Chapter 166 166. Miss, you are embarrassed.

"Boss, at midnight today, Myspace suddenly came online. I just searched and I can register and log in."

On the phone, Fitz was giving a report.

“How’s their website doing?”

Eric asked as he opened Google search himself and instantly found it at the top of the first page.

Needless to say, to be able to do this quickly and accurately, they must have paid Google.

After clicking on the link, Eric found that the interface was slightly similar to Facebook.

Facebook’s biggest slogan is “welcome to facebook!”

The slogan in the middle of the other party’s screen is “join myspace!”

"Boss, I haven't had much experience with it for long, but although you also use an email address to apply for an account, Myspace is anonymous."

"Users don't need any real information, let alone social security account numbers. Even their name, address, education, job, etc. can be filled in casually, and a nickname can be put in at the end."

Eric laughed out loud. "Anonymous, what's the idea behind such a stupid setting? If you don't use real names when socializing, who knows if there's a cat behind the computer?"

It is true that the real-name system brings the risk of user privacy leakage, but the opposite is authenticity, which is also the most important cornerstone of social networks.

Although anonymity reduces the risk of user information leakage, it will greatly increase problems in other areas.

For example, a pervert pretends to be a minor to go fishing for friends, and then seduces and tricks the other party into committing a crime.

For example, when engaging in online fraud, money laundering, selling contraband, etc., anonymity can provide a strong protective cover for these criminal activities.

Moreover, this kind of criminal behavior is like an infectious disease. Once a few people start doing it, it will often give rise to a small group of people, and then attract a large number of people.

They even bring in real-life criminal organizations, which seriously disrupts user experience and culture.

What Eric can think of, Fitz can naturally think of as well.

But he didn't laugh. Instead, he said in a serious tone: "Boss, although anonymity will give rise to a lot of problems, I don't think it's stupid."

"One thing that is more attractive than the real-name system is that it can attract users more effectively. After all, disguise is the nature of the Internet."

"A mailbox is just a mailbox that anyone can apply for, even a child of a few years old can get one."

"Myspace is more attractive to users of all ages than we are."

Eric hummed: "It's okay, don't worry about this kind of problem, the key is to provide a good user experience."

"All we have to do is to update and maintain normally and do a good job of internal review. As long as we don't have any problems, the other party will definitely have problems."

"Because they are the pursuers, they are more anxious. If they are always in a weak position, they will inevitably make mistakes and make stupid moves."

“What is Facebook’s user data like now?”

After a pause, Fitz replied: "The number of registered users has reached about 17 million, an increase of about 4 million since the beginning of this month, and the number of active users who frequently log in within a week is about 13 million."

"Currently, judging from the user portrait, the main group is still college students, but it has also begun to expand to high school students and the working class."

"It's just that the growth rate is not comparable to last month. Now the number of new users per week fluctuates around 3%."

"Last month's total visits were 190 million, and I had expected it to exceed 250 million this month."

"But with the competition from Myspace, we may not be able to reach this number unless we take some action."

"What do you want to do?" Eric asked.

"For example, the celebrity fan selection event you asked me to do was supposed to be held at the beginning of the month, but we have been waiting for so long, isn't it just waiting for MySpace to go online?"

“In addition, I think we can start a promotion plan in various middle schools. The number of college students has reached saturation, and we need to expand into new territories.”

"In addition to middle schools, there are also major companies, organizations, and groups. I think Silicon Valley is a very suitable place for experiments."

"People here are most willing to accept new things, especially in the Internet field. We can cooperate with Silicon Valley companies and carry out internal promotion."

"Boss, what do you think?"

As Fitz was talking, Eric was considering the feasibility of his suggestion. After a few minutes, he said, "Let's start with the middle school promotion first, and put the company and group promotion on hold."

"I don't think this is a good direction. People in our country like to separate life and work."

"Work is tiring and frustrating enough, and no one likes to be friends with their boss online."

"What if they assign you work remotely? If your boss posts a message, as an employee, do you have to comment on it?"

