Rebirth of the Internet Overlord

"Falcon 1 is now in the final critical stage. In fact, you don't need to come to the airport to pick me up in person. After all, I have been to your SpaceX factory area once."

"It's okay. I've been so busy in the factory area lately that it's dark. I just wanted to give myself a breather on the way to the hotel. After all, you can't work all day in your life."

"Hey man, I always feel that you are trying to bully me with these words. Headquarters, you want to guide me with the experience of people who have been there, right?"

"Emmmmm, how boring is it to not talk about love when you are young?" Elon Musk glanced at Dong Qianqian, the co-pilot, and said with a raised corner of his mouth, "You are unmoved by an Oriental beauty like Miss Li, right?

Because you always like to see different beautiful scenery?"

"We have only met a few times in the past few years, so have you misunderstood something?" Ning Zimo spread his hands and gestured to the front row, "This person is my relative, so don't be blind.

Think about it."

"Wow, you made this decision quietly?" Elon's eyes widened.

The SpaceX factory area located at 1 Rocket Road in Hawthorne, California is some distance from the San Francisco Airport. Elon Musk chatted with Ning Zimo on relaxed topics along the way.

Perhaps, precisely because of the presence of other people, the triviality at this time was very different from the usual brain-buzzing on the Internet.

Feeling that the car was driving more and more crookedly, Ning Zimo could only roll his eyes, "Miss Dong is my uncle's niece, so she is my sister in the family."

Looking at Elon who shrugged again, Ning Zimo felt helpless, "I used to wonder why all the old guys from our PayPal company are so gossipy. I always feel that when men gossip, they don't

A woman’s life is at stake.”

At the right time, Dong Qianqian’s unsuppressed laughter came from the front row, which made Ning Zimo so angry that he could only point his finger at Elon Musk.

But Elon was not afraid of Ning Zimo's lethality, "You can't blame me. After all, starting from Miss Li, including Miss Zhang and Miss Dong, the girls around you are all pretty good."

Glancing at Dong Qianqian who was laughing non-stop, Elon simply asked, "Ms. Dong, do you think what I said is right?"

"Are they Miss Li Ying and Zhang Miaoying? They are indeed quite good, but my brother should have his heart set on something." Dong Qianqian turned her head and rolled her eyes, seizing the opportunity and followed the pole.

Elon was immediately "surprised" when he heard this, "Hey, could it be that our creative genius has finally come to his senses?"

The adult world will have problems of one kind or another, and the topic of the other half is the most aggressive one after reaching a certain age.

Because he invited Sima Lin to watch the Olympic Games with him, Ning Zimo often kept this incident in mind for his family.

When I'm at home, my "sister secretary" is always involved.

As a result, when I arrived in the United States, I still had the opportunity to bring this matter to light.

Fortunately, Ning Zimo also has experience in doing Tai Chi.

"I've only heard that three women are equal to 1,500 ducks. I didn't expect that you alone can equal 1,400 ducks." Ning Zimo rolled his eyes again, "If I had known you were so naughty, I would have simply waited until Falcon 1 was launched.

Come here that day, you must be so nervous that you don’t have time to joke with me."

"That's right. I'm also curious about why you came to the United States at this time? Logically speaking, isn't your schedule always very tight?" Elon suddenly became curious.

When Dong Qianqian saw that her "brother" could turn things around with just one sentence, she stopped dwelling on the topic and looked over with curiosity in her eyes.

"It's Skype." Seeing that the two finally stopped teasing, Ning Zimo quickly returned, "We talked to me about something at the front end of PayPal's old rival."

"Meg Whitman?" Elon blurted out.

"Yeah," seeing him remembering it, Ning Zimo nodded.

"Is it possible that she wants to sell Skype to you before leaving office?"

"That's right," Ning Zimo snapped his fingers, "Meg Whitman wanted to sell Skype in the last period before leaving office, so she found me as soon as possible."

"Why?"

"Maybe I can't do it anymore."

"Then what do you think about it?"

"Me?" Ning Zimo shrugged without hesitation, "I'm ready for everything in the new era, why do I need Skype?"

…

"Why Skype?"

It only took Zhang Junhao and his party 20 minutes to get from the airport to his residence in San Francisco. As soon as he sat down, he felt that Winston's appetite had become bigger and bigger since MySpace was taken away from Ning Zimo for US$600 million.

Yes, the purpose of their trip is for Skype.

It's just that he needs a clear answer as to why they do this.

Previously, the way this group of people made money was by investing in projects at super high prices and then selling them at high prices.

In 2003, they sold Overture, which they had invested US$10 million in, to Yahoo, and they earned hundreds of millions of US dollars in revenue from this project on the Internet.

This method has accumulated a net worth of over 100 million US dollars for each of them in the past few years. Rothschild, who leads them, is already worth more than 5 billion US dollars.

But starting this year, their usual methods have changed dramatically.

Purchasing MySpace for 600 million is already a huge investment. Now, is it targeting Skype?

"We must know that Ning Zimo received a purchase price of US$5.6 billion when he sold Skype to PayPal. If we acquire Skype in order to make MySpace have a greater breakthrough in the social field, this will mean the price we have to pay.

It would be huge. And why would we buy Skype?"

"Yes, this is undeniable," Winston tilted his chin and leaned on the stool with a relaxed expression, "But since I accepted MySpace, I overturned the original operation plan of the management team and referred to Facebook's experience in the gaming field.

