Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 546 Untitled 2
There are several online comic platforms in China now, but the two most well-known ones are YouYaoQi and ZhouShan Comics.

YouYaoQi focuses on original comics, while ZhouShan Comics relies on Singularity and Under the Banyan Tree to focus on comics adapted from online novels.

Online novels that can be adapted into comics are generally novels that are very popular on the platform, and only popular novels will have copyright operations.

Therefore, after it was adapted into a comic, it came with its own fans, which also made it relatively easier for Zhou Shan Comics to get started.

In addition, with the help of several other brother companies of Zhoushan Literature, Zhoushan Comics developed rapidly, and it even surpassed YouYaoQi, the leading company at that time.

However, the potential of comics to be transformed by online literature only lies here. Not all people who like to read comics like to read novels.

Moreover, the novels that are currently very popular are generally fantasy-type, which are relatively more passionate, but the people who like comics at this time are more influenced by Japanese comics.

If Zhoushan Comics continues to insist on adapting online novels into comics, it will almost reach a bottleneck in its development.

Therefore, Zhoushan Comics changed its strategy since the year before last. It not only adapts online novels, but also focuses on creating an original comics section.

This prevented it from falling behind and allowed it to stand on equal footing with the evil spirit.

However, both companies are currently losing money to gain publicity. If it weren't for the support of the companies behind them, they would have had difficulty surviving long ago.

However, with the popularity of Zhiyin Manke in the past few years, online comic platforms have become more and more recognized, especially now that Zhiyin Manke has been on a downward trend.

Therefore, the two companies are more in line with the temperament of Internet companies. Although they have been losing money, their value is indeed increasing.

But compared to You Yaoqi, Zhoushan Comics is more valued by capital.

In fact, it is not just Zhou Shan comics, but the entire Zhou Shan literature that has received much attention from capital.

As several subsidiaries of Zhoushan Literature have been established one after another and have flourished, more and more people now understand Zhoushan Literature's layout.

Relying on the online novel platform to produce original content, and then carry out a series of copyright operations such as publishing, comics, games, animation and even film and television adaptations.

In the past, people might have thought it was a fantasy, but it is different now. In the past two years, the country promulgated the Copyright Protection Act, which protects not only film, television and music copyrights, but also various cultural and entertainment copyrights, including comics and animations.

Therefore, Zhoushan Literature, which has layouts in various fields, has undoubtedly become a hot commodity.

Perhaps the companies are still small in scale now, but with the implementation and deepening of copyright protection, these companies will surely develop better and better.

In addition, with the Sina Group and Golden Harvest Group complementing it in game adaptation and film and television adaptation, and with Zhoushan Literature, it can be said that the connection between these three group companies has become increasingly close.

Everyone had to admire Liu Zhou's long-term planning, because they knew very well that Liu Zhou founded Zhoushan Literature in 2002, and several other subsidiaries were established before the country announced copyright protection in 2009.

The seeds that were planted in the past have now blossomed and borne fruit.

These alone have already amazed the outside world. For example, Xiao Ma Ge highly recognizes and likes the model of Zhoushan Literature. After establishing Penguin Video, he has also begun to prepare for the creation novel website.

Although Zhoushan Literature occupies an absolute market share in the field of online literature, Xiao Ma Ge is still confident that he can make Chuangshi a success. His confidence comes from the huge and overflowing traffic of Penguin.

I thought Zhoushan Literature was already impressive enough, but I didn't expect that a B station would suddenly appear. Thanks to its niche market in the vertical field of two-dimensional culture, its traffic is not even inferior to that of some mainstream video websites.

The emergence of Bilibili can be said to have completely opened up the ecological chain of Zhoushan literature, making it self-sufficient from original content to copyright adaptation and terminal broadcasting.

Except for game adaptation and film and television adaptation, which require cooperation from sister companies, almost everything else can be done by ourselves.

However, according to Liu Zhou's plan, when the time is right, Zhoushan Literature will also set up its own film and television company, focusing on film and television adaptations of some online novels.

As for games, I won’t develop them myself as this is a very professional field and requires a lot of investment, so I will leave it to Sina Games.

If Liu Zhou's game companies want to compete with Penguin Games and NetEase Games, they cannot disperse their firepower and must concentrate their resources. Sina Games is the company he chose to compete with the other two game companies.

