Rebirth of the Internet Overlord

{Time: April 18, 2005}

{Location: United States-California}

When Peter Thiel drove the car from Palo Alto to Mountain View, looking at the secretary girl sitting outside the coffee shop not far away, Peter slowly parked the car on the side of the road.

Ning Zimo glanced at him. He still didn't understand the temporary driver's intention, but he saw Peter raised his chin towards Dong Qianqian in the distance and teased him, "When can you have a serious relationship?"

?”

These old guys from Paypal have always been like this. The closer you are, the weird things that might come out to "criticize" you might pop up at some point.

Although he was used to this kind of escape, Ning Zimo could only curl his lips when facing the former boss next to him, "I'm not Hoffman. He likes to eat grass on the edge of his nest. I'm afraid I won't be able to hide in time."

Peter Thiel shrugged, fittingly not continuing on the topic.

After turning around and taking out the key and getting out of the car, he took out a box of cigars and threw one to Ning Zimo.

He demonstrated it again in front of Ning Zimo, and this was considered a lesson to him.

It wasn't until Ning Zimo took a sip and then imitated him to spit it out that Peter said, "Didn't Sachs get a MySpace? Why do you want to buy a Facebook and compete with him?"

When starting a business after coming out of Paypal, except for a few people who were close friends and participated in specific projects, not many other former Paypal colleagues knew how Ning Zimo and the others worked together in their respective projects.

Most people just think that Ning Zimo is helping them make suggestions, even Peter Thiel is no exception.

Although he was the former CEO of Paypal, he knew very little about the industry of the old guys after switching to the investment field.

Although Ning Zimo took advantage of Peter's early investment in Facebook to complete the acquisition, he actually didn't have much interaction with this shrewd old boss on weekdays. But anyway, Peter still helped him a lot.

.So both emotionally and logically, Peter is still the person he needs to thank.

"News Corp. wants to acquire MySpace. If it really exceeds US$3 billion, Sachs will definitely consider it."

Although there was still a small hope of relying on MySpace to compete with Facebook, in the actual development process, the definition of crowd attributes still prevented MySpace from escaping the original fate of its previous life.

In this case, selling myspace has become a settlement.

Or so, this has been established a few years ago as a money-making project similar to a poison pill.

Therefore, Ning Zimo would be more comfortable selling the MySpace project than selling Skype. And Sachs, who knew Ning Zimo's next big plan, would not have anything to worry about.

Informing Peter of this news would not have any impact on the current development, but could actually bring the two of them closer together.

"Oh?" Peter Thiel raised his eyebrows, "It turns out that he really wants to sell MySpace, so now he will become the third billionaire in our PayPal."

When PayPal was sold, it immediately put Elon Musk on the list of billionaires. Next up was Ning Zimo, and this time, MySpace was able to put David Sacks on the list.

Although Ning Zimo was involved, he was always a little slow on this issue.

Ning Zi thought for a moment, shook his head and said with a smile, "Our PayPal gang executives and early engineers are all people who are willing to work hard. If you extend the timeline of this startup by another 10 years,

There will also be more names of Paypal people on this list with a net worth of over 100 million."

Peter Thiel was stunned for a moment, then smiled knowingly.

But he quickly stopped laughing and said, "When we formed Paypal, we chose people with similar temperaments and creativity in the selection of members. Although Paypal has changed owners, everyone will definitely change their minds after leaving Paypal.

Find somewhere else to unleash your creativity.”

After a pause, Peter Thiel glanced at Ning Zimo and said seriously, "It's just that I didn't expect that among our group of people, you who entered the company last are the most creative and adventurous."

"People always have to have some dreams, otherwise what's the difference between them and salted fish?" Ning Zimo curled his lips.

Peter Thiel saw Ning Zimo's little move, but shook his head and said, "Everyone has a dream, but how to realize it is something that many people cannot do. But our group of people is different.

Trouble is just a symptom of being good at action. In essence, people who love to dream will take more practical actions. And you are the representative of thinking before taking action."

After a pause, Peter turned to smile and said, "Now that Facebook has been won with your established method and price, are you going to prepare to enter the social network next?"

"Well, this is the focus of the next step."

"It seems that the 500,000 US dollars I invested in Facebook last year will make considerable profits in the future."

"Of course," Ning Zimo smiled, "there will definitely be no problem in sending you to the throne of a heavyweight billionaire."

Peter Thiel took a deep look at Ning Zimo, and after a long time he said in a deep voice, "Although we don't have a close relationship, we won't have as deep a relationship as you Chinese trio. But I believe that I can be counted among you.

One of my friends on paypal.

So, what I want to tell you solemnly is that if... I mean... if..., one day in the future, when you need any form of help, please remember that I am an old friend of Paypal..."

Looking at Peter's slightly serious face,

Ning Zi looked at Xiao Xiao for a while,

Finally he nodded solemnly.

…

It wasn't until he was lying on the grass in the backyard of Li Ying's villa at night, looking up at the stars in the sky, that Ning Zimo finally felt himself relax.

