The diva and I cross each other

Chapter 549: The Confrontation between Zhuo Guang and Ali
The rapid expansion of TikTok in recent times has made many people jealous.

Many people wanted to do some small things to trip up Douyin, but Luo Ming arranged a large number of video reviewers from the beginning and stepped up the review of uploaded videos.

In addition, the AI ​​model of Zhuoguang Technology has begun to take shape and can quickly identify some bad videos.

With these two approaches, any bad videos posted by people with ulterior motives will be directly blocked as soon as they are uploaded, leaving them no chance to discredit TikTok.

"Mr. Ma, we tried our best. The review mechanism of Douyin is too powerful." A middle-aged man said with a sad face in the president's office at Alibaba's Hangzhou headquarters.

“Is their audit so powerful because of the big data algorithm?” Mr. Ma asked with a frown.

"this."

"Don't you even know why the other party is technologically advanced?"

"Sorry, Mr. Ma, we..."

"Alright! I don't want to hear your nonsense. Since we can't do anything about TikTok, let's increase the promotion of our own APP and invite more celebrities to join before the APP is launched."

"Okay, Mr. Ma, I'll go right away."

Two days later, on Friday, March 2016, 3, Kuaipai, a short video software invested and established by Alibaba, was officially launched.

Alibaba has invested heavily in promoting Kuaipai, with advertisements everywhere and a large number of celebrities invited to join.

In order to increase the popularity of Kuaipai, Alibaba also started giving out cash. You can receive red envelopes by logging in every day, and you will get a big red envelope if you log in for seven consecutive days.

"Tsk tsk ~ Ali really spent a lot of money this time!" Rong Mu sighed as he looked at Ali's publicity.

"It's indeed a huge fuss. What are you going to do with the wood?" Luo Ming asked.

"It's very simple! Give them a taste of their own medicine. Whatever they did to us, we should just give it back to them."

“Are you saying that we should also find someone to post some bad videos on Snapchat and then report them ourselves?”

"Yes, Alibaba definitely doesn't have a review mechanism as complete as ours. In addition to this, I will also suppress Kuaipai in other ways."

"In this case, Ali's attention should be focused on this quick shot, right?" Luo Ming asked.

"Why? You want to take advantage of this opportunity to launch Pinduoduo?"

“Yes, although a vertical e-commerce platform is unlikely to attract Alibaba’s attention, it’s always a good idea to be cautious.”

"Okay, let's do as you say! I will increase my efforts so that Ali will have no time to take care of other things." Rong Mu said.

The next day, Rongmu started to target Kuaipai. First, he posted a video of Lin Shuwen singing and dancing on Douyin. The content of the video was very simple, just a cute gesture dance.

The purpose of releasing this video is to make Douyin popular again like the previous ancient style dress-up video, and to use Douyin's own popularity to squeeze the living space of Kuaipa.

Of course, Lin Shuwen herself would never shoot this kind of cute video, so the video was shot by Luo Ming in the interpenetration state.

Then they post some unhealthy videos on Snapchat and find someone to report them.

Finally, they began to incubate the trainees from Zhuoguang Entertainment, allowing them to become Douyin’s own internet celebrities and gather fans.

Luo Ming gave Chen Junmiao several brainwashing songs. Chen Junmiao took out one of them, called "Learn to Meow", and gave it to Yang Lanlan, the trainee she most favored.

Douyin's series of actions directly confused Kuaipai, which had just entered the market.

Just two days after Kuaipai was launched, Douyin broke out of its circle again. Lin Shuwen's cute gesture dance attracted countless passers-by to imitate her, bringing huge traffic to Douyin.

No matter how much money Kuaipai spends on buying trending searches, it just can’t suppress the popularity.

Even if they find celebrities themselves and want to shoot similar videos, they can’t do it.

Alibaba was very anxious when it saw that despite spending a lot of money, Kuaipai didn't attract many fans.

Just when Alibaba was in a state of panic, Baidu sent people to Shanghai and established Pinduoduo in Shanghai.

Just as Luo Ming and others expected, the emergence of a vertical e-commerce company focusing on agricultural products. No, now it should be said that it focuses on agricultural products and seafood did not attract any attention at all.

There are hundreds or eighty such e-commerce companies appearing every year, but Alibaba doesn’t care.

