After the press conference held by Zhou Xin, what impressed the media the most was the passage about the definition of media.
If you have 10 million users following you, your influence is comparable to that of the New York Times.
Now there are blogs and various online communities, and these online communities are filled with Internet celebrities of all sizes.
However, due to the lack of monetization methods, before the emergence of Quora, no matter how influential a person was on the Internet, it would be difficult to turn this influence into financial benefits.
Google's ad distribution system has not yet come out, and charging based on click-through rates is far away.
This is the eve of the self-media era. The emergence of Quora allows ordinary people to have channels for monetization.
Nowadays, if you have influence on the Internet, how do you monetize it? First, you need to build a personal website yourself, and then the site needs to attract traffic and have a certain click-through rate.
Then use this click-through rate to talk to advertising agencies one by one.
In the era before cloud servers, individuals still needed to purchase servers, networks and storage, then bring bandwidth to their own homes, and finally build personal sites.
To put it simply, it is almost impossible for a pure writer to make money through personal influence.
If you build your own personal website, the income will not even cover the cost of server and network bandwidth.
When Tencent started its business in the early days, the biggest difficulty was that servers and bandwidth could not keep up with the rapidly growing demand. At the same time, QQ was still unable to find a way to monetize its business.
Today’s blogs have the same problem.
If you establish a personal blog on a website provided by an Internet company, the advertising revenue belongs to the Internet company, not you, even if the content you contribute is the main reason for attracting users.
It is precisely in this environment that Quora seems particularly conscientious even if it takes 30%.
Of course, this is indeed a good idea. Even if Zhou Xin takes 50%, users will not feel that they are being cut off. This is the only Internet company that is willing to share profits with users.
"I think Newman, in a sense, subverted the traditional media model in his press conference yesterday.
I call it new media. This new media model is completely different from paper media.
In the era of print media, we relied heavily on the personal experience of editors, consisting of editors-in-chief, senior editors, general editors and reporters, roughly like this pyramid structure.
Manuscripts written by reporters are revised by ordinary editors, and then senior editors and editors-in-chief judge whether they can be liked by readers.
Is it possible that readers will like it? If the manuscript is valuable but does not meet the requirements, then it will be published in a newspaper or magazine after repeated revisions.
If it has no value, the manuscript will be eliminated and become a waste manuscript.
I don’t know whether this article is really liked by readers, because this article has not been put into the market and tested.
Take the Boston Herald as an example. The Boston Herald has nearly a thousand employees, and our average daily circulation is 48,000 copies.
We cannot guarantee at all that what we publish will really be what users like to see.
Quora Golden Selection creatively leaves the decision-making power to users. A large number of users decide on the best content, which will also be read by other users.
From an elite voting mechanism to a mass voting mechanism.
Yes, our editorial team is excellent. They have worked in the industry for many years and can keenly grasp the needs of readers.
But are they really right every time? Do they know themselves better than the readers themselves?
I don’t think so, Quora’s approach is obviously more reasonable.
We have also read the content of Quora Golden Selection. In terms of depth and breadth of content, it is better than our newspaper. I asked our editorial team and they all agreed that the Quora Golden Pick was more engaging for users than our newspaper.
Even from their perspective, they think so.
At the same time, if a Quora user's follower count reaches a certain level, his influence actually corresponds to that of media of the same level.
So I call this new media model new media, which is a disruption to our business.
They don't need editors or reporters. They just need to throw out the events and let users choose the best content.
Quora only needs to make a summary, and it will become an excellent magazine by summarizing high-quality content.
This is such an exaggerated efficiency. Everyone needs to be aware of the crisis. At the same time, we must also launch our own knowledge question and answer community. "
Murdoch's speech at the internal discussion was quickly published on the front page of his own newspaper.
"Quora Gold Pick? New Media!"
Within half a month after the launch of Quora Golden Selection, the number of subscribers exceeded 500,000.
"70 years to 14 days, what does the Internet mean to us?"
This is the headline of the New York Times the day after the official Quora account announced that the number of Quora Golden Pick subscribers exceeded 500,000 under a certain answer.
“The New York Times was founded in 1851, and the New York Times’ daily circulation exceeded 500,000 copies in 1921; Quora Golden Selection was launched in 1999, and it took 14 days for the daily circulation to exceed 500,000 copies.
On the day the New York Times’ daily circulation exceeded 500,000 copies, Mark Thomson, then chairman and CEO of the New York Times, said:
This achievement stems from the newspaper’s persistence and efforts. While maintaining the professionalism and in-depth reporting of traditional news media, the New York Times continues to innovate and explore to provide readers with diversified content and services. This is how we can succeed. key.
And a grand celebration ceremony was held that day. On the day when the number of Quora Gold Picks exceeded 500,000, the official just lightly mentioned it under the answer, which seemed not to be something to be proud of.
