You call this entrepreneurship?

Chapter 417

Qin Shaoyan soon received feedback from Davis, who called him overnight and said that Mr. Bill Gates was willing to cooperate.

"That's great!" Qin Shaoyan said happily, "Please thank Mr. Bill Gates for me."

"I will." Davis said casually, "One more thing, I found two translators here, and they offered $250,000."

"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars..." Qin Shaoyan frowned and thought for a moment, "I can agree to this."

"But they wanted to be credited and to have the book published and receive a share of the royalties."

"Are they crazy about money?" Qin Shaoyan laughed angrily, "This book will not be published at all. It will only be put on the Internet for everyone to read for free."

"I told them that," Davis sighed, "but they felt that as translators they should have the corresponding rights and asked for the book to be published."

"Then let them go." Qin Shaoyan said without hesitation, "I will find someone to translate in China. There is no need to find any translator or writer."

"Okay." Davis hesitated. "One more thing, John."

"Go on." Qin Shaoyan keenly noticed that Davis seemed to have something important to say.

"Mr. Bill Gates asked me if he could buy Facebook," Davis said quickly. "I didn't express my opinion at the time, but I said I would write a report to him."

"Then how do you plan to write this report?" Qin Shaoyan asked back.

"Well, I don't know either, so I came to ask for your opinion." Davis said awkwardly, "John, we are friends."

"Yes, we are friends." Qin Shaoyan smiled. "We met during Facebook's Series A financing. You are very optimistic about the prospects of Facebook."

“Facebook is a groundbreaking Internet social platform. Its future achievements will exceed everyone’s imagination. It will become the king of social networking sites!”

"Yes!" Davis agreed, "I think so too. I will write down my opinion truthfully in the report."

"Microsoft is an important partner of mine," Qin Shaoyan said enthusiastically. "I plan to actively raise funds in the next two years to promote Facebook's IPO. If Microsoft is interested, please participate more."

"But I hope Microsoft can give a fair and reasonable price."

"Don't worry, John," Davis assured him. "I'll give you a fair and reasonable assessment."

"OK!" Qin Shaoyan said happily, "Davis, I will not treat my friends unfairly."

"I know you're a good man, John," Davis said happily. "Good night."

Good night, it's daytime here.

After Qin Shaoyan hung up the phone, he sneered and said, "If you give money, you are a good person."

It’s a good thing that Bill Gates is interested in Facebook, otherwise Qin Shaoyan would be worried about who to sell the website to.

Of course, selling directly is definitely not an option.

YouTube has been sold once before, and the previous method will not work again.

Facebook can only be sold at a good price if it is sold in pieces.

No matter what, the right thing to do is to sell it as soon as possible before 08, whether it is to raise funds and cash out or to resell shares and take the money and leave.

As for who takes over, Qin Shaoyan doesn't care.

……

Qin Shaoyan quickly found Xiong Jiajia and asked him to find a few translators who knew English.

Xiong Jiajia has a subtitle group that she often collaborates with. They are usually responsible for translating American TV series, Hollywood blockbusters, foreign variety shows, etc., and everyone has a pretty good level of English.

Qin Shaoyan directly gave them one million RMB and asked them to translate the novel.

Several members of the subtitle group were so excited that they immediately patted their chests and said, "Don't worry, boss, we will get it done for you even if we don't sleep."

They have never seen such a large sum of money before, and this order is different from the business order for subtitles, it is legal!

All members of the subtitle group started working overtime without any mobilization, working as hard as if they were ready for sudden death.

This science fiction novel doesn't need to have beautiful writing, just an average one will do.

However, the people in the subtitle group strictly control the quality and strive to do their best. Every word is carefully considered and even the punctuation is carefully proofread.

Soon, the first chapter of the novel, renamed "The Martian," was released on Facebook.

Facebook's backend immediately intervened and began to recommend the account that published the novel according to a pre-planned plan.

……

Tom Plank is a student at MIT, and he looks no different from any other student.

