Chapter 798
"Lao Zuo, is your wife okay?"
"Thank you for your concern, cousin. I have already gone to Union Hospital to find a great chief physician, and the condition is finally under control."
Zuo Xingping, the driver who had only been in the company for half a year, expressed his gratitude to Lu Yiming. He was a generation older than Lu Yiming, but according to seniority he had to call Lu Yiming his cousin. He had just been discharged from the army the previous year and joined the company relatively late, but in terms of security level, he was definitely the most outstanding and best among all the bodyguards.
The key is that he is related to Lu Yiming, a real "relative by marriage", so naturally he has to be taken care of.
Now that Lu Yiming's family is wealthy and his business is big, Zhao Tiezhu has also been sent out to work. He has set up a security company and asked him to be the general manager. He has transformed from a driver to a company "boss".
Now when his relatives in the countryside see him, they don’t dare to call him Tiezhu as they used to, but have to respectfully address him as “Mr. Zhao”.
Therefore, Lu Yiming's full-time driver and bodyguard was replaced by Zuo Xingping.
But when this person is unlucky, even drinking water will get stuck in his teeth. Zuo Xingping's work has just stabilized, and he wants to bring his wife who is still in the countryside to the big city to settle down and live a better life. However, during the physical examination, it was found that she was seriously ill, so Zuo Xingping had to take leave and send his wife to Beijing for treatment.
Lu Yiming was naturally generous to the people around him. He directly covered the medical expenses. It was only a few hundred thousand yuan, it was not something he could not afford. It was enough for him to buy the loyalty of his subordinates.
Back in Baiyun, as soon as he got off the plane, the heat wave hit him and made him sweat all over. "What a damn weather! It's almost November and it's still so hot."
After a while, his shirt was almost soaked.
Outside the airport, the person who drove to pick us up was Qi Rong. The guy was wearing a black suit and sunglasses and was waiting at the exit. He had a cold face and looked like he wanted to keep strangers away.
It was not until he saw Lu Yiming and Shi Qingxue approaching from a distance that he stepped forward and put on a different expression: "Hello, boss, hello, boss lady."
"What's your look? Black police?"
"Hehe, I saw bodyguards in movies act like this, so I want to try it too."
Qi Rong touched the back of his head, then rushed to help Lu Yiming and Shi Qingxue carry their luggage. Although he was still a bodyguard in these years, his salary was enough to beat many self-employed bosses, so he was loyal to Lu Yiming.
Lu Yiming had just gotten into the car and hadn't even sat down when he received a call from Li Yiwen.
"Hello, cousin?"
"Have you arrived yet?"
"I just got off the plane. What's the matter?"
"Well, there is something I want to talk to you about. Let's get together later."
"Okay, let's have dinner together tonight."
In the evening, with the air conditioner on in the study, Lu Yiming poured a cup of tea for Li Yiwen, and then asked, "What happened ?"
"You should have heard about the blog, right?"
"Yeah." Lu Yiming nodded, indicating that he understood.
Blog is a transliteration word. Its English name is Blogger, which is a portmanteau of Web Log. If it is really translated, it should be called an online diary, which is a part of the social media network.
In Lu Yiming's opinion, a blog can be regarded as a "personal newspaper" where you can record current events, express your opinions, or simply brag.
In fact, blogs entered China quite early. People had been using them since around 2000. However, there were not many Internet users at that time, and there were no explosive points, so blogs were relatively unknown and did not make any waves in the early stages of the Internet.
But now that we have entered the Internet 2.0 era, the situation is different.
Especially the appearance of Mu Zimei, her bold and unrestrained writing style and her extremely explicit description of the relationship between men and women are really eye-catching.
As for the Internet, where there is attention there is traffic, and where there is traffic there is profit.
So quickly, blogging took off and became a hot .
It just so happened that this was the time when the Internet winter was over and foreign capital forces returned as kings. The entire Xia country's capital market suddenly became lively.
Several major portals have expressed their intention to promote their blog projects, and various venture capitalists have heard the news and are waving their money to get in.
Li Yiwen also saw this trend, and seeing that Lu Yiming had not responded, he came to him impatiently to discuss: "I heard that Qianxiang Interactive has teamed up with MSN, raised tens of millions of dollars, and plans to enter the blog field. This is to break QQ's social monopoly."
“Oh, they are very brave.”
Lu Yiming's reaction was rather cold. After all, Qianxiang Interactive and MSN were just a bunch of scumbags now. Looking at them for even a second longer would be considered a loss.
"Are you really not worried at all?"
In Li Yiwen's opinion, Qianxiang Interactive is nothing. Its founder Chen Yizhou was just the vice president of Sohu before. Although his resume looks impressive, he does not pose any threat to QQ.
But MSN is different. Although it is being beaten to the ground by QQ now, it is still alive and well. As long as it is not completely dead, it still has a chance to make a comeback.
Investing in blogs is the first step for MSN to sound the clarion call for a counterattack in the social field.
In this regard, Lu Yiming just wanted to wish them good luck.
blog?
This is obviously a sinkhole, only a fool would jump into it.
