Chapter 1494 1496 [First-mover advantage]

   Entering the year of 2007, Kylin Films is on full fire as usual.

  Ning Hao, who filmed "Crazy Stone" last year, and the supporting actor Huang Bo, were recruited by Xiang Nan, and then filmed "Crazy Racing" with the same theme.

After the release of "Crazy Racing" during the Spring Festival, it has won a total of 120 million at the box office. Its performance has been catching up with well-known directors such as Feng Xiaogang and Zhang Yimou. Huang Bo has become the new darling of the film industry.

  At the same time, "Love Call Transfer" directed by Ouyang Fenqiang and starring Xu Zheng, Che Yun, Huang Shengyi, Yu Na, etc. was also stiff on Valentine's Day.

   This movie, which cost less than 10 million yuan, actually sold well at the box office after it was released. The total box office was 42 million RMB, making Xu Zheng a rising star.

  Feng Xiaogang also adapted and filmed the war film "Assembly Number" based on the novel "The Lawsuit" by the well-known writer Yang Jinyuan.

  The production cost of this movie was as high as 80 million RMB, making it the most expensive movie ever made by Feng Xiaogang. The previous "A World Without Thieves" cost less than 30 million yuan.

  After the launch of "Assembly", it was very popular in the market, and finally won a box office of 260 million. It is Feng Xiaogang's best-selling work, and even surpassed the box office performance of "Hero" directed by Zhang Yimou in the Mainland. However, it still can't match its international box office.

  …

   In terms of TV dramas, Kylin Films also has a lot of popular dramas.

"Latent" directed by Mao Weining, "My Leader, My Group" directed by Kang Honglei, "The Indelible Number" directed by Gao Xixi, "Youth with Nowhere to Rest" directed by Zhao Baogang, "Brothers' Warmth" directed by Zhang Guoli "Brother" and so on are very popular.

In addition, Kirin Films has also recruited a group of new directors, such as Ding Hei who has filmed the "The Great Qin Empire" series, and Liu Jiang who has filmed "A Beautiful Era of Daughter-in-law", "Full House" and "Before Dawn". Liu Jin of "White Deer Plain", "Informant", "Ideal City" and so on.

  Because video websites have been launched one after another, and they are at the cusp of development. The continuous influx of capital has made the video sites rich and powerful, and they are willing to spend money to buy episodes, which makes episodes and movies have a bigger market.

  Before it could only be sold to TV stations, but now it can be sold to video websites, and the prices are also good. With the expansion of the market, Kylin Films naturally expanded its production, so it recruited troops.

   Moreover, Xiang Nan also knows that the price of buying dramas on video sites is increasing year by year. Now an episode of TV series is only tens of thousands. Wait another ten years, and an episode of TV series will already exceed tens of millions.

  So besides selling his own dramas to video sites, Xiang Nan also spends money to buy the copyrights of dramas from other private film and television companies. For those small-scale film and television companies, it is better to sell the video copyright to the video website on a yearly basis, and sell it to Kylin Films to earn enough money at once.

  As a result, the number of dramas in Kylin's business film library has increased dramatically. From the beginning, there were only a hundred or so titles, and it has rapidly expanded to as many as a thousand, which also makes its bargaining power with video sites rise rapidly.

  …

   In 2007, Cheng Ji's Weibo continued to develop rapidly.

  Although there were many more competitors during the period, such as Fanfou, Renren, Tencent Taotao, etc., Weibo already had a first-mover advantage.

  Netizens’ social relationships have already been established, so it’s really inconvenient to relocate. In addition, Weibo has continued to adapt to needs and increase functions over the past year.

For example, at the beginning of 2007, Weibo added a private message function; in the middle of 2007, Weibo added a group function, which is similar to QQ groups; at the end of 2007, Weibo added a short video function...Constant progress, constant changes, Constantly bring freshness to users.

   Therefore, although Fanfou, Renren, and Tencent Taotao provide good services, they have never competed with Weibo.

   Weibo has grown by leaps and bounds in the new year. By the middle of 2007, there were more than 50 million registered users of Weibo, accounting for about one-third of the total number of Internet users in China. Anyone can see that the rise of Weibo is already unstoppable.

   Therefore, a large number of venture capital companies flocked to Weibo, hoping to invest in Weibo.

  However, Cheng Ji is very optimistic about the development of Weibo, thinking that it is likely to become an Internet giant in the future, so he is not in a hurry to accept external investment. Anyway, she is not short of money.

   Not to mention that he himself has 50 million funds, which is enough to burn for a while. Xiang Nan alone has tens of billions of funds for her to burn.

   And the more arrogant she is, the higher the price those venture capitalists offer.

  …

   Entering 2008, Weibo has the honor to become an Internet content service provider for the Olympic Games. On Weibo, you can see the game preview, athlete information, game schedule, competition results of various countries, and so on.

  Benefiting from this, the number of registered users of Weibo once again exploded, directly breaking through 100 million users, accounting for nearly half of Internet users, and has initially grown.

   Therefore, Cheng Ji also began to prepare for commercialization. In addition to the traditional advertising and charging membership fees, Cheng Ji is also preparing to launch the online mall function, allowing users to post commodity transactions, similar to eBay.

  In the early stage, this function was also free, and it will be commissioned after it becomes bigger.

  In order to promote the function of the mall, Cheng Ji, under Xiang Nan's suggestion, also introduced the function of inviting friends to cut a knife. For a product, the more users who buy it together, the cheaper the price, similar to Pinduoduo.

   This transaction method instantly exploded on the Internet, not only making the Weibo mall business a hit, but also the number of Weibo registrations soaring rapidly. In the first year of the mall's opening, the transaction volume has reached 3 billion yuan, which made Tencent a little jealous.

   After all, Paipai has been online for three years, and it is still half dead.

   The commercialization of Weibo Mall was initially successful. After people found that Weibo was profitable, more users became available. However, after the commercialization of Weibo, a series of problems have also begun to be exposed.

  For example, there are too many advertisements on Weibo, which annoy users;

  For this reason, Cheng Ji also made a lot of changes.

Such as improving the algorithm of advertising delivery to make advertisements more suitable for user needs; small merchants pay deposits to eliminate fake and substandard products, and cooperate with major brands to open brand stores certified by Weibo; adopt mechanical and manual double review strategies , filter inappropriate content, and more.

  After these improvements, although Weibo has not yet evolved to perfection, it has made great progress compared to before.

  After making so many improvements, the number of Weibo users has not decreased but increased, which also makes its business valuation higher and higher. By the end of 2008, Cheng Ji was planning to list it.

  (end of this chapter)