Chapter 95: This Card is Simply Invincible
Chapter 95: This Card is Simply Invincible
At the same time, at the headquarters of Qianxiang Group:
Since Cheng Yizhou personally called Xu Jingren to propose rejecting the acquisition, he chose not to invest in Fanfou.com as he had threatened. Instead, he approved the establishment of a new project and formed a development team to create a competing microblogging platform.
The new product developed by the team is called "Qianxiang Weibo." Cheng Yizhou knows well that with his feud with the founder of Fanfou, it's better to create his own platform rather than invest in Fanfou.
At this moment, Cheng Yizhou is in a meeting with several leaders of the Qianxiang Weibo team.
After a while, the project lead spoke up. "Mr. Cheng, we were one step too late. Both weibo.com and the short domain name t.cn have already been registered. The weibo.com domain was sold for 2.9 million yuan three days ago, and the transaction was completed. The t.cn domain was also sold for 880,000 yuan. Both were bought by Quantum Jump."
Cheng Yizhou felt a tinge of frustration upon hearing that these domain names were snatched up by Quantum Jump, but he didn't show it. He nodded and asked, "Which VC institution is Quantum Jump backed by?"
Cheng Yizhou hadn't expected that more than three million yuan would be spent on two domain names. This indicates that Quantum Jump not only secured investment, but the scale of that investment is likely in the tens of millions.
"No wonder they're so confident," he thought. "This was a miscalculation."
Another team member added, "Mr. Cheng, we've conducted a deep investigation into Quantum Jump. The preliminary results show that they've penetrated Huayang Group."
Cheng Yizhou was surprised. "You mean Xincheng Huayang Group has invested in Quantum Jump?"
The team member nodded. "The investor in Quantum Jump is a company called Qunxing Capital. It was established just this year, and the specific investment amounts and equity shares are unknown at this time."
It was normal that they didn't know the exact figures, as Qunxing Capital and Quantum Jump had not disclosed their financial details to the public. Only insiders knew the specifics.
The team member continued, "Further investigation into Qunxing Capital revealed a connection to a company called 'Shenxing,' which is also newly established. Not only that, Hua Yu, the current head of Qunxing Capital, is the son of Hua Yongming, the head of Huayang Group. Hua Yongming also serves as the vice president of Huayang Group."
Cheng Yizhou's eyes widened in realization. "So, Qunxing Capital is controlled by Huayang Group, which means Huayang Capital is the investor behind Quantum Jump."
He smiled suddenly. "If it's Huayang Group, that's good news. I've heard about Xincheng Huayang Capital. They've invested in several Internet companies in recent years, but none of them succeeded. They've always failed, which shows that Huayang lacks the genes for success in the Internet industry."
The team member added, "We're also seeing rapid user growth for Quandong Weibo. Preliminary estimates show that the user registration has already reached at least 2.7 million."
Everyone in the room knew that Quandong Weibo had only been online for a little over two months. The 2.7 million user registrations were impressive, considering the short timeframe.
Cheng Yizhou turned to the project lead. "When will Qianxiang Weibo be ready to launch?"
The project lead replied, "At the earliest, it may be ready by March next year."
By March, Quandong Weibo could have as many as 8 million users, given its current growth rate.
But Qianxiang Weibo was not without its advantages, especially its potential for leveraging Xiaonei Network for increased user acquisition.
Cheng Yizhou immediately instructed, "Find a way to accelerate the growth of Qianxiang Weibo. Try to make it launch even sooner."
The project lead hesitated before asking, "Mr. Cheng, should we consider some unconventional methods of competition?"
"Unconventional?" Cheng Yizhou raised an eyebrow.
The lead quickly clarified, "What I mean is using methods that aren't traditionally acceptable—perhaps creating a lot of negative content on Quandong Weibo to provoke regulatory interference or force the platform into a shutdown for rectification. If the shutdown lasts a year or so, Quandong Weibo would be effectively out of the picture."
The room fell silent, but everyone knew the devastating effect of such an attack on a growing platform.
Cheng Yizhou calmly responded, "If it's necessary, unconventional methods can be considered, but only as long as they don't cause trouble for us."
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At the same time, not only was Qianxiang Group entering the microblogging field, but with Quandong Weibo's early success, other Internet giants were beginning to take notice. This included major portal sites like Xinlang and social networking giants like Penguin.
The appearance of Quantum Beat and Quandong Weibo had caused Internet giants to reassess the microblogging space and accelerate their own entry into the market.
However, despite their interest, many were still hesitant, unsure of whether microblogs were truly a significant opportunity. It was Qianxiang Group's decisive entry into the field that pushed the giants into action.
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Meanwhile, Fang Hong had left Quantum Beat and was reflecting on the events of his past life. He considered the possibility that Fanfou.com might face a similar fate to Quandong Weibo—shut down for a prolonged period due to sensitive comments, malicious traffic attacks, or inappropriate content spread across the platform.
Fang Hong understood that this was a high-risk situation. After all, Quantum Jump had already rejected major investors like Sequoia Capital and Qianxiang Group, effectively blocking them from entering the market.
However, Fang Hong felt that Xu Jingren and his group had not yet grasped the full scale of competition. They were still young and inexperienced in handling such turbulence.
Fang Hong knew that the key to preventing this disaster was to bolster the security of Quandong Weibo's platform, which would require strong technical support. To achieve this, he decided to improve the research and development capabilities of the team.
He decided to use the social reputation system's prop card to improve the R&D capabilities. The system's interface displayed that Fang Hong had a reputation value of 21.8 million and achievement points of 1.7205 million.
"I can exchange for 17 cards…" Fang Hong mused, then immediately made his choice. The system allowed six types of item cards: R&D, Operation, Loyalty, Attributes, Clearance, and Health.
Fang Hong exchanged an "R&D" item card, which consumed 100,000 achievement points, bringing his available points down to 1,620,500.
A message appeared on the interface: "Select a target to use the item card. The target's creativity will receive a 5% bonus. Further use of the card will accumulate the bonus. The 'Clear' item card can be used to reset the effects on a specific attribute."
Fang Hong thought for a moment, then designated Lou Gaoyuan, the team member with the strongest technical abilities, as the target to receive the creativity bonus.
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In the development room of Quantum Beat, Lou Gaoyuan, who was working on algorithm development, suddenly experienced a moment of clarity and exclaimed, "I got it! It works like this!" He immediately began typing away on his keyboard, implementing the breakthrough.
Meanwhile, back at home, Fang Hong exchanged another "Attribute" item card. This allowed him to see six basic attributes of a target: character, prestige, health, IQ, coordination, and wealth.
Fang Hong quickly analyzed Lou Gaoyuan's attributes. The IQ attribute showed a value of 128 (+1), indicating that Lou Gaoyuan had benefited from the 5% creativity bonus.
Fang Hong was pleased with the results, realizing that Lou Gaoyuan's IQ was now in the "excellent" range.
"I'll raise his IQ further," Fang Hong thought. He decided to exchange a few more "R&D" cards to improve Lou Gaoyuan's technical abilities, ensuring that the team would be able to handle any challenges that might arise.
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And so, with his creativity boosted, Lou Gaoyuan's capabilities would soon be ready to defend Quandong Weibo against any malicious attacks or challenges that might come their way.