Li Yiwen was a little confused about Lu Yiming's calmness: "Why do you seem not to be in a hurry at all? Aren't you afraid that if your MSN blog becomes popular, it will attract all QQ users to it?"
Lu Yiming laughed and said, "Blogging has no future. Whoever wants to do it can do it. I definitely won't do it."
"Why do you say that? Isn't she very popular now? Look at Mu Zimei, her "Love Letter" is probably known to people all over the country."
"What's the use of fire? At most, it's just a gust of wind, a weird wind at that. It's over after it blows. Let me tell you, blogs are too petty bourgeois and difficult to promote. In our country, there won't be many middle-class people in the true sense in the next 20 years, so if the Internet wants to make money, it has to be down-to-earth."
Lu Yiming came from the future, so of course he knew about blogs. They had caused many Internet companies to waste a lot of money, only to end up in a mess, and were overtaken by Weibo, which was smaller in size but had a wider audience.
To put it bluntly, the economic base determines the superstructure.
In China today, those who can afford to buy computers are basically "dual-income families" with some spare money, who can barely be considered middle class and have a high level of education. In addition, the computer usage environment determines that users are more likely to sit down and read long articles, so blogs have become popular.
Especially now that the Internet has entered the 2.0 era, people could only passively accept what the media said.
After the emergence of blogs, you can say whatever you want to say and then show it to everyone. You have changed from passively accepting opinions and information to actively outputting opinions and information.
This naturally attracted many people who previously had no way to express themselves to flock to join this new era of online feast.
But in the final analysis, this is still a minority.
Why?
Because most of the netizens who blog are well-educated intellectuals, and most of the netizens who go to Internet cafes are basically there for games and entertainment, and at most they occasionally pay attention to the hot topics on the blogs.
They may be migrant workers, poor students, or more likely left-behind children in urban and rural fringe areas. These talents will be the main body of the future Internet, and they are the real general public.
And for them, blogging is not a necessity.
It’s very simple, there are just too many words so I’m too lazy to read it.
Lu Yiming said to Li Yiwen: "Blogs have no future. They are only popular now, but once the mobile Internet era comes, they will be out of business immediately. Do you believe it?"
"The era of mobile Internet?"
Li Yiwen was obviously aroused by Lu Yiming's words.
Lu Yiming did not hide it from him, but told him about his trip to Zhonghai: "Multi-touch technology has been completed. It is estimated that in a year or so, our first generation of smart phones will be truly launched. By then, it will be the era of mobile Internet. Everyone will have a smart phone. Smart phones will have all the functions that computers have. By then, the user base will increase dramatically again."
Li Yiwen had heard of this plan many times, but when Lu Yiming mentioned it, he couldn't help but feel excited: "You've been talking about the smartphone for so many years, and it's finally going to be made? I remember that we didn't have any Ji Chu at all in this regard, right?"
Lu Yiming was also deeply touched by this: "That's right. We started from scratch, struggled for so many years, and spent billions of dollars. Finally, we can see a little hope."
Since the beginning of the transformation to mobile phone manufacturing, Lu Yiming has put a lot of effort into figuring out the production license, screen, touch screen, battery, baseband, chip, camera and other technologies.
Each piece of hardware is a hurdle. Even if you know the answer in advance, the problem-solving process cannot be skipped.
However, Xiaguo's technology in this area was very backward, so Lu Yiming could only use money to overcome one technical difficulty after another that made him scalp numb.
In order to avoid being strangled by others in the chip market, the company even went to great lengths to develop the semiconductor industry and find people to take the lead in developing a new generation of lithography machines.
All of this is just for one goal - to establish its dominant position in the mobile Internet era!
Lu Yiming and Li Yiwen chatted for a long time and finally decided to give up the blog project, which seemed attractive but was actually a useless project. However, Lu Yiming also told Li Yiwen that this matter should not be publicized and it would be better to wait for other colleagues to fall into the trap.
Li Yiwen didn't know whether to laugh or cry: "You, you still have such a bad taste. You just think about how to laugh at others all day long, right? You have no martial ethics."
"There is no father-son relationship in business wars, so what kind of martial ethics can we talk about? Believe it or not, if I get unlucky someday, these people will come over and add insult to injury, and they would like to trample on my head a thousand times."
"Okay, I can't argue with you anyway."
A few days later, Baiyun Airport.
Shi Qingxue was wearing a sky blue floral dress, revealing her white and delicate calves, and a sun hat. She stood beside Lu Yiming and kept looking around.
Not long after, a tall, professional woman appeared in her sight.
Below the slender waist is a charming curve tightly wrapped in the hip skirt. This aunt who I haven't seen for a long time has become more feminine.
"Aunt."
"Xiaoxue?"
The two quickly hugged each other, their mature charm and youthful beauty intertwined into an intoxicating picture.
"Our Xiaoxue is getting prettier and prettier. Look at her face, it's so tender that I want to kiss it."
"Aunt, what skin care products do you use? You look a lot younger than before."
"Such a sweet mouth."
