Chapter 64: A Global Innovation a Step Ahead

June 15, Dragon Boat Festival.

Holding a camera, Li Wenyu appeared on the campus of the Beijing Film Academy along with Fatty Bing. After driving away a few onlookers, he instructed Fatty Bing to strike various poses and began snapping away.

The upgraded aesthetic photo sets of once-Yang Xue and the tuned-up look of Huang Shengyi in the movie *The Piano in a Factory* had all been captured through his lens.

He was a director, not a dedicated professional photographer, but...

While ordinary photographers rarely excel at directing, every exceptional or master-level director has a strong grasp of cinematography.

Only by possessing a keen sensitivity to frame composition, color application, and light-and-shadow effects—capturing frames of exquisite aesthetic quality to be presented on screen—could someone truly be considered a great director.

One had to be deeply familiar with all sorts of panoramic shots, medium shots, close-ups, camera angles, and dynamic motion photography.

When it came to shooting glamorous fashion portraits of Fatty Bing, he handled it with effortless mastery.

After finishing a set, Li Wenyu put away his camera. "Time Weibo is officially entering public beta testing. You should start by calling on your fans in the forums to register."

"The platform will verify your account as your authentic, real-person profile. From now on, all our interactions will take place on Weibo, whether it's simple text posts or photo updates."

Big Penguin had not yet launched personal spaces, and microblogging features did not exist anywhere else.

This preemptive wave was a truly global innovation!

Fatty Bing walked over, looped her arm through his, and smiled sweetly. "That's easy enough. But with this website you're building, can internet companies like Penguin and NetEase raise capital and go public just like that?"

Old Li had explained this to her a few times in private, but to Fatty Bing, the notion of a listed corporate group felt somewhat lofty and distant.

Having it crash directly into her daily life felt far too sudden.

Li Wenyu shook his camera and chuckled, "With a bit of luck, we can raise tens of millions of dollars in financing next year and go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by 2004. However, I need to carefully consider whose capital to accept."

"What I want isn't just money; I want the influence and connections of a major capital powerhouse."

Since the internal testing of Weibo began on May 23, nearly twenty days had passed. Across three generations of students from the Beijing Film Academy—numbering one to two hundred people—alongside an internal testing team of several thousand internet commentators under his command, all the various bugs and performance issues of the first version had been thoroughly ironed out.

The technical team had patched numerous rounds of bugs.

This closed beta scale was by no means small. Those several thousand active internet commentators were not on a continuous retainer; they only received payment when tasks were assigned for external operations.

However, they were easy to coordinate through Penguin chat groups. By leveraging celebrity groups as a rallying cry during the public beta, there was zero need to worry about a shortage of users.

With Big Penguin boasting over one hundred million registered users, Time Weibo could effortlessly pull in tens of millions of registrations over this summer vacation.

Just then, Wang Luodan and Zhou Yiwei came running over from the distance. Wang Luodan wore a particularly bright and sunny smile. "Senior, Sister Bing, are you finished?"

Zhou Yiwei was equally excited. "Senior, if you have any tasks, just give the word."

Li Wenyu nodded. "You both know about my idol drama project. Principal photography starts after October. The two of you should prepare in advance; I'll give you both supporting roles."

"In the story, the female lead is a major celebrity. The two of you will play her life assistant and work assistant respectively—nature of work that current students can most easily understand and deeply comprehend."

"Make the most of this opportunity!"

Roles of this size—neither too big nor too small, yet with plenty of screen time—were a perfect fit for newcomers like Wang Luodan and Zhou Yiwei.

Zhou Yiwei was graduating from the vocational class this summer, and Wang Luodan had successfully completed her freshman year.

The two were beyond excited, barely able to string a complete sentence together. Even with predecessors like Yang Xue, Huang Shengyi, and Dong Xuan having successively soared to fame, not to mention senior Le Jiatong from the Class of '97...

When a real opportunity dropped right into your lap, the excitement was overwhelming!

Li Wenyu waved a hand to cut short the expressions of gratitude from the two junior students, and spoke again, "Alright, tomorrow at 12:00 noon, Time Weibo officially goes live."

"You two should also mobilize the commentators to promote it across Penguin numbers, Penguin groups, NetEase, Tianya, and other platforms. My funds are a bit tight at the moment; opening a branch in Hong Kong makes it difficult to cope with long-term high living costs."

