Chapter 337: 99 Yuan Subsidy Era! 4 Million Live Viewers, Drive the Price Down!

November 20, WeChat released version 4.5, adding real-time walkie-talkie, multi-person voice chat, QR codes, and navigation features; Penguin Maps entered the WeChat application ecosystem for the first time.

At the same time, after two months of development, Laoshou. com successfully launched Scan and Group Buying Code Verification functions, following Meituan and Dianping.

A brand new era has already begun!

However, the group buying market landscape changed drastically: Dianping and Meituan held the top two spots, while Kuipao, after integrating Nuomi. com's resources, surpassed Laoshou. com in just three months to rank third in the industry.

Laoshou. com was relegated to the bottom!

According to analysis reports from third-party data agencies, the total transaction volume of the national group buying market in October was 4.6 billion, with Dianping at 1.14 billion, Meituan at 1.02 billion, Kuipao at 0.93 billion, and Laoshou. com at 0.65 billion.

When Baidu acquired Laoshou, the monthly transaction volume was already over 600 million.

In other words, in the three months since Gong Zhenbing took over Laoshou. com, they had cumulatively spent 60 million on marketing, yet their market share remained unchanged.

"Baidu is a technology-driven company; including Li Yanhong, they understand neither management nor business. The fates of Laoshou. com and Didi Dache were destined long ago; they are bound to lose!"

Shan Jiawei, head of Kuipao's group buying business, commented bluntly on Weibo.

Li Yanhong, considering his status, was unwilling to engage personally, but Gong Zhenbing had no reservations and immediately retorted: "Kuipao's group buying business hasn't even reached number one in the market yet; don't pretend to be a big shot giving orders. Besides, are you qualified?"

"Better than plagiarism," Shan Jiawei mocked.

Seeing this, Meituan's Wang Xin and Dianping's Zhang Tao looked embarrassed; that bastard Shan Jiawei had dragged them both into the insult.

But Meituan and Dianping could not refute it, because they had indeed plagiarized.

There was no choice; combining QR code-style group buying codes with the Scan function could easily increase verification speed by more than ten times, benefiting users, merchants, and platforms alike. Plagiarism was unavoidable!

Additionally, the movie "Lost in Thailand," starring Xu Zheng and Wang Baoqiang, launched its pre-heat promotional campaign.

After some thought, Pei Yi immediately bet on this film, finalized a ticket subsidy activity with Light Media, and, with a 60-40 funding ratio, reduced the ticket price for "Lost in Thailand" on the Kuipao platform to 9.9 yuan per ticket.

The activity period was from December 6 to December 12!

From November 25 to December 5, users could obtain a puzzle piece by ordering takeout or verifying a group buying order; collecting nine pieces allowed free redemption of a 60-yuan face-value movie discount coupon.

In an instant, Kuipao's daily active users and user stickiness improved significantly.

Under Chen Yansen's instruction, Pei Yi proposed the "T-shaped Strategy" plan, viewing group buying as a horizontal line, while services like takeout, movies, hotels and travel, and local life were vertical lines for development, thus forming a "T" shape.

Everything can be group bought!

With the assistance of Shan Jiawei, Zhang Xuhao, and others, Pei Yi extended Kuipao's business map to all walks of life.

From food to leisure and entertainment, beauty salons, massage and foot therapy, scenic spot tickets, hotels and homestays, tourism and vacations, to seeing doctors, buying medicine, movies and performances, and ride-hailing cars; the categories were complete and all-encompassing.

However, Laoshou. com and Dianping's businesses were concentrated solely on food and leisure entertainment, with single categories and an incomplete ecosystem.

Meituan held a slight advantage, having already expanded into movies, hotels and travel, and takeout categories; from a business model perspective, it posed the greatest threat to Kuipao.

After receiving the October industry report, Zhang Tao and Gong Zhenbing both resolved to accelerate the expansion of their respective platforms' business boundaries and find new profit growth points.

Online ticketing thus became the core lever for everyone to compete for market share, attract users, and increase platform visibility and user stickiness.

Meituan partnered with Huayi Brothers to reduce the pre-sale ticket price for "1942" to 9.9 yuan and provided certain traffic resource support.

Laoshou. com chose "The Banquet" as a deep cooperation partner, with the ticket price also at 9.9 yuan.

Dianping's subsidy strategy differed; Zhang Tao did not sign exclusive agreements with any distribution company or production house but adopted an impartial attitude.

However, lacking a portion of the subsidy funding source, Dianping could only pay out of its own pocket; for every 9.9 yuan movie ticket sold, it had to bear 8 to 10 yuan more in costs than Kuipao, Meituan, or Laoshou. com.

In the first half of the year, the lowest movie ticket price was 19.9 yuan; in the second half, it became 9.9 yuan.

More and more people walked into cinemas, and box office receipts exploded!

Xu City, Zhuxianzhuang Technology Park.

Chen Yansen sat in his office, lining up a stack of movie tickets, glancing over them quickly, finally selecting two copies of "Cold War" and two copies of "Bourne Legacy," and tossing aside the "Tai Chi 2: Hero Rising" that Ye Qiuping had given him.

