What's wrong with me being a rich man?

Chapter 519 The Conflict Between China and Taiwan
TikTok is experimenting with different video lengths on a small scale.

This is a fact confirmed by Penguin's users after another reconciliation of accounts.

From short to medium to long, this is also a direction that Weishi has been discussing. But what surprises the Weishi team now is whether Douyin's progress is too fast.
Liu Chiping quickly learned from the discussion that the general consensus was that Douyin's attempt was likely in preparation for the Spring Festival activities.

The vast majority are still 15 seconds long, which can still convey the concept of "short" videos to potential users. The very small number of 1-minute videos, or even 2-minute videos, may be providing more flexible options for viral marketing during the Spring Festival.

This is similar to how WeChat and Wechat temporarily increase the limit for red envelopes from 200 to 520 on Valentine's Day.

Liu Chiping felt he was now much more comfortable with carbon and silicon data.

After repeated consideration and discussion, he concluded that Weishi could no longer wait and might need to resort to the most effective tactic—burning money.

This is the most useful method that has emerged in the competition between Tencent and Alibaba: you can get cash rewards by checking in and inviting new users.

The two giants fought so hard on this issue that it was painful for both of them, but it did greatly advance the penetration of WeChat and WeChat on smartphones.

If we lag behind in technology, we need to catch up in technology. At the same time, we must still use our advantages to exploit the opponent's weaknesses.

Weishi made a decision that wasn't difficult.

However, before it could officially transition to a full-fledged short video platform, news about Meituan's Series D financing shook the industry and immediately angered Alibaba.

Meituan secretly completed its Series D financing without notifying Alibaba, with Tencent, which already owns Dianping, becoming a major partner.

In other words, Meituan has invested in Tencent.

Although there were signs of disagreement between Alibaba and Meituan, Meituan's move will undoubtedly reshape the group-buying market and disrupt Alibaba's plans in this area.

Alibaba CEO Ma Chuan did not comment on the matter, and Joseph Tsai only gave a brief response during Alibaba's conference call: "Alibaba's withdrawal from Meituan was only a matter of time. We will bet on the development of Koubei.com."

However, more information was exposed on the Baixiaosheng Forum, a popular online forum.

It is said that Alibaba is accelerating its efforts to reach out to Ele.me, which may replace Meituan, with the intention of continuing to expand its presence in the local life services market. Internally, there is also a goal of "overtaking on a different track".

It is said that Alibaba had previously strongly advised Meituan that it was not allowed to accept investment from Tencent, and that it had only one choice: "either Alibaba or Tencent," and that it could not accept investment from both at the same time.

The discussion on Baixiaosheng was extremely lively, with many praising Tencent's move as a rare and brilliant counterattack in recent years.

However, Liu Chiping, who was in charge of this operation, was very calm despite personally negotiating the cooperation with Meituan. He calmly accepted the implicit weakening of his power within Tencent.

Liu Chiping joined Tencent in 2005 and formed the strategic investment team, which later became Tencent's investment and M&A department. Tencent's "capital + traffic" capital strategy after Q3 was largely carried out through this team.

When Tencent restructured its internal organization, the Investment and Acquisition Department was transferred to the newly established Corporate Development Group (CDG). Martin Lau continued to serve directly as the president of CDG, and Li Zhaohui, the head of the Investment and Acquisition Department, always reported directly to him, possessing a high degree of decision-making power.

However, Li Zhaohui now has a new, impeccable reporting subject, Pony Ma.

Tencent has made many large-scale investments in the past two years, and there may be even more and larger investments in the future. It is extremely appropriate for the head of the company to listen to such important matters directly.

However, as a president who is well-versed in the workings of Tencent's power structure, Liu Chiping knows that the company he has served for nine years is adept at meeting new challenges by establishing new departments or making minor structural adjustments.

Pony's actions remain as gentle as ever, but a new cutting-edge technology committee or internal innovation committee that can report directly to the general office may be added at any time, which may take away some of the functions of the CDG he is in charge of.

Liu Chiping had anticipated this, but remained silent throughout.

However, although Li Zhaohui could not deny the report to Pony, he was somewhat indignant when he privately approached Liu Chiping.

He both felt and experienced the turmoil within the penguin through his own changes, not to mention the targeted voice circulating now.

—An incompetent general can cause the deaths of thousands of soldiers.

This isn't just criticizing Liu Chiping; the very act of quoting that statement is problematic.

Many executives know that CCO Ren Yuxi likes to use this phrase to encourage himself, and also claims it is a reminder to himself.

