Chapter 321: Net Worth Hit 5 Billion, Passive Sina, Two Warriors Clash Again

At the end of July, Seeing Yan Li lost the Weibo God competition to Dayao.

That day, he added to his Weibo bio: "Top Four of the First Weibo God Contest," a title that sharply contrasted with the CEOs and chairmen listed before it.

It had the weird humor of a Crayon Shin-chan sneaking into Ultraman.

Without waiting for external praise or mockery, Seeing Yan Li took the initiative to meme, generating buzz for Weibo and the Weibo God contest.

Sure enough, Weibo gained a new trending topic, prompting many netizens to update their bios with half-meme, half-self-mocking lines.

Such as "Former Deputy Group Leader, Row 2, Group 2, Class 7-3, XX Elementary School" or "Recipient of the Bronze Award, Amateur Division, XX Street Children's Calligraphy Contest."

Reports have noted that Chinese netizens are exceptionally skilled at interactive creation; given decent material, they rapidly expand and spread it, forming catchphrases or memes.

Previously, the most active meme platforms were Tieba and Tianya; now, the main battleground is gradually shifting to Weibo.

Because Tieba and Tianya still had some community barriers, Weibo had no real threshold, and its information and topics were interconnected, always allowing users to find kindred spirits who got their wavelength and idle followers.

Several of the year's top online catchphrases were tied to Weibo.

For instance, this year's "X Photo Scandal" birthed the term "Soy Sauce Clan."

It originated from a TV interview with a passerby who said, "What's it to me? I'm just out here buying soy sauce," and the video went viral online.

At the time, Weibo, being the frontline for gossip and social news, always had these soy sauce buyers in its comment sections.

To match the trend, Weibo's official team even released a soy sauce bottle emoji, which became the Soy Sauce Clan's symbol—entering a comment section meant first throwing the bottle.

Besides soy sauce, Seeing Yan Li's self-promoted "Seeing Yan Li Style" also became wildly popular for a while.

Industries across the board imitated it; even an Olympic athlete version of the ad was produced.

The phrase "promoting myself" was endlessly punned on, and even under Seeing Yan Li's Weibo God voting comments, people daily fed him bags of salt.

Seeing Yan Li once posted a Weibo begging, "Please stop feeding me—I'll choke to death!"

Yet immediately after, a salt-bag emoji for feeding salt appeared, effectively encouraging and aiding netizens in meme creation.

Because memes brought both buzz and a light-hearted, humorous community ecosystem, beneficial for attracting and activating users—greatly advantageous for Weibo.

So Seeing Yan Li himself jumped in to guide, aiding Weibo while shaping his persona and breaking down Weibo's user barriers.

On Weibo, many celebrities still held themselves aloof, or were restricted by their teams and companies.

Seeing Yan Li set an example, reducing such concerns.

He, a film and TV tycoon, didn't care about face; he playfully teased netizens, endured all sorts of jabs and mockery, and celebrities would gradually loosen up—at least those who loved to play and clown around couldn't hold back their true nature.

"Celebrity Realness" was a key term in Weibo's annual intelligence reports.

Compared to later celebrities who became cautious, serene, and restrained for various reasons, early internet-active celebrities were fiercely self-expressive, vividly personality-driven, and brought Weibo countless trends and topics.

Thus, Seeing Yan Li consistently emphasized this—not only participating himself but also arranging Huo Siyan and others to demonstrate and lead, with good results.

Some celebrities emerged with strong realness, even striking contrasts.

For example, the diva Wang Fei—publicly perceived as a cold, composed woman.

But on Weibo, Wang Fei acted oddly goofy, loved to ramble, had a short temper, enjoyed clashing with others, and seemed psychologically young.

This shocked many netizens who knew her only through her voice and had never understood her personality.

There was also Liu Huahua—previously, in public perception, he was seen as the artistic type.

After all, he'd starred in many art films, his eyes always carrying melancholy, his face full of stories, so many imagined him as an artist.

But this guy opened a Weibo account, lay low for a while, then went completely off-script—not just goofy, but downright abstract.

His favorite thing? Snatching the sofa—the first comment.

Whether he did it himself or his assistant did it was unclear, but his success rate was high; a top-tier celebrity, daily high-intensity surfing, competing with netizens for the sofa—Liu Huahua quickly became famous on Weibo.

Even in hot news threads, people would specifically search for Liu Huahua's comments; if found, they praised him; if not, they @ed him to mock him.

The emergence of these celebrities made Weibo more fun and authentic.

Relevant institutions have analyzed monthly active users of Weibo and blogs.

Although Weibo hadn't yet surpassed blogs, the trend was upward, while blogs were clearly affected, with traffic beginning to decline.