"In three years, the entire ecological chain you originally planned for Bing has been fully realized until today, right?"

When Li Ying's voice came softly, Ning Zimo realized that she was sitting next to him holding her calf.

"Well," Ning Zimo responded lightly, and then returned softly, "From the core of the search engine to the surrounding traffic ecology, from the professional social crowd to the comprehensive social crowd, the bing ecological chain has reached its initial scale. The next step is

, I will take some time to launch YouTube and Facebook as planned."

“Will Facebook be left to the original team to execute?”

"Well, it's just that it won't take greater initiative like the projects created by our PayPal gang. I used 60 million US dollars to acquire 65% of Facebook's main shares, and the remaining 10% is owned by founder Mark Zuckerberg

In Ge Ge’s hands, 10% is in the hands of other core personnel, while 10% is left as TUP bonus equity for other key employees, and 5% is in the hands of Peter Thiel, who invested in Facebook early on.”

"Hmm~~This is your style~~" Li Ying said curiously, "However, I always feel like there is something weird about you today."

Looking at the sky, Ning Zimo said calmly, "I feel a little strange myself. Logically speaking, I managed to acquire Facebook, which has unlimited potential, at a low price. I should be very happy. But today I am very happy about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

, there is a strange and indescribable feeling.”

After a pause, Ning Zimo looked aside quietly and said: "It is normal for a businessman to have a political stance, such as being patriotic, but if a businessman wants to seek personal gain for himself through political changes, does this mean

Did you change your original intention just because you were looking at this person?"

Ning Zimo was lying down and Li Ying was sitting. When the two people's eyes touched each other, it was not the same as usual. This changed the image of the two people in each other's eyes.

Li Ying took a deep look at Ning Zimo, looked at him for a long time before shaking her head slightly, "The adult world is not that simple, otherwise there would be no Xinghuo."

Turning her head, Li Ying said quietly, "This is not a black and white world. You have known it for a long time. So, I thought you would not have this feeling."

Listening to the words of his tacit partner, Ning Zimo smiled softly, turned his head and continued to look at the sky.

Yes, this is not a black and white world. So, what is there to lament about the scenes of former idols becoming disillusioned?

…

Speaking of which, Zuckerberg is the idol of many young people on the Internet.

This young man born in 1984 has created a business empire in his unique way.

In his previous life, Ning Zimo also regarded Zuckerberg, who was one year younger than him, as his idol.

However, as time goes by, when the crisis really comes, everything hidden in the darkness finally has a moment to be revealed.

In the previous life, October 2019, this almost became the biggest turning point for Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg suddenly changed his face due to his Chinese-American wife and the "love to grow flowers" persona he had created for many years.

First, on October 10, when Zuckerberg defended "Libra" at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives, he promoted the "flower-planting threat theory" and claimed to have found signs of flower-planting interfering in the 2020 U.S. election on Facebook in an attempt to attract the audience's attention.

Attention found a breakthrough for "Libra Coin". Then he also expressed the idea that "it is a good thing that Facebook does not enter the flower garden. We can have more freedom to express our feelings directly and stand for the values ​​​​we believe in."

Then on October 31, 2019, Zuckerberg gave a speech at Georgetown University, which shattered his image of "loving to grow flowers".

In his speech, he talked about "freedom of speech" and advocated for his Facebook platform that "there is no guilt in posting zz ads" on Facebook, while the overseas version of Douyin is "not free" and is not like his Facebook and WhatsApp.

Provide services to thugs.

This is a very double standard and quite shameless.

Because before that, Facebook allowed politicians to spend money to publish various zz ads, and allowed thugs to spread rumors and incite speech. At the same time, it deleted and banned the accounts of thousands of mainland netizens! And all of this was just because of the overseas version of tiktok

) compared Facebook’s short video software Lasso.

At that time, Facebook's Lasso, which had been online for one year, had only been installed 420,000 times on the entire network, while the overseas version of Douyin during the same period had been installed 640 million times. When Zuckerberg found that he could not use commercial means and technical capabilities to kill his opponents

When the time came, we started talking about "universal values".

He never believed that his products were lagging behind, not competitive enough, and unable to please users, and he was even more unwilling to admit that his rival, Douyin, was more advanced, smarter, and more understanding of young users, so he directly framed his rival for not having "freedom."

However, these are all things from the past life.

Today Zuckerberg is still a young man chasing his dreams.

He may have many new fans in the future.

But among those fans, I no longer have myself.

/*

This section is free of charge:

Before the end of last month, I had written the outline of nearly 100 chapters. Until the Zuckerberg incident happened on October 31, it was extremely uncomfortable for me to write this chapter again.

Originally, these 4 chapters were probably more than 10 chapters. Now, I forcibly changed it to 4 chapters, just for that damn zz.

Maybe businesses have no borders, but entrepreneurs do have nationalities.

Anyway, these chapters are just painful to write.

*/