Reborn: Billionaire in College

Chapter 151 Star-making Plan (revised, 2000 words for free)
The next morning, Chen Pingjiang called Zhuo Ling and Zou Yu to his office.

"I called you here because I have a very important matter to hand over to the content department. You will each be responsible for one aspect, and the daily management work will be handed over to the people below."

"Yesterday we discussed inviting internet celebrities, official institutions and media to join Renren. This is something we cannot take lightly."

"Zhuo Ling, you go and contact internet celebrities and stars, and Zou Yu will be responsible for personally creating some internet celebrities and packaging them."

"Only if we can do this well can Renren be truly invincible."

Chen Pingjiang's expression was very serious, which made Zhuo Ling and Zou Yu feel pressured.

How important is this move?
The most appropriate example is the dispute between Sina and Tencent over Weibo.

Sina Weibo continued the advantages of blogs at the beginning of its establishment, inviting a large number of celebrities to open accounts and strengthening the interaction between them and ordinary users. With the help of the influence and traffic of these celebrities, it accumulated a lot of popularity in a very short period of time, thus forming a wide moat to block the latecomer Tencent Weibo.

This is how social platforms work; the Matthew effect is too obvious.

Even a strong platform like Tencent Weibo, after investing a huge amount of resources, has experienced a period of rapid growth. The number of registered accounts once reached 3.73 million, and the number of daily active accounts reached a maximum of 6800 million+, even surpassing its predecessor Sina Weibo and achieving its highlight moment.

But it is difficult to sustain such spending. Without the investment of real money, it immediately fell into a sub-healthy state with no comments and interactions.

Tencent Weibo does not have its own big Vs, does not have the media attributes of a platform that generates hot topics, and there is little interaction between celebrities and ordinary users. Over time, Tencent Weibo has become an empty city in name only. With the emergence of WeChat in 2011 and the birth of new products such as Weishi, Tencent's strategic focus and support resources have gradually shifted to other products. In 2014, Tencent's Weibo division was disbanded.

"Simply put, Zhuo Ling is responsible for recruiting, so she can be a bit more ambitious. Celebrities, internet celebrities, government agencies, various media, and even some TV variety shows, such as Happy Camp and If You Are the One, can all be tried."

"Zou Yu is responsible for 'creating stars'. If there are only internet celebrities, the ecosystem will be incomplete. We also need the backbone of producing platform content and assisting them to continue to exert their strength in different vertical fields and become famous bloggers in the field. We invest resources in them in the early stage, and when they grow up, we will give back to the platform in terms of traffic."

Zhuo Ling and Zou Yu didn't expect that the boss would give them such a big project. They were so shocked that they were speechless for a moment.

But as the director and deputy director of the content department, even if they have not yet joined the board of directors, they are still senior executives of the company. Especially after they just got the options, the two of them have no ability to say "no" at all.

A mission is a mission, and no matter how little confidence and experience they have, they have to charge forward.

Otherwise, Chen Pingjiang would have no choice but to replace the two of them with more courageous and capable ones.

They should do their job well and do their job accordingly. This was the job they were paid to do. This was a big test for the two of them by Chen Pingjiang. If there were any mistakes, they would fall behind.

Both Li Xi and Miao Bingwei have been tested and passed Chen Pingjiang's test. Now it is their turn.

Zhuo Ling nodded heavily and asked, "It shouldn't be a problem to invite Internet celebrities, organizations, and media to Renren.com. Stars and variety shows probably cost money, so what's the standard?"

Chen Pingjiang thought about it and concluded: "Spend the least money to hire the most people. You can decide for yourself."

Good boy, this means nothing to Zhuo Ling.

"Spend the least money to hire the most people" means, to put it bluntly, if you can get it for free, then get it for free, and it is best not to spend money. This requires painting a rosy picture for the other party, highlighting the influence of the platform and what the platform can bring to the other party.

In comparison, Zou Yu's job of "creating stars" is much more difficult. After all, the success or failure of hiring people is obvious, but creating stars requires real investment of various resources.

"Boss, what is the standard here?"

"Vertical fields include but are not limited to beauty, selfies, dance, travel, cars, comedy, sports, food, etc. Corresponding to this are naturally beauty bloggers, dance bloggers, travel experts, food exploration or food making, etc. It is best to have 2-3 bloggers in each channel who are accepted by fans."

Zou Yu smacked her lips. This was not an easy task.

With so many categories, at least ten reserve bloggers are needed for each category.

"No problem, I promise to complete the task."

The two of them answered in unison.

...............

After three days of development, the number of daily active users of Renren Parking Space exceeded 50, and the number of registered users of Renren also exceeded 60.

All of this was completely ignited after a hot search on Baidu went viral.

"Man fired for playing 'Everyone grabs parking space' at work."

As a result, the parking space grabbing has entered the vision of more people and received a lot of attention. Qian Oak Company.

Chen Yizhou pointed at the report in his hand with an unpleasant expression and said, "How come Renren.com has made such a big fuss without making any noise?"

