Huayu 05, our science fiction movie universe

Chapter 613 The Age of Culture 3.5
Under Wang Hao's intervention, Douyin's subsequent financing plan was ultimately adjusted to some extent.

The focus has shifted from solely valuing executives' plans to a planning model centered on long-term development.

In fact, it was only Wang Hao, the chairman who built Xinghe Group from scratch, who was able to forcefully suppress the will of these senior executives.

The performance of these executives undoubtedly confirms Wang Hao's point of view.

In some matters, even so-called senior executives cannot be relied upon.

In the business world, the old feudal dynasties' system of rulers, ministers, fathers, and sons doesn't apply.

The executives come to your company for stock options, shares, and salaries; to put it bluntly, it's all about profit.

Moreover, some of these later-joining executives, who have even grown up alongside Xinghe Group or Douyin, may not necessarily be willing to stay in the company for the long term.

Therefore, in the company's operation and management, they prefer to make quick money and leave after making a quick buck.

It's highly unlikely that they can become a century-old company.

Moreover, these people are just managers of Douyin. Their decisions are based on the interests of Douyin itself, and they do not consider the overall situation of Xinghe Group.

For Wang Hao, Douyin, this short video app, is not just a traffic portal, nor is it just Xinghe Group's ticket to enter the mobile internet market.

It is also an important foundation for Galaxy Group to continue to consolidate its development and carry out new cultural transformation in the post-traffic era.

It is often said that technology changes lives, and in the cultural field, the development of this industry is also closely related to technology.

In the beginning, culture was passed down orally, and was represented by totem symbols carved on clay tablets, bamboo strips, metal and stone, and tortoise shells.

In Wang Hao's view, that was the 1.0 era of culture.

Then came the invention of pen and ink, and the popularization of paper and printing, which allowed culture to no longer be confined to a minority of people; that was the 2.0 era of culture.

Then came the modern era. With the invention of telephones, telegraphs, and television, culture could spread rapidly to farther places, reaching everyone in the world.

At this point, culture has entered the 3.0 era.

This was an era of great cultural prosperity, and most of the classic works of human society were born in this period.

Then, culture entered a new era. The emergence of the Internet made culture no longer a top-down phenomenon where only a few people could control the discourse. It was no longer a spasm of a few.

In this era, as long as a person can read and use the internet, they can express their opinions and ideas online, find cultural content that interests them, and make like-minded friends.

However, in Wang Hao's view, it cannot be called the era of Culture 4.0 yet; at most, it can only be considered the era of 3.5.

Because it's still a little short, technological changes in culture have only temporarily altered the realm of written language and haven't yet benefited the entire cultural sphere.

Nowadays, only cultural creation and dissemination in the realm of written language are completely unrestricted, allowing every citizen to participate.

People can write movie reviews and share their life experiences online, and make a living by writing online novels. However, other cultural forms, such as music creation, movies, and TV series, are difficult for the general public to access due to technological barriers.

In Wang Hao's view, the true era of Culture 4.0 will only arrive when mobile internet platforms and AI technology develop to a certain level in tandem.

In Wang Hao's vision, in the era of Culture 4.0, due to the advancement and popularization of AI technology...

Even the most ordinary person can use AI to create their favorite novels, paintings, music, animations, TV shows, movies, and even games, and present them to everyone through mobile internet platforms.

At that time, the cost of creation was further reduced, the limitations on productivity that restricted cultural development were broken, and the breakthrough in productivity reshaped the production relations in the cultural field.

Therefore, everyone is both an audience for and a creator of literary and artistic works.

No matter how famous the directors or stars are, they will all be brought to the same starting line by the masses, and countless works of art will inevitably emerge in an endless stream.

Of course, most of these artistic works are certainly of little value.

But once the base number increases, countless new classics will definitely emerge from the vast number of literary and artistic works.

Who knows, maybe a cleaning lady, a young woman tightening screws in a factory, a truck driver, a high school teacher, or even a child could create a film or television work that is better than Lu Taijun.