An authoritative expert analyzed that blogs now relied entirely on years of accumulated user base; many users were accustomed to them and had left too much behind, unwilling to abandon blogs.

Without this accumulation, blogs would have already been crushed by Weibo.

But even so, blogs' overall inferiority to Weibo's mechanisms meant more people were switching to Weibo; users who dabbled in both gradually began favoring Weibo.

Once everyone became accustomed to Weibo, and blogs saw fewer and fewer visitors, it would be a dynastic shift.

Sina had little time left!

This was an externally recognized fact—Sina's new platform, Sina Weike, had to launch quickly.

Then, before Weibo fully devoured blogs, Sina had to transfer as many of its blog's core users as possible to Weike, using Weike's superior mechanisms to leverage Sina's advantages and fight Weibo.

…

"It's too late."

At the Weibo executive meeting, Seeing Yan Li shook his head; Sina had rushed, cutting corners, forcing an August beta test, all to capture Beijing Olympic traffic.

This wasn't necessarily a bad move, but it wasn't necessarily a good one either.

Before summer vacation, Weibo had already surpassed 30 million users; this user gap couldn't be closed by Sina in a short time.

Under these circumstances, the two platforms competing for Olympic traffic had an obvious outcome.

"Still, we can't let our guard down."

Seeing Yan Li had confidence in Weibo and had never underestimated Sina: "If I'm not mistaken, Sina's two cards are their exclusive celebrity groups signed to blogs, and their media resources and portal traffic."

"We must prepare thoroughly to counter these two cards—crush them, smother them!"

Many celebrities from Sina Blog had been poached by Weibo, or were active on both.

Some exclusive celebrities, like Han Han, Xu Caivu, Gao Xiaosong, Yang Lan, Xu Xiaoming, remained closely tied to Sina.

These individuals would form the backbone of Sina Weike.

Meanwhile, some Weibo celebrities would be lured over to Sina Weike.

Just like when Seeing Yan Li pulled people onto Weibo, never offending anyone—it's just a matter of opening another account.

But whether these people stay active is another story; getting them to use Weibo back then took a lot of effort.

Sina wants to replicate it, but the difficulty is substantial.

Because Weibo's mechanism completely surpasses blogging in every aspect, giving it unique advantages.

Put simply, Weibo is more fun than blogging, so everyone will choose Weibo.

And Sina Weike has no real difference from Weibo—it's just a pseudo-Weibo, and due to fears of lawsuits and time constraints, some features are even worse than Weibo's.

If that's the case, why abandon the more fun, more populated Weibo to play an immature Sina Weike?

Unless Sina throws money at it, signs exclusive deals with celebrities, and lures them with incentives.

Then it's simple: Seeing Yan Li and Weibo had already prepared—earlier, they frantically pulled in users, gained a head start, and built a moat; for Sina to poach users, even enough to cripple Weibo, would require astronomical funding.

And Weibo isn't stupid—it won't just sit there watching Sina dig under its walls; it'll throw money too.

But since Weibo already holds absolute advantage, it doesn't need to spend money competing with Sina for users—it can instead sabotage Sina, disrupt its layout, and drain more of Sina's funds.

Sina's media resources and portal traffic are indeed powerful, but Seeing Yan Li isn't without his own.

Even if inferior to Sina's, they can be compensated for by throwing money at them.

Moreover, Seeing Yan Li has TV channels too; his previous endorsement ads clearly show that TV channels are still very effective for acquiring new users.

This is also one of Seeing Yan Li's key weapons for compensating for his weaknesses and fighting other internet platforms.

You draw traffic from internet platforms; I bring in new users through TV platforms.

The King of Distribution isn't called that for nothing—when it comes to TV channel resources, Seeing Yan Li can crush these internet companies.

In short, Sina's moves are easy to predict—how it attacks, how Weibo responds and counters.

Even more, Seeing Yan Li obtained Sina Weike's newly researched features and had Weibo's tech team roll them out first.

The pursuer's advantage is erased, widening the gap further—see how Sina handles this.

After concluding the meeting on Sina, Seeing Yan Li pulled two core executives to discuss financing.

Previously, considering the financial crisis and the imminent bursting of the internet bubble, it wouldn't be easy to reap this sweet fruit again soon, so Seeing Yan Li, who wasn't short on cash, still raised funds by selling 10% of Weibo's equity.

Weibo's valuation was just over $500 million, raising nearly 400 million RMB.

In fact, given Weibo's current momentum, this price could have been negotiated higher.

But Seeing Yan Li feared delaying would bring the financial crisis, so he cut the Gordian knot—accepted this "relatively conservative" valuation, with only one demand: the money must arrive as soon as possible.

He feared the financial crisis would hit, leaving investors with no money or deeming the valuation worthless, causing them to stall payments and cause trouble.

