Rebirth of the Internet Overlord

/*Fix the bug in chapter 361. It was still thefacebook at that time, and its number of users was still 1 million, so I added an extra 0.*/

{Time: April 18, 2005}

{Location: United States-California & Delaware}

Although from many perspectives, 1999 is actually considered an "ancient era". However, many investors obviously still have fresh memories of what happened in 1999.

After all, since the arrival of the Internet winter in 2000, both stock valuations and investor madness in recent years have been far from the same as in 1999.

That year, Yahoo's skyrocketing market value approached US$100 billion, surpassing Warren Buffett's Berkshire (brk.b).

That year, there were 477 technology stock listed companies in the United States.

That year, Juhard’s market value was as high as US$606 billion.

Perhaps, it is because the Internet once had such glory that it is difficult for people to find anything interesting in the Internet industry in the following years.

Until 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for US$1.8 billion, which triggered discussions after the Internet winter.

Until 2004, Skype was acquired by eBay for US$5.6 billion, which confirmed the fact that the Internet winter was gone.

Therefore, in April 2005, what happened to MySpace in Silicon Valley in the United States suddenly aroused the interest of many people inside and outside the industry.

On April 11, Google officially announced that it would sign a three-year advertising contract with MySpace worth over 100 million.

And on April 11, when Google announced the news, there was a voice from within News Corporation - News Corporation intended to fully acquire Myspace, a social platform company.

In the following week, all kinds of information surrounding MySpace came one after another, dazzling people in Silicon Valley.

On April 12, Bing announced that it would sign a one-year advertising contract with MySpace worth 500 million.

Just that afternoon, news came from within Google: MySpace is considering a three-year advertising contract with Google that may be worth 10 figures.

On the morning of April 13, news suddenly came from News Corporation: News Corporation planned to acquire MySpace for 1.5 billion.

As a result, in the afternoon of that day, myspace suddenly announced that myspace had officially reached an advertising cooperation with Google. The cooperation period was three years and the total contract price was as high as 1 billion US dollars.

Just when Silicon Valley and Wall Street were surprised, MySpace announced again 2 hours after the previous news was released:

Bing signed a two-year advertising contract with MySpace worth up to 200 million.

Although myspace did not explain the details of this news, people with a discerning eye in the industry will understand at a glance that this is Bing's move to retreat to social networking sites after Myspace signed a huge advertising agreement with Google.

In other words, although Google has captured a large amount of myspace’s traffic, Bing still values ​​myspace’s user base.

Some people think deeper. Since Google and Bing, two competing companies in the search engine industry, have made the same move, it is only a matter of time before social networking sites like MySpace rapidly increase in value!

As expected,

On the morning of April 14th,

The latest news comes from News Corporation: News Corporation plans to send an acquisition negotiation team, headed by James Murdoch. This negotiation team will formally negotiate the acquisition with the founder of Myspace.

On the evening of the same day, news came that Myspace might be due to advertising cooperation with Google and Bing. Even before this little-known company went public, it had already reached a valuation of nearly 3 billion!

This news lit up Silicon Valley and made many people inexplicably excited.

Because MySpace has given social networking sites a higher valuation, similar sites will be able to attract more investors' attention.

But this news, which excited investors, was a bolt from the blue for a young man from Harvard!

***+***

On April 18, in a mansion in Palo Alto, California. In an environment full of computers, an unshaven curly-haired white man appeared.

What he said to the younger curly-haired white man in front of him:

"...Mark, actually you don't need to worry too much about the recent news about myspace. Because myspace is myspace, and we are us. After all, we have taken a completely different path from myspace from the beginning..."

The center of the topic they discussed was myspace, which has recently caused heated discussion in Silicon Valley.

Palo Alto and Mountain View are both in California, but one is in the San Francisco Bay Area and the other is in Santa Clara County.

In fact, these two places, including the neighboring cities of Sunnyvale and San Jose, are already the most important areas in the Silicon Valley of the United States.

But under such a premise, the face of the young man opposite the handsome bearded man did not look good. His tightened brows and bitten lower lip all reflected his inner conflicting emotions on his face.

As the bearded man unfolded more and more content, he found that the young man's face became more and more ugly, so he could only stop going into details.

Sure enough, as soon as he stopped talking, the face of the young man sitting opposite him became a little better.