A typical stay-at-home guy who doesn't like going out to parties or dating female classmates.

He usually likes to hide in the dormitory and surf the Internet. On the Internet, he has changed his shy and introverted personality and become a very active technology blogger.

Privately, Tom is a member of the Geek League and occasionally causes trouble for certain websites.

Tom is also a UFO enthusiast who likes to collect information on various mysterious events. He always believes that the US government is covering up the truth about the existence of aliens.

At the same time, he is also a science fiction fan and spends two or three hours every day chatting with other enthusiasts on science fiction fan forums.

After class today, Tom hurried back to the dormitory, threw his books aside, and carefully picked up a photo frame from the table.

In the photo frame was a photo of the two of them. A blonde beauty wrapped in a bed sheet, snuggled tightly in Tom's arms, looking at the camera with a sweet smile.

"Oh, Jennifer." Tom carefully wiped the glass on the photo frame, over and over again.

He met Jennifer on Facebook. They had been in an online relationship for a while, but after one date, Jennifer disappeared.

Tom still remembers this beauty to this day. He printed out a photo of the two of them, put it in a frame, and looks at it every day.

After putting the photos away, Tom opened Facebook and first checked the private messages to see if there were any comments, and then went to Jennifer's account to take a look.

Jennifer's account still has not been updated, and the last update was from a year ago. It seems that the owner of this account will never appear again.

Tom closed the other party's homepage with regret and prepared to go to the science fiction fan forum to chat with everyone.

Before he could make any move, a small pop-up window appeared in the lower right corner.

“A must-see for science fiction fans, telling the story of an astronaut surviving alone on Mars.”

"Sci-fi version of Robinson Crusoe, exclusively released, free to watch!"

Science fiction, Surviving Mars, and it's free!

Tom was so stimulated by these words that he didn't hesitate for a second and immediately clicked on the pop-up window to jump to the page for publishing the novel.

Tom quickly finished reading the first chapter. Not wanting to read more, he scrolled down and found that the comment section was already filled with positive reviews.

"Great book!" "Excellent science fiction!"

"The best novel I've read in the past decade!"

“A rare masterpiece, please update quickly!”

Most of them are brief praises and urging for updates, and there are also long paragraphs of disgusting flattery, but the core meaning is just one: urging for updates!

Tom thought about it and wrote a good review.

Anyway, it's a free novel, so give it a good review to encourage it.

Just after posting the message, I saw a voting prompt.

“Would you recommend this novel to a good friend?”

Why wouldn't he be reluctant to read a free novel? Tom happily clicked the option to agree, and then posted the URL of the novel on the science fiction fan forum.

As a senior member of the Science Fiction Fans Forum, Tom has a high reputation in the forum.

After seeing the recommendation post published by Tom, some people immediately followed the link to taste it.

People who had finished reading the novel came back to express their thoughts, and soon a lively discussion area formed in Tom’s post, with everyone expressing their opinions.

Tom soon joined in, first talking about the novel itself, then extending it to the possibility of colonizing Mars, and finally talking about whether there were any remains of prehistoric civilization on Mars.

By the evening, Tom found that there were more and more discussions about Mars on Facebook, which immediately triggered his desire to write.

He is also a senior science fiction fan and has done a lot of research on Mars. He has also discussed things related to Mars with his friends online for a long time.

Tom immediately picked up the keyboard and wrote an article on Facebook about the colonization of Mars, which detailed the various problems that might be encountered in the colonization. It can be said that it was full of practical information.

The next day, Tom was stunned when he opened his account.

He found that the article he wrote about Mars colonization had gone viral, with thousands of people reposting and commenting on it overnight, and his backstage private messages were almost flooded with messages.

The popularity of the article continued to rise, and soon reached the scale of tens of thousands of comments.

Facebook customer service called Tom soon and asked if he was willing to participate in the advertising sharing plan, which would allow the company to recommend his articles and give him a portion of the advertising revenue.