The five founders of Tencent, including Pony Ma, were once known as the "Five Tigers of Tencent." To date, three of the five have left the company, while Ren Yuxi was Tencent's first employee recruited by the company. He was not yet 26 years old when he joined the company and almost single-handedly built up Tencent Games' business, breaking through the game market that was firmly controlled by Shanda, NetEase, and The9 at that time.

Two years ago, Ren Yuxi took over the COO position left by Zeng Liqing, one of the "Five Tigers," when he was only 38 years old.

This veteran of Tencent, this king of games within the company, has already launched a challenge to the CEO.

Ren Yuxi is fully qualified in terms of both seniority and achievements.

"Is the company's struggles over the past two years solely your responsibility? I think some people are just blind to it!" Li Zhaohui expressed his dissatisfaction while sitting in the president's office.

Liu Chiping remained calm and did not follow up on this statement. Instead, he shook his head and said, "The thing I regret most is that I did not directly acquire Yu Xing's WeChat back then. Many things could not be seen at the time, but now, looking back, it really shows that he has dug a huge hole for us."

Li Zhaohui, who had been involved in the internal decision-making process, immediately said, "That's what everyone thought! No one had the determination to directly acquire WeChat! If it weren't for Yu Xing's management and Ma Chuan's decisive action, the situation wouldn't be like this! But, but..."

Liu Chiping then chuckled, “It just so happens that Yu Xing’s operations team ran into Ma Chuan’s decisiveness. It was like a thunderbolt striking a prairie fire. They managed to tear up half of our ticket in the mobile internet market. We have nothing to say, nothing to say.”

Penguin was only a few months late; aside from not being determined to make the acquisition, its product operations were already at full capacity at that time.

Li Zhaohui stared wide-eyed: "President Liu, what...does this mean?"

He felt something was off.

“It’s nothing much, just worried that Weishi can’t compete with Douyin, and worried that Carbon Silicon Data will grow even bigger.” Liu Chiping finally showed signs of fatigue. “Carbon Silicon Data is already a force to be reckoned with. First it was Tencent News, then Tiantian Kuaibao. Zheng Jian and his team have been doing their best to target the latest hot topics of Carbon Silicon Data, but this year they still can’t stop Lingang’s blind rush.”

Zheng Jian is the head of Tencent's newly launched Daily Express this year. He spearheaded the content synergy mechanism between the product and its sister products such as Tencent News and Tencent Video, aiming to target the latest trending topics through a broader content strategy. However, the results have been disappointing.

Li Zhaohui asked in bewilderment, "Are carbon and silicon data really that impressive? How can they be so impressive?"

Liu Chiping twirled the teacup in his hand, pondered for a moment, and then said, "So, I'm a little confused now. Maybe I really am wrong?"

Upon hearing this, Li Zhaohui was greatly alarmed. Oh no, President Liu's Dao heart has been shaken by the beating!
He immediately said, "Mr. Liu, changing course isn't a good idea either!"

"It's not just a change of course, it's more like a power struggle, everyone is re-evaluating the company's situation and strategy." Liu Chiping sighed. "Is there any strategy that can be set up and then executed indefinitely without being completely correct? It all needs to be considered in light of market changes and competition."

"When Mr. Zhang Zhidong talked about Alibaba and the technology platform model of silicon carbide, and about their investment in technology, I think it made sense."

"Alibaba is using it, silicon carbon is using it, shouldn't we also make some changes?"

Liu Chiping fell into thought again at this point; he was genuinely a little lost.

Li Zhaohui frowned and said, "What's suitable is the best!"

Liu Chiping countered, "How will you know if it's suitable if you don't try?"

Li Zhaohui was speechless for a moment before saying, "I think there's a bit of short-sightedness and a desire for quick success within the company right now, which isn't good."

“This is indeed not good.” Liu Chiping nodded and said, “Let’s wait and see. Anyway, we still need to do our best to play the Weishi card well. You work normally, and I work normally, that’s fine.”

Seeing his trusted general's unpleasant expression, he smiled and said, "Among three people walking together, there must be one who can teach me. I recently came across the Douyin account of the Silicon Carbon Group and found Yu Xing quite interesting. I wonder what kind of commotion his car will cause. Can you find him on Douyin?"

Li Zhaohui shook his head: "All the people I see on my feed are beautiful women."

"What's the point of a pretty girl for ten seconds or so?" Liu Chiping said dismissively.

“Who said it’s ten seconds or so? A video is 15 seconds long,” Li Zhaohui said. “I watched it four times, that’s a minute. Who doesn’t like watching beautiful women? I think Douyin is doing this to appeal to young people’s hormones. If they can win over young people, they’ve already succeeded halfway.”

