How can you become a star without money?

Chapter 90 So Envious I Can't Sleep [10,000-Word Update, Please Subscribe]

The comments section for A-Jiao is clearly polarized, with almost no neutral comments.

One side is enthusiastically praising Ah Jiao and admiring her courage, while the other side is vehemently opposing her remarks, labeling them as violating public order and good morals.

At the same time, her fan base is growing rapidly.

Purification, frantic purification.

Faced with the sudden topic, Pang Bin, the head of the old Sina Weibo business unit, quickly seized the opportunity to push a large amount of traffic. In the past few days, Kanpianer.com had absorbed a lot of their traffic, and now they finally had a chance to get it back.

However, when they contacted A-Jiao's company, Yinghuang, in an attempt to explore deeper and more ongoing cooperation on this topic, they were told that A-Jiao had already established her own studio and that most of her business was no longer managed by Yinghuang.

Pang Bin was still somewhat unwilling to give up and wanted to ask who was in charge, but he was quickly interrupted by his subordinates.

"Mr. Pang, it seems that Ajiao's situation has escalated."

Pang Bin took a look at the backend data analysis and was stunned.

Within three hours, Weibo's daily active users surged from 200 million to 500 million, with over 40 new registered users, and the number is still increasing. These figures even surpassed those of Qu Shou at the time.

Abnormal, absolutely abnormal!

Pang Bin immediately realized, "Could it be that Tencent Weibo is about to launch? Are they trying to sabotage me beforehand?"
But he quickly calmed down and analyzed the reason for the data anomaly.

It turns out that after Ah Jiao spoke out, someone he thought would never speak out registered a Weibo account under their real name.

Zhang Baizhi: Ah Jiao is absolutely right. Besides, there's no competition between us. And what's the point of fighting over a man? Fighting over a man's job is what's interesting.

Even Hong Kong media couldn't get the two to appear in the same frame back then, but now the old Sina Weibo has done it.

Moreover, as soon as they opened their mouths, the two victims reached a consensus, and even seemed to be forming an alliance.

There's an absurd feeling of a former love triangle turning into a reunion dinner.

No wonder the data has surged to such an extent.

With the help of this wave of public opinion, Sina's user base is about to break through the 2000 million mark. The KPI of reaching 5000 million users for the whole year is likely to be achieved ahead of schedule, which is definitely a good thing for Pang Bin.

Since the financial crisis, Sina's decline has not improved. Weibo is a crucial project for the company's turnaround, and now that it has shown such improvement, the stock price may be boosted significantly.

But before he could even check the stock price fluctuations, CEO Cao Ge called.

"You haven't offended anyone lately, have you?" Cao Ge asked in a somewhat serious tone.

"Huh? Of course not, Mr. Cao, I was just about to report to you." Pang Bin was taken aback.

"We weren't involved in Ajiao and Zhang Baizhi's affair, were we?" Cao Ge asked again.

“No, Yinghuang doesn’t seem to know either,” Pang Bin quickly replied.

"This is so strange. Including Ma Ruo and Qu Shou, this is the second time. These kinds of good things always happen to our platform out of nowhere. Now there's an even bigger one, but no one is coming to us for cooperation. It feels like a pie has fallen from the sky." Cao Ge's tone was particularly solemn.

“President Cao, didn’t you already speak to Meishe about Qu Shou and Ma Ruo’s matter? Wang Jing probably only got involved because she valued Qu Shou’s popularity.” Pang Bin was taken aback.

"But in the end, they all pointed to Kanpianer.com. I've communicated with Ren Quan several times, but he doesn't seem to have any intention of cooperating with us. Are they just giving us traffic for free?" Cao Ge asked doubtfully.

Upon hearing this, Pang Bin fell silent. Qu Shou's actions alone brought nearly a million new users to Sina. If the daily active user value were converted into a valuation, it would be worth at least tens of millions.

Like all platforms, Sina needs to spend money to acquire users, mainly by signing celebrities or creating buzz. However, each of these methods incurs costs. In the past month, however, these users and traffic have indeed been acquired for free.

"Could it be an isolated incident? A chain reaction? After all, Qu Shou's matter is indeed related to the current situation with A Jiao and the others. Maybe it's for a comeback. After all, we're a big platform now." Pang Bin finally found an excuse to convince himself.

"The stock price has been fluctuating. It started to decline the day before yesterday and has already dropped by almost 10%. I suspect someone is manipulating the market, and the timing is too coincidental," Cao Ge said worriedly.

