Reborn: Billionaire in College

"The TikTok project is a key project that Mr. Chen personally oversees. There are already many short video products on the market, such as Kuaishou, Weishi, Miaopai, and Meipai. However, we are very different from them. Our positioning for TikTok is to serve young people aged 15-40. The video length is limited to 15 seconds. In the early stage of the launch, we will focus on short music videos."

"In addition, we have also launched the Jianying APP to reduce the cost of producing short videos for ordinary people, so that even a beginner can easily edit good-looking and cool short videos."

“Everyone can take a look…”

In the small conference room, Zhang Yiming spoke eloquently.

He attaches great importance to today's meeting. Even though Chen Pingjiang is taking the lead, the bigwigs present will not ignore his face.

But there is still a big difference between passive catering and active integration, and the difference is even greater in the intensity of support and the final effect.

To some extent, this is also like a financing, except that it is not funds but resources that are being raised.

The pressure on Zhang Yiming is enormous.

Of course, he wants to make ByteDance comparable to giants like Renren and Orange Technology, but he still needs time.

Convincing Renren and Orange Technology to inject resources into ByteDance is particularly important for the promotion of TikTok.

Mr. Chen has his say, but it is also important that the people below cooperate willingly.

While Zhang Yiming was introducing the project, Li Xi and others on the opposite side were also looking at him carefully.

"He is another rising star in the business world. He is so lucky that Mr. Chen took a fancy to him."

No one present doubted whether this project could be accomplished. With the huge resources and funds currently at the disposal of the group, and in the absence of obvious advantages from competitors, it could be pushed forward even if forced.

What remains is whether user retention and conversion are qualified.

Among the three, Wan Yuqian nodded first: "No problem on my side. Director Chen has discussed with me. I will let his celebrities and crews enter the platform, and will also help contact friends in the circle. It seems that I am unable to do anything else."

Lin Bin also smiled and said: "I can pre-install Douyin on all terminal devices of Orange Technology. The rest depends on Mr. Li. Haha, as long as he nods and is willing to provide resources to Douyin, Douyin's traffic will definitely be endless."

Li Xi waved his hands quickly: "No, no, Lao Lin is just supporting me. I will do whatever Mr. Chen asks me to do. Besides, Renren is a shareholder of Douyin, so it is natural for them to support it."

Chen Pingjiang glanced at the people present and scolded them with a smile: "When did you guys become so modest? I called you here today not only to discuss cooperation, but also to help you make decisions and see the feasibility of the promotion plan and what problems may be encountered. Rubo, please introduce the promotion methods to everyone."

Liang Ruobo, who was named, stood up quickly, bowed, and then opened his notebook: "We originally planned to use college students as the entry point, looking for a group of handsome men and beautiful women in art schools across the country, and quickly mass-produce a batch of short videos in the form of singing and dancing to fill the video library. In addition, we will first focus on the four first-tier cities for promotion, because the people here are more receptive, more fashionable, and more likely to accept new things."

"However, after President Chen mentioned the need for a joint operation yesterday, we modified some of the promotion plans overnight. We hope to use the channels of Weibo, Renren, and WeChat to conduct multi-dimensional and in-depth promotion. Specific promotion methods include but are not limited to opening the WeChat backend interface, allowing forwarding in Moments, inviting Weibo celebrities to join, etc..." Li Xi couldn't help frowning when he heard this.

Because of the special nature of WeChat, Li Xi is not afraid that Douyin will cause damage to WeChat after it becomes bigger, but it is hard to say about Weibo and Renren.

Not to mention anything else, once Douyin becomes popular, users will use the time they spend on Weibo to browse Douyin, which directly leads to a shortening of the average user stay time on Weibo, thereby indirectly affecting the background data.

On the other hand, the rise of Douyin is bound to have an impact on Weibo’s advertising revenue.

Companies have a budget for advertising. If the budget is insufficient, they will invest in platform A and will not consider platform B.

Li Xi does not think that Weibo can withstand the attack of Douyin, because the way text and pictures are spread is inherently not as good as video, and their influence on users is different.

Although the entire Renren industry belongs to Chen Pingjiang, he, Li Xi, is currently in charge. If the performance is not good at the end of the year, it will be Li Xi who will be blamed.

Even if Chen Pingjiang and Renren shareholders don't care, Renren itself is like his own child to Li Xi. How can he bear to draw his own blood to feed others?

What's more!

The performance and profits have gone down, which will also affect the year-end bonuses of Renren employees...

From a big picture perspective, he must follow Mr. Chen's advice and cooperate with the promotion of Douyin. On the other hand... who doesn't have some selfish motives?
Unlike Li Xi who was frowning, Wan Yuqian and Lin Bin naturally hoped that Douyin would rise quickly. After all, they had no direct competitive relationship with Douyin. If they invested some resources, it would be a profitable business. Who would not want to see a killer weapon in their camp?

Chen Pingjiang was so smart that he could roughly judge Li Xi's thoughts just by a few actions.

He reached out to stop Liang Ruobo from introducing, and said to Li Xi in a comforting tone: "The communication methods of TikTok and Weibo are almost different. The reason why Weibo has its irreplaceable position is that this platform is currently the only one in the Chinese Internet that has both "media attributes" and "social communication". In this regard, Twitter's situation is much more embarrassing because it has FB next to it."

“So Weibo may become weaker, and may gradually change from a national social media to a less national mass social media, but it will always be the only social media platform of scale. If one day Weibo is almost dead, it may not necessarily mean that we have a new national social media, but that we no longer have a national social media.”

"Both TikTok and Weibo can create hot topics and have media attributes, but TikTok does not have social attributes. TikTok's dissemination and distribution are strongly platform-centric, and the distribution and dissemination of content are almost entirely based on the platform's algorithmic recommendations. On TikTok, there is no dissemination chain based on "retweets." This means that the TikTok platform has almost unlimited say over media content, and the popularity of content is not driven by the public, but more by the platform. The core action of Weibo is actually "retweets." Retweets directly lead to dissemination, which in turn leads to popularity. So although Weibo is also very centralized, it is not platform-centric, but rather big V-centric, and information is still distributed and disseminated based on social logic."

"Li Xi, Weibo is the most important "public opinion platform" in the Internet era. Even if it is not the largest traffic gathering place in the future, it will definitely face the most stringent supervision. To be honest, even if Weibo does not have the current traffic in the future, it does not mean that it is just the product of user choice and external competition. Instead, when Internet supervision becomes more mature and strict, a powerful Weibo cannot exist."

“Even if there is no Douyin in the future, there will be Kuaishou, but Douyin is a card in our hand anyway. The emergence of higher-dimensional products is not subject to human will.”

“Weibo will not die, but it will certainly weaken. Its final outcome is that society needs public opinion, but it does not need public opinion that is too costly to control, and it certainly does not need public opinion that becomes increasingly omnipotent.” (End of this chapter)