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Chapter 487 A Key Step in Unifying Social Circles

In the Google Video conference room, Ernst's thoughts were still on the YouTube mode.

"Ernst?"

"Hmm?" Ernst looked up at Hamilton and then realized that everyone's eyes were on him.

"What's wrong?"

Hamilton looked at Ernst's slightly bewildered expression and gave him a slightly amused look. "What are you thinking about? I called you several times, but you didn't respond."

Ernst nodded slightly and said truthfully, "Sorry, I was just thinking about ShareYourWorld.com."

"Because of acquiring it? There's no need to be so preoccupied with it, is there?" Hamilton didn't understand. If you like a website, just acquire it. If the other party doesn't agree, you can develop a related function yourself. It's not a difficult task. Why be so engrossed?

"No, it's not about the acquisition." Ernst shook his head slightly, then sat up straight, his eyes suddenly flashing with excitement. "What do you think? Could we develop a content-sharing feature similar to ShareYourWorld.com, but instead of focusing on sharing videos, concentrate on sharing text and images?"

"Ernst, are you referring to weblog?" asked Herven Weiss, CEO of Google Video.

Upon hearing about sharing text and images, he immediately thought of blogs.

As early as 1993, the U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications launched the What's New Page webpage. Although there was no clear concept of a blog at the time, this webpage already had the prototype of a blog and became an important channel for early Internet users to obtain information and share content.

By the end of 1997, programmer Jørn Bagl had created his own personal website, where he not only regularly published his technical insights and life reflections, but also innovatively added features such as link aggregation and interactive comments. This model defined the basic form of a blog.

From then on, the name "blog" began to spread in the internet industry and gradually became a mainstream way of creating and sharing content.

"From the perspective of content carrier, that's one way to understand it, but the platform I'm talking about is fundamentally different from traditional blogs."

Ernst explained, "Most blogs are text-based, and even if there are pictures, they are only used as supplementary elements to the text. The platform I want to create is one that deeply integrates text and images, giving them equal importance in content expression and forming a completely new form of content presentation."

Modern blogs can be seen, to some extent, as an upgraded version of chat rooms.

Blogs, on the other hand, tend to be more personal, allowing users to publish content on their own platforms. Readers can then interact with creators through the comment section, creating a relatively stable model for content dissemination and interaction.

However, both chat rooms and blogs have certain limitations and cannot meet the diverse content sharing needs of current users.

Ernst picked up his coffee and took a sip. "Blogs are mainly long-form content, with individual articles typically ranging from a few hundred to several thousand words. This long-form content model has a significant drawback: it has a high barrier to entry, requiring creators to have solid writing skills and professional knowledge, which does not meet the needs of users for fragmented information in today's fast-paced lifestyle."

"The platform I want to build is centered around short content, focusing on sharing in one sentence, along with one or more pictures, to make the content more vivid and intuitive."

"These short pieces of content can be users' instant comments on trending events, interesting moments from daily life, fragmented opinions and insights, etc. The overall goal is to be concise, intuitive, and easy to spread, aiming to record beautiful moments in life."

"In terms of dissemination model, blogs are more like personal websites. Their dissemination mainly relies on search engine indexing, user subscriptions, or readers' active visits. Moreover, the interaction is mostly in-depth exchanges in the comment section, and the frequency of interaction between users is relatively low. The traffic is also relatively stable, making it more suitable for creators to cultivate long-term fans and form a personal brand base, but it is difficult to achieve rapid content proliferation and large-scale dissemination."

"But my idea is to create a social square where all users can equally display their content, and the spread will no longer rely on users' active search and access, but on mechanisms such as topic guidance and popular recommendations."

"This model is fast-paced and has a strong ability to spread rapidly, making it more suitable for chasing hot topics and expanding the exposure of content, allowing high-quality content to spread quickly in the public sphere and form a powerful influence on public opinion."

"Simply put, the core value of this platform is to lower the threshold for content creation and dissemination, allowing everyone to become a content creator, using brief words and vivid pictures to record their beautiful lives, forming a vibrant social ecosystem."

