Rebirth declares war on the honest

Chapter 402 396. Two Swords Combined
After Liu Xinhua left, the International Business Department fell apart.

The product and operation were taken over by the corresponding person in charge of Dou Le at that time, and the algorithm and technology were reported back to their respective middle stations.

Later, Zhou Jingjin took over the position and fully accepted overseas business.

Dou Le's first international business department came to an end, and the independent kingdom was declared disbanded.

No one has ever seen sullen color climb up Gu Yun's face. He is like an emotional insulator at work.

But those present could clearly hear what he said.

"I don't feel angry now. The biggest negative emotion I have towards a person is disappointment."

"If you pay enough attention to competing products, you should also notice a company called Musical.ly."

After a silence at the meeting, Gu Yun spoke again, pointing out the direction for the whole team.

Musical.ly, in its previous life, provided a second product body and massive content fuel for a certain sound. After merging with the algorithm, it exploded with tenacious vitality.

However, on the eve of the smooth meeting between the two companies, both companies fell into a period of struggle.

At this moment, Gu Yun does not need to wait for Musical.ly to develop slowly, he intends to acquire it directly.

Musical.ly, a short music video product, was born in Shanghai.

The two founders are like the opposite of Su Hua: emotional, fluent in English, and full of artistic flavor.

Yang Luyu has curly hair, loves cycling, and wears a stud in one ear, while Zhu Jun has long gray hair, like a Taoist priest.

The two are like artists in the Internet industry, with sharp product insights, but lack of algorithms and advanced technology research and development capabilities.

The birth story of Musical.ly was a game of misfire.

It's hard to imagine that these two "artists" worked together at Epro Software, an insurance enterprise service company.

This kind of track used to be at the bottom of the chain of contempt in the Internet circle.

Of course, standing at the starting point, they don't have a single idea of ​​entertainment in their minds.What they prepare for starting a business is education.

The founder and actual controller of the company is Yang Luyu.

He believes that the short video track has opportunities, and the way out is education.

At that time, Jun Zhu went to the United States and moved to the enterprise service provider SAP to study the future form of education.

Once when he went back to Shanghai to visit relatives, Yang Luyu lobbied him.

Not long after, Zhu Jun joined as a co-founder, and the two began to explore a video mutual teaching and mutual learning community called "Zhi Liao".

However, the threshold for educational video production is too high. In addition, there is already a giant company in the education field, Paradise Technology. The two stumbled, and half of the financing was burned.

Paradise Group's moat in the field of education is too high and too wide, and its products are more cutting-edge and more popular.

They were unable to break through, and due to the situation, they could only transform in other directions.

After a failed entrepreneurship, they have accumulated a certain understanding of what is an excellent community product at this time, believing that "an excellent community is a collection of life attitudes" and "a tool for self-expression".

So the two came up with a new idea to promote to young people: "Live like music."

In 2012, they launched this app, and took a very blunt Chinese name: "Music Land".

As a result, it was the beginning of the second failure.

The status quo of the Internet industry this year is that 4G has not yet been fully popularized.

Kuaishou, who started a business at the same time, has accumulated users in China and endured a long waiting period, like a butterfly struggling to break free from a thick cocoon.

However, Yang Luyu and Zhu Jun, who have international work experience, chose another path.

They plan to go to countries with wide 4G and wifi coverage to try their luck and start the short video industry again.

Going back to that time point, only the United States and South Korea have wifi in public places in the world.

Finally, after two setbacks in China and two despairs, they decided to start their business in the United States.

This year, their decline suddenly reversed.

Musical.ly has caught the pulse of the times and is wildly sought after by American teenagers.

In just one year, the product achieved 2000 million monthly and 500 million daily lives in the U.S. market, and was known as "a toy for white children".

"After the meeting, contact the founding team of this software and ask what the package price is."

After the meeting, in just two days, Su Hua, who flew to the United States in person, fed back the news to Gu Yunxin from across the ocean.

Dou Le was not the first choice for Musical.ly to sell.