Liu Chiping nodded slightly: "Indeed, it is still important to make young people like it. Weishi needs to learn from it, but Douyin's user base for creating content is obviously stronger. We still need to put more pressure on Xi'an and not let it develop so comfortably."

Li Zhaohui shared his experience using Douyin, which didn't offer any product or operational advice; it was purely to ease the somewhat heavy atmosphere that had been presenting during their previous conversation.

He quickly left the president's office to continue with his work.

Liu Chiping fell silent again, twirling his teacup as he pondered the internal changes and external competition.

After a long pause, he gripped the cup and repeated, "Technology-driven, internal innovation, technology platform, technology platform..."

Liu Chiping put down his cup, lit a cigarette, and murmured, "It's not a fault of the war."

……

"A technology platform is different from a technology middle platform."

"Alibaba's technology middle platform is a 'large middle platform with small front-end'. It integrates distributed storage, middleware, and containerization technologies into the middle platform. For example, front-end businesses such as Taobao and Tmall share the payment and user center modules of this middle platform, avoiding redundant development and covering the entire system from IaaS to PaaS."

"Our Lingang technology platform is a 'strong platform with a light front end.' The technology platform integrates core capabilities such as recommendation algorithms and audio and video processing. For example, the latest trending topics, Douyin, and MusVid can quickly reuse the intelligent recommendation engine and real-time audio and video SDK through the platform interface. The focus is on algorithms and data processing."

"Alibaba uses a centralized middle platform, while we use a cellular middle platform."

"Specifically, when it comes to short video applications, Alibaba's Leyin algorithm uses the Deep Interest Network (DIN) as its underlying logic, while our Douyin algorithm uses a dual-stream recommendation model. Based on current performance, we have a better performance in content distribution. Alibaba is still rooted in the experience of e-commerce, which is not suitable for short videos for the time being."

In the conference room of the carbon silicon data center in Lingang, Yang Zhenyuan, the technical director, analyzed the technological differences between his company and its competitors for the investors. However, he tried to explain it in a simple way, and the investors who had gathered still seemed to understand but not quite.

Following Tencent's attack on the group-buying market and its successful poaching of Meituan, which was invested in by Alibaba, its subsidiary Weishi quickly launched a strong competitive campaign, using the most frustrating tactic of giving money to users.

Even though Carbon Silicon Data is developing and releasing many new content series, when faced with such a money-burning situation, they can only invite investors they have already contacted and, incidentally, conduct new analyses for them.

This move directly forced Yu Xing to shift his attention to Douyin (TikTok), personally meeting with investors and pushing for funding sources to fuel the cash burn.

After listening for a while, Zeng Jia from Temasek couldn't help but ask, "Mr. Yang, what about Tencent? Why are you only talking about Alibaba? Tencent's Weishi has now changed to the same format as Douyin, which is the most direct reason why we are sitting here."

Weishi followed in the footsteps of Leyin, also changing from music short videos to all types of short videos. However, this move did not cause much of a stir. They finally couldn't keep up the act anymore, so they changed it. What's there to be coy about?
Yu Xing, who was also listening, laughed when he heard the question: "President Zeng, it's not that President Yang doesn't want to talk about Tencent, it's just that Tencent is indeed relatively weak in this area. Its recommendation algorithm and other technologies still need further development. What we should pay more attention to right now is Alibaba's progress in this area."

Du Yuchen of Matrix Partners China had a strange expression: "Is Tencent's recommendation algorithm not working?"

Yu Xing replied succinctly: "Yes."

Du Yuchen received the most direct answer, which left him with no way to refute it, and he even quickly came to believe the judgment.

“What I mean is that Alibaba’s Leyin has advantages in e-commerce technology, but at this stage, it needs to solve the problems of content ecosystem construction and user experience. On the other hand, we can quickly seize market share with our algorithms and global capabilities.” Yang Zhenyuan gave a more understandable description: “To put it this way, Alibaba wants to achieve a chemical reaction between e-commerce and content through its technology platform, while we need to complete the ecological loop of content + e-commerce. What users need now is content, and e-commerce is secondary. It’s not Alibaba’s version yet.”

Many investors rubbed their faces in unison.

Yu Xing waited for everyone to digest and absorb the information before saying, "What General Manager Yang is talking about is the technology we have honed over the past three years, which is what we rely on now and in the future."

He put it more bluntly: "We are ahead, we can win, but we need money, we need money to consolidate and expand our lead, we can't let the other side burn money to narrow the gap."

Du Yuchen, Zeng Jia, and the others nodded in agreement. Their minds were much clearer now, and it was easier to pay up when their minds were clearer.

(End of this chapter)