The next morning, Chen Pingjiang called Zhuo Ling and Zou Yu to his office.
"I've called you here because there's a very important task to entrust to the Content Department. Each of you will be responsible for one aspect, and daily management work will be handed over to those below you."
"Yesterday, we discussed inviting internet celebrities, celebrities, official institutions, and media to join Renren.com. This matter cannot be taken lightly."
"Zhuo Ling, you will be responsible for contacting internet celebrities and celebrities. Zou Yu will be responsible for personally cultivating and packaging some internet celebrities."
"Only when this is done well can our Renren.com truly stand invincible."
Chen Pingjiang's expression was very serious, putting Zhuo Ling and Zou Yu under immense pressure.
Just how important was this move?
The most suitable example would be the early Weibo battle between Sina and Tencent.
From its inception, Sina Weibo continued the advantages of blogs, inviting a large number of celebrities and public figures to create accounts, and strengthening their interaction with ordinary users.
Leveraging the influence and traffic of these celebrities and public figures, it quickly accumulated immense popularity in a very short time, thereby forming a wide moat to fend off the latecomer, Tencent Weibo.
Social platforms are like this; the Matthew effect is too obvious.
Even a strong platform like Tencent Weibo, after investing massive resources, experienced rapid growth for a period.
Its registered accounts once reached 373 million, and its peak daily active accounts exceeded 68 million, even surpassing its predecessor Sina Weibo, achieving a moment of glory.
However, such an expenditure is difficult to sustain.
Without further substantial investment, it quickly fell into a sub-healthy state with no comments or interactions.
Tencent Weibo, lacking its own native major influencers (Da V) and the media attributes to generate trending topics, also had little interaction between celebrities, stars, and ordinary users.
Over time, Tencent Weibo became an empty city in name only.
With the sudden emergence of WeChat in 2011 and the birth of new products like Weishi, Tencent's strategic focus and support resources gradually shifted to other products.
In 2014, Tencent's Weibo business unit was disbanded.
"Simply put, Zhuo Ling is responsible for recruitment, and you can think bigger. Celebrities, internet celebrities, government agencies, various media, and even variety shows from some TV stations, such as 'Happy Camp' and 'If You Are The One,' can all be tried."
"Zou Yu is responsible for 'starmaking.' An ecosystem with only internet celebrities and stars is incomplete.
We also need a core force to produce platform content and assist them in continuously developing in various vertical domains to become popular bloggers in those fields.
In the early stage, we will invest resources in them, and once they grow, they will generate traffic that feeds back into the platform."
Zhuo Ling and Zou Yu had not expected their boss to entrust such a large project to them and were momentarily speechless with surprise.
However, as the head and deputy head of the Content Department, even though they hadn't yet entered the board of directors, they were considered senior management of the company.
Especially after just receiving stock options, neither of them had the ability to say "no."
A task is a task.
No matter how little confidence or experience they had, they had to bite the bullet and push forward.
Otherwise, Chen Pingjiang would simply replace them with those who were bold and capable.
In their position, they had to fulfill their duties; they were paid to do this job.
This was also a major test from Chen Pingjiang for the two of them.
If there were any errors, they would fall behind.
Li Xi and Miao Bingwei had both been tested and passed Chen Pingjiang's assessment; now it was their turn.
Zhuo Ling nodded heavily, then asked,
"Internet celebrities, institutions, media—inviting them to Renren.com shouldn't be a big problem. Celebrities and variety shows will likely cost money. What are the standards?"
Chen Pingjiang thought for a moment and concluded,
"Spend the least amount of money to invite the most people. You'll need to figure out the specifics in between."
Wow, for Zhuo Ling, this was as good as saying nothing.
"Spend the least amount of money to invite the most people" basically means to get freebies if possible, and ideally spend no money at all.
This requires presenting a grand vision to the other party, emphasizing the platform's influence and what it can bring them.
In contrast, Zou Yu's 'starmaking' work was much more difficult.
After all, inviting people either succeeds or fails immediately, but starmaking requires tangible investment of various resources.
"Boss, what are the standards for this?"
"Vertical domains include, but are not limited to, beauty, selfies, dance, travel, automotive, comedy, sports, food, etc. Correspondingly, there would naturally be beauty bloggers, dance bloggers, travel experts, food reviewers or food creators, etc. Ideally, there should be 2-3 bloggers accepted by fans in each channel."
Zou Yu clicked her tongue; this was not a simple task.
With so many categories, at least ten potential bloggers needed to be prepared for each one.
"No problem, we guarantee to complete the mission."
The two responded clearly and in unison.
......…
After three days of fermentation, the daily active users of Renren Grab a Parking Spot surpassed 500,000, and Renren.com's registered users also smoothly broke through 600,000.
All of this was thoroughly ignited after a Baidu Hot Search went viral.
"Man Fired for Playing 'Renren Grab a Parking Spot' at Work."
As a result, 'Grab a Parking Spot' entered the view of more people, gaining significant attention.
Qianxiang Corporation.
Chen Yizhou pointed to the report in his hand with a grim expression and said, "How did Renren.com make such a huge impact so quietly?"
"They embedded this web game into Renren.com, and in just three days, their Alexa traffic ranking is already higher than ours."
