Reinventing the Millennium

Fang Zhuo flew to Houston after inspecting Facebook and Twitter with Wang Yan and others.

Compared with Facebook, Twitter, which was just established in Silicon Valley this year, is a bit out of place.

When Fang Zhuo and his team arrived at the Twitter office, the three founders Stone, Dorsey, and Williams were all waiting.

But before there was any communication between the two parties, another man who also claimed to be the founder angrily rushed into the office and shouted loudly, using words such as "despicable", "shameless", "expulsion" and "stealing results" from this company named The extremely silky squirt came out of Glass's man's mouth.

The scene was once bad and embarrassing.

Unfortunately, the office rented by Twitter was relatively cheap, and the security response was very slow and did not show up for a long time.

Seeing that the people here could not handle it on their own, Fang Zhuo had no choice but to ask his security assistants to invite Glass out with the consent of Twitter founder Dorsey.

When everyone sat down again, the three founders seemed a little embarrassed.

Fang Zhuo observed the three people and felt that Dorsey was the most natural, followed by Williams, and Stone was the most restless.

Maybe it was the different roles they played in an event to oust another founder, or maybe someone could always be shameless in such an embarrassing situation. In short, this is the initial impression of the three founders of Twitter. down.

In addition to the suspected problems with the team, the professional ability demonstrated by Twitter also made the group who came to inspect look a little bit confused.

When you come to Twitter, you naturally want to experience the product.

However, when Fang Zhuo, Wang Yan and others used their mobile phones to send text messages to the numbers designated by Twitter, they followed each other and did not receive a reply from Twitter.

A group of people waited for more than ten minutes but heard nothing.

Finally, after checking, Dorsey said slightly: "There are some problems with the server, and sometimes there will be some delays, but I believe that I will definitely receive it by the evening at the latest."

Fang Zhuo could only give a polite smile.

The team has problems, the server has problems, they all come, so we can only talk about business logic and reasons for starting a business.

While Dorsey was describing this, Fang Zhuo noticed that Stone, the other founder, would always look at him with incomprehensible eyes from time to time. He waited for a while, found an opportunity when Dorsey was drinking water, and asked why.

Stone then said: "Mr. Fang, the bird in our logo has a name. What do you think it is called?"

Twitter's logo is a bird.

But trying to guess the name based on the bird...that's a bit overwhelming.

Fang Zhuo felt baffled and pondered deeply when he saw Stone's eyes were quite eager. Dorsey and Williams next to him also looked at this scene with smiles.

Such questions and such emotions must have roots.

He took a sip of water, his thoughts turned over and over again, and he said slowly: "It's not called Larry, is it?"

Stone smiled and gave a thumbs up: "Yes, I especially admire Larry Bird."

Larry Bird is a legendary star of the NBA giant Celtics. Bird's English word "bird" also means "bird".

Fang Zhuo was a little dumbfounded: "This... um, are you from Massachusetts?"

The city where the Celtics live is Boston, and Boston is the capital of Massachusetts.

Generally speaking, local people will support local teams extremely much, especially since the Celtics have won many championships in history.

Stone nodded and announced: "Mr. Fang, if you are willing to invest in us, Twitter can add another rocket to the logo."

Fang Zhuo: "..."

He pondered over and over again, there was no need to do this, just a bird would be fine.

And whether to invest in Twitter is a matter of two opinions.

Twitter seems really disorganized right now.

Originally, there was a quarrel among the founders, and if a large amount of money was needed to be spent, maybe some trouble would come up, and the company might just break up.

“I like the idea of ​​Twitter very much. Its social pressure is very low, unlike Facebook’s atmosphere of a network of acquaintances. Moreover, its content creation threshold is also very low, which is conducive to the activeness of users, rather than being like Blogs must find ways to activate the author’s creative desire.”

As Fang Zhuo said this, his eyes scanned Sina's senior management.

listen well!

Study well!

"Social networks are a worthy project in the current era. Facebook is developing rapidly, but Twitter can form differentiated competition with it. This is an extremely rare opportunity."

"But we must provide users with a better experience and create an ecological atmosphere."

“In addition to the advantages of social pressure and creative threshold, Twitter is not so much based on mobile phone text messages as it is based on mobile phones, which are mobile devices.”

"When faced with new news or emergencies, mobile phones are more convenient than computers and laptops for every user. It is also important to make good use of this."

"If you can verify the growth of Twitter, I think I would be happy to invest in it."

"It will take half a year to a year. If you have any financial needs then, you can contact me."

Fang Zhuo finally gave a similar statement to Facebook, but the degree of desire on both sides was obviously different.

He felt that if he opened his mouth to make an acquisition, the three people in front of him would all want it.

However, creativity alone is not enough. It depends on what the team can make of the creativity. From a conventional perspective, even if the decision-making team includes two college dropouts and a high school graduate, they have entrepreneurial experience. It is easy to have problems in business management.

Fang Zhuo's words were recognized by the three people, and they didn't know whether they were compliments or not.

Because he has a bird, Stone mixed in his love for basketball, and the atmosphere of the conversation became much more relaxed.

Wang Yan and others have experience in running blogs in China, and also exchanged some ideas about ecology.

Finally, a new problem was discovered.

Twitter now has no backup of user information at all...

After the inspection, Dorsey, Stone, Williams and the Eastern guests said goodbye reluctantly. They wished they could drag Mr. Fang down to chat for a few more hours. "You rich owner of the Rockets, why can't you be so heroic?"

"It doesn't look very mature." Wang Yan in the car said more tactfully. Mr. Fang chose Twitter as the company.

"It's quite immature." Fang Zhuo said without politeness, "But this model is still somewhat interesting."

Wang Yan agrees with this point, but is still a little unclear about how to do it well if Sina is to do such a project in China. The point that Mr. Fang mentioned about viewing mobile devices through text messages is very good, but this is not the case between the two. There are also differences between countries.

The most critical thing is not how a project is, but the important changes that the mobile era can bring.

Wang Yan thought about this and felt that he was facing a very important test question.

He temporarily suppressed all the thoughts in his heart and asked Mr. Fang a question with a smile: "This Twitter is a mess. If they can't do it well, can Mr. Fang learn from Penguin's micro-innovation in the United States?"

"Human energy is limited after all." Fang Zhuo pondered, "I still want to see how they can develop such a model."

He paused and said, "If it doesn't work, you can also try Penguin."

Wang Yan felt relieved after hearing this.