Those Years When I Was Forced to Top the Forbes List

Chapter 412 This President Chen is a bit pretentious
Those present included Jack Ma of Alibaba, Cao Guowei of Sina, Ding Lei of NetEase, Zhang Chaoyang of Sohu, Ma Huateng of Tencent, Zhou Hongyi of 360, Wang Leilei of TOM, Zou Shenglong of Xunlei, Chen Yizhou of Mop and Xiaonei.com, Qian Zhonghua of Lianzhong, and Lei Jun of Kingsoft.

Their identities on the internet are complex; to put it simply, they are either selling users or buying users.

Those who sell users are primarily the three major portal websites: Sina, Sohu, and NetEase.

The latest price for a featured image ad on Sina's homepage is 35 RMB per day.

NetEase Mail's price for a single client's push notification ad is 50 RMB.

Sohu offers the most comprehensive advertising, with a cost-per-click of 0.3-0.5 yuan per user for its paid advertising; its women's channel offers 10%-15% commission on transaction volume for embedded articles, generating annual revenue exceeding 10 million yuan; its subsidiary 17173 has a dedicated section for games, where users who click "Play Now" are directly taken to the registration page, and the company takes a 20-30% cut of game revenue.

In the early days, there was also a fourth-ranked TOM.com. Tencent has been ranked fourth in recent years, but its main business is still driving traffic to the QQ client.

In the Web 1.0 era, users had to remember website addresses when browsing the internet, and finding good websites almost always depended on searching on portal websites. They passively received centralized information, and major portals almost monopolized all traffic.

Alibaba rose to prominence during this era, when its very lifeline was almost entirely controlled by major portals.

In its early days, Alibaba facilitated transactions between B2B merchants and invested a lot of money in its portal website. Business owners learned about Alibaba through the portal, but used Alibaba's information for free.

After finding their preferred suppliers on Alibaba's website, they directly called the manufacturers' phone numbers on the webpage, completing over 67% of their transactions offline.

B2B is Alibaba's core revenue source. However, in this IPO, two-thirds of its business has been diverted to offline operations. This is unacceptable.

In 05, Alibaba asked Sohu to synchronize user mobile phone numbers to Alibaba CRM (Customer Relationship Management System), but Zhang Chaoyang refused. So he decided to cut off all traffic from portal websites and changed the requirement to register and log in to an Alibaba account and bind a corporate email to view supplier contact information. Only then did he gradually improve the closed-loop transaction rate.

"Customer data is the heart, and it's more valuable than traffic, which is like a blood vessel."

Of course, this is Jack Ma's public statement.

Whether Alibaba's decision to cut off traffic from its portal website was proactive or reactive is hard to say.

At the same time, Alibaba's C2C business, Taobao, was facing high-priced traffic interception from eBay. eBay used exclusive cooperation to place portal ads, blocking Taobao's online ads, which made Taobao look bad for a long time. It was only by waiving the annual commission fee for merchants that it was able to escape.

Alibaba's attitude towards portal websites is self-evident, as is its sense of crisis at the risk of being strangled by them.

It wasn't until the rise of search engines like Baidu and 3721 that the right to access information was handed over to users, diverting some of the traffic from portals and ushering in the Web 1.5 era.

Foreign countries have taken a step further, creating UGC (user-generated content) public platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia, decentralizing information and ushering in the Web 2.0 era.

The more traffic channels there are, the greater the competition becomes, turning the market from a seller's market to a buyer's market. Companies like Alibaba that buy traffic are naturally happy to see this happen.

Currently, UGC in China includes blogs, communities, and videos. Although the models exist, they have not yet reached a large scale. In terms of content, they are not very competitive with portal websites. Even blogs are just a place for a few elites to express their views, at most a "sub-centralized" supplement to centralized content.

But the emergence of Weibo changed everything.

Yesterday, Jack Ma spent the entire day browsing Weibo and astutely discovered that this model has usurped the right to speak that was previously reserved for experts and journalists under the portal website model. Anyone can now speak, express their opinions, and become a hot topic, as long as they get enough likes and comments.

The key point is that users really love this model!

Yesterday, he witnessed users voting with their feet, actively participating in content creation.

This model is bound to explode.

Another key point is that the owner of this website is also a future shareholder of Alibaba!

He couldn't help but be even more delighted.

This led to a wide range of imaginative ideas about how Alibaba and Weibo could collaborate.