No, in fact, in this era of Culture 3.5, some signs of such creative change have already emerged.

We should not underestimate the power of the people, nor their creative abilities.

Take, for example, the girl named Li Ziqi on Douyin. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she lived with her grandparents in the countryside.
Later, in order to make a living, he began to drift in the city. During this time, he slept in parks, worked as a waiter in a five-star hotel for a few years, studied music, and also worked as a DJ in a bar.

In 2012, Li Ziqi returned to her hometown because her grandmother was ill. She ran a Taobao store for a while, and then, inspired by her younger brother, she started posting some nonsensical videos online.

However, while her early videos were creative, their quality was generally mediocre.

It wasn't until 2015, when Li Ziqi started living with her grandmother, that she began to define her creative approach, choosing the "rural life" she was most familiar with and setting the theme as "traditional food and culture".

During this period, she spent more than a year recreating the ancient production process of the "Four Treasures of the Study" and also made handmade soy sauce using ancient methods. She also built a thatched shed and a swing set in the courtyard by herself using wood and bamboo.

In 2016, Li Ziqi's "Cherry Wine" video was praised by the CEO of Douyin and featured on the homepage, attracting more attention.

In November, her video of "Lanzhou Beef Noodles" went viral online, garnering 50 million views and 600,000 likes. Even Wang Hao watched the video and had his company sign her.

In April 2017, Li Ziqi's video of making a swing garnered over 10 million views on Douyin, reaching 80 million views across the entire network, and receiving over 1 million likes. Dozens of advertisers approached Li Ziqi every day.

In January of this year, Li Ziqi's original short videos gained considerable attention on TikTok overseas, with her number of followers exceeding 1 million. She was also referred to by foreign netizens as "a mysterious force from the East".

Its works, such as "Han Makeup", "Bread Oven", and "Taro Rice", have garnered millions of views on TikTok, becoming another successful case of Xinghe Group's cultural expansion overseas.

Nowadays, although Xinghe Group has provided Li Ziqi with a team, thanks to the girl's own efforts, the videos played on her account, in terms of content quality, camera language, and aesthetic style, are already comparable to those of many film directors.

Watching Li Ziqi's videos is like watching a CCTV documentary; it's so immersive that you feel like you've returned to the countryside with her, enjoying the idyllic scenery and tranquil life. On Douyin, there are many people like Li Ziqi who, despite not having formal training, have created a considerable amount of excellent content.

Wang Hao has actually been paying attention to this area, and often asks Xinghe Group to provide more assistance to those grassroots creators.

For example, Xinghe Group has specially opened training courses for these video influencers in cooperation with Beijing Film Academy, and has also provided promising bloggers with professional behind-the-scenes teams with superb skills in photography, lighting, makeup and other fields.

In Wang Hao's view, Douyin is an incubator for Culture 4.0. It is gradually liberating the cultural field and helping the general public to wrest the right to create and interpret culture and art from the hands of certain people who were originally high and mighty.

Now, all that's left is for Galaxy Group's R&D department to achieve a major breakthrough in the field of AI, so that those big directors and artists can be dethroned and art and culture can be returned to the people.

Of course, before the arrival of the new era where "the people's culture is created by the people themselves," there are still many problems in reality.

"How to monetize it? How to survive?"

This reflects the collective anxiety within the short video creation industry.

Last year's "Douyin Short Video Creator Commercial Monetization Report" pointed out that 47.9% of short video teams on the platform could not make a profit, while 30.25% of teams had a slight surplus.

Platform subsidies have become the largest source of income for countless creators, accounting for 72.58% of their total income.

As a platform, Douyin certainly has the potential to make a profit, but for most people who focus solely on short video content, it's not profitable enough. They can only monetize through advertising, making the profit model for content creators extremely limited.

This is also a pain point in the current short video industry.

It differs from online novels, which not only have two models—subscription and free advertising—but also sell IP rights. Furthermore, the creation cost of online novels is low; the biggest expense is just a computer and some time.