Besides, Ali’s attention is now attracted by Snap, so how can he have time to care about other things?
It is worth mentioning that the person in charge of Pinduoduo was Mr. Li from Baidu who was poached from Taobao, and the two vice presidents were poached from JD.com. They are definitely experienced in e-commerce.

Just like that, in an unnoticed corner, Pinduoduo took root in Shanghai.

At the strong request of Mr. Li, Luo Ming also dispatched a 30-person working group to Pinduoduo to provide technical support and stabilize the situation of Pinduoduo.

Before we knew it, another half a month had passed. With the big data support of Zhuoguang Technology, Pinduoduo successfully helped the fruit and vegetable farmers that Baidu had previously contacted to complete several large orders.

Seeing that these fruit farmers and vegetable farmers had tasted the sweetness, more and more fruit farmers began to join Pinduoduo. With the entry of fruit farmers and vegetable farmers, the number of users gradually increased, and Pinduoduo's APP began to become lively.

Of course, most of Pinduoduo's current users are merchants. They order fruits to sell in their own stores. There are actually not many ordinary users in comparison.

This situation occurs on the one hand because Pinduoduo is currently engaged in vertical e-commerce.

Vertical e-commerce itself is one of the purchasing channels for many merchants, so it is normal that there are many merchants.

On the other hand, the people in charge of Pinduoduo are deliberately creating this phenomenon.

Because many users will subconsciously think that the things they buy are cheap when they hear that the product is purchased from a store, and this happens to be in line with Pinduoduo's subsequent development direction.

Therefore, the person in charge of Pinduoduo wanted to first make Pinduoduo an APP for domestic fruit and vegetable merchants to purchase goods, and then use this to promote and attract ordinary users.

This idea of ​​theirs was recognized by Mr. Li from the very beginning. Luo Ming didn't know much about e-commerce, so he chose to trust Mr. Li's judgment. Now it seems that Pinduoduo's development is steadily improving, and overall it is still very good.

This shows that the idea they set was correct.

Pinduoduo is booming, but Kuaipai is in trouble. Just after Lin Shuwen's gesture dance became popular, Douyin released a catchy song called "Learn to Meow", which continued the popularity of Lin Shuwen's gesture dance and even incorporated gesture dance into it.

As soon as it was released, it became an instant hit on the entire Internet. People on Kuaipai were confused. How could they have fun like this?

The person in charge of Kuaipai is Liu Yifeng, who was transferred from Youku by Alibaba and is specifically responsible for the short video business.

Liu Yifeng previously thought that being in charge of Kuaipai would be another peak in his career. After all, Douyin is so popular, proving that short videos have a large market.

Alibaba’s support for Kuaishou is also very strong. Kuaishou can succeed no matter how you want it. Even if it cannot reach the level of TikTok, it will not be far behind.

The result was a slap in the face. Within half a month after Kuaipai was launched, two popular videos appeared in succession, which directly overwhelmed Kuaipai. After half a month, the number of registered users of Kuaipai was less than 2000 million, and many people never logged in again after receiving the red envelopes for 7 days.

What made Liu Yifeng even more uncomfortable was that not only could he not defeat Douyin head-on, he also couldn't beat Douyin by using tricks.

They posted unhealthy videos on Douyin, and Douyin deleted them immediately.

However, Tik Tok is doing something tricky and posting unhealthy videos, but they simply do not have the corresponding technology to quickly identify them.

Many videos were discovered and processed only after the data was collected.

In just half a month, they received three warnings from above. If it weren't for the support from the head office, Kuaipai would probably have been blocked.

Liu Yifeng had no way to deal with the attack from Douyin.

In fact, let alone Liu Yifeng, even Alibaba did not expect that Douyin would be so strong and did not give Kuaipai any chance at all.

At this time, some people within Alibaba had already opposed continuing to invest in Kuaipai.

But Mr. Ma is somewhat unwilling to give up, as the current investment in Kuaipai has approached 10 billion.

This is 10 billion! If you throw it in and don’t see any splash, wouldn’t it be a waste of 10 billion if you just give up? The sunk cost is too high!
In the end, Mr. Ma overcame all the opposition and said, "Hold on a little longer. I don't believe that Douyin can create a third hit video!"

Just like that, another half a month passed, the popularity of "Learn to Meow" gradually faded, and Liu Yifeng once again received 2 million yuan of funds from Alibaba and began to promote Kuaipai.

