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

Chapter 316 Give Him a Push (6k views, please subscribe)

Everyone in the meeting was aware of Lü Yao's ability to stir up trouble.

Although Lü Yao's words sounded grand and dignified, President Liang and Zhang Xiaonan understood them perfectly. So President Liang took the lead and said, "Don't worry, we will definitely cooperate with President Lü."

In fact, what Lü Yao wanted to do was not just use the shutdown of Tencent's operations as a marketing tool.

Most of the games that Tencent chooses to shut down are either unprofitable or have very low profit margins; many of them are outdated products that have been phased out by the times.

For example, services like Penguin WiFi Manager, Sogou Maps, Lianliankan, and Quanmin Zhanxian.

Many users of these products are quite old. Even if they have a sentimental attachment to a certain product or game, they will at most complain a bit, make their presence known, and act like a broken record in front of netizens for a while before the matter is over.

If you want to create a truly big enough uproar, you need to ignite it on a product that's already incredibly popular, and link it to the interests of most people.

This needs to be discussed behind closed doors.

After saying everything that could be said publicly, Lü Yao adjourned the meeting.

After Yao Qiguang and other senior executives from Guang'an Network Company left the meeting, Lü Yao took out his phone again and sent messages to Gan Xiaoxi, President Liang and Zhang Xiaonan: "Let's have a small meeting privately."

These people are usually very busy.

Work schedules are usually very full.

Lu Yao suddenly added a short meeting, which meant their subsequent schedules would have to be postponed. However, none of them hesitated to cancel their remaining plans and instead found a quiet, secluded place to hold the meeting.

Compared to the preceding open and aboveboard meetings, the subsequent closed-door meetings are where the truly crucial content is revealed.

This can be considered a tradition in human society.

Small matters are addressed in large meetings, big matters in small meetings, and extremely important matters are not addressed in meetings.

Once all the participants of this private online meeting were online, Lü Yao smiled and said, "Sorry to take up everyone's time, haha. There was nothing I could do. There were some things that were inconvenient to say directly during the meeting."

Gan Xiaoxi finally shed her serious facade and excitedly said on the online screen, "Oh, I get it, I get it! Of course, we should talk about these tricks behind closed doors with our own people. Don't tell me yet, let me guess."

"Are you trying to get us to hype up this incident? But I don't think this matter has the potential to go viral."

Upon hearing this, Lü Yao gave a thumbs-up to the camera and laughed, "Our CEO Gan is getting more and more knowledgeable about the internet. That's right, these outdated internet products really don't have the potential to spread. If we want to make this a big deal, we need to start with Tencent's most popular and profitable products."

On the video screen, Mr. Liang raised an eyebrow and smiled, "Mr. Lü, do you mean to target Tencent's 'League of Legends'?"

League of Legends was indeed at its peak in 2016. If it weren't for Lü Yao returning from studying abroad in the future and stirring up trouble, changing the timeline, in this timeline, if you walked into an internet cafe now, every screen you saw would be filled with League of Legends gameplay.

Even with Lu Yao, a future international student, stirring things up, there are still quite a few people playing League of Legends in internet cafes, almost on par with PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds.

Not to mention that League of Legends now has a mature fan base and a profitable live streaming model.

Lu Yao laughed and said, "That's right. My plan is to proceed in two steps. One is to do things your way, Mr. Gan. This time, we need to make a big splash with the news of poaching employees. Ideally, everyone online and in real life should know that Tencent has started laying off employees and cutting departments, creating the impression that Tencent is heartless."

Gan Xiaoxi smiled expectantly and said, "Okay!"

After finishing speaking, Lü Yao looked to the other side and said, "President Liang, President Zhang, I hope that you can increase traffic support, advertising revenue sharing support, and various rewards and support for Tencent games on various platforms under the ByteDance system."

ByteDance's debugging algorithm allows for targeted support of specific content, which is a very simple effect to achieve. As for increasing ad revenue sharing and various influencer reward programs, that's not difficult either.

If all else fails, Lü Yao can pay for it.

However, given ByteDance's magnanimity, they wouldn't care about such a small amount of money. Although Douyin will become very mercenary later on, that's an inevitable development after the group grows big. In the early stages of ByteDance's development, under the leadership of a group of veterans, ByteDance was very willing to spend money, and their actions were very consistent.

This is an advantage that Tencent has little access to, and it is one of the reasons why Tencent has been unable to grow and become a major player in the short video market.

Although ByteDance was already a large company when it launched Douyin, it was still a relatively young and lightweight company with fewer conflicts of interest. Coupled with the algorithm developed by the strongest internet engineering team in the Asia-Pacific region led by CEO Zhang, Tencent's failure in the short video field was almost inevitable.