He knew Ye Qiuping's body and character inside out, fully aware that he must not give that woman even a shred of hope.

Wanting Mr. Chen to accompany her to a movie? No way!

Occasionally drinking two bowls of sweet soup, the Boss Chen could barely accept.

Now that the group buying track only had Kuipao, Meituan, Dianping, and Laoshou. com remaining, besides competing on product experience and after-sales quality, new customer subsidies, old customer discounts, and repurchase frequency were also of paramount importance.

Internal skills must be solid; external skills cannot lag behind.

Pei Yi's operational style became increasingly steady; he lacked no straightforward means and could also play dirty tricks with great skill.

Chen Yansen was not at all worried about the development of takeout and group buying businesses; with Pei Yi, Shan Jiawei, and Zhang Xuhao in command, let alone the likes of Zhang Tao and Gong Zhenbing, even Wang Xin and Wang Huiwen would find it hard to cope.

Outside the window, the autumn rain pattered, a scene of desolation.

With the hot sales of Sister Chengzi phones, Mo Si (Alexa) smart speakers, and power banks, plus the offline channel supplementation from Sister Chengzi Smart Life Halls and Yunsu Express Service Stations, and the OEM orders for Xiaomi, 360, NetEase, and Huawei phones, the production capacity of Luhu No. 4 Factory had approached saturation.

In the morning meeting, after communicating with Cao Dahua and Cai Jingming, he planned to purchase an industrial plot of land near Luhu No. 4 Factory this month, convert it into a production base, and prepare for 2013.

Simply put, the employee scale of the Sister Chengzi phone factory would expand again, with an estimated increase of 20,000 jobs.

Upon hearing this, Tao Jingwen immediately patted his chest, saying he would handle the procedures and policy issues, guaranteeing that the new production line at the Luhu Factory would go into production before Q2 next year.

Chen Yansen smiled, made a few perfunctory remarks, and hung up the phone.

From Tao Jingwen, he learned he had acquired another title: Executive Director of the Hui'an Chamber of Commerce.

He knew very well the nature of those old men in the Chamber; holding a nominal title was fine, but don't expect to get a penny of benefit from him.

Want resources? No problem!

Bring something to exchange!

Half an hour later, the rain stopped, a clear breeze blew gently, and the sky brightened slightly.

Chen Yansen pushed open the door, intending to go downstairs, but bumped head-on into Gao Weilin, who was just about to enter.

"Boss, Sina's Cao Weiguo has released news externally, planning to open a financing window for Weibo; should we take a share?"

Gao Weilin stopped, speaking slowly.

Weibo?

Chen Yansen thought for a moment, then shook his head and refused.

In his view, Weibo's commercial monetization capability was extremely weak; if one only looked at user data, strengthened social layout, and expanded traffic entry points, there was absolutely no need to invest, because Senlian Capital had better alternatives—Toutiao and Lingxi Browser.

Additionally, the short video project was under development; Liang Bo prepared to go to the United States in early December to establish a branch company and compete with European and American internet giants for market share in the short video track.

"Understood, Boss," Gao Weilin nodded and replied.

"Walk with me downstairs."

After Chen Yansen finished speaking, he walked forward on his own.

Gao Weilin responded with a sound and hurriedly chased after him.

…………

At 10 AM five days later, Chengzi Technology, in conjunction with the YY platform, introduced its new product to users via live broadcast for the first time.

YY Live founder Li Ling was very accommodating; he symbolically collected an advertising fee and then pushed over ten million exposures to the Chengzi Technology live room.

The homepages of Toutiao, Lingxi Browser, and the Chengzi App Store all displayed jump links to the live room.

External traffic reached the 20 million level!

Therefore, as soon as it hit ten o'clock, the number of people in the live room skyrocketed in a straight line, quickly breaking through the 100,000 mark.

At this moment, Wang Teng, wearing a blue suit, stepped up onto the stage of the Sky Garden Banquet Hall and smiled slightly at the camera.

Suddenly!

The live room went black, and over a million people disconnected simultaneously!

"Friends, I am Wang from Chengzi Technology..." Wang Teng, unaware of the situation, followed the established procedure and spoke the opening remarks at a leisurely pace.

"Wang Zong, sorry, wait a moment! The server crashed; the technical department is making emergency adjustments," a YY Live staff member standing below the stage waved and signaled.

The server crashed?

Wang Teng froze, then reacted, and couldn't help but ask curiously: "It crashed with just 100,000 users?"

After all, when he contacted Li Ling, the other party had solemnly claimed that during last year's YY Annual Gala, the peak concurrent viewers in the main hall's live room reached 1 million.

With YY Live's backend encoding efficiency, distributed architecture, CDN coverage, and other multiple technologies, it should have been sufficient to handle Chengzi Technology's online launch event.

Yet now, before he had even finished a sentence, the live room actually crashed?

"Wang Zong, from 10:00 to 10:03, over 1.2 million viewing users surged in instantly, far exceeding the server's carrying capacity," a YY Live employee replied resentfully, feeling extremely ashamed.