"They embedded this web game into Renren.com, and within three days, Alexa's traffic ranking was higher than ours."

Chen Yizhou couldn't help but look unhappy. In terms of average daily PV alone, Xiaonei.com had been left behind by Renren.com.

And all this was just because of a small game. What's funny is that two months ago he thought that Renren would never be able to catch up with Xiaonei.

"Mr. Chen, we have studied this game carefully and it is indeed extraordinary. It may seem like a crudely made web game, but it has accurately grasped the essence of social interaction. With its easy-to-use features, it is rapidly gaining users."

"I have to admit that Renren's move was brilliant. Everyone copied it from Facebook, but they actually thought of breaking through through social games. Even Facebook has just opened up third-party interfaces. In a way, they are even ahead of the old masters."

"Moreover, Renren and our Xiaonei follow two different routes. We focus on college students, while they provide a better interactive experience for social users and white-collar users."

"Our analysis department believes that we should quickly follow up on this game. Their move hits the weak spot of not only us but also other SNS social platforms."

With every word spoken by the executive next to him, Chen Yizhou's expression became uglier.

Even on the other side of the ocean, Zynga did not release its first game on Facebook until September 2007, and it was a free poker social game. The popular Friends For Sale was released in 9.

Chen Yizhou thought about it, then turned around and said, "Can you find out which company developed this "Parking Space Grab" game? Let's go buy it."

At this time, the door of the conference room was pushed open, and a female executive hurried in with documents in her hand. She said as she walked, "Mr. Chen, I'm afraid there is no chance. This game was developed independently by them."

Hearing this, everyone present looked even uglier.

After a long silence, Chen Yizhou rubbed his cheeks and forced himself to calm down: "Don't panic, Lao Zhang, how long does it take to make a Flash web game like this?"

The middle-aged man named Lao Zhang frowned and pondered, "It will take at least two or three months. This is based on copying, which will involve copyright risks. If the other party wants to sue us, we will win."

"What do you think?" Chen Yizhou, who was a little upset, looked back and forth at the faces of the executives.

Someone said: "I don't think we have to follow suit. I also played it yesterday, but this web game has too few ways to play, and its product life cycle is doomed to be short, or even quite short. Even if we follow suit now, by the time the game is launched, the trend of grabbing parking spaces may have passed."

As soon as he finished speaking, someone immediately expressed a different opinion: "That's just based on your personal judgment. If Renren keeps updating the version to retain users and forcibly prolongs the game life cycle, every month of extension will be a fatal blow to us. This is like a war. If we do nothing, the initiative will be handed over to the other party. No one knows how many users Renren will snatch away from us in the next two or three months. Besides, it will be sooner or later for our campus network to go beyond the campus. I am afraid that when I want to go beyond the campus, I will find that the other party has become a behemoth."

"I didn't say we won't do anything. We can definitely make other web games. I just don't think it's necessary to follow the trend and make parking space grabbing games. Not only does it have the risk of infringement, but it may also lead to bad reputation."

"So what? You also said that the life cycle of the game will be short. We will just follow the trend and launch it in a few months. By then, even if Renren sues us, we will just remove it from the shelves. Anyway, the life cycle has already expired. As for a little bit of bad reputation, what does it matter? If it doesn't work out, we can find a third party to do it."

As everyone expressed their opinions, Chen Yizhou's eyes gradually brightened.

We decided, "We need to do both. We will quickly find a third party to make a follow-up product based on the gameplay of the parking space grabbing game. At the same time, we will set up a special project team internally to make other types of web games. When the popularity of the parking space grabbing game has almost passed, we will ensure that our self-developed games can quickly follow up."

Chen Yizhou's plan was undoubtedly more comprehensive, and everyone present supported it.

After the meeting, Chen Yizhou sat in his seat without moving.

He still didn't understand why a small, unknown company could become so popular with just one game, and why this game could capture the public's favor?

In fact, Chen Pingjiang is just following the path of Cheng Binghao of Kaixin.com.

When Kaixin.com was first launched, it became a huge hit with the social game "Friends Buy and Sell". It was also the first social game in China and users immediately flocked to it.

At the most exaggerated time, at least 80 venture capital institutions approached Cheng Binghao to provide investment for Kaixin.com. You can imagine how intense the situation was.

Kaixin.com was founded in March of that year, and launched "Friends Trading" in April and "Fighting for Parking Spaces" in June. Its page views exceeded 3 million in July, and the number of registered users reached 4 million in September, with page views exceeding 6 million. In January 7, the number of registered users exceeded 1000 million.

It went incredibly smoothly!
Unlike the earlier Xiaonei.com, which was established to compete with Facebook and focused on student social networking, Kaixin.com is mainly aimed at white-collar workers and aims to create a more "entertaining" social network.

Therefore, Chen Pingjiang, to some extent, snatched the luck of Cheng Binghao of Kaixin.com and ignited the torch of social games one year in advance.

Chen Yizhou's opponent also changed from Cheng Binghao to Chen Pingjiang, and the opponent of Xiaonei.com also changed from Kaixin.com to Renren.com.

(End of this chapter)