Not to mention that behind this is Zhang Xiaonan, a "genius-level" product content manager, who is in charge of content operation and product line development and iteration.

So without saying a word, General Manager Liang nodded in agreement: "Don't worry, I'll talk to the technology and operations teams."

Zhang Xiaonan also assured, "This is a type of content that is currently lacking on the Douyin platform. I will carefully control the content format and may even contact influencers directly if necessary."

They were all very intelligent people, and when Lü Yao proposed this idea, they already knew what Lü Yao's real purpose was.

Through ByteDance's platform, players of Tencent's games can earn more money.

The content contributed by these players can enrich the platform's content, attract more internet users, and increase the platform's user base. At the same time, it can also allow other users, influencers, and celebrities on the platform to earn more revenue.

Essentially, this is a process of making the pie bigger.

Therefore, both President Liang and Zhang Xiaonan are willing to spend this money.

As for the consequences of spending money, Mr. Liang and Zhang Xiaonan could probably guess. When Tencent saw so many players from its own ecosystem rushing into the short video platform next door to publish works and even live stream, they would definitely not sit still. At that time, they would definitely restrict and order the players to leave the ByteDance platform.

By doing this, they are bound to offend the player community.

During the video conference, Mr. Liang laughed and said, "It's foreseeable that Tencent will definitely launch a fierce lawsuit against us later."

Lü Yao laughed and said, "Let's go to court, shall we?"

ByteDance's legal team and Lu Yao's team are both highly capable. They are supported by an eight-figure annual budget for their legal team, not just to be idle. They are the perfect people to handle these demanding tasks.

Lu Yao continued, "And if a fight really breaks out, we must make this matter a huge public spectacle, preferably known to the whole world."

Mr. Liang laughed and said, "Okay, leave this to me."

After finishing his conversation with the three people, Lü Yao hung up the video conference.

……

In the empty conference room, Lü Yao sat in his seat, leaning back in his chair in silence, quietly thinking.

He felt that Tencent's reaction and actions this time were a bit too fast and too decisive.

Lu Yao recalls that Tencent only relaunched the rebuilt and revamped "Weishi" in May 2017. The event that put pressure on Tencent was Douyin's marketing campaign during the 2016 Spring Festival.

Red envelope rain in short videos during Chinese New Year.

The widespread dissemination of New Year's greeting special effects videos.

And Yue Yunpeng's lip-syncing videos went viral.

This allowed Douyin to grow from less than a million daily active users to more than five million.

Afterwards, Douyin collaborated with emerging music talents, and singers in the hip-hop and rap genre began to rapidly penetrate the youth community through traditional media and Douyin, a new media platform. This successfully transformed Douyin's image from a "short video tool" to a "trendy community."

By July 2017, Douyin's daily average views had skyrocketed from 100 million in June to over 1 billion in July.

Monthly active users have also exceeded 50 million.

During this period, Tencent faced increasing pressure day by day, and launched the Weishi APP in May and officially launched the Weishi "30 billion creator subsidy plan" in August. Although Tencent's efforts were substantial, its actions were hasty.

However, ByteDance's Douyin has only been online for a little over two months, but Tencent's actions seem excessively frequent.

why?
Douyin is still in its cold start stage. Although its daily active users are better than Lu Yao remembered, they are only around two or three million. Logically speaking, this size is not enough to attract Tencent's attention.

However, intelligence gathered from within Tencent suggests that Tencent clearly sees the newly launched TikTok as its mortal enemy.

This is unreasonable.

What factors influenced the penguin's decision-making team, leading them to make changes that differed from Lü Yao's memory?
One possible factor and influence after another flashed through Lü Yao's mind.

Suddenly!

It was as if a bolt of lightning had suddenly exploded in Lü Yao's mind, causing him to open his eyes abruptly and almost jump out of his seat.

He figured it out.

The reason why the penguins reacted differently than they would in the future is because of the "butterfly effect." Since it's the butterfly effect, the one that caused the penguins to change like this must be that "butterfly."

In the empty conference room, Lü Yao couldn't help but laugh helplessly. It turned out that the problem was with him. It was because of his existence that Tencent attached so much importance to this newly launched product and started planning for it at least a year in advance.

"call--"

Lu Yao raised his hand and rubbed the back of his neck.

Suddenly, they started integrating resources and focusing on the short video sector more than a year in advance... This adds a lot of uncertainty to the future.

If Weishi really succeeds this time, will it have a negative impact or a severe blow on Douyin in the future?
As one of the major shareholders of Douyin, Lü Yao has to consider this issue.