But seeing Chen Xuebing's bewildered expression, he frowned and thought to himself that his boss seemed to have a lot on his plate lately. He had heard that Spreadtrum had canceled its IPO, Gu'an Construction was bidding everywhere, Kirin phones were going public, and there was also an overseas investment in ARM, all of which were huge matters. Now he was preparing for a meeting in Hong Kong. Could he really be so busy that he hadn't noticed that his company had started a Weibo account?
He couldn't help but remind him, "Weibo, the Weibo platform that launched yesterday! Such a big event, you didn't know?"

"Weibo?" Chen Xuebing still looked somewhat doubtful.

Then, it gradually dissolved.

"Oh—" Chen Xuebing said with a hint of realization, "That social networking site, right? They mentioned it to me briefly. It went online yesterday? I had some important things to deal with yesterday, so I didn't notice. What's wrong?"

Upon hearing this, Cao Guowei, Ding Lei, Zhang Chaoyang, and Ma Huateng all twitched in the face.

what happened?
Sina Blog views its blog business as the core engine of its portal transformation, and has spent heavily to invite Xu Jinglei, Han Han, Yu Qiuyu, Pan Shiyi, Yang Lan, and Guo Jingming for prominent exposure on the portal homepage.

Sohu Blog is vying for dominance, investing heavily to closely follow Sina. Zhang Chaoyang personally took charge, using personal connections to poach talent with large sums of money, launching a celebrity offensive that brought in Zhao Wei, Li Bingbing, Gao Yuanyuan, Chen Kaige, and Li Yuchun.

NetEase Blog differentiates itself by building a grassroots community barrier and cultivating distinctive bloggers such as photography enthusiasts, travel writers, and campus celebrities.

QQ Space invited celebrities to open verified spaces, including big names like Fahrenheit, S.H.E., Super Junior-M, and NBA stars.

What did you say?
We had a meeting all night yesterday, bro!

We're all building blogs (on social media), and each of us has put in a tremendous amount of effort. Do you realize how much damage it does to us when you come up with a microblog?
"President Chen." Ma Huateng pushed up his glasses, his smile reminiscent of Detective Conan: "Let's not beat around the bush. Yesterday, more than twenty celebrities and big names were on Weibo as soon as it went live. Mobile Dream Network also opened a free data channel for your registered mobile users. We've been cooperating with Dream Network for so many years, I know exactly which level this matter needs to go through. Can a subsidiary like yours handle all this?"

He was probably the one most wary of Chen Xuebing. It all started with Liu Chiping, then Xinglian, and then Weibo.

To be honest, if he puts himself in the shoes of a victim, it feels like all of this is aimed at Tencent.

He didn't want to come today, but he was afraid that if other senior executives from the group came, they might be drugged by him and Tencent would lose a senior executive or gain an undercover agent after the Hong Kong meeting.

Since we're already here, let's see if we can draw a clear line with Chen Xuebing and decide whether we want to make peace or fight.

The others nodded in agreement when they heard Ma Huateng's words.

This trip to Hong Kong was originally invited by Alibaba, and they readily agreed. However, after yesterday's Weibo incident, they are now hesitant to come, fearing that they might be detained by Chief Envoy Chen in some underhanded way, thus missing a crucial opportunity.

These days, business competition is fierce, so everyone is still somewhat wary.

But this time, there's an official presence, and the discussion revolves around major events in the internet industry. Having already agreed, how could we back out? What if this event, organized by the Ministry of Commerce, really needs everyone's support?
Given this factor, it's unlikely they would resort to any tricks.

Everyone had their own thoughts, but there was one consensus: Chen Xuebing must have a deep scheme behind his actions on Weibo.

Chen Xuebing, however, denied it from the root.

"Mr. Ma, don't be so naive. The resources under our Gu'an Group are shared. We recently invested in Huayi Brothers and are preparing to help them list their Hong Kong celebrity resources. Let alone twenty celebrities, even dozens of celebrities, what's so strange about that? Spreadtrum is a communication technology partner of China Mobile, and Singularity is a contract phone supplier. Getting a channel through China Mobile doesn't require my personal involvement, does it? I said I had important business yesterday, what's there to hide?"

He straightened his collar and looked at Jack Ma: "Mr. Ma should know how busy I've been lately, right? Do you think I, Chen, have to be preoccupied with such trivial matters?"

Jack Ma fell into deep thought, then nodded and smoothed things over: "You've been busy lately. By the way, let's talk about that overseas investment later."

Everyone else felt a sinking feeling in their hearts.

Damn, this opponent has too many resources.

