Chapter 400

In June 2010, the World Cup, held every four years, took place in South Africa.

Due to the poor performance of a certain team, the World Cup may not have drawn the same nationwide attention as the Olympics in China, but its influence was still immense.

With fans, related audiences, and trend-followers numbering in the hundreds of millions, it remained one of the top two sporting events.

High influence and intense attention meant high traffic.

Two months in advance, major internet information platforms began vying for exclusive World Cup reporting rights.

Tencent, Weibo, Baidu, and the three portal sites—Sohu, Sina, and NetEase—fought like dogs fighting over brains.

In the end, Weibo, Tencent, and Baidu emerged victorious, while the three portal sites suffered defeat.

This battle for World Cup rights was seen as a shift in internet information dominance.

The three portal sites, once dominant, were gradually being replaced by new internet giants.

Tencent, with its massive user base and traffic pool; Baidu, as the search gateway; and Weibo, which had overturned the mechanisms of internet information dissemination and sharing, became the new dominant powers in the internet information sector.

Of course, the decline of the three portal sites in information was due not only to the progression of the times but also to their strategic shifts.

For example, NetEase had long transformed from a portal site into a gaming company.

As early as 2007, NetEase’s gaming revenue accounted for 85% of its total income; its original portal business had become a negligible subsidiary.

Sohu had expanded everywhere—search, gaming, video, social media—all present; although Sohu’s portal remained one of its core businesses, its decline in information did not strike at its core.

The worst off was Sina.

Due to the success of its blog platform, Sina was the only portal site that chose to deeply invest in information services and then expand into social media.

It ran straight into Weibo, was crushed by Yan Li, and is now the lowest-ranked of the three portal sites.

Still, Sina had some foundation; it was said to be preparing to enter the fields of Q&A platforms, in-depth discussion communities, and mobile internet-aligned vertical social sectors.

Both aimed to differentiate themselves from Weibo’s mass-platform model.

For the former, Sina held an advantage—after all, decades of portal and blog/microblog operations were not in vain; finding experts and high-quality content creators was not difficult.

Weibo, as a mass social platform, excelled in information breadth and speed but lacked depth and personalization, and its user base was a mix of all kinds.

To counter Weibo’s weaknesses, Sina planned to launch targeted Q&A forums and cultivate a high-quality user base to compete.

The latter was a trial by Sina.

Among all internet platforms, Sina was among the most attuned to the mobile era—too bad it ran into Yan Li, who had a godlike advantage; otherwise, the outcome was uncertain.

Sina believed the new mobile era would inevitably bring new forms of social interaction.

Even if Tencent and Weibo took the lion’s share, Sina still had a chance to carve out its own niche.

Sina currently lacked the capital and time to compete with giants; it needed to first regain some momentum, earn back recognition in the capital markets, and then pursue the next big opportunity.

Yan Li paid little attention to Sina’s moves; after learning Weibo had secured the rights, he began actively promoting deeper cooperation and integration between Weibo and Tudou.

Tudou had also secured the rights to the South Africa World Cup.

Compared to Weibo and other information platforms, video websites could better monetize World Cup traffic.

After all, watching football means watching the matches; text and image platforms might capture news hype but could not satisfy the demand to actually watch the games.

Of course, the dominant TV platforms still held the largest share of the cake.

But due to TV’s functional limitations, video websites—through on-demand matches, replays, and video clips—and the growing number of fans accustomed to watching online due to internet adoption, would inevitably capture a significant share with immense potential.

Thus, not only did major information platforms compete fiercely, but major video sites also moved aggressively.

The six video sites that secured World Cup rights were Tudou, Youku, Ku6, Sohu Video, and two others.

With so many competitors, a fierce traffic battle was inevitable.

To this end, Yan Li summoned the senior executives of Weibo and Tudou for a joint meeting, preparing for a coordinated campaign.

Previously, Tudou and Weibo, though allies and strategic partners, operated largely independently.

This was normal: Weibo was Weibo, Tudou was Tudou; though linked, they were two separate companies with two different bosses.