"Everyone else is commenting and flattering, but if you don't comment, will your boss have an opinion of you?"

"For example, Fitz, you plan to go to a concert and you take a sick day to go. After watching the concert, you are excited and want to post a status to show off. But when you think about your colleagues and boss among your friends, do you dare to post it?"

Fitz choked up and smiled bitterly, "Of course not. It is better to separate life and work. I am still thinking too simply."

"Let's do it this way, is there anything else?"

"Um"

"If you stutter when you speak, then there's something wrong. Go ahead and tell me."

"Boss, since Facebook went online, everyone has been very busy. Now there are more and more users, and the pressure of review is getting greater and greater, as well as maintenance and technical development."

"50 people is a bit too few. When I'm really busy, I have to ask Howard and Mirren to borrow people, but I'm embarrassed to keep asking. Can you recruit a group of new employees?"

"How many do you want to recruit?" Eric asked back.

"I calculated that if everything goes well, 70 people would be enough to last until the end of this year."

"Okay, then go ahead. You take charge of the details, and I'll go take a look when the time comes."

After hanging up the phone, Eric thought that it was indeed time to recruit more people to Facebook, mainly because he didn't expect it to develop so rapidly.

In addition, if we want to compete with Myspace, we must have stable logistics.

In fact, ever since he met James Murdoch at Nicole's birthday party on June 20, Eric has been waiting for the other party to make a move.

Now, after nearly a month, it’s finally here.

It seems that this guy has convinced old Murdoch, but I don’t know to what extent old Murdoch will support him.

For a traditional newspaper giant, an old man with stubborn ideas, especially since old Murdoch had experienced the disastrous failure of the Internet, it is not easy to rekindle his enthusiasm.

That was during the Internet bubble a few years ago. Yahoo created a market value twice that of News Corporation with less than 3% of News Corporation's revenue. This phenomenon stimulated old Murdoch.

So he invested crazily in the Internet, spending more than $1 billion to acquire websites such as WebMD, Juno, TheStreet and SixDegress.

The result was of course no surprise: not long after the investment, the Internet bubble burst.

Almost all of Murdoch's investments were wasted. It was more than tens of billions, not just a few dollars. He lost so much that he bleeded.

From then on, Murdoch never said a good word about the Internet. He even disbanded News Corporation’s Internet department and stopped playing with it completely.

So even if it was his youngest son's request this time, Eric estimated that old Murdoch might not be willing to invest much money.

It is probably just like his father giving himself 10 million to take a gamble, for example, giving James half a year to try.

If you succeed, you're a genius. If you fail, come back and listen to my instructions for work.

Eric also believes that Murdoch Sr. will definitely set a goal for his son, and that goal will definitely be based on Facebook.

If Facebook has 20 million users, he won't ask for less than 15 million.

And after having a user base, given Murdoch's greedy character, he will definitely make profit demands.

Assets that cannot be converted into cash are equal to negative assets.

But for social networks, in the current economic environment, there is only one way to make money, and that is advertising.

It just happens that users hate ads the most. Once too many ads are inserted when the user base is still unstable, this practice is tantamount to driving users away in disguise.

Before starting Facebook, Eric had already set a policy that he would not accept any advertising within a year. Even if he didn't make any profit, he would just have to burn money to retain his users.

Once user stickiness increases and Facebook's functions are perfected, you will be reluctant to leave.

The cost of silence is too high, and that’s when it’s time to reap the benefits.

The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!

Just as Eric was deciding on Facebook's next development plan, Myspace also began its large-scale promotion.

With strong financial support, Myspace’s promotion strategy is similar to Facebook’s.

First of all, let’s talk about TV commercials. As a company run by a father, Fox Group is going full throttle.

News networks, television networks, and radio networks insert looping advertisements at various time periods.

"Join myspace!"

"Join myspace!"

"Join myspace!"

All Fox viewers were brainwashed by this advertisement.

Then came online promotion. Yahoo, Google, MSN, and major forums all began to engage in whitewashing marketing.

