Entering 2007, Kirin Pictures is firing on all cylinders as usual.
Ning Hao, who filmed "Crazy Stone" last year, and supporting actor Huang Bo were recruited by Xiang Nan, and they immediately filmed "Crazy Racing" with the same theme.
After "Crazy Racing" was released during the Spring Festival, it grossed a total of 120 million at the box office. Its performance was closely matched by already famous directors such as Feng Xiaogang and Zhang Yimou. It also allowed Ning Hao, a newcomer, to establish a foothold in the film industry and star in the film industry. Huang Bo has become the new darling of the film industry.
During the same period, "Love Call Transfer" directed by Ouyang Fenqiang and starring Xu Zheng, Che Chen, Huang Shengyi, Yu Na, etc. was also released on Valentine's Day.
This movie, which cost less than 10 million, actually sold well at the box office after its release. The total box office was 42 million yuan, making Xu Zheng a famous star.
Feng Xiaogang also adapted the war film "Assembly" from the well-known writer Yang Jinyuan's "The Lawsuit".
The production cost of this film was as high as 80 million yuan, making it the most expensive film Feng Xiaogang has ever shot. The previous "A World Without Thieves" cost less than 30 million.
After the release of "Assembly", it was very popular in the market and eventually earned a box office of 260 million. It is Feng Xiaogang's best-selling work, even surpassing the box office performance of "Hero" directed by Zhang Yimou in the mainland. However, it is still not as good as its international box office.
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In terms of TV series, Kirin Pictures also has many popular series.
"Latent" directed by Mao Weining, "My Captain, My Group" directed by Kang Honglei, "Eternal Number" directed by Gao Xixi, "Nowhere to Place Youth" directed by Zhao Baogang, "Brothers and Brothers" directed by Zhang Guoli ” and so on are all very popular.
In addition, Kirin Pictures has also recruited a group of new directors, such as Ding Hei, who has filmed the "Empire of the Qin" series, Liu Jiang, who has filmed "A Beautiful Day", "Mom and Dad", and "Before Dawn". Liu Jin, who has acted in "White Deer Plain", "The Informer", "Ideal City", etc.
Since video websites have been launched one after another, they are at the forefront of development. The continuous influx of capital has made video websites rich and wealthy, and they are willing to spend money to buy dramas. This has given them a larger market for dramas and movies.
In the past, it could only be sold to TV stations, but now it can be sold to video websites, and the prices are also good. As the market expands, Kirin Pictures naturally expands its production, so it recruits troops.
Moreover, Xiang Nan also knows that the price of buying dramas on video websites is rising year by year. Nowadays, one episode of TV series only costs tens of thousands. If you wait ten years, one episode of TV series will cost more than 10 million.
Therefore, in addition to selling his dramas to video websites, Xiang Nan also spent money to buy the drama copyrights of other private film and television companies. For those small-scale film and television companies, leasing video copyrights to video websites on a year-by-year basis would be better than selling them outright to Kirin Pictures to earn enough money at once.
Therefore, Kirin's business film library has increased dramatically. It started with only a hundred or so films and quickly expanded to thousands. This also caused its bargaining power with video websites to increase rapidly.
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In 2007, Cheng Ji's Weibo continued to develop rapidly.
Although there have been many competitors during this period, such as Fanfou, Renren, Tencent Taotao, etc., Weibo already has a first-mover advantage.
The social relationships of netizens have been established, and it is really inconvenient to move positions. In addition, Weibo has continued to add functions in response to needs over the past year.
For example, in early 2007, Weibo added a private message function; in mid-2007, Weibo added a group function, which is similar to QQ groups; at the end of 2007, Weibo added a short video function...continuous progress and constant changes , constantly bringing freshness to users.
Therefore, although Fanfou, Renren, and Tengxun Taotao provide very good services, they have never competed with Weibo.
Weibo has grown rapidly in the new year. By mid-2007, there were more than 50 million registered Weibo users, accounting for about one-third of the total number of domestic Internet users. Anyone can see that the rise of Weibo is unstoppable.
Therefore, a large number of venture capital companies flocked to Weibo, hoping to invest in it.
However, Cheng Ji is very optimistic about the development of Weibo and believes that it is likely to become an Internet giant in the future, so he is not in a hurry to accept external investment. Anyway, she is not short of money.
Not to mention that he himself has 50 million funds, which is enough to burn for a while. Xiang Nan alone has tens of billions of funds for her to burn.
And the more arrogant she is, the higher the price offered by those venture capital investors.
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In 2008, Weibo was fortunate enough to become an Internet content service provider for the Olympic Games. On Weibo, you can see game previews, athlete information, game schedules, game results from various countries, and so on.
Benefiting from this, the number of registered users of Weibo has once again exploded, directly exceeding 100 million users, accounting for nearly half of Internet users, and has begun to grow.
Therefore, Cheng Ji has also begun to prepare for commercialization. In addition to traditional advertising and collecting membership fees, Cheng Ji is also preparing to launch an online mall function that allows users to publish product transactions, similar to eBay.
This function is also free in the early stage, and we will take a commission after it becomes bigger.
In order to promote the function of the mall, Cheng Ji also introduced the function of inviting friends to have a knife at Xiang Nan's suggestion. The more users who buy a product together, the cheaper the price will be, similar to Pinduoduo.
This transaction method instantly detonated the Internet, not only making the business of Weibo Mall a hit, but also the number of Weibo registrations soared. In the first year of the mall's opening, the transaction volume has reached 3 billion yuan, which makes Tencent even jealous.
After all, it’s been three years since its launch, and it’s still half-dead.
The commercialization of Weibo Mall was initially successful. After people discovered that Weibo was profitable, the number of users increased. However, after the commercialization of Weibo, a series of problems began to be exposed.
For example, there are too many advertisements on Weibo, which annoys users; the goods in the mall are of mixed quality, and there are many fakes; there is an increase in bad content on Weibo, which is controversial, and so on.
For this reason, Cheng Ji also made many changes.
For example, improving the advertising algorithm to make ads more adaptable to user needs; small merchants paying deposits to eliminate fake and substandard goods, and officially cooperating with major brands to open brand stores certified by Weibo; adopting a mechanical and manual double review strategy , filter inappropriate content, etc.
After these improvements, although Weibo has not yet evolved to perfection, it has made significant progress compared to before.
And after making so many improvements, the number of Weibo users has increased instead of decreasing, which has also made its business valuation higher and higher. By the end of 2008, Cheng Ji was already planning to take it public.