Seeing this situation, the curly-haired man smiled bitterly and shook his head. Although he had not worked with the young man opposite him for a long time, he was still familiar with his habits.

At this time, he had already fallen into thinking. No matter how much he said at this time, it would be useless. He could only digest the recent series of problems by himself.

"Sean..." The young man suddenly raised his head, but his eyes when looking at the curly-haired man were still confused, "I think I went in the wrong direction from the beginning. I have refused to advertise randomly since I founded the website.

But you have also seen that myspace, the hottest social platform at present, is about to implement an advertising contract worth more than one billion yuan. This means that my persistence is worthless in the eyes of users.

No one cares about whether the pages they visit have ads, users only care about whether they can get social services for free."

The young man stood up as he spoke. He walked to the computer placed on the table, pointed at the blue website on the monitor and continued:

"We at thefacebook were wrong from the beginning, because we only allowed students to have their own carnival gathering places in universities without a suitable business model. So users caroused on thefacebook, but they rarely did anything for us.

What.

But what about myspace? Their users can even make money by placing ads on their pages, but what will happen if we introduce the same mechanism to thefacebook?"

The young man looked at the man he called Sean with wide eyes, and then curled his lips under his gaze:

"Our user group is high-end users in the ivory tower. They have no contact with society and will hate the existence of advertisements as I originally imagined.

They will think that Thefacebook is pure and it is best not to have anything to do with business. Therefore, when Myspace wins a large advertising contract, the 10 million university users will only think about their own holy places and forget that Thefacebook’s server space also requires funds.

of."

Sean frowned, and he could hear the indignation of the young man opposite.

The founder of the Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, although he and the users of his site are both college students, he obviously understands the nature of business better than those students in the ivory tower.

"Perhaps, one day when they enter society, they will gradually understand the prerequisites for survival in this world. Perhaps at that time, they will also make a donation in the form of sponsorship to the holy place where they once caroused.

A small amount of sponsorship fee. But the important thing is that we can survive tonight when facing the huge amount of money in an industry like MySpace!"

Mark Zuckerberg pointed to the page on the screen, then pointed to other young faces beside him one by one, and continued to smile calmly at Sean.

"Staff, bandwidth, server costs, no project does not cost money. Even if we save money and use the funds invested by you and Peter Thiel to do it today, we can even continue to be in the current situation for several more years in the future.

month time.

But that is just our own imagination, because currently we have to face the current growth and development of myspace.

Look at the changes that have happened to it in the past week, whether it is advertising revenue or the attention that News Corporation attaches to them. Under these many premises, do you think the Facebook will be able to survive in the future if we do not do what I said?

How to develop?”

Looking at the astonishment on Sean's face, Zuckerberg sighed helplessly:

"Sean, thank you for your continued recognition of thefacebook. It was the amount of money you invested that kept me going, and then you also introduced Peter Thiel to join us and let us go further.

But what is happening to myspace now makes me feel that there is no need for my team to go on. Instead of waiting until one day to disappear, we might as well sell thefacebook on this day.

Whether it's 50 million or 70 million, the value of thefacebook at this moment can still be somewhat guaranteed. But if one day we develop to the point where we can't continue at all, then all the time we have spent in the past has been in vain..."

Sean opened his mouth. He wanted to retort something but didn't know if it was better to tell the truth.

Mark is right. This young man he once valued has made great progress in the past year. In the past, he was even a person who could never speak to the point. Today, he is in the current position of thefacebook.

The situation was explained clearly.

There is really no better way than selling, just like Bandwidth, which competed with Skype back then. With the sale of Skype, Bandwidth's life became worse and worse, and the website was closed at the beginning of this year.

thefacebook cannot be like that, because they have put in a lot of hard work in the past year, and they have to gain something.

Thinking of this, Sean finally sighed in his heart.

In the end, he could only look up at Mark and said, "The only way we have is to sell."

Mark didn't speak, didn't even look into his eyes, he just nodded lonely.

"Peter will bring someone here today. It is said that he is an investor who dares to innovate..."

Dong Dong Dong,

The knock on the door happened to ring at this time,

Sean glanced at Mark, then stood up and walked to the door.

After he opened the door, a smiling Peter Thiel stood at the door.

When he saw the gloomy people in the room, he spoke with his loud voice:

"Guys, I know what you are worried about. So, I brought you the person who once brought new hope to our paypal."