Then came offline promotion. Myspace did not choose major universities, perhaps because it felt that those places had already been occupied by Facebook.

It chose the option that Eric abandoned and cooperated with major companies and groups to promote it.

At the same time, they also hired a large number of people to frequent bars and nightclubs in major cities, and selected DJs, musicians, and spirited girls to join.

This group of people have a lot of fun and have a certain number of fans. More importantly, music is currently Facebook’s weak point.

The celebrities gathered on Facebook are mostly film and television actors, and there are also musicians, but their proportion is relatively small.

Myspace certainly did not let go of the film and television industry. MGM was able to mobilize its own connections, and Fox could only become stronger.

So in just two days over the weekend, a large number of Hollywood actors opened MySpace accounts.

Many of them are the same as on Facebook, after all, there are only so many big-name actors that the audience is familiar with.

The actors were also helpless as they were all acquaintances of the big guys and had to give face to both sides and dared not offend either side.

For example, the more active Orlando Bloom, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Anne Hathaway, etc. Eric certainly can't blame people for this kind of thing.

Nicole even called him to ask what to do, and Eric told her to just send a message as a token of her appreciation. She and James Murdoch were considered acquaintances.

However, although celebrities will give face to both sides, who can keep people in the future depends on their own abilities.

At the same time, half a month later, Facebook users received another system tweet that the official would hold an event.

"Vote for your favorite star!"

Facebook will launch a ten-day ranking event to select who is the most popular person.

The rules are simple. The ranking is based on the number of fans, and the star fan who ranks first will get a golden logo behind his nickname.

The second to fifth places have silver emblems, and the sixth to tenth places have bronze emblems.

Of course, Facebook also bought advertising space, and there was also overwhelming publicity on the Internet, competing against Myspace's advertising.

It was Monday. After breakfast, Eric drove to the set. Today was the day when "House of Cards" would start filming.

Eric had just parked his car when a white Land Rover suddenly pulled into the parking space next to him.

He was already very familiar with this car, and it was naturally the beautiful Charlize Theron.

Eric got out of the car and walked to the side of the Land Rover. He opened the door and stretched out his hand. He saw two tight and beautiful legs wearing flat sandals.

Theron smiled sweetly and helped Eric down by the hand.

Bang! The car door closed, and Theron rolled her eyes at him: "Why don't you let go? I'm not disabled."

“I won’t let go!”

Eric said as he squeezed hard, and Theron's expression suddenly became tangled.

"Come on, Eric, you know I have a boyfriend, this isn't nice."

Eric didn't listen to what she said at all. He leaned over and whispered in Theron's ear: "Miss, you are embarrassed."

Theron's breathing suddenly became heavy, and she pulled her hand out with force. She glared at Eric and left in a hurry.

Arriving at the studio, she calmed her pounding heart and sighed for some reason.

Patty Jenkins looked over curiously: "What's wrong, Theron? Why are you sighing?"

"No director, the filming is almost over."

"Well, there are only a few scenes left. We will try to finish it within two days. Go and put on your makeup."

Charlize Theron said "oh" and walked towards the dressing room, and couldn't help but sigh again.

"The filming of Monster is about to end, and I'm afraid we don't have a suitable reason to meet again. The script of Inception hasn't even been released yet, so I can't use this as an excuse."

She muttered to herself, feeling a little lost.

"This bastard is such a hateful guy. He always bullies and seduces me. He is so bad. Why is he so handsome and so outstanding?"

"Charlize Theron, wake up. You have a boyfriend. Eric Cooper is a playboy. He has had scandals with Nicole Kidman, Gal Gadot, and the Olsen sisters. You two are not suitable for each other."

"Yes, we are not suitable. I can't betray Stuart. He is very good to me. Although he likes to lose his temper sometimes and we will quarrel, I can't be the betrayer."

The makeup artist puts makeup on Theron, who looks ahead with empty eyes.

In my mind, the figures of Eric and Stuart kept interweaving and changing.

Perhaps she herself didn't know when it started, and her body and mind had fallen into it.

Alas! (End of this chapter)