Content creation in the short video field requires more investment in shooting and production. If it is difficult to make a profit, creators will not even be able to feed themselves, so how can they have the mind and energy to create good works?

Moreover, relying entirely on advertising is not a long-term solution.

After all, this thing will greatly reduce the user experience. Too many ads, whether they appear on the platform or in personal content, are a disaster.

This was actually verified in Wang Hao's previous life. When he transmigrated, the most common message on Douyin was "3, 2, 1, link up".

Wang Hao naturally didn't want this situation to appear on his own Douyin account, so he had been thinking about how to solve this problem.

Fortunately, although the time he traveled to was only a few years away from now, he still had some precognitive experience and could draw inspiration from some successful cases.

For example, Li Ziqi, and later Eyebrow Pencil Guy and Dong Yuhui.

To outsiders, their monetization of traffic seems to consist of live streaming, product sales, and advertising.

But in Wang Hao's view, their approach is actually to create vertical content in certain niche areas, then extend it to industrial coverage, and then monetize it further through the industry.

Li Ziqi represents traditional rural life and intangible cultural heritage, "Eyebrow Pencil Brother" represents beauty products, and Dong Yuhui represents cultural tourism and rural revitalization. They do not monetize through short videos themselves, but rather through the industries involved in their short video content.

From this perspective, the value of short videos does not seem to lie in "what valuable things are in your videos".

Of course, this is not comprehensive, because there is another situation: the video content may not be valuable, but the people appearing in the video are valuable.

This is another way to monetize short videos, namely the "internet celebrity" economy.

Currently, the best example of this monetization channel is Papi Jiang.

This remarkable woman, a graduate of the Directing Department of the Central Academy of Drama, became an internet celebrity as early as 2015.

At that time, three years after graduating with her bachelor's degree, she returned to the Central Academy of Drama to pursue a master's degree. A short video she posted online, titled "The First Episode of the Male Survival Rules," in which she played multiple roles using a voice changer, unexpectedly went viral online.

Her subsequent short videos, featuring exaggerated performances, garnered her a large following.

After becoming famous, Papi Jiang became a hot commodity in the eyes of industry bigwigs.

In March 2016, Papi Jiang received 12 million yuan in funding from ZhenFund, Luo Ji Siwei, Guangyuan Capital, and Xingtu Capital.

It can be said that Papi Jiang has built her personal brand to a valuation of 3 million yuan single-handedly.

In the future, there will be many short video creators like Papi Jiang who focus on building their personal brand, and many of them will have a net worth that even surpasses that of many A-list celebrities.

However, as short videos are an emerging field, the term "internet celebrity" is still considered a derogatory term in many contexts.

Even within the entertainment industry, although some celebrities have started to develop in the direction of becoming internet celebrities and live-streaming e-commerce, in the eyes of many, that is a self-degrading and degrading behavior.

It will take several more years for the short video industry and the influencer economy to develop further before the public's perception can be changed.

However, judging from these two examples alone, it seems that there are some insufficient conditions for revitalizing and monetizing short video content creation in the current situation, whether it is creating vertical content in a niche field or engaging in the influencer economy.

However, upon closer examination, Douyin today has a condition that Wang Hao's previous life's short video industry lacked: the emergence of Xinghe Group as a variable.

Compared to the Douyin account controlled by Capital Today, Xinghe Group's Douyin account has a unique advantage: its controller has a strong influence in the traditional film and television culture field.

There may be a thick wall separating short videos, long videos, and the film and television industry right now, but if Galaxy Group wants to open a door in that wall, it will be a piece of cake.

For example, Galaxy Pictures can attract outstanding content creators from the short video field, help them create better short videos, or expand and adapt short videos into short dramas, long videos, and other directions.

For example, they can help outstanding performers, singers, and dancers obtain larger and more formal platforms.

For example, Galaxy Group's powerful distribution and peripheral channels can help them transform their own creative IP into marketable peripheral products.

Furthermore, Xinghe Group's own promotional capabilities can help some creators connect with local governments to achieve mutual success through agricultural assistance and cultural tourism.

(End of this chapter)