Chapter 1974: Each One Finds His Own Way

"MySpace?" Old Murdoch obviously didn't know much about this website.

"Is that the SNS (Social, Network, Service, social network service) website headquartered in Los Angeles?" Murdoch's eldest son, Lachlan Murdoch asked.

"Yes," Ross Levinsohn said.

What's rare is that Mrs. Murdoch actually knows this, "Is it that social networking site where many music lovers gather?"

"Yes ma'am, we can indeed think of MySpace as the music version of Friendster," Ross Levinsohn said with some surprise.

He noticed that Chairman Murdoch Sr. also looked at his wife with surprise. Obviously, he had not expected that his wife actually knew about such a website.

"Before going to Silicon Valley, I naturally have to understand Feng's current company's main competitors," Mrs. Murdoch said softly in the old Murdoch's ear.

I see!

This can be said to be a meticulousness unique to women.

As for Friendster, this dating website established in 2002 was supposed to be the pioneer of social networking sites in the United States. However, as soon as Feng Yiping came to Stanford as an exchange student, he established NEXTDOOR, and this pioneer became a follower. .

This follower cannot be a pioneer, but it is very likely that he will become a martyr soon. Because of the design limitations of the software and the lack of funds, the hardware cannot meet the needs of development. Last year, its registered users were very small. I intuitively felt the problem of the website's load capacity. The website's speed was very, very slow, which quickly caused a large number of users to flee.

MySpace, which was only established in 2003, was the beneficiary of Friendster users' escape.

The establishment of MySpace drew on a lot of experience from NEXTDOOR. It can be said that the reason why it was able to gather a group of users was, like NEXTDOOR, mainly due to offline promotion in the early days.

The main growth in its users comes from their sponsorship of influential bands in Los Angeles, attracting influential musicians to become their registered users, and then driving their fans to follow up.

Therefore, although MySpace has now added many functions, Mrs. Murdoch is right, its feature is music.

Musicians promote their works on the website, music fans find their favorite works on the website, and music companies discover promising singers on the website...

Of course, some people are now looking for girlfriends or female friends on it.

"The headquarters is in Los Angeles?" Old Murdoch frowned.

Although in Feng Yiping's view, the current News Corporation has not made any achievements in the Internet field, in fact, in the 1990s, News Corporation had acquired a large number of Internet companies.

However, the companies they acquired, like most of the companies acquired by Yahoo, ended badly and have now disappeared.

But these tuition fees at least make Murdoch know nothing about the Internet field. For example, he knows that there seems to be no clear reason, but engineers just have no idea about the city of Los Angeles.

And how can an excellent Internet company do without excellent engineers?

"We can have our offices in Silicon Valley, including Seattle," said Ross Levinsohn, president of Interactive Media.

That means additional expenses.

"The two founders of this website, Chris DeWulf, who is responsible for business, are good guys, but Tom Anderson, who is responsible for technology, is still a hacker with a criminal record. When he was 14 years old, he was convicted of hacking into Chase Manhattan Bank. system was investigated by the FBI,"

Levinsohn revealed another important situation he had mastered.

"Because he was underage, the FBI only confiscated more than 20 computers that he and his accomplices used to commit crimes..."

"So if we consider developing a social business ourselves, acquiring MySpace is also a high-risk decision, especially under the attack of Feng's NEXTDOOR and Facebook, its difficulty in user growth, and its founder's less than glorious past,"

"But at the same time, considering Facebook's rapid success around the world, if we intend to develop our own social business, we also feel that acquiring MySpace may bring high returns, because with our foundation in countries around the world, it is also possible Soon MySpace was successfully promoted in many countries,"

He didn't say the next words, but everyone knew that if such a goal could be achieved, then this could completely replace Skype.

The bigger temptation is that although Skype is undoubtedly an excellent product, compared with Facebook, especially in terms of business value, it is not even a little bit worse. And MySpace is a product of the same nature as Facebook.

Murdoch Sr. asked everyone's opinions with his eyes again, and it was his eldest son who spoke first, "I think this is a good idea. No matter how it develops in the future, there is definitely no harm in making more preparations now,"

This is also the opinion of the majority of people present at the meeting.

"Because of the user gap, the price of acquiring MySpace is much less than that of Skype, and MySpace has great development potential around the world, so I also think we can make such preparations," Mrs. Murdoch said.

Although no specific price has been negotiated, the acquisition of Skype, which has nearly 200 million registered users and currently adds more than 100,000 registered users every day, is obviously better than MySpace, which only has more than 20 million users and only adds a few thousand new users every day. The spending is much larger, and the difference could be measured in billions of dollars, which is obviously attractive.

"Still actively following up on Skype," the elder Murdoch said.

Since so many well-known companies are eyeing Skype, it is conceivable that this must be a good opportunity. Since News Corporation is still qualified, there is no reason to give up now.

"At the same time, Levinsohn, you should set up a new project team as soon as possible and follow up on the MySpace project immediately,"

You, Feng Yiping, are not the only one who can run two M&A projects at the same time.

"Okay Mr. Murdoch," Levinsohn said happily.

He felt that this would definitely be selected as the most successful crooked building conference in history.