"Huh? It fell? Shouldn't it have gone up?" Pang Bin was taken aback.

"It will definitely go up, but I'm not afraid of it going up. I'm just afraid it will go up on its own without anyone notifying us," Cao Ge sighed softly.

"Then, should we try to control ourselves?" Pang Bin swallowed hard.

"It's alright, it won't affect the overall situation. It's just a short-term loss, but the user growth is real. No matter what the other party wants to do, at least they are helping us attract traffic. As long as users use Weibo for more than three days, they will develop a habit. That's the real core asset." Cao Ge sneered.

He knew there was an evil hand behind it all, but he didn't care.

Pang Bin felt relieved, asked for instructions on the next steps, and then called an impromptu team meeting. It seemed that everyone would be spending the New Year working overtime.

Wang Yao is familiar with most of the diverse paths to monetizing traffic, but he is not currently qualified to participate in most of them.

However, thanks to Deng Wendi's connections, he managed to hitch a ride.

It's not difficult to get Ah Jiao to speak, but it's quite difficult to get both Ah Jiao and Zhang Baizhi to speak at the same time. This can't be achieved simply through personal connections; there must be greater interests behind it.

So yesterday, when I received the authorization documents from Deng Wendi regarding the cooperation between Zhang Baizhi and Yang Lan, I checked the shares of Sina.

As one of the first Chinese internet companies to list in the US, Sina has witnessed almost the entire rise and fall of the internet era, yet it has remained steadfast, making it almost a barometer of Chinese companies listed in the US.

However, affected by the 08 financial crisis and internal turmoil, Sina's market value has been halved in recent years, fluctuating from $20 to $50. Since the launch of Weibo last year, it has been maintained at around $30 for almost half a year.

However, in the past few days, it seems that since the contract with Myspace was signed, Sina's stock has been declining. Wang Yao has been keeping track of it every day. After speaking out today using Zhang Baizhi's account, Sina's stock price dropped directly from 28.6 to 26.9.

Wang Yao didn't even need to look at the data from the old Sina website to know that the influence of the 'chastity controversy' was definitely positive.

If a company is doing well, but its stock price is steadily declining, it means someone is shaking out weak hands and preparing to enter the market to reap the profits.

Wang Yao didn't have much experience in stock trading, but he did have some common sense.

You've been working so hard here all day, and someone else is just sitting back drinking red wine and eating steak, ready to pluck the biggest fruit, huh?

Wang Yao entrusted Chen Tao, a senior student at Pufa, to use the 3000 million yuan borrowed by Ren Quangang to purchase shares of Jiulang at a price of 27 yuan per share in advance.

The day after Zhang Baizhi entered the fray, Weibo flooded the controversy with traffic, with contracted bloggers like Gao Xiaosong, Han Han, and Fang Zhouzi once again personally joining the fray, each using their own methods to stand on the opposite side of A Jiao and Zhang Baizhi.

Their rhetoric is simple: they label chastity, linking it to marriage and love, quickly providing a tenable argument for netizens who can't find a side to support.

As more and more celebrities joined the discussion, the topic of chastity quickly took center stage, drawing netizens from other platforms into the Weibo discussion like a siphon.

After all, this topic is a real 'fundamental dispute,' unlike the moral judgment in the Qu Shou incident. Now, there are no referees involved, only the players.

Finally, an unknown blogger posted a viewpoint that was reposted by Ma Ruo, escalating the topic once again.

"Chastity is the best dowry. If you don't want chastity, then you don't need the bride price either."

This completely ignited the emotions of all participants.

The backlash from netizens even disrupted Sina's original schedule.

"The number of posts on this topic is growing too fast, with the number of posts already exceeding ten million."

Upon hearing this data, Pang Bin realized that even the fists had won.

Twitter is currently valued at over a billion US dollars, with only around ten million posts per day. It's just one project, Weibo, that has already achieved such a valuation. As the project leader, it's hard for him not to be excited.

"If only Weibo could be separated into its own platform," Pang Bin thought to himself. He quickly snapped back to reality and issued the order, "Continue to expand the traffic. Get all the online trolls under your command moving. Also, contact our partners on Baidu. Within two days, we must use any means necessary to push the number of posts to 20 million!"

He knew very well that this level of public opinion was a rare opportunity, and if he missed this chance, he didn't know when the next one would come. So, no matter what method he used, he had to expand the impact of the topic as much as possible.