Tom agreed without hesitation, and soon five hundred dollars were deposited into his account.

Tom, who got a windfall, immediately went to a science fiction fan forum to show off, causing others to be jealous.

Then various popular science articles about Mars appeared on Facebook, and without exception, the novel "The Martian" was recommended under these articles.

The free novel "The Martian" spread rapidly in a very short time and became the most popular topic on Facebook within three days.

Several top Facebook influencers posted their reading experiences on their accounts for several consecutive days and invited fans to discuss.

There are a large number of followers among small and medium-sized internet celebrities, who have followed suit and started sharing their reading notes in a pretentious manner, further fermenting the popularity.

The entire Facebook network seemed to be discussing this novel, and people who had not read the novel almost became a symbol of being out of date.

As a result, countless passers-by joined in to read the novel.

In just one week, "The Martian" became popular all over the Internet, starting from Facebook, and some people even reposted the novel on their blogs.

"The Martian" has generated real online popularity.

Facebook's plan exceeded its goals, with the marketing team first targeting a hardcore group of science fiction fans and then spreading the word.

The second step is intelligent recommendation. As long as the novel is labeled as science fiction or literature, you will often see recommendations for novels.

The third step is to promote the novel to other groups through recommendations from internet celebrities and popularity lists.

Through the three-step marketing, Facebook became the birthplace of the storm, and its huge user base gave the storm more and more energy.

The storm quickly formed and then swept across the Internet.

"The Martian" has become a hot topic on the Internet. Several science fiction writers have also expressed in their blogs that the novel is great and has bizarre plot twists and turns.

The popularity of the novel quickly spread from the Internet to traditional media.

This originated from an interview Bill Gates gave to a reporter.

Bill Gates talked about the future development of the Internet, and then recommended the science fiction novel "The Martian" that he was reading recently.

The reporter reported Bill Gates' conversation in full, and the name "The Martian" appeared in the newspaper for the first time.

After the report was published, several newspapers and magazines came to contact the author the next day and wanted to obtain the rights to reprint the novel.

Facebook officially stepped in and reached an agreement with newspapers and magazines on reprint-related cooperation.

"The Martian" was upgraded from a free online serial to a newspaper serial.

The popularity of the novel also became television news and was reported extensively.

Amid the explosive popularity of the novel, more than a dozen science fiction writers came out to support it and predicted that it would win the Hugo Award.

Naturally, a novel-themed website also appeared. It gathered tens of thousands of fans on the day of its establishment, and the number of website users exceeded 200,000 in just one month.

There are also fanatical fans who have launched a petition to vote, calling for the novel to be adapted into a live-action movie.

These fans quickly collected 100,000 signatures, and even hundreds of people came to Facebook headquarters holding banners, demanding that they take the fans' demands seriously.

Everyone at Facebook headquarters was shocked; they didn't expect marketing to have this effect.

The people in the operations department were quite confused, but they reacted quickly and immediately invited fan representatives and reporters to the company and held a special press conference.

The marketing director listened carefully to the fans' demands, and then solemnly stated that they would contact Hollywood to discuss cooperation, and invited fans to send several representatives to monitor the progress of the work at any time.

Fans were very satisfied with the official statement on Facebook, and one of them vowed that if Hollywood was unwilling to adapt the film, he would be willing to launch a crowdfunding campaign and call on everyone to donate to raise funds for filming.

The marketing director responded very quickly, saying on the spot that if there was really a crowdfunding campaign, Facebook would be willing to donate $5 million.

The fans were delighted and applauded.

The reporters had never seen such a scene before, and they took photos frantically to record everything that happened at the scene.

Fans raised funds through crowdfunding to make a movie. How popular will this book be?

Even Harry Potter didn't get this treatment.

Unfortunately, the crowdfunding that the reporter expected did not occur.

Hollywood is not blind. How could they not see that the novel is so popular?

The day after the press conference, a Hollywood film company approached Facebook and expressed its willingness to cooperate.

(End of this chapter)