So Lü Yao paced back and forth in the empty office, constantly digging into his memories of the future. Unfortunately, Lü Yao didn't have any superpowers. Not to mention that he knew everything about the future, much of the information he did know had become blurry over such a long period of time.

But Lü Yao still remembers those particularly significant events. The competition in the short video arena will become exceptionally fierce, even brutal, after Douyin's meteoric rise.

Tencent alone has launched four or five short video products with different positioning and types, trying to target Douyin from all directions.

Besides Tencent, Baidu, and even Taobao later started developing their own short video products, either as standalone products or as features added to existing apps. Platforms like Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu are also vying for a share in this arena.

But none of them have truly shaken Douyin.

The internet landscape ten years from now will actually be quite similar to the current e-commerce platform landscape.

Taobao dominates the market, holding half of the market share, while JD.com, Vipshop, and other e-commerce platforms each occupy a few percent or a dozen percent of the market share, dividing up the remaining half.

Ten years later, TikTok will dominate the domestic market.

Immersive information delivery has become a powerful tool for killing time. With this tool, Douyin has monopolized half of the short video market, while other apps such as Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili share the remaining half.

Even WeChat's "Video Account," touted as the most promising candidate to catch up with Douyin ten years later, still has a considerable gap to close.

and so.

Even if Tencent makes advance preparations and spends more resources on it, it doesn't seem to pose a significant threat at present.

After all, Weishi has faced numerous setbacks since its inception, with chaotic internal management. Furthermore, the leader of Weishi after its relaunch hastily relied on replicating the Douyin model and offering massive subsidies, resulting in user growth depending on subsidies, low retention rates, severe content homogenization, and a lack of original content.

Therefore, Weishi's data growth was extremely slow. By the time the competition ended, Weishi's daily active users had exceeded 10 million, while Douyin had already reached 200 million.

"But this is ultimately a variable."

Lü Yao made up his mind.

If necessary, he might need to subtly continue to exert influence on Tencent and give them a push.

Lu Yao quickly returned to his office, and after searching through some documents, he listed the current factions and personnel of Penguin on a whiteboard using a tree diagram.

Penguins are currently divided into three factions.

Among them, the most prominent is President Liu's faction. Lü Yao has done background research on this President Liu. Although he was born in mainland China, he is not a mainland Chinese. He graduated from the University of Michigan and holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. After that, he has been working in investment institutions.

This bigwig orchestrated Tencent's IPO and was also Goldman Sachs's internal spokesperson within Tencent. Therefore, many of Tencent's investment activities have a subtle, underlying foreign influence.

This bigwig was also the main driving force behind the launch and huge success of WeChat, and also the one who eliminated QQ, making it no longer Tencent's main business.

It can be said that the development of the Chinese Internet since 2010 has been influenced by this bigwig.

He is like Sima Yi in the Cao Wei camp of the Three Kingdoms. Although he is not the commander-in-chief, his shadow is everywhere.

Then there are the original members of the penguin community.

Wireless business, internet business, interactive entertainment business, online media business, advertising value-added business and other aspects have been almost halved, resulting in a major blow to the veteran faction. Four of the original five tigers of Tencent are gone, leaving only Tencent CEO Teng to hold the reins.

However, the old guard has not completely disappeared, or rather, the old guard has left an influence. Teng hopes that the new generation of the old guard can be used for his own purposes.

That's why the veterans and the new generation, such as CEO Ren, CEO Tang, and CEO Lu, gradually rose to the core power stage of Tencent.

Because of the impact of Lu Yao's Guang'an Online Games Company and President Liu's domineering behavior in the Tencent senior management decision-making circle, President Teng had to personally oversee the front line of the Interactive Entertainment Business Group and use his position to show his support.

This means that Teng's faction has once again joined forces with the veteran faction.

After nearly a decade of development and cultivation, Tencent's internal ecosystem is now much like it was when President Liu first joined Tencent... no! It's gotten worse.

When President Liu joined Tencent ten years ago, he had the strong support of President Teng.

But ten years later, Teng began to favor the new generation of veterans.

"interesting."

Leaning against his office desk, Lü Yao smiled as he stared at the tree diagram filled with names and factions.

The more deeply one analyzes Tencent's corporate structure, the more clearly one can perceive that Tencent, a group disguised as a high-tech internet company, is actually a group with the structure of a feudal ancient dynasty.

At the very center of power, President Teng is the emperor.

The partners who started the business with Teng were the meritorious force. Without exception, they left Tencent's core decision-making circle one after another, but their disciples stayed and became the representatives of the former meritorious force.