It is not uncommon for daily sales to exceed 500,000 copies in today's traditional media industry, but to achieve such a breakthrough in just 14 days is what is most worthy of consideration by every traditional media person and even those in the traditional industry.
The Internet is definitely not just about realizing offline models through computers and networks. It is also a means to subvert all our traditional business models.
We originally thought that the first traditional industry to be disrupted would be online shopping, but now we see that traditional media is being disrupted even faster.”
After the launch of Quora Golden Selection, it has brought as much shock to traditional media practitioners as AI painting has brought to painters.
The success of the Quora Golden Election, 500,000 people may not seem like much, but this is 500,000 paying users and a stable cash flow of US$3.5 million per month.
Quora paid Q&A is an unstable cash flow.
After the success of Quora Golden Election, Nasdaq became increasingly popular.
Wall Street investors, traders and investment managers, when someone questions why the market value of Internet companies is so overvalued, they directly use Quora to refute the other party.
As a knowledge question and answer community, Quora has found more than one profit model and achieved high profits.
As long as other Internet companies have users, they can also find profit models and achieve profitability. It is only a matter of time before they become profitable.
This is the same as Big A's hype. Regardless of whether it exists or not, blow it up first and then talk about it. If Microsoft can handle ChatGPT, big A listed companies can rise to the top with just a little bit of involvement.
The popularity of Nasdaq is a good thing for Zhou Xin. He hopes that Nasdaq will become even more popular.
Only when it is hot can Quora be sold at a high price.
“The giant Time Warner entered the market and announced its acquisition of Quora through the issuance of additional shares.”
"The deal of the century, Time Warner acquires Quora for a whopping $74 billion!"
“In order to build a multi-channel media empire, Time Warner bought Quora for a sky-high price of US$74 billion.”
The emergence of Time Warner has made all transactions lose suspense.
Yahoo is only willing to pay $30 billion, Microsoft is willing to pay $37 billion, and AOL is willing to pay $45 billion.
Murdoch is the stingiest, only willing to pay $21.7 billion.
When Zhou Xin was about to accept AOL's offer, the sudden emergence of Warner Bros. made everything lose suspense.
One of the Goldman Sachs committee representatives met with Zhou Xin that day and said that Time Warner was willing to acquire Quora through additional stock issuance and financing, and the price offered was US$74 billion.
Goldman Sachs is the major shareholder behind Time Warner. Other shareholders of Time Warner in 1999 included Spielberg, Reuters, and the Saudi royal family.
This price knocked Zhou Xin out. For the first time, Zhou Xin felt like he was knocked out by a rich man.
At the same time, representatives of Goldman Sachs said that after Nasdaq approves the transaction, they can sign the contract first.
After signing the contract, Time Warner will provide an initial US$2 billion, and the subsequent US$72 billion will be paid after financing is in place.
You must know that the financial report for the third quarter of 1999 showed that Time Warner had only US$2.43 billion in cash on its books.
Their total assets are US$18.1 billion, which is a snake-toning phenomenon led by Goldman Sachs.
In terms of valuation, yes.
Time Warner is one of the most ambitious companies in the Internet era.
Without Quora, AOL's acquisition of Time Warner would have become the "ultimate symbol" of the Internet boom. AOL acquired Time Warner for $147 billion in 2000.
A year later, in January 2001, Time Warner bought AOL for US$164 billion in order to build a multi-channel media empire.
Unexpectedly, Goldman Sachs directly led Time Warner to intercept Hu.
The deal was met and closed in just two weeks.
Even if he has to pay a tax of about 37%, the US$46.62 billion this transaction brings to Zhou Xin alone can make Zhou Xin surpass Buffett's net worth of 44 billion yuan and become a celebrity second only to Bill Gates. Rich.
At the press conference, a photo of Zhou Xin shaking hands with Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin was spread around the world by traditional media.
Almost all media used the term "deal of the century" to describe this deal.
Zhou Xinxin owns 90% of Quora shares, which means that Time Warner’s valuation of Quora exceeds US$80 billion.
In later generations, AOL's acquisition of Time Warner, originally regarded as a landmark event of the Internet bubble, became Time Warner's acquisition of Quora.
However, it is much more conscientious to backhand Time Warner to acquire AOL and lose US$200 billion. The acquisition of Quora only caused Time Warner to lose US$50 billion.
And this loss is borne by investors.
No more procrastination, I want to close this deal as soon as possible.
Estimated based on real data, it will be higher than actual.
This tax rate can only be estimated. It is too long ago to calculate the true value.
45 billion US dollars in start-up capital, enough to cause trouble, right?
As for whether the protagonist will be assassinated or not, I think it’s better not to think about it so much.
(End of chapter)
