Since we are both reborn, of course I would choose the rich woman!

Chapter 231 Coincidence (6k views, please subscribe)

When not working, Lin Qiaoyi was very well-behaved and sensible, and she was very good at cleaning. After she cleaned up and dressed Lü Yao, she also tidied up her own clothes in the private room, and once again returned to her dignified yet slightly ambiguous appearance.

Lin Qiaoyi glanced at Lü Yao and said, "Then I'll head back now. See you later when you have time."

Looking at the table full of food and wine, Lü Yao laughed and said, "We haven't eaten anything, how about we go out and get some more?"

Lin Qiaoyi chuckled lightly, "No need, I'm very full tonight."

After shedding her work clothes and changing into her usual attire, Lin Qiaoyi became exceptionally bold in her speech and actions, to the point that Lü Yao could hardly tell which was her true self.

But it's precisely this feeling of not being able to figure things out that gives it a unique flavor.

Lü Yao smiled and said, "Okay, by the way, please tell your editor-in-chief that I really like his gift."

Lin Qiaoyi smiled, her waist swaying gracefully beneath her bodycon skirt as she left the private room, her departure clean and efficient.

After Lin Qiaoyi left, Lü Yao took out his cigarettes in the private room, lit one, and slowly smoked himself.

Lin Qiaoyi was a gift from the editor-in-chief of Xinwang News Agency. He had to accept this gift, otherwise the editor-in-chief would overthink it and feel that he had never let go of the past grudges. In that case, he would push a potential ally to the opposite side.

This has the same meaning as "filthy social interaction," which is also known in the underworld as "a pledge of allegiance."

Lin Qiaoyi appears to have an ambiguous aura and can openly flirt with you, but in reality, this open ambiguity is just part of her job.

Their relationship was purely that of a man and a woman, without any emotional entanglements.

In terms of handling official business, Lü Yao appreciated Lin Qiaoyi's decisiveness.

Once the smell of cigarette smoke had mostly dissipated from his body, Lü Yao went downstairs, got into his car, and went home.

……

In the following days, the two articles published by Xinhua News Agency and Computerworld generated increasing momentum in public opinion.

With Xinwang News and Computerworld leading the way, many traditional and new media platforms have begun to target Tencent. Some have exposed the scale of Tencent's investments over the years, some have exposed the original authors that Tencent has plagiarized and crushed over the years, and some have even exposed the companies that Tencent has acquired and merged over the years.

Suddenly, all sorts of negative news about penguins were flying around.

It was at this time that many netizens realized that Tencent was no longer the internet company that only did social networking and games; it had long since become a behemoth in the investment world and a true giant in capital.

The sheer amount of wealth is itself a key factor in triggering jealousy. After netizens learned that the penguin was now so enormous, they began to hurl insults at it online.

"No wonder penguins are so fearless; they really are fearless."

“Every Penguin user bears responsibility for how Penguin has become the behemoth it is today.”

"It seems that penguins are involved in everything we do, from clothing and food to housing and transportation."

After various media outlets exposed Tencent's investment portfolio, netizens became increasingly convinced that Tencent wanted to become a monopolistic internet conglomerate in China. Netizens, who were already full of resentment towards Tencent's operations, found an outlet to vent their anger. They criticized Tencent on various platforms such as Baidu Tieba, Weibo, and Neihan Duanzi, hoping that relevant departments could intervene to break it up.

The various posts and voices on the internet are making a lot of noise, but in reality, Tencent doesn't care at all what netizens think or say.

The penguin has long been incorporated into the fold; it has powerful backers.

Moreover, Tencent is very discreet in its actions. Although its investment portfolio covers all aspects of the internet, including clothing, food, housing, and transportation, it primarily invests only in the internet sector.

Penguin's investment portfolio contains very few physical industries. They are extremely cautious about investing in physical industries, explaining that the profit margins are low and the supply chains involved are too long, making them prone to errors. Therefore, they are very conservative in their investments in this area.

The fundamental reason is that the real economy is the true lifeline of the economy. People may not go online, but their standard of living still needs to be maintained by the real economy.

This is a dividing line.

When mobile phones were booming and various domestic mobile phone manufacturers sprang up like mushrooms after rain, Tencent did not invest in mobile phone manufacturers.

Even as the new energy vehicle sector is booming, Tencent has shown no interest in entering the new car manufacturing arena.

That's what it means to be mindful of boundaries.

As long as it doesn't cross this dividing line, the penguin is safe and can reliably use the internet as its foundation to expand its capital pool, continuously generating wealth for itself and those behind it.

Lü Yao never intended to rely on netizens' criticism to get Tencent to come out and fight him or speak for him.

What will truly elicit a reaction from Tencent is the actual response from the capital market.

