Chapter 548: Preparations Before Departure (Part 1)

Because Sun Cheng, this administrator, had appeared in the chat room after a long absence and had even provided unified replies to the questions of many members, the atmosphere inside the 【China Technology Exchange Room 1】 chat room suddenly surged.

However, this unified reply only solved the problems of the majority.

There were still quite a few people who, after Sun Cheng lifted the global mute, spoke up in the chat room to ask questions or continued to send him private messages.

Seeing that the questions were much more complex than the ones just before, and that many of them hit the nail on the head.

Sun Cheng did not refuse again; this time, he quite straightforwardly spent some time answering the questions of the members in the chat room one by one.

However, for some idle chatter or purely formulaic pleasantries, he was not so polite.

Upon seeing such private messages or posts, Sun Cheng simply ignored them directly.

After spending about ten minutes resolving the accumulated questions on the side of Room 1.

Sun Cheng used his administrator privileges to begin the operation of inviting new members once again.

Revenge had always been arranged by him to stay at home; besides being responsible for the security of the villa and protecting Ye Qi, it also had quite a lot of daily work.

For example, after Hanyi was thrown by Sun Cheng onto 【Nublar Island】 to be responsible for the land reclamation of Base No. 3, the remote control of Base No. 1 was handled by Revenge.

Another example, it needed to act as the server for the 'Magic House', and it also often had to compile some software enhancements and upgrades for Sun Cheng.

Now, the entire list of invited members for the 'Magic House' chat software was also screened and finalized by it hacking into the network and browsing through massive amounts of talent information.

The invitation list was continuously increasing along with Revenge's daily work.

After Sun Cheng pulled up the list within Xia Country, following the old rules, he first excluded those working in state-owned enterprises and government research institutions; although he also knew that the exposure of the 'Magic House' was only a matter of time, he truly had never thought of using it to do anything bad.

But if it were discovered too early, there was no guarantee that all the members in the Xia Country chat room in the future would become people planted by the state.

By then, once the state saw that they could directly exchange for all kinds of things they needed here.

Undoubtedly, Sun Cheng's importance and status in the eyes of the state would drop significantly.

Following the old rules, just like the previous two times, he had Revenge use the mobile phone numbers or email addresses of the target invitees obtained through various channels to send SMS or email invitations to one thousand predetermined targets.

These SMS or emails contained some simple instructions and were attached with the download URL for the 'Magic House' software and a chat room invitation code.

If the invitation code of an invitee remained unactivated, these invitation SMS and emails would continue to be sent at a rate of one per hour, and this would continue for seven days.

Using a blacklist or blocking would also be unable to stop the sending of the SMS and emails.

Sun Cheng did not intend to turn a good deed into a bad one; generally, if someone had not entered the chat room to activate their invitation code after seven days, Revenge would stop the SMS and email bombardment toward them, while simultaneously removing them from the invitation list and transferring them to another list specifically tracking how many people had rejected the invitation.

Among these one thousand people, Sun Cheng increased the proportion of technical personnel and highly educated individuals.

However, he did not have too many expectations; according to the experience of the previous few times, it would already be quite good if one-tenth of the people accepted the invitation in the end.

Not staying in the two chat rooms for long, Sun Cheng closed the 'Magic House'.

Having Revenge open his mailbox, he rummaged through it and, sure enough, saw the document regarding the investment in Yuegui Network that Assistant Lin Bing had just mentioned.

Because it concerned Ye Qi, Sun Cheng spent a few minutes carefully going through the entire document twice.

"... Reached an agreement with Moon Laurel Network's parent company—Surging Wave Technology for 749 million Chinese Yuan, obtaining 22.7% of Moon Laurel Network's shares, one board seat, and one vice president position..."

Yuegui Network was not the only live-streaming platform in the country; in recent years, following the introduction of foreign live-streaming into the country, domestic live-streaming platforms had also sprung up like bamboo shoots after a rain, with the number of large and small ones totaling over two hundred.

However, the live-streaming industry was not that easy to do; currently, foreign live-streaming platforms were doing a bit better, as after years of competition, a few giant platforms like YouTube and Twitch had monopolized the market.

Most viewers on foreign platforms needed to pay to watch streamers, and streamers could also sell wonderful clips from their live streams for a second time to make money, while simultaneously running advertisements, doing endorsements, and participating in television programs; their means of profit were relatively more numerous.

The profitability of live-streaming platforms within Xia Country was relatively poor; in terms of running advertisements and doing endorsements, they could not compete with television stations, video websites, and more professional modeling agencies, and over ninety percent of streamers relied on platform buyout fees and viewer tips to make a living; only a very small number of streamers could obtain advertising endorsements.

Moreover, because too many enterprises and funds had rushed into the live-streaming industry in the country, it had led to domestic live-streaming platforms still being in the stage of burning money to grab market share, so naturally, even fewer people dared to engage in paid live-streaming like those abroad.

Established in 2014, Yuegui Network was considered one of the older batches of live-streaming platforms in the country; although it was not the largest, its scale could still rank in the top five, and it had also cultivated a batch of die-hard fans.

Its parent company, Surging Wave Technology, was also a veteran internet enterprise in the country; in its early years, it started by making portal websites, and it also had many industries under its banner such as search engines, input methods, cloud drives, chat software, and games; for the time being, its scale was even larger than the 【Cybertron Group】.

However, having too many products and businesses under one's banner was not necessarily a good thing; in search engines and cloud drives, Surging Wave Technology had consistently failed to compete with Yibai; Moon Laurel Network lost 120 million in 2014, 430 million last year, and in just the first three quarters of this year, it had already lost 547 million.

Inside Surging Wave Technology, there had actually long been rumors of shutting down the cloud drive and selling off Moon Laurel Network.

As for the search engine, that concerned the traffic interface, so no matter how much it lost, they would grit their teeth and insist on continuing it.

When Sun Cheng sent people to their door, they initially thought the 【Cybertron Group】 had taken a fancy to their cloud drive business again, and they were even happily thinking about selling the cloud drive business to him.

Unfortunately, Sun Cheng really did not look highly upon those tens of millions of users; after all, the user overlap among the country's several major cloud drives was very serious, and he estimated that over 70% of Langchao's cloud drive users likely had Panda Weiyun accounts.

Regarding the negotiations for Yuegui Network, there were not many twists and turns; Langchao Technology clearly already had the idea of selling this money-losing business, and the two sides just hadn't been able to agree on the funding aspect.

Investing 749 million Xia Yuan into Yuegui Network was definitely a loss-making investment.

Sun Cheng did not understand the live-streaming industry very well and did not intend to develop it deeply, so this investment was paid for out of his own pocket.

However, for the 【Cybertron Group】, this investment was worth affirming.

Because Sun Cheng had delegated the group president, Wang Lu, to negotiate, and he had also strived to secure good concessions for both Sun Cheng and the group.

In the end, the 749 million Xia Yuan acquisition payment was not all cash; 300 million of it would be offset by storage equipment and enterprise cloud storage services.

It was equivalent to Sun Cheng taking out 749 million Xia Yuan, paying 449 million in cash to Langchao Technology, and then taking out 300 million to purchase storage equipment and enterprise cloud storage services from the 【Cybertron Group】, which he then turned around and gifted to Langchao Technology.

It was believed that once Langchao Technology used and got used to their products, the 【Cybertron Group】 would eventually gain another big client.