The operation direction has increased MySpace’s social user share by 2% points within 2 months.”

A slightly arrogant atmosphere permeated the entire conference room, and Winston's posture only added to this aura.

"The increase of 2% points in two months has caused MySpace's revenue to increase from 40 million U.S. dollars per month before the acquisition to 60 million U.S. dollars in August. By the middle of this month, MySpace's revenue has reached 67 million U.S. dollars. Like this

The increase means that I have found the right direction for MySpace."

After a pause, Winston asked, "Think about the US$1.63 billion price we sold Overture in 2002, and then compare it to the US$5.6 billion price eBay bought Skype for two years later in 2004.

What will we find? Does it take time and methods to make profits and add value in the Internet industry?

If you think about it more carefully, when Overture was in our hands, there were less than 5 million users, and the annual profit was less than 30 million US dollars. As for the Skype profit data we got from eBay, in 2003, their users were

103 million, and the profit was 250 million US dollars.

Going back to the survey statistics we obtained after acquiring MySpace, in 2007, the revenue was 570 million and the profit was 10 million US dollars. And after I got it, the revenue was as high as 67 million in half a month.

What does all this information reveal? Doesn’t it fully illustrate the huge potential of social Internet projects? Since MySpace has unlimited potential, why don’t we change our original way of making money and focus our main firepower on MySpace to make more money?

?”

"But what does this have to do with Skype?" Zhang Junhao walked into a dark alley.

"Of course it is related," Winston said firmly, "If you think about the way Facebook has developed, from the day it was acquired by our direct competitor. Facebook has purchased a large amount of traffic, whether it is LinkedIn, Gmail or even Bing, Facebook

It was only through large-scale traffic purchases that their user base reached 110 million, and they overtook MySpace at an extremely fast rate.

Of course, FaySpace's huge pressure to catch up is also the main reason why we were able to successfully acquire MySpace, but at the same time it also once again emphasized the importance of users."

"But you didn't say what the development of MySpace has to do with Skype?" Zhang Junhao still clung to it.

Looking at Zhang Junhao's stubborn persistence, Winston was obviously a little disdainful, "Doesn't it matter? I have actually made it clear enough. The key to the success or failure of a social network is the number of users, and Facebook uses a relative method to increase its users.

Cheap way.

But the Internet tycoon missed out on Skype that he had sold. He may not have thought that if Facebook could integrate Skype users, it would greatly increase the number of users and quickly become the leader of social networks.

overlord."

"You mean, our MySpace can acquire Skype, and then integrate Skype users to create our dominant position as the social network overlord?" Zhang Junhao finally understood.

Giving him a "You're not stupid yet" look, Winston distributed the documents in front of him to everyone.

"This is the social network research report I recently studied while leading MySpace."

Richard Rothschild took it but put it aside because this report was the main reason why he challenged Ning Zimo.

"In 2004, Facebook had 3 million users. By August this year, they already had 110 million users. With the introduction of traffic from users on multiple platforms, the number of Facebook users has grown exponentially after Ning Zimo took over.

As you can see from the news coming from China, Ning Zimo used the same method to gather users for his Feixun software after acquiring the two websites 269 and 4399 this year.

What does this mean? It not only shows that he pays attention to social user data, but also shows that he wants to build Feixun into another Skype. It also shows that he wants to give up Skype’s already huge user base and build a new social miracle.”

Winston laughed disdainfully.

"It can be seen that he wants to create different social networks in Europe, America and China, and has created different social products based on the attributes of the people. Whether it is LinkedIn, Twitter, Weibo, or Feixun, he has emphasized in his own way

He values ​​the importance of social networks.

But he was too arrogant. He tried to conquer the entire social network by himself in the Internet era, but he missed his original product. And Skype, the product he missed, is very likely to be the foundation for us to gain a foothold in social networks.

The most important thing.”

Gazing across everyone's eyes, Winston finally stared at Richard Rothschild and said word by word:

"This is why I brought all of us together this time. I want to focus most of our human and financial resources to win Skype. In the future Internet era, we must change the previous way of big fish eating small fish.

, focus on a certain area that we are optimistic about.

Internet social networking is an area worth fighting for, and the acquisition of Skype is also an area where we can gain a foothold in the Internet field and make money."

Seeing the fire in Richard Rothschild's eyes, Winston went further:

"Back then, we seemed to have made a lot of money in Overture, earning 1.63 billion with an investment of 10 million US dollars. But we actually missed the most important search engine in the Internet era, so we couldn't earn 50 or even 50 million every year like Bing.

10 billion US dollars.

Nowadays, we have an excellent opportunity to enter the field of Internet social networking. This is the social network that Ning Zimo once wanted to focus on building. However, due to financial constraints, he had no choice but to sell it to eBay for US$5.6 billion.

Nowadays, Skype is not adapted to the environment in eBay's hands, and it cannot achieve any outstanding results at all. But Skype is a natural fit for our MySpace.

As long as we plan correctly and operate properly, we will no longer need to invest in companies one by one and seek large-scale value-added for a company in the form of venture capital as before. Instead, we will take Skype and integrate it into MySpace, so that we can also become a

A greater legendary story than Ning Zimo!"

Zhang Junhao was moved.

He noticed,

their heads,

I was also moved.