"But for this battle, we must still make a resounding impact on the mainland internet!"

He had earned a great deal of money, but his expenses were equally massive. At the very least, when it came to internet security, he was paying high salaries to hire a large cohort of professional talent from Tsinghua, Peking University, and other prestigious schools.

There was no rush; establishing a firm foothold in the mainland this summer came first, and overseas expansion could be discussed later.

Celebrities had vast networks of friends, and these networks formed super platforms capable of attracting fans to register and interact.

Today was the Dragon Boat Festival, and tomorrow was Father's Day.

The timing was quite favorable.

Wang Luodan and the other thanked him repeatedly once more before running back to their respective circles to share the good news. This piece of news exploded among their classmates, leaving many feeling as sour as if they had eaten several lemons.

Sourness aside, everyone could only hope for their own turn at a good opportunity in the future.

***

As time moved into noon on Father's Day, Time Weibo made its true debut on the internet. Fatty Bing was the first to register. Following lightning-fast official verification, she immediately posted a series of glamorous photos.

Her very first short text post wished her father a Happy Father's Day, thanking him for the paternal love that had nurtured her so well.

The final update was a photo of Fatty Bing posing alongside her father.

She similarly wished a happy holiday to the fathers of all her fans.

Fans who were fathers in real life? They were greeted directly.

Following that, she went to the Baidu Tieba forum of Tencent QQ, posting from her personal account to announce that she had discovered a new and fun internet platform, calling on everyone to join.

After Fatty Bing, stunning beauties like Cecilia Cheung, Michelle Reis, and Rosamund Kwan successively checked in, heading over to their respective fan forums to urge fans to come and play.

The creative team behind *The Sound of Music*? From Tony Leung Ka-fai, Li Bingbing, Sandra Ng, and Jiang Wen to Michael Hui, Irene Wan, Elvis Tsui, Ding Haifeng, He Qing, and Liu Ye...

They too charged onto Time Weibo to register and verify their accounts, touching off a massive trend of Father's Day greetings.

This wave quickly spilled over offline. Driven by the trend set by Fatty Bing, eighteen- and nineteen-year-old fans were urged by their idols to wish their fathers well and express gratitude for paternal love.

In reality, numerous young people called their fathers to offer greetings and express gratitude for their upbringing, leaving a great many middle-aged men utterly bewildered before their hearts began to warm up.

Upon asking further...?? A wave of well-wishes initiated by a bunch of celebrities on the internet?

Any father hearing warm words from his child at the appropriate moment would find his spirits greatly lifted!

Consequently, countless fathers—middle-aged and elderly individuals who understood nothing about the internet whatsoever—developed an overwhelming wave of goodwill toward the newly emerged Time Weibo!!

It was on the verge of exploding!

Who could understand how exasperating the rebellious phase of teenagers could be, constantly driving parents up the wall? And now, they were being urged by major celebrities to show gratitude to their fathers...

There were also middle-aged and elderly folks who had no shortage of computers, and they directly began browsing Time Weibo online.

***

June 16th, 8:00 PM, Shenzhen.

Pony Ma sat in his large office, browsing Time Weibo on his computer. As he scrolled, he heard a knock on the door. After he called out to enter, a handsome young man walked in and closed the door.

The young man walked around behind Pony Ma to take a look. "I heard Time Weibo has crossed two million registered users. This isn't just inflated data from hired commentators, is it?"

"Pulling in two million users in eight hours after launch? What about eight days later, or eight months? Will this conflict with our Penguin?"

Pony Ma irritably slapped the desk. "Of course there's a conflict! How many users have they lured away from the forums? Once users get completely accustomed to this new platform..."

"Then our plans to go public in a few years will see our valuation compressed."

After studying it for several hours, Pony Ma discovered that Weibo and Penguin still had distinct differences. Penguin was about instant social messaging.

Weibo resembled a public broadcasting platform for major celebrities!

It served as a replacement for newspapers, magazines, and television programs.

Fans could gather there to admire their idols' daily updates, communicate and interact, and get firsthand gossip about them.

Ten seconds later, Pony Ma lit a cigarette. "I thought this jerk wanted to build a new social networking software; good thing it's different."

"Still, the nature of this platform is pretty good, and quite fun. Quick, have the R&D department copy a version—whether we can beat them or not, we have to try."