The original Bilibili would also develop games, but Liu Zhou didn't want to do that. If Bilibili needs it, Sina Games can authorize it at that time.

So now with the support of Bilibili, the value of Zhoushan Literature is even greater.

Last year, Forbes valued Zhoushan Literature at 8 billion RMB. Although it has only been less than half a year, if Liu Zhou is willing to raise funds, the valuation given by major investment companies will not be less than 10 billion.

Now is the period when official video websites are quite popular. In particular, the successful listing of Youku and Tudou in North America has further increased the popularity of this industry.

Although Bilibili is only a video website in a niche field, its traffic is not bad, and it is visible with the naked eye that more and more netizens like the two-dimensional culture, which just proves that Bilibili's potential is far more than that.

Youku’s market value is now nearly 10 billion yuan, and its stock price changes every day. Even if Bilibili is only half of its value, it would still be 40 to 50 billion yuan.

Adding to the value of the online literature sector, it is no joke that the total value of Zhoushan Literature has exceeded 10 billion.

Unknowingly, Liu Zhouyou built a company worth tens of billions of dollars, which made his peers in the business community admire him even more as the richest man.

Since the second half of last year, many large investment companies have inquired about Zhou Shan Literature's financing matters.

They also understood that Liu Zhou was not short of money, and they asked not really for financing, but to see whether Zhou Shan Literature would be listed.

Zhoushan Literature will definitely go public, but not now.

Now Zhoushan Literature is still in the stage of cultivating its internal strength. The valuation of 10 billion is indeed quite high, but it can be even higher.

Only after a few years, when it goes public in 2015 or 2016, can we maximize our profits.

At that time, not only will Zhoushan Literature's various businesses have a broader market, but the overall environment will be very good, and they will definitely be more sought after by investment companies and shareholders.

And that was the time when Bilibili's value was truly revealed. In 2016, the valuation of Bilibili was as high as to billion US dollars.

After Penguin Group invested every two years, the value of Bilibili soared to more than 10 billion US dollars.

By then, if the online literature sector is added and the other businesses also develop well, when Zhoushan Literature goes public, its value may not be impossible to exceed 100 billion yuan.

Therefore, there are two core elements of Zhoushan literature, one is Singularity and the other is Bilibili.

Singularity is developing quite well at the moment. Despite many challengers, it still firmly holds the leading position and is far ahead of its peers.

Therefore, Singularity does not need to worry too much, as its advantage is already huge, even greater than that of the original space-time. At this time, a certain vertical in the original space-time has been established, and a large number of great writers have been poached from Singularity, which also supports the framework of the certain vertical. Later, it was also the only online literature platform that could barely compete with Singularity.

However, in this life, because of the existence of Zhoushan Literature, Singularity’s copyright operation is much better, which also greatly increases the income of top online writers.

Therefore, when a certain company went to Qidian to poach people, it was impossible to do so. The new platform offered better treatment, but it did not have the complete copyright operation channels like Zhoushan Literature.

If you go to a new platform, your income will actually decrease, so it would be foolish for the top writers at Singularity to change jobs.

Not to mention that Zhoushan Literature is a company owned by the richest man Liu Zhou, and it has two sister companies, Golden Harvest Group and Sina Group, so its future development is even more limitless.

Therefore, the vertical that Perfect World established with great ambition is now half-dead and its development is far below expectations.

Even facing the upcoming competitor Genesis, which is backed by Penguin Group, Singularity is not afraid.

Penguin has high traffic, but as a newly established online literature platform, Chuangshi is empty and cannot retain traffic even if it has a lot of traffic.

Moreover, the brand image of Singularity as an online literature platform has been deeply rooted in people's hearts. When talking about online literature, the first thing that comes to mind is Singularity.

As for Bilibili, its importance is self-evident, and its future value is also self-evident.

At this time, Bilibili is in a period of rapid development. Currently, it needs to invest in two major areas: one is the server fee, and the other is the content.

The reason why Bilibili attracts people who like the two-dimensional culture is that, in addition to being a place where they can communicate, the most important thing is that Bilibili has the largest and most complete collection of genuine anime series from home and abroad.