The two founders once flew to Facebook headquarters in California to meet with founder Mark Zuckerberg to discuss the matter.

Zuckerberg is a strong bidder. In 2012, he spent $10 billion to acquire Instagram, a 20-person team.

Thanks to Facebook's huge traffic blessing, Instagram quickly absorbed a huge number of users and grew into a giant in the photo community.

Zuckerberg is interested in capturing the teen market.In his view, Musical.ly is "Instagram for video".

In the end, Facebook verbally made an acquisition offer of $16 billion in pure cash.

However, in the later stage of the negotiation, Facebook became hesitant because it was not sure how high the ceiling of the short video was, for fear that this was a gamble.

The second person who extended an olive branch is Kuaishou, the originator of short videos who also has the willingness to go to sea.

Unlike the other two competitors, who suffer from insufficient cash flow, Kuaishou has given an investment plan that expresses sincerity to the greatest extent.

Musical.ly retains independence and becomes a subsidiary of Kuaishou, which holds more than 40% of the shares.

And it was Dou Le who entered the game last.

But what Su Hua didn't expect was that the founding team heard that it was Dou Le, a subsidiary of Paradise Group. They didn't hesitate for too long, but after a period of discussion, they agreed to accept the acquisition on a conditional basis.

The founding team of Musical.ly proposed three conditions:
Renamed Musical.ly to reverse the minds of users who are teenagers App;
Access to the core algorithm that DouLe relies on for survival;
Invest heavily in marketing.

Gu Yun agreed to all of them. His offer was lower than Facebook's, only US$10 billion, but the acquisition could be made in the form of cash + stock.

After several rounds of repeated consultations, Musical.ly and Dou Le Overseas Edition are the perfect combination of swords.

At this time, even Su Hua, who was involved in the game, never imagined that this would be one of the most successful acquisitions in the history of the Internet, and the power of the joint outbreak of the two was beyond everyone's imagination.

On the one hand, Dou Le has incorporated Musical.ly's overseas team of more than 400 people, and on the other hand, it has integrated the algorithm into Musical.ly, and the sideways data has restarted and grown, but not so fast.

At the same time, Gu Yun started the name change plan as promised.

At this time, there was an alternative plan. The Musical.ly team proposed to Gu Yun to continue the "ly" tradition and change the name to Vedio.ly.

However, after the A/B test, the data was relatively average, and finally changed its name to TikTok.

Gu Yun, who values ​​return on investment and is partial to pragmatism, will not worry too much about the meaning of a name, as long as the data rises well.

However, the reason why Dou Le's overseas version is called TikTok is because Gu Yun made the decision himself.

In order to meet the name change plan, the team took many English names and did A/B tests, but they were not finalized.

TikTok is the title of a European and American pop song released in 2009. It is pronounced from tick tock and describes the ultimate nightclub carnival.

At first, they almost kicked TikTok out of the many cool English words.

What makes people hesitate is that although this song is very popular, it is very similar to a saliva song, and it seems vulgar in American culture.

Its few advantages are: easy to pronounce.

Of course, the name was chosen by chance.

Dou Le changed its strategy at the beginning of the acquisition, focusing on Japan and South Korea. In these two countries, TikTok is not only catchy, but also a bit playful.

"The big boss finalized it in one go. This is the name. It is easy to pronounce, easy to remember, and can be popular."

The early team thought, since there is no better one, let’s use it for now, anyway, it can be changed at any time.

No one expected that this onomatopoeia without any meaning has such a strong spreading power.

"It can be pronounced in all languages, all over the world, and they are all pronounced the same."

Therefore, the unified name of Dou Le's overseas version is TikTok.

After the acquisition, Dou Le announced the full integration of Musical.ly and TikTok with great fanfare.

Next, in order to shake the city and seize territory at home and abroad, relying on the huge capital input of the Paradise Group, a splendid money carnival debuted.

The sea team is to help young people who are newborn calves. Even recruiting soldiers and horses is difficult, and it all depends on enthusiasm.

This time, Dou Le will lead the war of burning money to promote overseas.

(End of this chapter)