"What the hell, this "Bunny Goodie" is just a rip-off!"
At Toutiao’s emergency high-level meeting, some executives couldn’t help but use foul language.
"We can't let her go so easily, just block her account!"
Some other executives objected, "The account cannot be blocked. Wouldn't it make us feel guilty if we did so?"
"Then how can we let her go gently? This bitch has definitely taken advantage of her."
"We definitely can't let her go so easily. Why don't we sue her directly for defamation?"
"I think something is wrong. If we file a lawsuit, the matter will definitely escalate. And if she stands behind her and shakes her head, she won't be afraid of filing a lawsuit with us.
I think Dou Vision wants us to file a lawsuit, and the bigger the issue, the better.”
…
The senior executives were busy discussing, and Zhang Ming was also very tired.
In order to catch up with the pace of TikTok, Toutiao has tried every means possible.
From poaching anchors, snatching m-organizations, to moving videos, they have used all kinds of tricks, but they can't close the gap with Dikvision.
While Toutiao Video is still pursuing its goal of breaking through 20 million daily active users, DouShi’s daily active users are already approaching the 1 billion mark.
A gap of 10 times makes people lose their fighting spirit.
And as this gap widens, the Matthew Effect is almost taking shape.
The number of users of DouShi is growing faster and faster because the content on it is more and more sophisticated.
Toutiao Video has fallen into a growth bottleneck. Although the number of users is also increasing, they are all purchased with money.
What troubles him most is that user activity is declining.
Zhang Ming thought about it but couldn't figure out where the parallax was.
In terms of technology, Toutiao’s content distribution and recommendation mechanism is the best among its peers.
In terms of investment, after receiving actual financing of US$1 billion, Toutiao quickly allocated US$200 million to Toutiao Video.
With this money, Toutiao Video spent money to grab Internet celebrities and invest in advertising. The effect was still there, but it was not as good as Zhang Ming expected.
He even said that it was far from what he expected.
Things that don't work even if you spend money on them will be difficult to solve.
Zhang Ming thought about it and felt that he still missed the short video trend.
Zhang Yida is a master of "blitzkrieg", which can be seen from the development trajectory of Huimin Travel.
Compared with DouShi, Toutiao Video was launched a year later, so the opportunity was lost.
We can only place our hope on the opponent's own mistakes, but Dioshu did not make any mistakes, and his rise was as fast as riding a rocket.
Faced with this situation, he was helpless.
"How about going overseas to make short videos? I heard that Musical.ly is developing very well in Europe and the United States, and it is also becoming popular in South Korea.
We can enter blank markets that Musical.ly does not cover, such as Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan, Southeast Asia, India, Central Asia, West Asia, Africa...
After establishing a foothold in these markets, we will then enter Europe and America."
Zhang Ming put forward his idea, then looked at the senior executives, looking forward to their opinions.
“These markets are indeed blank markets that Musical.ly has not yet covered, but this is only temporary.
Moreover, compared with Europe and the United States, most of these areas are economically backward.
Even if we can capture a part of the market, if we can’t break into Europe and the United States, it may be difficult to make a profit.”
An executive raised objections and later said: “I think we should focus our business on news distribution.
Domestically, Toutiao is already the dominant player in the segment.
But overseas, we don’t have many layouts.
The overseas market is vast, equivalent to several Chinese markets. This virgin land is still waiting for us to explore.
As long as we copy the model in China to these regions, it is very possible to create the miracle that happened in China again."
Zhang Ming nodded, "At present, the most important business of the group is indeed the news aggregation platform. We should also focus more on Toutiao.
But you can’t give up on short videos!
Think about it, if we master the two tracks of graphics and short videos, there is so much we can do.
Moreover, short videos are a black hole of time, and it is easy for users to become addicted to them.
Domestic Internet dividends are gradually drying up, and what will be competed for in the future is the existing market.
It’s not a competition to see who gets more new users, but which product users use longer...”
Zhang Ming talked a lot and finally convinced other executives.
Toutiao decided to maintain the status quo of domestic Toutiao video and shift more funds and manpower to overseas markets.
As for the removal of the video, Toutiao pretended to be deaf and dumb.
It cannot be called pretending to be deaf and mute, and published a clarifying article.
Toutiao said that it would strengthen the review mechanism in the future, and called on users to focus on originality and respect intellectual property rights.
Anyway, the Toutiao incident was a mess. Anyone with a discerning eye can see that there must be someone behind the move of the video, and there must be some connivance behind it.
TikTok did not pursue it, and after gaining the upper hand in public opinion, it died down.
Anyway, after such a round of turmoil, it will be even more difficult for Toutiao Video to catch up with TikTok.
For example, DouShi is the .asxs.Chinese website, and Toutiao is a pirated website such as Biquge and Dingdian Novel.
Moreover, this genuine version is free and has more and richer content. Everyone must read the genuine version.
…
After Ruixin Group acquired Weizhong Tax Bank, it took a long time to digest it.
Now, they have set their sights on a new target, corporate inquiry websites.
“The enterprise search website began to explode in 2014, and at its peak there were more than 40 companies competing for it.