…………

Silicon Valley, eBay campus, is also holding a meeting with the same purpose at this time, but this meeting is at a higher level because it is a board of directors meeting.

"Gentlemen," Whitman did not sit down, but walked around the conference table.

"In the last meeting, we have discussed the significance of the acquisition of Skype to us. Now the problem is that this acquisition, which is of far-reaching significance to us, currently encounters great challenges,"

The directors suddenly became commotion.

The reason why Whitman is only interested in Skype is because these directors believe that Skype is indispensable to eBay's growth and development.

"I knew," one of the directors said, "I knew that Whitman, you had been targeting Mr. Feng everywhere in the past, which would definitely bring us trouble."

These directors are all well-informed, and they know the current situation very well.

"Yes, there will be a price to pay for those unnecessary provocations," said another.

For a time, the tone of the meeting seemed to have changed, turning into a criticism of Whitman.

Whitman smiled contemptuously, "Shouldn't I target Feng? What he did has seriously affected our strategy in China. As for the extent of the impact, everyone now knows,"

Her words immediately left the directors who had just accused her speechless.

What Feng Yiping did not only caused their original encirclement and suppression strategy to fail, and hundreds of millions of dollars in publicity and promotion expenses to be wiped out. eBay, which was the number one in the industry at the time, is now barely ranked in the third place in China's e-commerce field. Three.

China, which has the largest population in the world and is becoming increasingly wealthy, is an important region in which they have high hopes.

Feng Yiping, almost single-handedly, easily disrupted the business in China that they valued so much, which was indeed intolerable.

If given the chance, no one here would not want to sneer at Feng Yiping. No one would have a good impression of someone who cut off their own money, even if that person is Feng Yiping.

"Even so, such targeting and provocation are too unnecessary. No matter how much they do, they will not have any positive help to our business in China,"

Another director spoke.

Whitman was so anxious that he didn't spit out those words. Isn't it pointless? It's very so-called. Targeting and provoking Feng Yiping will make me less angry, won't it?

"I think the best response to Feng's behavior is for us to make outstanding achievements in China that surprise him?"

Whitman stared at that person. What makes me most unhappy is that a guy like you, who is so talkative, has made such outstanding achievements that surprised him? It's easy to say. If you have the ability, can you try it?

"Also, we are a large international company after all. We must pay attention to the impact of everything we say and do..."

"Okay," Whitman couldn't bear the act of pretending to be a gentleman.

Please, who doesn’t know who is who? It’s all mineral water. What kind of pure water can you put in it for me?

"Are we going to solve the problem, or are we going to be like a bunch of little girls who attack each other when they encounter some obstacles? Instead of thinking of solutions, we just criticize each other for what has happened in the past?"

We are not criticizing each other, we are criticizing you. Several gentlemen exchanged vague glances.

"Can we focus all our energy on the present?" She slammed the computer in front of her desk together.

This time, no one came out to chirp.

Whitman’s nickname of “Queen of Silicon Valley” came about for good reason.

It was she who successfully led eBay to develop into the world's number one e-commerce company; it was she who successfully led eBay to go public; it was she who insisted on her opinion on the board of directors and successfully persuaded everyone to agree to acquire PayPal...

"Yes, it is also pointless to discuss those things now. Let us listen to what conditions Mr. Feng offered," one director tried to smooth things over.

"Feng has additional conditions. He hopes to invest in PayPal,"

"What?" Suddenly, the conference room felt like it was exploding again.

Even the most brainless people can see the development prospects of PayPal at this time. To be frank, PayPal has a great chance to face fewer challenges than eBay in the future, so it will continue to bring high returns to everyone.

Feng Yiping's request is tantamount to snatching food from their mouths.

Even the director who just criticized Whitman for being careful about his words and deeds did not calm down.

"He is taking advantage of the situation. We can complain to the Skype board of directors and ask them to replace the person in charge of the acquisition negotiations," he said angrily.

"Gentlemen, do you think the directors of Skype believe more in Feng Yiping's vision or our statement? Why do you think they agreed to let Feng Yiping be in charge of the acquisition negotiations?"

"Do you think they care about this? The only thing they care about is their return, that is, our bid. They don't care if any company is troubled in the process,"

"Then, let's say that Feng used this as a condition in exchange for our lower bid," someone shouted immediately.

"Please, do you think this will solve the problem? Will Skype replace the person in charge of the acquisition negotiations? Do you think those guys are stupid? In this world, are there a few businessmen who are better than Feng Yiping?" Whitman looked at those guys with a sneer on her face.

The meaning is self-evident, at least you are not.

"So, how could they reject Feng Yiping's initiative? How could they replace him? Everyone knows that it is equivalent to surrendering before the negotiation even starts," Whitman shook his head.

"Then what do you say? Should we just agree to his request to invest in PayPal?"

If you can agree to this, it will save me a lot of trouble, Whitman thought.

In fact, she really thinks that if there is really no other way, it is not unacceptable to let Feng Yiping invest in PayPal. His business in the United States can actually greatly promote PayPal.

But looking at the looks of these guys, "That is of course impossible, but his request cannot be ignored, so what do you think, if we propose to divest the Chinese business to him, how about it?"

The conference room was suddenly silent...