The influence of X, formerly Twitter, is undeniable. As one of the world's most influential social platforms, it covers multiple fields, including politics, media, and business, across three dimensions: global public opinion agenda, instant information dissemination, and cross-sectoral connections.

Its influence is much greater than that of platforms like YouTube; otherwise, Elephant wouldn't have been able to compete against the entire Donkey media alliance with just Elephant.

There are reasons why world leaders and international organizations such as the United Nations and the WTO all choose X as their preferred platform to voice their opinions.

A single tweet can reach tens of millions of followers and even influence diplomatic statements and policy trends, something even TK cannot do.

Because of the way TK and YouTube operate and their development models, these websites are destined to be more entertainment-oriented.

And X, no matter how much it tries to operate in an entertainment-oriented manner, will always pay more attention to newsworthiness.

News on YouTube and TK may be fake, but trending topics, such as Weibo's hot searches, are more accurate.

Users may not necessarily believe the content on YouTube and TK, but they generally believe the topics trending on social media.

Beyond its political influence, X is also crucial in the entertainment and business spheres.

Owning such a powerful social platform is tantamount to becoming one of the most media tycoons in America, capable of significantly influencing public perception and behavior, and even shaping the direction of industry development.

"So you want to set up another subsidiary within Google, operate it independently, and develop the website you mentioned?" Hamilton asked.

"No." Ernst shook his head. "I want to integrate it into Google Messenger, and it will primarily focus on social networking among acquaintances."

None of the people in the conference room understood, and they looked confused. Hamilton, even more puzzled, asked, "Social networking among acquaintances? Are you mistaken?"

"If the focus is on building social connections among acquaintances, relying primarily on users' contacts in their address books, how can it possibly achieve the kind of powerful global influence and rapid dissemination of trending content that you mentioned earlier?"

Hamilton believes that the scope of social networking among acquaintances is too narrow. Users' social relationships are limited to people they know, and the spread of content can only take place within their circle of acquaintances. It is impossible to achieve large-scale viral spread, which is far from the social square concept that Ernst previously described.

"Because I never intended to get rich overnight." Ernst thought for a moment and decided to focus on developing the Moments feature first.

What is social interaction nowadays?

Whether it's blogs or other social media platforms, the content format is mainly long articles, and users update content very infrequently.

Moreover, the dissemination model is mostly one-way, based on acquaintances, which is a weak interest recommendation, making it difficult for users to discover other content that interests them.

And what about Weibo?

The content is short and frequent, and it is no longer a one-way communication, but will form a public square, which will spread through forwarding and hot topic aggregation.

Most importantly, it is extremely open, fostering a thriving third-party ecosystem.

This leads to a situation where it must be driven by large models, essentially moving towards pseudo-AI. It requires complex algorithmic models to analyze and process user behavior and content data in order to achieve accurate recommendations and effective content distribution.

Without a robust AI ecosystem, it's impossible to deeply analyze content and user needs, let alone upgrade search technology, integrate massive amounts of platform content to build knowledge graphs, and intelligently push content to hundreds of millions of users.

It can be said that it has broken the technological logic of all current social media, and the requirements for technological research and development are too high.

There are too many technical challenges to overcome here; even just the storage problem is not easy to solve.

A large social media platform generates a massive amount of text, images, and other data every day. Traditional storage methods simply cannot meet the demand. Only when cloud computing and large data center technologies mature can the platform be provided with sufficient storage capacity and efficient data processing capabilities to fully demonstrate its power.

The strategy is to first build a user base on WeChat Moments, and then, once the technical challenges of Weibo have been fully resolved, directly convert users and use WeChat Moments to drive Weibo growth.

Then, once the Weibo platform can withstand the massive influx of content and operate perfectly, it can leverage its accumulated user base, technological strength, and brand influence to further create websites similar to YouTube and Instagram that have more singular functions and focus on a specific area.

Seeing that everyone was waiting for his answer, Ernst smiled slightly and changed the subject, "We'll talk about this later. Let's have a meeting first and discuss the Google Video issue."