Su Yunwei talked to Shi Qingxue for a while before looking at Lu Yiming.
Although Lu Yiming is her junior, when it comes to achievements, she can only look up to him and admit defeat.
On the way back, Su Yunwei talked about the situation in America: "Investment institutions have begun to be interested in Internet companies again, especially a company called Facebook, which has been very popular recently."
At this point, Su Yunwei couldn't help but look at Lu Yiming again. She first looked at him for a few times, then sighed: "I don't know if you are lucky or have a sharp eye. You can actually encounter a quasi-unicorn-level project just by drinking a cup of coffee."
Lu Yiming smiled and said modestly: "I'm just lucky."
Su Yunwei was quite unconvinced after hearing this: "Why don't I have the same luck as you? Do you know that Facebook's current valuation is already $100 million?"
Not long ago, venture capital firm Accel Partners invested $12.7 million, and Facebook's valuation officially exceeded $100 million, becoming a quasi-unicorn-level high-quality project.
Even in the eyes of many people, this is definitely not the pinnacle of Facebook.
There are nearly 20 million college students in the United States. These people are all potential user groups of Facebook. They are young and outspoken with bright prospects. In a few years, they will become the main consumer force in the market.
To put it bluntly, if Facebook controls this group of users, it is like owning a gold mountain!
Therefore, more and more investment institutions want to get on board now, and they are very jealous of Lu Yiming, the first person to try it out.
Even Su Yunwei was a little jealous of Lu Yiming.
After chatting for a few sentences, Su Yunwei brought up another matter: "Lu Yiming, I think you should be careful. Facebook is very popular in America, and I'm afraid there will be imitators in China soon."
Lu Yiming was not surprised by this. In the early days of the domestic Internet, almost every single one was a plagiarist.
QQ copied ICQ, Taobao copied eBay, the three major portals copied Yahoo, and even Dong Ge who came later directly opened the Sharingan and copied Amazon's model.
There's nothing I can do. I'm used to following the lead of the Eagle Sauce. I'm almost rubbing its skin off.
Lu Yiming asked Su Yunwei: "Did you hear any rumors?"
Su Yun nodded slightly: "Some people have already started working on this, and many venture capitalists are also very interested in this project. By then, your QQ will probably face a strong competitor in China."
In social networking, it has always been a winner-takes-all game, there is no such thing as everyone dividing the river and ruling it separately.
Facebook has already proven to be a successful model in the United States, and some people in China will inevitably follow suit.
In fact, Lu Yiming was not surprised by this.
In the previous life, in the fall of 2005, Wang Xing, who had received a master's degree in computer engineering from the University of Delaware, immediately set his sights on the university campus SNS niche. After studying the Facebook model, he combined his previous experience and lessons in the SNS field and quickly developed the campus network.
When Xiaonei.com was first released, it took only three months to attract 30,000 users, which was a rapid growth.
When the number of users of Xiaonei.com exploded in 2006, Wang Xing had no money to add servers and bandwidth, so he was forced to sell Xiaonei.com to Chen Yizhou, CEO of Qianxiang Interactive Group. Chen Yizhou raised $430 million from SoftBank and changed Xiaonei.com to Renren.com, which went public in 2011.
Although Renren ultimately failed to survive the test of time and shake the social hegemony of QQ and WeChat, Chen Yizhou himself made a lot of money.
Lu Yiming, who had not thought of this at first, suddenly had an idea.
Seeing Lu Yiming lost in thought, Su Yunwei couldn't help but ask, "What are you going to do?"
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "Originally, I didn't plan to replicate Facebook's model in China. After all, the national conditions of the two countries are different. But after you reminded me, I suddenly feel that Facebook's model is not completely useless in Xia Country."
Facebook mainly attracts users through photo sharing, relying on the social interpersonal network of universities to attract young user groups and then retain them.
In this regard, American college students are more enthusiastic and keen to express themselves.
Of course, the most important thing is that American college students are rich and can afford digital cameras, which cost several thousand yuan. How many college students in China can afford them?
If you can’t even take a photo, how can you share it?
So whether it was Xiaonei or the later Renren, after being popular for a while, they soon disappeared and were submerged in the great wave of the times.
On the contrary, with the further development of the economy, especially the popularization of smart phones and the improvement of camera pixels, the function of taking photos and sharing them has truly entered thousands of households.
Looking at the WeChat Moments later, you can see that Xiaguo’s users are actually very unrestrained and keen to express themselves.
The reason why he was reserved and introverted before was mainly because he was poor.
Knowing this result, Lu Yiming did not plan to replicate Facebook. After all, this project is not profitable.
But the news that Su Yunwei brought back gave Lu Yiming a new inspiration.
The Facebook model is still feasible, but if it is introduced into China, it needs to be adjusted in a targeted manner. And the one that best fits this project is MM.
When Lu Yiming first developed MM, it was to compete with WeChat and to prepare for the mobile Internet era.
Although smartphones haven't been made yet, MM can first develop among the college students and accumulate a user base. Once smartphones are made, she can connect seamlessly and instantly gain a huge user base. It's perfect.
