Reborn multinational giant

Video traffic accounts for more than half of the traffic in the entire Internet industry.From the emergence of the first batch of video sites such as Tudou, Youku, and Ku6 in 2005, to the establishment of iQiyi and Tencent Video two or three years ago by Internet giants such as Baidu and Tencent, the domestic online video industry has gradually matured.

With the popularity of mobile Internet and wifi in recent years, video users and traffic from mobile terminals have also begun to have substantial growth and imagination.

A few years ago, when Huizhong’s core business still relied on the Zhongle page game platform, traffic had always been a major factor stuck in the necks of Zhongle and Huizhong. Therefore, Fang Zhe had to visit Baidu in person. , Reached a cooperation with Baidu to escort Zhongle’s traffic channels, and at that time, Fang Zhe talked with Baidu Manager Li about cooperating to establish a video website.

It was just that at that time, Baidu's President Li Fangzhe and Huizhong kept secrets, and they didn't look at them, so they did not agree to Fang Zhe's request.

At that time, Fang Zhe saw great opportunities in the video industry, but with Huizhong's strength and resources at that time, he could only give priority to the development of the more important WeChat.

Now two or three years have passed. Baidu, which said that it was not a video website, not only established a wholly-owned subsidiary, iQiyi, but also invested a lot of money to make iQiyi become the fourth place in China with Tudou, Youku, and Tencent Video. One of the big video sites.

As for the future of video sites, Fang Zhe, who was reborn in the world, couldn’t be more clear. Not to mention that iQiyi, which was listed on the U.S. stock market in 2018, was valued at tens of billions of dollars. After the merger of Tudou and Youku, Alibaba also spent money to buy it. A huge sum of nearly 5 billion U.S. dollars!

If you look abroad again, Netflix, whose main business is online movie rental, has a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars!

A few years later, when the global mobile Internet industry gradually enters a mature period, the major mobile video apps with a large group of paying users are among the top few in global mobile APP revenue all year round!

Fang Zhe remembers that in the previous life in 2018, whether it was iQiyi or Tencent Video, the number of paid membership users in China was more than 70 to 80 million. If the monthly membership fee is 10 yuan per member, the two video sites will be paid for each Monthly membership fee income is 7.8 billion!

Of course, the revenue of 7.8 billion yuan a month is not much compared to the revenue from Huizhong games and WeChat advertising, but the huge traffic of video websites and the IP value derived from the video content on the website are a sum. Huge gold mine!

Pan entertainment!This is one of the core points of Huizhong's development and layout this year.

At present, WeChat, one of Huizhong's core businesses, is constantly transforming from a social tool to a social platform. Another core business game is also relying on WeChat traffic, and the technical foundation of Huizhong cloud computing is booming.

The upstream of the game business, or the key source of the booming game business, is IP.

The so-called IP is not an IP address in the concept of Internet technology, but refers to the source of intellectual property rights and the ownership of the copyright. In layman's terms, the current online novel "Fights Breaking the Sky", which is spreading all over the Internet, is an IP. This IP-derived Fights Breaking Sky game, Fighting Breaking Sky animation, Fighting Breaking Sky TV series and movies, etc., can all be seen as the pan-entertainment process of this IP.

IP can be a novel, an animation, a movie or a TV series, or even a story or a sentence. As long as it has value, spreads, and can form commercial value, it can be regarded as an IP .

Every IP is a gold mine. Large and small IPs support the content consumption patterns in people's amateur life and produce unparalleled commercial value.

The video industry is a major traffic user in the entire Internet industry, and it is also one of the important ways for IP to generate content and economic value. In the Internet industry, whoever controls the traffic has the right to speak and countless opportunities for realization. Whoever has enough IPs will have enough traffic!

Therefore, even if it is better than Baidu, the two Internet giants of Tencent have also started their own video sites. Although Alibaba later did not rank, the Youku Tudou, which was purchased with huge sums of money, also made up for its shortcomings in this regard.

Huizhong, which started as a game business, naturally understands the importance of traffic. Don’t look at WeChat. Now there are hundreds of millions of users who control huge mobile traffic. However, with the popularity of Wi-Fi and the advent of the 4G era, consumer content such as mobile video will It will gradually become a major consumer of mobile traffic, and it will also become one of the mobile apps that takes up the most user time. Therefore, Fang Zhe’s layout in this area naturally cannot be left behind.

Under this premise, whether to develop Huizhong's own video website from scratch, or to acquire or control existing video websites in the market, has become a question that Fang Zhe and Huizhong executives must think carefully about.

Although a video website has a huge amount of traffic, it is also a big money player. Whether it is the server and development operation and maintenance costs required to support the huge online video traffic of the website, or the cost of introducing movie and TV series variety shows on the website, It's all a lot of money.

In China, with the investment and involvement of the two Internet giants, Baidu and Tencent, in the online video industry, this industry has become a sea of ​​blood. While Baidu and Tencent are spending money to introduce a large number of high-quality movies, TV series and variety shows, They also used ultra-low or even free-of-charge prices to induce users to open members and cultivate users' paying habits. A group of established video sites such as Tudou, Youku, and Ku6 can be described as miserable and struggling.

If you can't fight for technology, you can't fight for money, you can't fight for money, so how can these old video sites survive?It can only be holding a group for warmth or finding a rich father to hold his thigh!

In the previous life, the merged Youku Tudou chose Alibaba, Jinsheng, Huizhong and Fang Zhe and gave them this opportunity!

On March 15th, on the third day after getting the reply from Huizhong Holdings with the consent of Valve, Fang Zhe, with a happy and suspicious mood, met with the current CEO of Youku.com, Gu Yongqiang, in a club near Huizhong.

Fang Zhe's joy is naturally due to Huizhong's taking the controlling stake in Valve, because this means that Huizhong is about to make a big splash in the field of global end-game publishing.

Fang Zhe’s doubts are due to the Youku network he is about to face.

According to Fang Zhe’s memory, it seems that the previous life was at the beginning of March of this year. Youku and Tudoubaotuo.com merged into one company, which also opened the beginning of a comprehensive reshuffle of the domestic video website industry. Jianfang and the like are either being annexed and acquired, or gradually falling into decline. In the end, only iQiyi, which is backed by Baidu, Tencent Video, which is backed by Tencent, and Youku Tudou, which are still unable to escape their fate after the merger, are competing for hegemony. !

What Fang Zhe was puzzled and wondering was how he and Huizhong have not heard the news of Youku and Tudou’s plan to merge until now in this life. Is it because these two companies have blocked the news too well, or they haven’t decided yet. Do you want to merge?

With such doubts, Fang Zhe just saw Gu Yongqiang who had been waiting at the meeting hall, and without greeting him a few words, he asked directly: "Gu, do you mind answering one of my questions first, you Have you met President Wang from Tudou recently?"

Fang Zhe said that Wang Wei is the founder of Tudou.com and the current CEO of Tudou. After the merger of Tudou and Youku, Gu Yongqiang became the CEO of the combined company, and Wang Wei chose to retire with money. Two people can be regarded as getting what they deserve!