparse bullet comments, medium bullet comments, and many bullet comments."

"I still don't think it's necessary. If I were an advertiser, and I saw my ad banner filled with comments criticizing the ad, how would I feel?"

A group of people started arguing there, and Wang Wei didn't know whether he should use the bullet screen format.

Forget about that for now, let's focus on getting "iPartment" on first.

……

Game Science.

Xu Fengyin looked around and, finding no one paying attention to her, took out some potato chips and opened A-site.

This website was recommended by an anime fan at the end of last year.

Xu Fengyin instantly fell in love with it. This place was full of anime lovers, all kinds of anime videos, and there were also very magical bullet comments.

Unfortunately, this was a personal website, and the Subor server crashed frequently.

In the words of ACFun users, it's "a daily explosion."

Xu Fengyin, wearing headphones and eating potato chips, was enjoying watching anime videos, occasionally glancing at the comments that floated by.

She denied slacking off at work, claiming she was actually gathering inspiration.

A site can provide her with a lot of inspiration.

Wow, Claymore has been updated!

Claymore was very popular at the time, but due to its excessive gore and darkness, the anime was later blacklisted in China.

Xu Fengyin opened the video and continued eating potato chips.

A barrage of "[DATA EXPUNGED]" comments scrolled by, which Xu Fengyin ignored. Those were comments from a user named "Xiao Rizi," who had traveled across the ocean to protest A-site's plagiarism of Niconico.

The uproar started at the end of last month, forcing A-site to change its model, requiring members to log in to post bullet comments, and registering a membership is extremely troublesome.

"What are you looking at?"

Chen Guiliang, who had just flown back from Shanghai, appeared behind Xu Fengyin without warning.

Xu Fengyin was engrossed in watching "Claymore" when she was startled and dropped her potato chips.

It was too late to turn off the video. She took off her headphones, turned around, and patted her chest, saying, "I was so scared! I thought it was President Qu."

Chen Guiliang was speechless.

That's outrageous. You're not afraid of the boss, but you're afraid of the general manager? Do you think I have no authority?

Chen Guiliang glanced at the video: "Claymore, huh? This show is boring. The main character always dies. One old main character dies, a new one comes along, and after a while, the new one dies too. It's predictable! The author just enjoys torturing the main characters."

"The boss also reads 'Claymore'?" Xu Fengyin was pleasantly surprised.

Chen Guiliang said, "I look at everything, I'm not picky. I'm planning to start a new project. Your classmates, and the talented people you know online, can recommend one or two to do art."

"Okay, I'll ask for you." Xu Fengyin put on her headphones and continued watching the video.

Chen Guiliang was utterly speechless.

The boss is right there, and you still dare to slack off? You're already a seasoned veteran!

(End of this chapter)