No wonder he uses celebrity resources like they're free; he's the boss of a celebrity company! He can even help people go public!
It's still a mobile communications partner!
The business they're competing for has been exposed at its source; how can they compete anymore?
Chen Xuebing glanced at everyone's expressions and then said with a smile, "I'm sorry everyone, I only handle strategic investments. If you want to know about the specific business details, let's arrange a time to have dinner together next time. I'll call Mr. Lu from Qidian, and he will definitely answer all your questions without reservation."

"This trip to Hong Kong is about our next step in aligning with international standards. Let's focus on the important matters. Chairman Wu of Wharf Holdings will personally receive us later. He is also a leader of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council. Let's take a look at the venue that Wharf Holdings has prepared for us and the development of the internet in Hong Kong. The first batch of opportunities to land here is very valuable. We have dedicated networks and lines, are included in the data whitelist, have two years of rent-free space, and a 30% reduction in the third year. In the future, we will also have the support of our Qianhai Big Data Server Cluster. Companies that come in later will have to be reviewed separately, and the channels will not be easy to navigate."

After he finished speaking, everyone fell silent.

As for Hong Kong affairs, everyone should continue to observe them.

Portals and forums have always been curious about how much money Hong Kong's wealthy business community can spend on advertising. Software and consumer websites can also enter Hong Kong to expand into new channels, especially QQ, which has long reached a bottleneck in mainland China. Only by competing in new fields can it have the opportunity to significantly increase its customer base.

But no one responded.

Seeing that everyone was silent, Chen Xuebing stopped paying attention and smiled as he put his arm around Lei Jun, who was standing in a corner staring blankly at the sea.

"Mr. Lei, I have some advice for Kingsoft's Hong Kong listing. Also, Shunwei Capital should invest in a few new projects soon, let's talk about that." Mr. Lei was naturally delighted: "You've been working on big deals lately, I thought you'd forgotten about our company!"

"Haha, I won't forget, Mr. Ma. Weren't we supposed to talk about the investment? Let's go."

Chen Xuebing pulled Lei Jun and Ma Yun into the cabin.

Nine people remained outside.

Cao Guowei was the most composed, Ding Lei was the most low-key, and Zhou Hongyi felt relieved that Li Yanhong, whom he had fought with, hadn't come. The group stood by the boat, leaning on the railing, and started bragging.

But everyone is still in a small circle.

Ma Huateng had a feeling that Chen Xuebing wanted to harm him. Looking around, he decided to take this opportunity to divide and win over some people. So he chose the outspoken Zhang Chaoyang first and asked in a voice that was neither too loud nor too soft, "Mr. Zhang, what do you think of this Mr. Chen?"

Zhang Chaoyang looked around and saw that they were all familiar faces, so he hesitated and said, "Tell the truth?"

Ma Huateng felt that the truth must be unpleasant to hear, so he immediately nodded in agreement.

“He’s a bit pretentious.” After saying that, Zhang Chaoyang added an analysis: “I heard that he also started from scratch, but he speaks in a somewhat official and unrealistic way. He doesn’t have the spirit of entrepreneurs in our new era.”

These words immediately resonated with everyone.

Zhou Hongyi, who was not afraid of trouble, didn't even turn his head when he heard this and shouted loudly at Hai: "Yeah, he's not Li Ka-shing, what's he pretending to be a big shot for? He just has a little money. Ding Lei and Chen Tianqiao were once the richest people in China. The richest people in mainland China in the future will definitely be in the Internet circle. He doesn't take the Internet seriously? He'll regret it."

Ding Lei immediately turned his head to look in the other direction.

Don't involve me in this, don't involve me.

I don't want to mess with anyone.

Little Ma couldn't contain his smile, and kept saying "uh-huh," seemingly empathizing with another male protagonist from the later 3Q War.

Then, with a serious expression, he said, "I think so too, but we can't underestimate him. He has too many resources. We need to work together to block Weibo. We must not give him any openings. It's not like we can't take down Weibo, right? Let's do it together."

“This is a must.” Cao Guowei suddenly spoke up: “This social networking business is too powerful. We analyzed it yesterday. Portals don’t have stickiness to begin with, but this website has a long user retention time. If we give it six months, it will steal half of our users. I see that they register through the Qidian Company’s official website, and they may be going to implement an integrated account system. If that’s the case, if their Xinglian also launches a PC client, even QQ’s user retention may be in danger.”

Sina's hard-won leading position in the blogosphere is also in danger.

So he didn't hold back in exaggerating the matter, but he also directed the criticism at Tencent, hoping that Tencent would take the lead in opposing the singularity.

Ma Huateng felt a chill in his heart.