Just as Pang Bin was extremely busy...

Wang Yao also received many phone calls. All the public opinion was being drawn to A Jiao, which made Wang Jing very anxious. However, Wang Yao repeatedly told him not to get involved in this topic and to just wait for the box office to slowly increase.

Ren Quan urged the promotion of "Quan Lian" because he was worried that it would not be able to steal the limelight from A Jiao and Zhang Baizhi, which would increase the promotion costs significantly. After all, the major media outlets also knew very well that no topic could generate more traffic than the chastity controversy.

Wang Yao told them to calm down, and that no matter how chaotic Weibo was, what did it have to do with their website? They should focus more on themselves.

After dealing with them, Wang Yao received another call from Zhang Meng.

"I regret it," Zhang Meng said with a sigh.

"What's wrong?" Wang Yao asked, startled.

"If I had listened to you back then and posted that Weibo post, maybe I could have gained some exposure now," Zhang Meng said with a sigh.

When Qu Shou got into trouble, she originally wanted to help Wang Yao, but she didn't expect that Wang Yao was so confident that he gave her a chance to gain attention.

But she didn't pay attention at the time and missed it.

Because at that time, any public figure who spoke out gained a lot of fans. Several people around her who were not as popular as her before gained attention, and I heard that their commercial performance fees have increased after the New Year.

The value the internet brings to artists made Zhang Meng realize the seriousness of the problem.

Yesterday's incident involving Ah Jiao and Zhang Baizhi made her so regretful that she pinched her thigh until it was bruised. She knew very well that the aftermath of this virginity dispute would be very serious, and it would be much more difficult for her to make a living as a strong woman in the future.

"Unfortunately, there's no going back in life, but thankfully, you have other options," Wang Yao said with a smile.

"I heard you run the movie-watching website? You're really amazing, little brother." Zhang Meng changed the subject, her tone becoming somewhat coquettish.

"Now you're tempted by the benefits? You're a bit materialistic, aren't you, sister?" Wang Yao chuckled. "I wouldn't dare be unrealistic, I'm scared of being fooled by all you bad men," Zhang Meng retorted with a light snort.

"I'm not kidding you, don't drag me into this." Wang Yao smiled. "I'm starting a clothing brand after the New Year and I need a capable CEO. Are you interested, sister?"

"How capable do you have to be? I haven't touched a pen in years." Zhang Meng was taken aback.

It's not surprising. Many people in the industry have side businesses. In the early years, the skincare industry ruined a lot of female celebrities. In the last two years, it seems that the clothing industry is making a comeback. She had heard about it before. There was a group of Teddy Sisters in the industry who jointly invested in a clothing brand, which seemed to be selling quite well.

"It mainly involves managing the company's image and promotion. It's not difficult, but it should be quite profitable. If you're interested, you can invest some," Wang Yao explained.

"Why me?" Zhang Meng asked with a smile.

"Because your major is relevant, and you fit my stereotype of a clothing brand CEO." Wang Yao smiled and offered bait, "This brand will invest in a number of film and television dramas and variety shows for promotion."

"Where are you? Let's arrange a time to meet and talk," Zhang Meng asked, intrigued.

“I’m in Korea now, after the New Year. If you’re not going to use that copy, I’ll give it to someone else,” Wang Yao said.

"Given the current situation, would anyone still dare to use that copywriting?" Zhang Meng asked, somewhat surprised.

Public opinion is no longer evenly matched; supporters of the "chastity is useless" theory are being overwhelmed by supporters of the "chastity is useful" theory.

"A generous reward will surely bring forth brave men," Wang Yao chuckled.

After making an appointment with Zhang Meng, Wang Yao received another call from Deng Wendi.

"Is Ah Yao busy?" Deng Wendi's voice sounded like she was in a good mood.

"I'm not busy, what's wrong, Sister Di?" Wang Yao asked.

"I see the situation on Weibo is going very well. Yang Lan asked her when she'll be appearing," Deng Wendi said with a smile.

“I’m thinking of letting it ferment a bit more. I can see that the old Sina platform seems to still be pushing it,” Wang Yao said thoughtfully.

“Ah Jiao and Bai Zhi both have nearly a million or two followers, and they seem to be under a lot of public pressure. Why don’t we finish this quickly? While these female fans are still angry, let’s drag them all onto Myspace?” Deng Wendi advised.

