Hollywood Hunter

The launching ceremony is very simple.

After confirming the opening of the website, everyone opened a few bottles of champagne in the office building of the Instagram team. It was a lot of fun. Instagram employees began to work after the first day of the website opening. The waist, legs and legs were also left to take care of some things with D girl. Simon left with A girl and C girl who attended the launching ceremony.

As for the top executives of companies such as Igret, there is no invitation.

It is not that there is no such face, but it is not necessary.

For Instagram, Simon does not intend to help Miao Miao, so this time, basically D girl and several "angel investors" are busy in all aspects of things, Deborah is responsible for communicating with Igret in order to obtain technology and In terms of traffic support, Yaojing and Jijing leveraged their connections in the entertainment and fashion circles to attract a group of celebrities to open an Instagram account for the first time.

This is sufficient in the short term.

Simon's account of the D girl is that the site should not consider any profitable things for three to five years, concentrate on developing users, and the fund is not a problem for Instagram.

However, Simon apparently ignored the connections of the women around him.

In other words, it is still an extension of his own personal influence.

Others may not give ABCD or waist fine legs fine face, but it is impossible not to give Simon Westero face.

Although Simon did not show up, this website was created by several women around him, which has already explained the problem.Even if the website is just a toy for Westeros to their lovers, everyone has to give it a favor.

As a result, the website has just been launched, and many celebrity entertainment celebrities who have been stationed on Facebook have recommended Instagram on their social homepages. There is even an article introducing the site on the news page of the Igrid portal. Not conspicuous, but enough to get millions of readings.The website navigation page of the Igrid portal also included Instagram for the first time.

In order to protect its own interests, Eaglet has various explicit or implicit restrictions on users of its platform recommending other websites.

Now, Instagram, which has no equity connection with Igret, has just been launched, but it has received the kind of biological daughter-level treatment of the company's direct investment website.

On the other side, Simon left the headquarters of Instagram and came to Tincobay with Girl C.

Instagram website wants to be widely promoted, the popularity of personal computers and digital cameras is a basic hardware requirement.

However, these two aspects are no longer a problem.

Taking the first half of 1994, for example, global PC shipments reached 26.3 million units in the first six months of 1994, compared with only 20 million units in 1990.Although the rise of the Internet in the world has led to an increase in the share of overseas PC shipments, at this stage North American PC shipments still account for 41% of global shipments, reaching 10.9 million units.

It is estimated that in the whole year of 1994, global PC shipments will be around 55 million units, of which North America will not be less than 22 million units.

In terms of digital cameras, in the first half of 1994, Tinco Bayer’s shipments of digital cameras reached 3.27 million units, and it still managed to hold more than half of the global consumer digital camera market, with a market share of 53%. Annual shipments may be close to 8 million units.

At the same time, worldwide shipments of consumer digital camera products in 1994 are expected to reach 16 million units.

As the world's largest consumer electronics market, the popularity of digital cameras in North America is as fast as the growth of video recorders in these years, far exceeding overseas, 16 million digital cameras, of which more than 70% are in North America, reaching 11 million.

Even if we don’t talk about the accumulation of the past few years, we will not consider overseas users for the time being. Only the increase of 11 million digital camera users in North America in 1994 is enough to ensure that Instagram has a broad user base.

What's more, as long as Instagram can be popularized and stimulate user demand, the shipment of digital cameras will only increase further next year, and the two complement each other.

Simon arrived at the headquarters of Tincobair, and was first taken by Girl C to view a prototype of a digital camera that Tincobair had completed.

I have applied for a full series of trademarks in advance, and still start with'i'. Taking the meaning of'', Tinkerbair's digital camera series will be named iRec, which is easy to remember.