Not only did they realize this, but others did too.

"But they control a lot of mobile phone ports and mobile communications, so I can't compete with them."

"Why bother arguing about mobile ports? What future is there? Let's focus on the PC first," Zhang Chaoyang said nonchalantly.

Ma Huateng's face twitched again. You eunuch aren't worried, but I am.

Cao Guowei wanted to be ahead of the curve, and seeing Ma Huateng's frustrated expression, he realized that the development of mobile devices might be in his blind spot.

Tencent and Singulato are both based in Shenzhen, so Ma Huateng (Pony Ma) may know some things that they don't.

"Pony, how many of those smart terminals has Singulato sold so far? I don't think it's been many, right?"

“At least 500,000.” Ma Huateng said a number that surprised everyone. After hesitating for a moment, he added, “The key is not Qilin. They have a Kunlun Spreadtrum Alliance in Huaqiangbei. Once it’s up and running, Huaqiangbei will have a production capacity of over 100 million a year.”

Ma Huateng didn't really want to say it, fearing that people would be afraid to fight if he did, but if people didn't realize Qidian's strength, they wouldn't know how to counter him.

After he finished speaking, he immediately looked at the expressions of the others.

Sure enough, this caused a huge stir.

"Holy crap." Zhang Chaoyang was stunned.

Ding Lei immediately took a few steps back, indicating that he wanted to leave this industry.

NetEase's main business now is games. They did research on the Kirin phone when Chen Xuebing released it. With the advent of the 3G era, this type of phone should be able to run online games.

However, this model is not yet on the market, and its future game loading capacity and popularity are still unknown.

Therefore, he is quite cautious about opposing the singularity.

Are these kinds of phones now being produced in Huaqiangbei?
Well then, if we cooperate with Mr. Chen, we can give up the portal business altogether. We can just keep a channel for registering NetEase email addresses on the official website.

By the way, Li Xueling and President Chen are quite familiar with each other!
"Huh? Why didn't Li Xueling come today? Where is Li Xueling?" Fatty Ding pondered for a moment, looking around as he spoke, then slipped away as if searching for someone.

With one person missing, Cao Guowei frowned deeply, and Ma Huateng also sighed.

Oh well, NetEase's portal mainly serves game clients anyway, let it be.

Chen Yizhou, who was in charge of Mop and Xiaonei.com, also felt a sense of crisis. After all, Xiaonei.com's Facebook model and Weibo's model were in conflict. He looked around and thought of a very important traffic channel.

"Where's Mr. Li? Can't you find him on Baidu?"

This is the current internet giant, controlling 40% of the access points!
"You went to Japan, right? About the launch of Baidu's Japanese website." Zhang Chaoyang chimed in, then gave Zhou Hongyi a teasing look. "Besides, with President Zhou here, President Li wouldn't be coming."

The two of them even got into a fight in a meeting room back in 03 over the issue of 3721 and Baidu deleting each other's accounts. If you were to talk about this, it would be incredibly interesting.

Zhou Hongyi's face darkened, and he cursed, "MLB."

"How humorous. With you around, would Youku even come? Copying a former employee's idea, how interesting."

Youku Video founder Gu Yongqiang was formerly the COO of Sohu and had a good relationship with Zhang Chaoyang, but this month, Sohu Video also launched.

"Hey, I did right by them. When Lao Gu left, I didn't make him sign a non-compete agreement. Otherwise, would we have Youku?" Zhang Chaoyang chuckled.

Zhou Hongyi left, cursing and swearing.

With one less person, Ma Huateng was having a bit of a headache.

Zhou Hongyi may have a bad temper, but he also has a lot of shady tactics. Back then, the 3721 search engine drove Li Yanhong crazy. Now that he has 360, he might even block users' Weibo URLs.

Zhang Chaoyang is too good at offending people.

At this moment, he actually began to understand why Chen Xuebing had simply left a group of people behind.

The internet world is a damn leaky wall; chatting in groups here will only make things more divided.

Cao Guowei also realized this and planned to leave Zhang Chaoyang behind for the time being.

This person is up to no good, and might even expose everyone's secret plot afterward.

He turned to invite TOM Wang Leilei and Chen Yizhou: "It's a bit windy, Pony, Mr. Wang, Mr. Chen, let's go inside and talk."

After saying that, he asked Zhang Chaoyang in a feigned manner, "Mr. Zhang, shall we go together?"

Zhang Chaoyang realized the invitation wasn't sincere and said sheepishly, "No, no, I'm depressed!"

(End of this chapter)