As long as the money arrives and no redemption clauses are set, it'll be hard to make Seeing Yan Li give it back—then just sue.

When Seeing Yan Li was an investor, he minimized payments and tried to withdraw funds whenever possible—shareholder interests came first.

Now that he's a company founder dealing with investors, he demands as much money as possible and finds every way to keep it in the company—even if shareholders are unhappy, they must consider the company's greater good.

In one sentence: his stance is flexible, entirely depending on which side his ass is on.

With these hundreds of millions in funding, Seeing Yan Li's confidence grew—he knew Weibo's war would require massive spending and had already prepared mentally.

Now that Weibo has gained momentum, as long as it maintains market and user leadership, an IPO opportunity will attract investors willing to gamble.

So Seeing Yan Li isn't afraid of burning cash—most of it isn't even his money; he can always take less equity.

Again, Seeing Yan Li doesn't rely on Weibo, Yi'an, or Tudou to make money—there are far more profitable industries.

With the system's cheat, investing at the bottom, returns years later will be far greater.

But in this world, you need more than money—you need power, and this industrial chain's massive entertainment sector is Seeing Yan Li's power, helping him protect his wealth.

At least high exposure and high attention can block many things from happening, preventing him from being quietly swallowed up.

Thus, Weibo's war becomes a cash-burning war; those worried aren't Seeing Yan Li, but certain platforms—Sina, at least, may not have this resolve.

Every year's intelligence shows Sina fighting fiercely in the Weibo war because it maintained its first-mover advantage and had already sunk massive sunk costs.

Win, and feast; lose, and lose everything—and since the chance of winning is high, it's worth fighting to the death.

But now that first-mover advantage is in Seeing Yan Li's hands; Sina's other resources aren't clearly superior to Seeing Yan Li's, the success probability is low, and sunk costs are minimal.

Under these circumstances, will Sina risk everything, spend huge sums, and fight to the death over an uncertain Sina Weike?

What do Sina's other divisions think?

What do shareholders and executives think?

Frankly, Sina's current scale isn't a behemoth compared to Weibo—it can even be affected by Weibo.

Especially in the first half of the year, due to Weibo's rise, its core business—blogging—suffered massive impact, its market cap continuously declined, even dropping below $2 billion.

And don't forget: the financial crisis is coming soon.

Compared to the newborn Weibo, Sina, already listed and with multiple divisions, will suffer a massive shock.

By then, even if Sina wants to fight Weibo to the death, it won't be able to muster so much money in a short time.

Previously, Seeing Yan Li thought launching Weibo in 2008 meant a gap remained before the mobile internet era, carrying significant risk.

Now it's clear 2008 had its own advantages: too many major events, one hotspot after another, and the financial crisis triggering an industry earthquake.

A new platform with no preparation, hitting the financial crisis, is definitely dead—but with preparation, the financial crisis helps stall opponents, indirectly becoming Weibo's accelerator.

Timing, terrain, and human harmony are all on his side; Seeing Yan Li even feels a bit sorry for Sina.

…

On August 2, Weibo announced the completion of its Series A financing, without disclosing exact equity or funding, but its public valuation reached $650 million.

The last frenzy before the financial crisis—while financing, inflate the valuation as much as possible.

$650 million equals roughly 4.8 billion RMB.

Outsiders don't know how many shares Seeing Yan Li holds, but industry insiders believe Weibo's rapid growth means Series A couldn't have sold too much equity; after reserving management and option pools, Seeing Yan Li must hold at least 60%.

In reality, this guess is still somewhat conservative—the financed shares weren't only Seeing Yan Li's, and he also invested some of his own money.

So his current shareholding remains above 70%.

But he had no need to announce it; the outside world calculated it at 60%, and he accepted that just the same.

Moreover, even at 60%, it amounted to roughly three billion RMB—within just half a year, his net worth had more than doubled from the initial Forbes list's figure of just over two billion.

Adding in his other industries, Seeing Yan Li's total net worth had reached five billion RMB.

This had been calculated before, but at that time Weibo had not raised external funding—it was merely a rough valuation, quite speculative.

Now Weibo had genuinely raised funding; though not directly equivalent to listed stocks and hard cash, it nonetheless represented a degree of market recognition and carried real reference value, which many acknowledged.

Five billion in net worth!

The key point was that Seeing Yan Li was still under twenty-eight, and had built it all from nothing.

The allure of wealth and success swiftly reversed most of the negative fallout from Seeing Yan Li's blog scandal; even Qin Lan and others were envied by many.

If Seeing Yan Li were still participating in the Weibo God of Men election, his probability of winning would be extremely high.

The outside commotion had little effect on Seeing Yan Li; things were not like they were back then.