They could offer mutual support and coordination, but had no obligation—and could not deeply integrate.

Tudou could not command Weibo; Weibo ordering Tudou would not be obeyed.

But now it was different: both bosses were one person.

Orders came from one source, actions were unified; even if they weren’t as close as one family, they could move as if controlled by a single arm, and no one dared openly defy or visibly slack off.

In the past, when the two cooperated, if Tudou didn’t cooperate, Wang Wei turned a blind eye; if Weibo paid lip service, Tudou could only protest a little.

Now, if anyone caused trouble, the other could directly report it to Yan Li, who would personally deal with the offender.

In this alone, the intensity and efficiency of resource integration were incomparable to before.

This World Cup traffic battle served as a testing ground for their deep cooperation.

Yan Li’s deliberate acquisition of Tudou was not for an IPO and cash-out, but to build his own industrial chain.

In his vision, Weibo and Tudou were to be increasingly tightly bound, creating a powerful ecosystem of content plus social interaction, achieving a 1+1>2 effect from two billion-dollar internet platforms.

Such deep cooperation could not be achieved with a few words; both sides needed continuous trials, discussions, and refinement to establish an effective and precise mechanism.

Even in Yan Li’s mind, it was not merely about exploring cooperation mechanisms—when necessary, he could push for the merger of the two companies into one.

This would benefit both sides’ development and safeguard his personal interests.

Yan Li’s foothold in Tudou was still somewhat shallow.

If Tudou and Weibo further merged, his personal stakes and cross-held shares between the two companies would form a more complex and stable equity structure—each embedded in the other—making his position unshakable.

Of course, this was only a vision.

Currently, Yan Li had just taken control of Tudou; he focused on company development and did not wish to clash with shareholders yet. He would consider other moves only after firmly securing his position.

The outcomes of this high-level joint meeting between Weibo and Tudou greatly satisfied Yan Li.

Not to mention anything else—just announcing the account integration, content sharing, and data coordination would keep Tencent’s executives and Youku’s bosses awake at night.

Account integration meant one-click login across Weibo and Tudou, tightening user ties and enabling massive user acquisition.

Users of Tudou might not use Weibo, and Weibo users might not use Tudou; once accounts were linked and backed by data analytics, precise user acquisition became possible.

Content sharing allowed seamless cross-platform sharing between Weibo and Tudou.

This provided Weibo with rich content and brought Tudou massive traffic, further enhancing platform synergy.

Data coordination established a unified data state, analyzing user behavior across both platforms to build a fuller, more accurate database.

Thus, content recommendations and ad targeting became more precise, improving user retention and maximizing resource utilization.

These three moves significantly strengthened and enriched Weibo; Tudou, previously weak in traffic and users, gained a clear advantage.

After the meeting, several Tudou senior executives grinned so wide their gums showed.

Director Yan is great!

Director Yan came at the perfect time!

In fact, Director Yan came a bit too late!!!

Many secretly blamed the former boss, Wang Wei—if only he had opened Tudou earlier and deeply cooperated with Weibo, reaped the benefits, Tudou might have exploded in growth and not been crushed by Youku.

Wang Wei would have cursed if he knew—he knew full well the benefits of deep integration with Weibo.

The problem was, once tied to Weibo, Tudou would be completely bound, at Yan Li’s mercy, constantly reactive, and eventually become Yan’s company.

Now that Tudou was already Yan’s, there was no such concern; they could comfortably enjoy the benefits.

This was Yan Li’s gift to Tudou upon taking over—and his ultimate weapon to control it.

Besides the broad cooperation direction, the meeting also devised a joint World Cup campaign plan.

Each had its role: Weibo was the topic engine and traffic pool, generating topics, sparking interaction, and gathering traffic.

Tudou was the content production center and experience hub, delivering professional, fast, diverse video content, absorbing Weibo’s traffic, then feeding it back to Weibo for discussion, creating a cycle.

If Weibo only discussed without offering experience, it risked letting its hard-won traffic flow to other platforms,