Wang Yao narrowed his eyes upon hearing this and smiled, "Okay, if there are too many users, Myspace's servers may not be able to handle it. I'll probably schedule it for around 8 or 9 p.m., when people are more rational when they go online."

"Okay, thank you for your hard work." Deng Wendi exchanged a few pleasantries and hung up the phone.

At 9 p.m., the Weibo controversy that had been going on all day was still raging. The topic of bride price even attracted the attention of the Baidu Tieba community. The slogan "D-bar, leave no grass alive" appeared indiscriminately in every corner, fanning the flames.

Seeing that it was almost time, Wang Yao posted a long Weibo post using Yang Lan's account.

Yang Lan V: My advice to everyone is to calm down. Regardless of gender, don't have a strong possessive desire for the chastity of a strange woman.
Secondly, apricots are a normal thing, and as long as they are legal and compliant, there is nothing to discuss.

Even if we're going to discuss it, there's no need to make it glorious for a man to not be a virgin, and shameful for a woman to not be a virgin.
If chastity is a woman's best dowry, then what about men?
Of course, you can have blank paper look for blank paper, and newspaper look for newspaper, but if a newspaper wants to look for blank paper, there will be a problem.

Besides, throughout history, Ying Zheng's mother was a second-time bride, Liu Che's mother was a second-time bride, Cao Rui's mother was a second-time bride, and Wu Zetian was also a second-time bride. Those emperors didn't have so many requirements, so why do you have so many?
Only incompetent people care about chastity, because only by locking women in a chastity lock can they conceal the truth of their own incompetence.

As a representative of intellectual female hosts in the early years, Yang Lan has rarely appeared in the public eye in recent years. Firstly, several of the women-themed programs she produced have flopped, and secondly, she is indeed very busy with her company.

Even though she doesn't appear often, she remains one of the most authoritative figures in the public's perception because the persona she created for herself in her early years was extremely positive and highly educated.

The public's fascination with authority persisted until several years later when the internet changed lives, and people gradually learned about the unknown side of these public figures through various social media platforms.

But in 2010, Yang Lan's words were enough to shock and guide many people. At least netizens who wanted to refute her would need to think carefully.

However, if the same message were posted from Zhang Baizhi's account, it would be met with indiscriminate criticism.

This is a manifestation of human nature's flaw: respecting clothes before respecting people.

This also confirms the importance of public persona.

Yang Lan's Weibo post garnered over 10,000 likes and reposts within ten minutes, and the comment section was filled with praise. Most female netizens who had suffered grievances during the day finally found a pillar of support.

Not only netizens, but even public figures from the daytime are starting to think about how to deal with it. It's not that they have a soft spot for Yang Lan, but they are afraid of offending the people behind Yang Lan, so even if they are at odds, they can only touch on the issue briefly.

Almost the entire internet's attention was focused on Yang Lan's Weibo post.

Wang Yao's gaze was fixed on the stock of Old Wave on the screen. At this time, the US stock market had just opened, and ten minutes later, it began to fluctuate and seemed to stop falling and stabilize.

Half an hour later, the K-line slowly turned positive and started to rise. As more and more people discussed and forwarded Yang Lan's Weibo post, the stock line on Sina Weibo also seemed to be getting straighter and straighter.

Wang Yao picked up the phone and dialed, "Good evening, Mr. Ding."

"Good evening, Mr. Wang. It's so late for you to call. It seems you've made a decision?" Ding Lei, CEO of the pig farm, said with a smile.

Last week, Wang Yao asked Ren Quan for the contact information of the person in charge of Tencent Weibo, but Ren Quan brought two, one from Tencent and one from NetEase.

The Weibo account of Pig Farm is a project personally overseen by Ding Lei and his son, and it is also one of the fastest-following giants. The internal testing ended on January 20th, and the public testing began in early February.

Tencent's platform wouldn't be operational until at least March, and Wang Yao couldn't wait for them, so he contacted Ding Lei. For Weibo, which was just starting out and in dire need of rebuilding, Ma Ruo and Qu Shou were definitely top influencers.

The two sides exchanged their respective needs, but some disagreements remained.

Ding Lei's strategy was to start with games as the core. In the early stages, NetEase's Weibo was mainly positioned as a game community, which was somewhat different from the general entertainment positioning of Sina and Tencent.