However, there are currently three companies with relatively good development momentum: QiChacha, Tianyancha, and Qixinbao.
Qichacha completed a Series A financing of RMB 50 million in September last year, with a valuation of around RMB 500 million;
Tianyancha received an investment of 25 million yuan in April last year, and was valued at 200 million yuan at the time;
Qixinbao was launched in March 2015, and was sold to Hehe Information, the parent company of Business Card Almighty King, for 30 million yuan in September of that year..."
Fang Yuhan introduced the situation of the three companies to Zhang Yida one by one.
Zhang Yida nodded, "Let's focus on the first two. The latter one probably won't be sold, and its market share is lower than the first two."
Fang Yuhan said hello, and then began to introduce: "Qichacha is currently the number one in the market, but Tianyancha is growing very fast and has a stronger technical background.
The founder, Liu Chao, once served as the chief scientist of Sogou. He started the business the year before last and formed a small team of four people, and within one year it reached a valuation of 200 million."
Zhang Yida was also stunned and said in surprise: "Four people built a company with a valuation of 200 million?"
"Yes, it is also a legend in the industry."
Fang Yuhan chuckled, "Actually, the technical barriers to this kind of corporate query website are not high. A few IT technicians can just mess around and get a crawler software to capture corporate public data."
Data source channels: National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System, China Judgment Document Network, China Enforcement Information Disclosure Network, State Intellectual Property Office, Trademark Office, and Copyright Office.
If we were to build the platform ourselves, it would probably take less than half a month to complete.
But to promote your own brand, you still need a lot of advertising investment.
In addition, companies such as Tianyancha were established a few years ago and have already taken the lead.
It is not an easy task for us to snatch food from the tiger's mouth.
To be on the safe side, acquisition is the best option.”
"Well, Qi Cha Cha or Tian Yan Cha, which one do you like more?"
Fang Yuhan smiled and said: "It must be Tianyancha. It will launch the product later, but it will soon catch up with the senior company Chacha.
It is expected that within this year, the lead will be completed. Moreover, Tianyancha is an authentic Beijing University series.
CEO Liu Chao and COO Liang both graduated from the Computer Science Department of Peking University, and speaking of which, Mr. Zhang, you are still an alumnus."
"Hey, there are still two senior brothers! Then we should acquire them."
Zhang Yida's sentence was quite nonsensical, and Fang Yuhan couldn't accept it.
However, she also feels that Tianyancha is more suitable because it is cheaper and has greater growth potential.
…
Fang Yuhan, CEO of Ruixin Group, personally called Liu Chao, CEO of Tianyancha, and invited the latter to meet.
Both of them are familiar with Zhang Yida. He is a well-known alumnus who has not graduated. How could he not know him?
However, our acquaintance was limited to Zhang Yida's face, and this was the first time we had ever interacted with him.
A few people chatted for a while, and Liu Chao pondered for a moment, then said: "Junior brother Zhang, why did you come to see us?"
Liang Shuang, who was sitting next to him, also looked at Zhang Yida. They both didn't believe that Zhang Yida came to them just to make friends.
Most of it is related to Tianyancha, either investment... or mergers and acquisitions.
"Ruixin Group's ambition is to be China's "Experian" and "Deng & Bradstreet". To achieve this goal, we need more partners to provide advice, so I sincerely invite my two senior brothers to join us."
Zhang Yida spoke very elegantly, but the two of them still understood him. He was trying to contain himself.
"Junior Brother Zhang, to be honest, Tianyancha is already in contact with Series A investors, and the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Fund under the Ministry of Finance has expressed its intention to invest in us.
The intended investment amount is 130 million yuan, and the post-investment valuation is 433 million yuan.”
Zhang Yida began to think quickly after hearing what Liu Chao said.
After raising this round of capital, Tianyanchake has become half a national team, with the direct investment fund under the Ministry of Finance accounting for 30% of the shares.
With this background, if you don’t go sideways in China, your chances of success in starting a business will be greatly increased.
You have to add some chips, otherwise you won't be able to fool people.
"Oh, that's it!"
Zhang Yida smiled and said: "This is a good thing. I predict that Tianyancha will soon stand out from the crowd of enterprise inquiry websites."
"In fact, Tianyancha has not been in a hurry to start commercialization in the past few years. We have been working hard to practice our internal skills.
We have invested most of the funds we raised in research and development, developing a graph database with independent intellectual property rights, realizing multi-point aggregation of relationships between business entities, and presenting it to users in a visual way.
After the research and development results come out, C-side users will naturally know whose query software to use to query corporate relationships more clearly..."
Liu Chao has high academic attainments. He was the top scorer in science in the college entrance examination in Henan Province in 1999. He received a doctorate in computer science from the University of Illinois in the United States. He once worked at Microsoft Research in the United States and was in charge of the data intelligence team.
He has published 3 English monographs, 5 articles, and more than 30 international first-class academic conference articles, with a total of 1,300+ independent citations.
At this time, when talking about technology, he talked endlessly. Zhang Yida couldn't understand most of them, so he could only smile and nod.