Rong Mu curled his lips in disdain when he saw the Kuaipai advertisement. He picked up his phone and sent a message to Chen Junmiao: "Continue with the next song!"

"Okay, Mr. Rong." Chen Junmiao replied immediately.

The next day, Douyin users all saw Yang Lanlan’s new song. This time it was not a catchy song, but a song called "Clouds and Smoke Become Rain".

This song was a huge success on Tik Tok in 2018, second only to "The Wind Rises". The equally popular "Paper is Short, Love is Long" was far behind it. It is no exaggeration to say that it was the second best song on Tik Tok in 2018.

As soon as "Clouds and Mist Become Rain" was released, coupled with the resources allocated by Zhuoguang Technology, the number of views exceeded 10 million in just one day.

It also ranks high on Penguin Music.

As expected, "Mist Becomes Rain" became a hit again.

Liu Yifeng was completely confused this time. He finally realized that Douyin had plenty of cards. As long as Kuaipai put out an advertisement, Douyin would follow suit until Kuaipai was defeated.

On the other hand, over the past month, after stabilizing its basic market share, Pinduoduo spent a little money on purchasing some advertisements.

With the insertion of advertisements, a large number of users flocked to Pinduoduo, and many merchants also began to be interested. Although they have their own stores on JD.com and Taobao, who would complain about having many ways to make money?

In addition to various door-to-door visits and introductions by the Pinduoduo team, except for some products with extremely high brand value, other merchants have also begun to try to enter Pinduoduo.

When there are enough merchants and users, merchants can easily sell their products and users can easily buy the products they want, then a virtuous circle begins to form.

However, there is still a problem, that is quality!
That afternoon, Luo Ming received a call from Mr. Li, who said straight to the point: "Mr. Luo, our Pinduoduo has received a lot of complaints recently, and we may need your help to deal with them."

"Complaint? What's going on?" Luo Ming asked hurriedly.

"It's mainly because there are too many people registering as Pinduoduo merchants and the shipment volume is increasing, which makes it difficult for us to control the quality in a short period of time."

Luo Ming pondered for a moment and asked, "Then what do you want me to do, Mr. Liu?"

"At present, the most time-saving and labor-saving method is to block the accounts of merchants who have received a large number of complaints. At the same time, increase the registration costs of merchants, because blocking accounts alone is useless. Many people who want to get a bargain can simply change their account and register!" Mr. Li replied.

"But isn't our account bound to our ID card?" Luo Ming asked.

"Bind the ID card is not a problem. For some people with connections, it is not difficult to get around it."

Luo Ming thought about it and agreed. If the problem of counterfeit goods could be solved simply by binding the ID card, it wouldn’t have taken Taobao ten years to completely put an end to this problem.

For capitalists, if there is profit, then any risk can be taken, and a business that costs one’s life is just a matter of whether the price is cost-effective.

However, if the merchant registration costs are increased arbitrarily, it will indiscriminately harm the vast majority of normal merchants, which will also have an impact on Pinduoduo in the merchant field. If the source of merchants is insufficient, the growth on the user side will also be affected.

Thinking of this, Luo Ming said: "Mr. Liu, will arbitrarily increasing the registration cost have an impact on Pinduoduo's development? I think we should still block those problematic accounts.

For new merchants, we can restrict the power of large-scale group purchases. As long as the quality is stable in the long term, the authority will be gradually increased. Even if this cannot solve the root cause, it should at least reduce losses. What do you think of this method?"

Mr. Li thought for a moment and said, "We can try this method. We can manage merchants by restricting group purchases."

Merchants on both JD.com and Taobao make profits on every order.

Pinduoduo's business model is to sell at low prices and in large quantities at low prices. Even if it can make a profit if it sells each item individually, the profit will be very low.

Theoretically, by controlling the group-buying authority, one can control the profits earned by merchants. If the profits are controlled, then the quality can also be gradually controlled.

Seeing that Mr. Li agreed, Luo Ming nodded and said, "Okay, let's give it a try. This kind of product quality problem is a long-term battle. Don't think about solving it in the short term. Just improve it slowly."

"Don't worry! I'm not losing my composure. Since we're doing e-commerce, we're bound to encounter quality issues. I've been mentally prepared from the beginning. Besides, I'm not fighting alone. I have your company's assistance!" Mr. Li said with a smile.

(End of this chapter)