Then Teng started playing a balancing act within Tencent.

Just like the so-called upright and corrupt officials in the imperial court from generation to generation.

Lu Yao crossed his arms and stroked his chin with his left hand, pondering, "It seems that President Liu is a bit isolated and helpless now."

Although President Liu currently holds multiple positions, has a vast investment portfolio, and is backed by Goldman Sachs, he is ultimately just one person within Tencent, and it's hard to say what his subordinates are really thinking... When President Liu is in power, whatever he says goes.

But once President Liu no longer receives clear and firm support from President Teng, can he still use his subordinates as smoothly as before?

How many of these people are nominally President Liu's subordinates but are actually sent by President Teng?
Given Teng's penchant for playing the balancing act, who knows how many "werewolves" President Liu might have under his command.

Then.

How can I get President Liu to "help" my side?

Simply going up to express goodwill and a willingness to cooperate will definitely not work.

Soon, a vague idea formed in Lü Yao's mind: "I need to find a way to give President Liu a push."

However, for someone of President Liu's stature, their power and connections are already terrifying. They are like a mountain pressing down on all businesses in the world. It would be difficult to give them a push.

This would require at least a very powerful shock.

But no matter how immense and terrifying President Liu's power may be, people's hearts are like water, easily stirred by the wind.

If it's just about getting President Liu to do something, then there's actually some room for maneuver.

……

Although he had decided to use tricks to get President Liu, Lü Yao hadn't figured out exactly how to do it.

While Lü Yao was trying to find a solution, ByteDance and Gan Xiaoxi's team had already started to exert their efforts as Lü Yao had instructed.

Gan Xiaoxi's almost reckless selection and poaching of employees laid off from Tencent's departments quickly spread throughout the headhunting circle. Thanks to the help of internet and media platforms such as Douyin and Weibo, this matter concerning the future of a major company and an individual quickly spread online.

The sudden layoffs of more than 50 projects and departments by Tencent, leaving nearly a thousand people facing unemployment, have already generated considerable public discussion.

Now, at this critical juncture, Gan Xiaoxi is recruiting heavily, even making a bold statement: "Anyone with real talent and skills is very welcome to join Guang'an Network Games Company."

Although Guangan Network Games is just a game company, they need marketing staff, IT engineers, managers, artists, or 3D technicians, as long as you have real skills.

Because game development is a systematic project, even if you are a liberal arts student, you can find your place in the field of game development.

Whether a game's story is well-told and whether its characters are compelling are things that only skilled storytellers can achieve.

Among the many employees laid off by Tencent, there were indeed quite a few junior employees who were not good at speaking and only knew how to do technical work. These employees would naturally be absorbed into Guang'an Online Games.

Suddenly, all sorts of speculations about Tencent and Guangan arose online as if from nowhere:

"Is Tencent failing? Why are they laying off employees at this crucial time?"

"Guangan is awesome! They're expanding aggressively and making great strides. It seems Guangan has big ambitions for the future."

"Come on! What kind of size is Penguin? And what is Guang'an, some little karaomi? Do you really think Penguin can take Guang'an down? Bullshit! They're not even in the same league, okay?"

"Let me put it this way, you might think that Guang'an is a boxer at the level of Tyson, but Penguin is at the level of Taro."

"No matter what, we should thank Guang'an for coming along. Not only have we been able to play more fun games, but Tencent has also launched more and more generous events. Isn't that a good thing?"

"Yeah, yeah, I hope both Penguin and Guang'an can live well! So I'll spend 60 on Guang'an and 6 on Penguin~~~"

Looking at the online comments about the impact of this incident, Lü Yao, who was hiding behind the scenes, smiled.

Penguins are indeed a strange breed.

When there are no competitors, their project operations managers are practically incompetent. Take the upcoming revamped League of Legends for example; the free chests you receive every day without fail give you 10 essence. Even without hero price reductions, you only need 630 days, roughly two years, to buy a hero with the free essence you collect!
Later, when League of Legends launched in Taiwan, all champions were given away for free, and legendary skins could be found in chests! The Malaysian server lost over three million players in just one day, completely overwhelming the Taiwanese server…

The penguins were so frightened that they immediately started offering treats.

The free chests that were always there can now yield 66 or 188 essences, and the chests no longer contain those tattered skins from old feet.

Later, Tencent used its technology and connections to replace all download links pointing to the Taiwan server client with the official Chinese League of Legends website, cutting off most people's access to the Taiwan server. As a result, the daily reward for the free chests reverted to the almost insulting 10 essence.

(End of this chapter)