As early as when Lü Yao agreed to Gan Xiaoxi's interview with Xinwang News Agency, he had Rong Nianqing intentionally or unintentionally reveal information that Lü Yao was planning to set up a scheme against Tencent. This information would then be inadvertently learned by the "financial faction" of the Rong family.

At this time, Tencent had been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for many years, and short selling was allowed there. So after Xinwang News confirmed that it would interview Lü Yao, the "financial faction" of the Rong family signed a lot of short orders. After Computerworld also attacked Tencent, the financial faction began to operate on a large scale.

The wave after wave of negative news online is partly due to the Rong family's financial faction stirring up trouble.

The Rong family is large and powerful, and finance is their traditional expertise. So even though he was sidelined in China, their funds overseas and across the strait are still quite formidable. The money they used for short selling this time was only a small amount.

The reason they do this is that it's part of their basic job.

The Rong family's "financial faction" made a big move, and after a series of sell-offs, Tencent's stock price plummeted for three consecutive days. Coupled with the increasingly heated public opinion in China, many retail investors and speculative funds felt something was wrong and began to withdraw their funds as well.

In just three days, Tencent's market value evaporated by nearly 10 billion Hong Kong dollars.

Although Tencent's market capitalization in Hong Kong had already reached HK$1.2 trillion in 2015, the loss of tens of billions of dollars in market value over three consecutive days still caused significant pain for Tencent's major shareholders. This means that Tencent can no longer remain silent in response to this public opinion; it must do something to quell the public outcry and stop the downward trend.

On the fifth day after Computerworld launched its attack on the penguin, the long-silent penguin finally made a move.

First, a senior executive at Tencent issued an official statement, denying Computerworld's "monopoly accusations" against Tencent. The statement also accused Computerworld of malicious speculation and offensive illustrations that hurt the feelings of Tencent users, and stated that Tencent reserves the right to pursue legal action.

On the same day, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued "Opinions on Rectifying Internet Chaos," calling on netizens to think independently and not to blindly follow others.

By evening, major financial channels and media outlets began discussing whether Tencent was involved in "monopoly" issues. However, the seemingly objective and fair discussions were actually all in favor of Tencent.

In this battle of public opinion, Lü Yao used aggressive internet users to stir up public opinion and coerce Tencent into speaking out.

And what about penguins?

They directly demonstrate their power to the outside world from an official perspective, especially to investors in the stock market.

Investors in the stock market don't care what netizens say. What truly influences their trading decisions are two things: fluctuations in capital flows and official positive or negative news.

When the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued a statement to rectify the internet environment, stock market investors knew that Tencent's stock price was poised for a rebound. As a result, the stock price began to recover in the afternoon after the "Rectification Opinions" were released in the morning.

Tencent's CEO, Teng, still didn't directly respond to Lü Yao's move. Instead, he remained behind the scenes and thwarted all of Lü Yao's schemes with a series of maneuvers.

This is the pride of a large corporation.

However, Tencent's actions have failed to quell the resentment of netizens. This high-end approach is a sincere contempt for ordinary netizens. The condescending remarks not only fail to extinguish the resentment, but will only make it grow stronger.

Thus, without Lü Yao's intervention, various conspiracy theories about penguins began to circulate on the internet.

Meanwhile, netizens also began to vote with their feet.

Users and gamers from the Tencent ecosystem began to leave, with social users switching to MiTalk, online media users switching to ByteDance, and entertainment users choosing Shangnan Guang'an.

Within a week, all user data on Lü Yao's alliance side were rising rapidly.

It was only then that people suddenly realized that all along, people online had been saying that once most people were using a social media app, they would find themselves in an awkward situation of "single-player social interaction" when they tried other social media apps.

After all, it would be quite awkward if no one responded to your message.

With a market penetration rate as high as 90%, Tencent's social products have become "necessities" that people cannot live without.

But after they switched to other social media platforms, they found that it wasn't as mysterious as the internet made it out to be. It turned out that all those posts were just to scare people. They were having a lot of fun on other social media platforms.

Following this, netizens shared their feelings about switching to social media.

"Brothers, it's not that hard to transfer Tencent's social gaming products. The reason why everyone thought it was difficult to transfer before was because there were no decent competing products, so everyone had to accept it. But it's different now. MiTalk's community interaction features are very good! Much more interesting than WeChat."

Similar comments began to appear in every corner of the internet, much like mold in the humid season. Ten days after Computerworld's attack on Tencent, an article titled "Leave your work to WeChat, leave your happiness to MiTalk" appeared on Weibo. This article quickly went viral and was then forwarded to WeChat Moments, public accounts, Tieba, and various forums.

This article recounts the development of WeChat, stating that WeChat had an almost original sin from its inception.