This is also the core advantage of Bilibili, but in order to maintain such an advantage, it needs to invest money.

Every year, Bilibili spends a considerable amount of money to purchase overseas animation copyrights. Especially in the past two years, with the increase in Bilibili users, more and more animation copyrights need to be purchased.

Previously, the profits from Zhou Shan Wenxue’s other companies were able to support the development of Bilibili, but now it is no longer possible and it needs Liu Zhou’s support.

Although Zhoushan Literature has a good future, the profit levels of these companies are not high at present.

The main sources of profit are Singularity and Under the Banyan Tree, but the animation, comics departments and Bilibili are all running at a loss. The animation department can barely make some profit, but the latter two have been losing money.

Now Bilibili needs more and more funds, and the profits from the online literature sector and publishing business can no longer support the development of Bilibili, so Qu He also found Liu Zhou.

Of course Liu Zhou would not be stingy about this and directly invested 50 million yuan in Zhoushan Literature, which should be enough for this year's development funds.

Since Zhoushan Literature is solely owned by Liu Zhou, it would not be too difficult for him to inject capital into the company.

In addition to Zhoushan Literature, Sina Group also has a lot of things to do.

By this year, the wireless recharge business can be said to have completely died out, and Sina Group has officially cut off this business that was once the group's cash cow.

During the Internet winter, major Internet companies survived almost entirely by relying on wireless recharge business.

Among them, Sina Group has the largest market share in this area in the industry. After the recovery of the Internet industry, the wireless recharge business provided Sina Group with a large amount of development funds.

But the times are irreversible, and the wireless recharge business was eventually eliminated by the times.

In addition, the competition in the video website industry is in full swing, and more and more funds are needed.

Such a large flow of funds also requires Liu Zhou to personally review and sign.

There is also Sina Weibo, which has dominated the Weibo market. Penguin Weibo also announced that it had admitted defeat and closed down.

Not only that, as Weibo becomes more and more popular, blogs are almost being eliminated, although the one being eliminated is Sina Blog.

However, Sina Weibo lacks funds, but Cao Guowei wants to enhance the influence of Weibo and wants to invite some official departments to join Weibo.

There has never been such a precedent before. In the past, blogs were all played by individuals, and official departments did not get involved.

They are also relatively conservative and are very cautious about such invitations.

So Cao Guowei tried his best several times, but no department agreed to join Weibo.

In the end, he had no choice but to ask Liu Zhou to come back for help. After all, Liu Zhou had much more face.

Liu Zhou knew that this was a general trend and agreed.

The first place he looked for was Southern Weekend. After all, this media magazine had a relatively close relationship with Liu Zhou, and since they were located in the south, they were more open to accepting new things.

He then found Shonan TV. As a TV station with the strongest entertainment attributes, they have the deepest ties with the entertainment industry.

In this case, it seems that they are very clear about the role of Weibo, and it will be easier to invite them.

Finally, Liu Zhou approached China Film Group Corporation and the Film Bureau, both departments having very close relations with Liu Zhou.

Originally, he wanted to contact someone from a certain optoelectronics bureau directly, but his connections in this department were not that strong. It was okay to ask them for convenience occasionally, but if it might involve the possibility of making mistakes, they would have to be much more cautious.

These four departments are enough. Someone has taken the lead. I believe that with Cao Guowei's ability, he should be able to invite more official departments to move in.

However, the most important thing for Sina at the moment is not these, but the official launch of Toutiao, which has been brewing for more than a year.

This is the project that Liu Zhou pays the most attention to, and it is also the key to Sina Group's ability to be on par with BAT in the future.

Because it is an application APP developed by Liu Zhou himself, and now it is about to be launched, Liu Zhou will of course take a final look at it.

Sina Group does have a unique advantage in developing and operating Toutiao, because the Sina portal can provide sufficient news information, and Sina Video can also provide some video information.

It can be said that the content of Toutiao is filled up in one go, coupled with its unique pre-loading feature and simple big data algorithm.

Toutiao, developed by Sina Group, is a relatively mature application. In Liu Zhou's opinion, it is very similar to the Toutiao he has in mind.

However, Liu Zhou’s memory of Toutiao is a little vague, and the specific situation can only be fully understood through feedback from a large number of users.

(End of this chapter)