It was no wonder Chen Yizhou's face looked bad; in terms of average daily PV alone, Xiaonei.com had already been left behind by Renren.com.
And all of this was surprisingly due to a small game.
The laughable part was that two months ago, he thought Renren.com would never catch up to Xiaonei.com in a lifetime.
"Mr. Chen, we've thoroughly researched this game, and it's truly extraordinary. It appears to be a crudely made web game, but it accurately captures the essence of social interaction, and with its easy-to-learn nature, it's rapidly attracting users."
"We have to admit, Renren.com's move is brilliant. Everyone copied from Facebook, but they actually thought of breaking the deadlock with social games. Even Facebook had just opened its third-party API, so in some ways, they are even ahead of the veterans."
"Moreover, Renren.com and our Xiaonei.com are taking two different paths. We focus on college student users, while they provide a better interactive experience for social users and white-collar workers."
"Our analysis department believes we should quickly follow up on this game. Their move has hit the Achilles' heel of not just us, but other SNS social platforms as well."
With each sentence the executive next to him spoke, Chen Yizhou's expression grew a little uglier.
Even across the ocean, Zynga only launched its first game on Facebook in September 2007, and it was a free poker-based social game.
The hit 'Friends For Sale' was still a 2008 phenomenon.
Chen Yizhou thought for a moment, then turned and said,
"Can we find out which company developed 'Grab a Parking Spot'? Let's buy it."
Just then, the conference room door was pushed open, and a female executive hurried in, holding a document, saying as she walked,
"Mr. Chen, I'm afraid there's no chance. This game was independently developed by them."
Upon hearing this, everyone present looked even more displeased.
After a long silence, Chen Yizhou rubbed his cheeks, forcing himself to calm down:
"Everyone, don't panic. Old Zhang, how quickly can we develop a Flash web game like this?"
The middle-aged man called Old Zhang frowned deeply and pondered,
"It would take at least two or three months, and that's just by copying. It would involve copyright risks, and they would have a solid case if they sued us."
"What do you all think?"
A somewhat flustered Chen Yizhou's gaze swept back and forth across the faces of the executives.
Someone said,
"I don't think we necessarily need to follow suit. I played it yesterday too, but this web game has too few features. Its product life cycle is bound to be short, perhaps even very brief. Even if we follow up now, by the time our game launches, the 'Grab a Parking Spot' craze might have already passed."
No sooner had he finished speaking than someone immediately offered a different opinion:
"That's just based on your personal judgment. If Renren.com continuously updates versions to retain users, forcefully extending the game's life cycle, every extra month would be a fatal blow to us. This is like a war; if we do nothing, the initiative will be entirely in their hands.
Who knows how many users Renren.com will snatch from us in these two or three months? And expanding beyond campus is something Xiaonei.com will have to do sooner or later. I'm afraid that by then, when we want to expand beyond campus, we'll find that the other party has already become a behemoth."
"I didn't say we should do nothing. We can certainly develop other web games. I just don't think it's necessary to follow the 'Grab a Parking Spot' trend; not only are there infringement risks, but we might also get a bad reputation."
"So what? You also said the game's life cycle will be very short. If we follow suit, it'll last a few months after launch. Even if Renren.com sues us then, we can just take it down; its life cycle would have already ended anyway. As for a little bad reputation, what does that matter? If worst comes to worst, we'll find a third party to do it."
As various opinions were expressed, Chen Yizhou's eyes gradually brightened.
He made the decision, saying,
"We must be strong on both fronts. We'll quickly find a third party to create a copycat product based on the 'Grab a Parking Spot' gameplay. At the same time, we'll establish a dedicated internal project team to develop other types of web games, ensuring that our self-developed games can quickly follow up once the 'Grab a Parking Spot' craze has died down."
Chen Yizhou's plan was undoubtedly more comprehensive, and everyone present supported it.
After the meeting, Chen Yizhou remained in his seat, motionless.
He still didn't understand how an obscure small company could quickly become hugely popular with a single game, and what made this game capable of capturing public favor.
In fact, Chen Pingjiang was simply following the path of Kaixin.com's Cheng Binghao.
When Kaixin.com first launched, it became hugely popular with the social game 'Friends For Sale,' which was China's first social game, and users immediately flocked to it.
At its peak, at least 80 venture capital firms approached Cheng Binghao, wanting to invest in Kaixin.com, which shows just how explosive its growth was.
Kaixin.com was founded in March that year, launched 'Friends For Sale' in April, 'Grab a Parking Spot' in June, saw its page views exceed 10 million in July, reached 5 million registered users in September, with page views exceeding 100 million, and in January of the following year, 2009, its registered users surpassed 15 million.
It was shockingly smooth!
Unlike Xiaonei.com, which was founded earlier and targeted Facebook for student social networking, Kaixin.com primarily catered to white-collar workers, aiming to create more "entertaining" social interactions.
Therefore, Chen Pingjiang, to some extent, seized the good fortune of Kaixin.com's Cheng Binghao, and ignited the torch of social gaming a year earlier.
And Chen Yizhou's opponent changed from Cheng Binghao to Chen Pingjiang, and Xiaonei.com's opponent changed from Kaixin.com to Renren.com.
(End of this chapter)