It first gained popularity through its less-than-honorable features such as "People Nearby," "Drift Bottle," and "Shake," and then rapidly achieved economies of scale by leveraging the migration of QQ users, thus dominating the market.

Once the user base was large enough, WeChat Moments became a breeding ground for rampant micro-business advertisements, with all sorts of substandard and counterfeit products flooding the market. Now, WeChat's development focus has shifted to official accounts.

However, the quality of public accounts varies greatly, with a large number of advertisements interspersed among various information, which is exhausting.

Not to mention that with the widespread use of WeChat, it has become an essential tool for work communication.

The article states: "I don't know when it started, but I've started to feel that there's less and less to look forward to on WeChat. My Moments feed is full of work ads and elaborately designed posts. If there are bosses, family, or friends in my Moments feed, I don't even dare to complain on it anymore."

"I don't know when it started, but I began to fear the messages that pop up on WeChat, fearing that they were urging me to work or that I was suddenly notified to work overtime."

"I don't know when it started, but looking at that green bubble, I began to feel a deep weariness in my heart."

The article then uses MiTalk as a comparison, highlighting how MiTalk, a media information platform, allows for easier interaction with gaming partners in the Guang'an gaming ecosystem. MiTalk's "Today's Top Comments" and "New Things" sections also offer more fun and interesting content, making it much richer than the limited information in one's own social media feed.

Compared to the content produced by users of traditional media platforms on WeChat official accounts, the content presented by "Today's Top Comments" and "Fresh News" is more vivid, interesting, and entertaining.

Moreover, users can seamlessly interact with ByteDance's platforms while using a pseudonym, without worrying about their true identities being exposed. Users can freely and boldly express their thoughts on this platform.

The user base created by the integration of multiple platforms ensures that these platforms have no shortage of content. Compared to WeChat, which is becoming increasingly rigid and has a limited circle, the "interconnected social platform" created by Lü Yao in collaboration with ByteDance and Xiaomi is indeed more interesting.

This article is written in a steady and logical style, with every word sincere, making it very easy for readers to resonate with it.

Therefore, it resonated with many people online as soon as it was released, and was widely shared.

Especially those who work regular jobs.

I don't know when it started, but WeChat has become the software for handing over work information. Isn't that just ridiculous?!
Many netizens initially started using WeChat because of the "People Nearby" feature!
When these working stiffs saw that there was such an interesting and fun social software besides the Penguin-affiliated social apps, they all started downloading MiTalk, wanting to see if it was really as interesting as the article described.

And so, overnight!
MiTalk has added nearly 10 million new users.

Fortunately, Xiaomi today is not the same Xiaomi it was four years ago. Today's Xiaomi has a more powerful server cluster, more users, and stronger allies.

Therefore, when a large number of users flooded into MiTalk this time, MiTalk did not experience any server outages.

After these users flooded into the MiTalk community, they discovered that it was actually true!

MiTalk's user interface design is very similar to WeChat. When you open it, you see an information box interface, and the bottom menu bar only has "Messages", "Contacts", "News" and "Me".

The "News" section includes features such as "Friends' Updates," "Today's Top Comments," and "Gaming with Friends."

Friends' activity is the same as WeChat's Moments.

Today's top comments seamlessly connect to ByteDance's Neihan Duanzi (a popular Chinese humor website), with a constant stream of funny jokes and even posts initiating offline gatherings.

The game features direct access to Guangan games, including screenshots of gamers' stats, funny videos, and links to other games. Players can team up anytime, anywhere.

Such rich community content is indeed more interesting than WeChat, which is becoming increasingly work-oriented.

The saying "Leave your work to WeChat, and leave your happiness to others" has indeed resonated widely.

In fact, this situation will become the norm in a few years. WeChat will gradually become a work software, just like QQ was in its early days. Even Tencent is guiding WeChat in this direction.

Although people use WeChat, the main functional requirements for WeChat are constantly changing.

A few years later, everyone's phones will likely have many different social media apps.

WeChat handles work-related tasks, Momo and Tantan handle dating, while Soul, Changqing Teng, and Qianshou have become rising stars in dating; Nico, Highway Shop, and other apps have become gathering places for niche communities.

After 2018, Douyin will become a brand new social communication platform among young people thanks to its rich user-generated content; while WeChat will be completely reduced to a tool for work coordination, information sending and receiving, and wallet.

However, the appearance of Lü Yao brought this situation forward by a few years.

The day after this article was published, Mr. Shang from Xiaomi Interactive Entertainment rushed to Lü Yao's side to thank him in person.

Upon seeing Lü Yao, President Shang was overjoyed and beamed, saying, "President Lü! You've really pulled off a brilliant marketing move this time. Every word in that article was a gem, and I wholeheartedly agree with it."