"We tried storage media such as CD, flash memory, magnetic tape, etc., and ultimately the same as the boss said. At this stage, the only storage solution that is suitable for us is the micro hard disk. However, although the prototype has been completed, there are still many problems to be solved. At the same time, we also need to wait for hard disk manufacturers to develop micro-hard disks with greater storage. Therefore, iRec will be released as early as next autumn. At that time, we can launch a 250-M storage-grade micro hard disk within the cost allowable range, and the cost can be controlled. Within reasonable limits."

In Tin Cobalt's laboratory, girl C introduced Simon while watching Simon playing with the apparently rough digital camera.

Simon's iRec prototype machine took a video and played back directly on the iRec small screen, and obviously felt some stagnation. This is probably one of the problems that C girl said.

Claire also brought a first IBM laptop, connected iRec to the USB port of the laptop, and began to transfer the video files that Simon just shot.

This iRec uses 240P video resolution, enough to meet the needs of users at this stage.

At the same time, the 1-minute video I just shot was only 2.2M in size because of the clarity.

The 2.2M MP4 format video, which is transmitted by USB after more than ten or twenty years, is absolutely just a flash.However, this time, Simon also found the problem again.Last year, the popular USB1.0 standard has been promoted, and the transmission speed is only about 90K per second.

At this stage, it takes about 25 seconds to transmit a 240-minute video of 1 minute.

In this way, if one hour of video is transmitted, it may take half an hour, which greatly affects the user experience.

Claire, who was by Simon’s side, was obviously quite satisfied with this. He noticed the slight expression change of the man and said, “The transmission speed of 1.5Mbps is enough to meet the needs of users at this stage. The theoretical transmission speed is equivalent to 180K per second, but, Limited to the reasons for referrals, we show that we can only achieve half the transmission speed, and we can further optimize when the product is launched next year."

Simon nodded.

Indeed, the road is important step by step.

Being able to achieve the current level, compared with the USB standard in memory, was initially formed in 1995, and it is already very advanced at this time.

I have read the statistics in advance. Under the vigorous promotion of the Westeros system, the USB interface has been promoted since the end of last year. In the first half of the year, Tinkerbair released a USB flash drive as a turning point. Until now, PC manufacturers have shipped the latest products. Of personal computers with USB interfaces have exceeded 20%, and this ratio will exceed 50% next year.

Not only that, including personal computers that do not have a USB interface in the hands of home users at this stage. Next, if you want to use the USB function, you do not need to replace the computer. You only need to purchase a transfer interface worth tens of dollars.

Evergrande, Microsoft, Intel and other companies have promoted USB since the end of last year, and they have set up venture funds that specifically invest in USB peripheral products to develop mouse, keyboard and other hardware products that use USB interfaces.

With the popularization of the USB interface, the Dinkel Bayer company plans to release digital cameras, digital music players, digital video cameras and other products that are scheduled to be released next year.However, the floppy disk digital camera at this stage will still be upgraded next year. In addition to the miniature hard disk version of iCam-50, it continues to release an iCam-40S floppy disk version as an excessive.

After seeing the iRec prototype, Claire took Simon one by one to browse some other products being developed.

There are also iBooks that haven't leaked any wind at this stage.

This is a concept given by Simon early on, and iBook is also one of the first batch of trademarks hoarded by Tinkerbair.

Apple released the first Newton tablet last year. This is the predecessor of Apple's tablet computer, which uses a very advanced touch screen design.

It's a pity that Apple didn't pinpoint the positioning of this product, but used it as a personal digital assistant.Moreover, because of the expensive pricing of this product over $700, few users.

Including e-book readers, there are actually similar products on the market at this stage, but limited to content resources, there is basically no good development.

Tinbook’s quietly developed iBook has no plans to launch a finished product in the short term. The main reason is that the price of small LCD screens at this stage is too expensive, and it is limited to other hardware. It cannot be as delicate and compact as the same book.

In the plan, to really launch this product, at least until 1996.

Simon also hopes that this product will be able to be integrated to a certain extent, cooperate with digital music players, and even further, integrate a digital camera and use touch screen functions.