Perhaps because he was inspired by games, Ding Lei prioritizes the gaming industry for many of his projects, but Ma Ruo and Qu Shou have already transcended the category of "goddesses of otaku".

Therefore, the two sides are still in the discussion stage.

If it weren't for curbing the expansion of Weibo, Wang Yao wouldn't have made a decision so early, but there's no other way; there really aren't many options available right now.

"Mr. Ding, I must reiterate, Qu Shou and Ma Ruo's fan base is basically all girls, and girls who don't play games much," Wang Yao said with a smile.

"Of course, I didn't make this decision on a whim. The fans of the two of them are a positive stimulus for our original users. What we lack is female users," Ding Lei said with a smile.

The groups of "otaku" (homebody men) and "only children" (only daughters) seem inherently incompatible; I wonder what Ding Lei was thinking.

However, since the other party recognized the value, Wang Yao had no reason to refuse the profits that were offered to him. "Then let's stick to the previous agreement, the entry fee is 300 million per year."

"No problem," Ding Lei readily agreed.

"However, there's something else I'd like to discuss with President Ding. You should be aware of the buzz surrounding Old Wave these past few days, right?" Wang Yao asked.

"Those who are envious can't sleep," Ding Lei joked.

"I have a batch of materials related to this incident. I think if we let Sina continue this bottomless promotion and incitement of conflict, it will harm the overall atmosphere of the internet, especially regarding the speech of public figures. I think there should be some restrictions and regulations."

"The reason I wanted to bring Qu Shou and Ma Ruo to cooperate with you is because I value your operating style, which at least has a bottom line. The internet should be a place where everyone can get along amicably, seek common ground while reserving differences, and enjoy their own little world. The current mutual attacks and constant disputes are not a good phenomenon, don't you agree?" Wang Yao said with great distress.

Ding Lei was stunned after hearing this.

For a moment, they couldn't tell whether Wang Yao was being sarcastic or just confiding.

But he seemed to understand one thing.

"Did you have a disagreement with Mr. Wang and Jiulang?" Ding Lei asked.

"No, it's just that I feel that a monopoly is not good for the development of the Weibo industry. One flower does not make a spring, but a hundred flowers blooming make a garden full of spring," Wang Yao said with a smile.

"So what does President Wang mean?" Ding Lei asked, puzzled.

“As a responsible internet professional, I know my voice carries little weight, but Mr. Ding is different. Here are some things I have for you; you can give them to the higher-ups for advice, right?” Wang Yao said with a smile.

Ding Lei's mind raced.

Cleaning up the chaos on the internet? That's worth a try.

Business warfare should be simple and unpretentious.

It's 4 AM, China time.

A group of senior executives from Sina sat around in the conference room discussing the upcoming marketing strategy.

Yang Lan's speech officially pushed the debate on chastity from the internet to the real world. Even the famous female scholar Li Yinhe spoke out in support, raising a topic that was even more explosive than the chastity debate.

'De-virginityization.'

The presence of these two authorities elevated public opinion, but also intensified the debate.

The senior management of Sina did not care about the right or wrong of these issues. They only saw the data that was increasing every second and the beautiful straight positive line of the stock. At midnight, Sina publicly announced that its user base had exceeded 2000 million and the highest number of posts per day had exceeded 1000 million for two consecutive days.

As soon as the data was released, the stock price naturally rose. In the half hour before the market closed, the increase was close to 10%, which is the highest increase in the ten years since the listing.

Although all the executives present looked slightly tired, they were all in high spirits, after all, a rising stock price is a good thing.

Amidst laughter and cheers, CEO Cao Ge suddenly received a special phone call, and his expression changed drastically.

　感谢哈喽了恶心、草川帝酋、百谜虫、另世我、小李哥哈哈、1919、大数据总给我推送美女，反了反了这个世界反了、林旭升、最爱你的人不是我、八两银、此生须臾一粟沧海、博查特、剑法高深、表里如一的法海、洒家单名一个飞、水粉誓言、琦、不要优雅要污、好大一颗、日月星幸运星、易_尘、风度红尘、随YU而an、原愿随风、林恩EX、天使魔鬼、720、神丶祇、疯子炸弹、蓝海的左岸、思念难成疾、小雪鹰、袅袅婷婷袅袅、书友20230209546_cD、书友20230221091354957、书友2023021146_CE、书友20240516761_CA、书友20250316123502531、书友20220428095948917的推荐票支持~万分感谢
　　

(End of this chapter)