On the other side.

After receiving the news, Li Ling rushed to the technical department, called over the person in charge, and asked: "Can it be fixed? When can it be resolved?"

Backed by Senlian Capital, Chengzi Technology's status and influence in the domestic internet investment circle were in no way inferior to old-line investment firms like Siwei, Gao Ling, and Qiming.

If this cooperation project was botched, Chen Yansen speaking about it publicly could even affect the investment world's view of YY Live.

Moreover, YY Live had only been listed a few days ago; if the news got out, the stock price could even be affected.

"Mr. Li, things are a bit troublesome. Previously, we adopted multi-line CDN nodes, server cluster optimization, and client-side caching strategies, barely achieving million-level traffic distribution, but with high latency and serious lag issues; you should be aware of this."

The technical department head looked troubled.

Before the popularization of 4G networks and the maturity of cloud service technology, a million-level concurrent user count was the load limit for a single live room.

"Do you mean the number of people in Chengzi Technology's live room exceeded 1 million?" Li Ling asked incredulously.

It was worth noting that to boost platform traffic, YY Live frequently invited second-tier, or even first-tier, singers for interactive live broadcasts, holding new song releases, fan meet-and-greets, and similar events, yet the viewership for a single live room topped out at only 700,000 to 800,000.

"To be precise, it was 1.267 million people; if the server hadn't crashed, it would have probably exceeded 2 million," the technical department head explained.

"I want to hear a solution," Li Ling waved his hand and asked urgently.

"Traffic splitting! Push Chengzi Technology's video source to multiple live rooms, but latency and lag issues will still occur, and the consistency of the interactive experience will be greatly discounted," the technical department head blurted out.

"Is there no other way?" Li Ling furrowed his brows slightly and asked again.

"Actually, recording first and then on-demand playback is the best solution; it can solve the network latency problem and also improve video quality."

The technical department head hesitated for over ten seconds and threw out a new idea.

"Fine, let's do traffic splitting first," Li Ling chose the first technical solution.

As for recorded playback?

He couldn't bring himself to mention it to Wang Teng!

If it was recorded playback anyway, why did Chengzi Technology still need to find YY Live?

Wasn't Penguin Video or Youku Video enough?

"Understood, Mr. Li," the technical department head nodded.

Actually, before Li Ling arrived, he had already formulated the technical strategy with his subordinates.

Chengzi users in front of computer and mobile phone screens were still waiting!

Keywords such as "YY Live server crashed," "YY only has three minutes," and "Chengzi Technology online live broadcast" shot to the top of the hot search, and the comment section was filled with curses.

"It's been fifteen minutes already; does YY Live work or not?"

"Customer service told me to wait a while."

"@Li Ling @YY Live, if it works, it works; if it doesn't, it doesn't. What does 'wait a while' mean?"

"I heard today's new product launch event will feature two new products: a tablet and a laptop."

Not until 10:39 did Chengzi Technology's live room return to normal, and netizens immediately clicked to enter.

Every time it reached 500,000 people, the YY platform would automatically split the traffic.

The launch event originally scheduled for 10:00 was forcibly delayed by 40 minutes.

"3.94 million?"

Li Ling stared at the backend data, subconsciously swallowed, and immediately felt that cooperating with Chengzi Technology was the wisest choice he had made.

After the event ended, add 1 million on top, and publicly claim that YY Live's single live room viewership broke the 5 million record; this would not only ride the wave of popularity fiercely but also boost the stock price.

"Sorry to keep everyone waiting; next, I will introduce two new products from Chengzi Technology: Chengzi Pad 1 and Chengzi MagicBook laptop."

Wang Teng reappeared in the audience's line of sight and said with a smile.

The Sister Chengzi Pad1 is equipped with a Tegra3 quad-core processor, features a 9.7-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 2048x1536, comes with a standard memory configuration of 2GB+16GB, and supports 1080p video playback, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, multi-touch, GPS, and gravity sensing functions.

The system is a deeply customized AuroraOS 1.46 version, embedding the Mo Si voice interaction engine, with a 5-megapixel front camera and a 12-megapixel rear camera.

Wang Teng explained point by point, comparing the core parameters of the Sister Chengzi Pad1 with Apple's iPad4 and Shanxing N8000.

The screen size is on par with the iPad4 and slightly smaller than the Shanxing N8000.

The camera pixels crush Apple and Shanxing, and Sister Chengzi Technology's photography algorithm technology is no worse either, with imaging effects that do not fall behind at all.

The 7000mAh large battery can maintain 600 hours of ultra-long standby; under heavy use, it can last 11 to 13 hours. The battery life is astonishing, exceeding the iPad4 and Shanxing N8000 by more than 10%.

"The price of the 16GB standard version is 1999 yuan!"

One hour later, Wang Teng leisurely revealed the launch price.

This quote instantly made Yu Chendong, who was watching the live broadcast, twitch at the corner of his mouth and suck in a breath of cold air.

(End of this chapter)