By that time, it will be almost the same as the later tablet computers.

In the laboratory, Claire listened to Simon's idea, but said: "If this is the case, then our product may be more expensive than Apple's Newton tablet, and not many people can afford it."

The reason why the former electronic products were able to achieve the thousand yuan level is mainly because the development of the entire electronic industry system has caused the overall cost to drop significantly.

At this stage, it is still much to this extent.

Simon put down the iBook prototype with no touch function and can only operate it through the buttons, and said: "Think carefully, this is actually an inevitable trend, isn't it? Tinkerbear does not need to be too advanced, but since it is occupied If you have an opportunity, you should ensure that you are always one step ahead of other manufacturers."

Claire knew that her boss would not casually say this to others, and nodded solemnly, making a note of it.

So I stayed at Tincobair until more than 11 o'clock.

I had lunch with John Chambers at noon. In the afternoon, I went to see the construction of Mountain View's Everett Park and participated in a conference call with AOL.

At more than five o'clock in the afternoon, Simon boarded a plane returning to Los Angeles.

Inside the Boeing 767 cabin.

Girl A came to the study room in the front cabin of the plane with a thick stack of documents, but first said: "D just called, and as of 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the number of Instagram registered users has reached 370,000, probably after this weekend. Exceeded 1 million."

Although Simon didn't intervene too much in person, he only heard Alison's words and roughly understood what happened.

Shaking his head and smiling, Simon took the file handed over by girl A and said, "D is in a hurry."

In just three days, the number of users exceeded one million, and even with the strong support of the Westeros system behind Instagram, the various problems that swelled were enough to make this small company, which was only three months old, scramble, if it affected the user experience. , It is even more detrimental.

However, on the other hand, the number of users exceeded one million, which means that this company is already very valuable for the new technology industry that has been boiling at this stage.

After this weekend, if D girls want to cash out, they directly offer 20 million US dollars, there will definitely be a bunch of people rushing to ask for it.

In comparison, the girls only invested more than one million dollars in the early stage, and in a few months, they paid back dozens of times.

Alison heard Simon say this: "D just said on the phone that she wanted to get more support from Igret by transferring part of the shares."

Simon looked up and asked with a smile: "How much?"

Girl A said: "20%."

Simon nodded and said, "You talk to Jeff yourself, I don't care."

If you consider the pure interest, Instagram's transfer of shares is of course best sold directly to Westeros. After all, the current Igret company is no longer 100% owned by Simon and has sufficient support.

However, if you do this, it will break the rules.

Interest binding is the most solid foundation for cooperation.

Simon is also more inclined to talk business.

Although Instagram has gained widespread attention just after going online because of Simon's sake, the transfer of a portion of its equity to Igret actually did not suffer at all.

Now countless small companies in Silicon Valley want to work with Igret, often out of reach.

After talking about this, Alison saw Simon release the box office report just over the past box office week, and said: "There is one more thing about EA's video game "Warcraft: Orcs and Humans."

Simon didn't look up, but just hummed.

Alison continued: "According to preliminary statistics, in the first week of the shelves, this real-time strategy game sold about 76,000 sets, with sales reaching $3.8 million. EA has directly recovered the cost, and it is expected that this game will be sold throughout the sales cycle. The shipments in the company can reach about 1.5 million sets, breaking the total sales of 1.1 million sets of the first generation of "Dune Castle" of the same type."

The price of "Warcraft: Orcs and Humans" is $49.99, which is the universal price of video games in this era.

The total sales volume of 1.5 million sets means that the account will be about 75 million US dollars.

In comparison, the development cost of this game is only about 2 million US dollars, which is completely profitable.

The first generation of "Warcraft" in Simon's memory was successful, but the total sales volume was only 300,000 sets. Now, it can be said that the production and release specifications of the game are all lined up with the support of EA from Silicon and Neural Key Studio. The result of the upgrade.