Lu Yao smiled helplessly: "President Shang, you've thanked the wrong person this time. This article really wasn't written by me, or even by someone else."

Mr. Shang was taken aback: "Huh?"

Lü Yao laughed and said, "It's a coincidence."

Mr. Shang quickly realized what was happening and laughed, "But the content system within the MiTalk community today was personally built by you, Mr. Lü. It was you who used games to carve out the 'games + social' landscape, successfully creating the MiTalk community we know today."

"Your strategy was a great success! So, tonight it's my treat, let's have some fun."

Lü Yao laughed and said, "Then let's just have a simple meal and drinks. It's too early for a big celebration."

Later, Mr. Liang from ByteDance arrived at Shangnan with Zhang Xiaonan. They also thought that the article was orchestrated by Lü Yao. They were very surprised when they confirmed that it was not Lü Yao's work.

But since everyone's already here, we should naturally have a meal together.

Jian Xiaojie quickly got wind of it and immediately sent a message: "People from Xiaomi Interactive Entertainment and ByteDance came to dinner but didn't even take me with them?"

Lu Yao asked in surprise, "You're interested in this kind of small gathering? Then we can join in."

Jian Xiaojie replied instantly: "OK~ I'll arrange the place."

Lu Yao replied, "Don't make it too grand. Let's find a quiet and unique place and have a simple meal and drinks."

Jian Xiaojie: "OK!"

Later that evening, Jian Xiaojie drove an MPV to Lu Yao's company building, picked up Lu Yao, President Shang, President Liang, and Zhang Xiaonan, and then went to a small restaurant that Jian Xiaojie had strongly recommended.

This small restaurant is hidden in an old residential area in Shangnan Gulou District.

The restaurant is old, but it is very clean inside and out. The simple and old storefront is full of traces of time. As soon as you arrive, you can see that the restaurant is full, and there are hardly any empty tables in the open space outside.

So Lü Yao and his group of wealthy internet entrepreneurs sat on low stools and waited.

Jian Xiaojie has a plump and slender figure, and she is a sight to behold whenever she walks or sits. Sitting on a small stool, she said to Lü Yao and the others, "You've come at the right time. This time of year is the last batch of spring bamboo shoots. The pickled bamboo shoots and pork soup at this restaurant is absolutely amazing!"

At this point, Jian Xiaojie transformed into a gourmet: "Actually, in terms of texture, spring bamboo shoots have a higher fiber content and aren't as tender and sweet as winter bamboo shoots. But the salted pork used in 'Yan Du Xian' (a Sichuan dish) is rich and fatty, which easily overwhelms the fresh flavor of winter bamboo shoots. As the owner of this restaurant puts it, that's called 'commonplace.' It's the fresh and tender spring bamboo shoots that can truly balance it out."

As she spoke, Jian Xiaojie took a deep breath: "The broth of the pickled bamboo shoot and pork soup is savory and delicious, and the bamboo shoots inside are fresh and crisp. Together, they bring out the taste of spring in every mouthful. It's absolutely amazing!"

Zhang Xiaonan is quite the foodie. She sat on the small stool, took a deep breath, and said with delight, "Just smelling it makes my mouth water."

Jian Xiaojie leaned closer, her eyes sparkling: "Right, right! Let me tell you, at this time of year, around this time of day, the temperature isn't so dry in the evening, it's even a little cool. At this time, sitting around a clay pot cooking pickled bamboo shoots and pork, with scrambled eggs with toon sprouts and a few side dishes to go with drinks, and a pot of warm yellow wine, it's just so wonderful~"

Zhang Xiaonan was immediately drawn into the atmosphere. In addition, the old residential area was full of life and everyday charm. The hushed conversations of the diners around her and the occasional noises from afar made the place seem even more secluded.

Lü Yao, who had been staring at the computer and scrolling through a lot of online information for the past few days, finally felt that his mind was truly clear.

These restaurants hidden in the backstreets and alleys can indeed be a remedy for human suffering at certain times.

So Lü Yao dragged his small stool to sit next to a tree, then leaned against it in a carefree manner, took out a cigarette, and was about to enjoy a good puff.

Just then, Zhang Xiaonan suddenly came over and said, "President Lü, our company is currently developing several short video platform software. I would like to ask you to be the chief content operations officer of our platform. Is that possible?"

Lu Yao thought for a moment. Douyin was launched in September 2016 and it took more than a year of operation to gradually gain a foothold in the market.

ByteDance was indeed developing this at that time.

Lu Yao turned his face to the side and exhaled smoke, chuckling, "Let's not talk about work tonight, we'll talk about it tomorrow."

(End of this chapter)