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.

As early as two months prior, major internet information platforms had begun vying for exclusive World Cup coverage rights.

Penguin, Sina Weike, Baidu, and the three portal sites—Sohu, Sina, and NetEase—fought fiercely, leaving their brains battered.

In the end, Sina Weike, Penguin, and Baidu emerged victorious, while the three portal sites suffered defeat.

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

The three portal sites, once dominant, had gradually been replaced by new internet giants.

Penguin, with its massive user base and traffic pool; Baidu, as the search gateway; and Sina Weike, 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 since 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 founding 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 still Sina.

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

It ran into Sina Weike and was crushed by Seeing Yan Li, now ranking last among the three portal sites.

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

Both aimed to differentiate themselves from Sina Weike's mass-platform model.

For the former, Sina held an advantage: after all these years of portal and blog operations and Sina Weike, it was not hard to find experts and high-quality content creators.

Sina Weike, 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 Sina Weike's weaknesses, Sina planned to launch targeted Q&A discussion zones and cultivate a high-quality user base to compete.

As for the latter, it was Sina's experiment.

Among all internet platforms, Sina was among the most attuned to the mobile era, but unfortunately it encountered Seeing Yan Li, who had broken the rules—if not for him, the outcome might have been uncertain.

Sina believed the new mobile era would inevitably bring new social methods.

Even if Penguin and Sina Weike took the lion's share, there was still room for them to carve out their own niche.

Sina currently lacked both capital and time to fight with all the giants; it needed to regain some blood first, win back capital market recognition, then seek the next big wind.

Seeing Yan Li paid little attention to Sina's moves; once he learned Sina Weike had secured the rights, he began actively promoting deeper cooperation and integration between Sina Weike and Tudou.

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

Compared to information platforms like Sina Weike, video websites could actually capture more of the World Cup's traffic.

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

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

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

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

Currently, six video websites had secured World Cup rights: Tudou, Youku, Ku6, Sohu Video, and others.

With so many competitors, this was bound to be a fierce traffic battle.

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

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

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

They could offer each other some support and coordination, but had no obligation and could not deeply cooperate.

Tudou could not command Sina Weike, nor would Sina Weike honor Tudou's orders.

But now it was different: both companies had the same boss.

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 Sina Weike paid lip service, Tudou could only protest a few times.

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

Just this one point made the resource integration and efficiency of both sides incomparable to before.

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

Seeing Yan Li had schemed to acquire Tudou not to cash out through an IPO, but to build his own industrial chain.

In his vision, Sina Weike and Tudou were to be increasingly tightly bound, creating a powerful ecosystem of content plus social interaction, achieving a 1+1>2 effect between the 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 Seeing Yan Li's mind, it was not merely about exploring their cooperation mechanism—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.

Seeing Yan Li's foothold in Tudou was still somewhat shallow.

If Tudou and Sina Weike further merged, his personal shares in both companies and their cross-held shares would form a more complex and stable equity structure—each embedded in the other—making Seeing Yan Li's position unshakable.

Of course, this was only a hypothesis.

Currently, Seeing 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 joint senior meeting between Sina Weike and Tudou greatly satisfied Seeing Yan Li.

Leaving aside other matters, merely announcing account integration, content sharing, and data coordination would keep Penguin Taotao and Youku's heads of department awake at night.

Account integration—allowing one-click login across Sina Weike and Tudou—not only tightened the bond between users of both platforms but also enabled massive user acquisition.

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

Content sharing allows content from Weibo and Tudou to be seamlessly shared across the other platform.

Thus, Weibo gains corresponding content, Tudou receives massive traffic, and the two platforms further achieve synergy.

Data coordination establishes a unified data state, analyzes user behavior across both platforms, and builds a more complete and accurate database.

Consequently, content recommendations and ad placements become more precise, enhancing user retention and maximizing resource utilization.

These three moves have significantly enriched Weibo, and Tudou, which had lagged in traffic and users, reaped clear advantages.

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

Director Yan, hello!

Director Yan's arrival is perfect!

In fact, Director Yan's arrival is even a bit late!!!

Many internally muttered that former CEO Wang Wei—if he had opened up Tudou earlier and deeply partnered with Weibo, reaping the related benefits—Tudou might have experienced a surge of growth and avoided being crushed by Youku.

Wang Wei would surely curse if he knew—he couldn't possibly be unaware of the benefits of deeply binding with Weibo.

The problem is, once Tudou is bound to Weibo, Seeing Yan Li will control every move; Wang Wei will be perpetually reactive, and Tudou will eventually become Yan's.

Now, Tudou already belongs to Yan, so there's no such concern—of course, they can comfortably enjoy the benefits.

This is the gift Seeing Yan Li's rise has brought Tudou, and also his ultimate move to seize control of it.

Besides the broad cooperation between the two platforms, the meeting also covered a joint strategy for the World Cup.

Each has its role: Weibo is the topic engine and traffic reservoir, generating topics, sparking interaction, and gathering traffic.

Tudou is the content production center and experience stage, providing professional, fast, and diverse video content, absorbing Weibo's traffic, then feeding it back to Weibo for further discussion, creating a cycle.

If Weibo only discusses without offering experience, it risks letting its hard-won traffic flow cheaply to other platforms.