The villa was bought, but decoration is the major expense, not just indoors, outdoor landscaping cannot be neglected either.
Chen Pingjiang found a top interior design company in Dongjiang, and they had to produce six or seven versions just for the design plan.
Finally, after consolidating opinions from all parties, a modern style was chosen.
Li Yuhua said,
"Xiao Chen, you're very busy with work usually. I have plenty of time, so I'll supervise it."
Li Yuhua's thought was simple: it would be good to contribute a little effort.
Yan Yan also nodded,
"I'll help too."
Chen Pingjiang didn't decline and let them make the arrangements.
Back at the company, Guan Yifeng reported that the data for "Happy Ranch," jointly launched by Kaixin.com and Tencent, showed an upward trend, even causing some trouble for "Renren Farm."
Chen Pingjiang tapped on the table with his hand.
The fact that Cheng Binghao had now chosen to team up with Tencent, even completely siding with Tencent, was unacceptable to Chen Pingjiang.
In the current SNS market, most other small players were already gone.
Only Xiaonei.com, Renren.com, and Kaixin.com remained.
Xiaonei.com represented SoftBank.
Renren.com was its own entity.
Kaixin.com represented Tencent's interests.
Among them, Kaixin.com posed the biggest threat to Renren.com.
Although it was the "youngest brother" among the three, its user base highly overlapped with Renren.com's.
More critically, Tencent had internally abandoned the QQ Alumni project and instead supplied resources to Kaixin.com, attempting to compete with Renren.com. This was intolerable.
These internet giants are always trying to build ecosystems and closed loops, thus extending their reach into various projects.
For example, in the map ecosystem, AutoNavi belongs to Alibaba, and Tencent also has its own map service.
Meituan is backed by Tencent, and Ele.me is backed by Alibaba.
Even in retail, Tencent invested in Yonghui, and Alibaba created Hema.
In payments, Tencent has Tenpay, and Alibaba has Alipay.
For Renren.com to thrive, it must defend its own territory, and to grow into the third pole of the internet, it must also have its own closed ecological loop.
After some thought, Chen Pingjiang called Miao Bingwei to his office and asked,
"How are the preparations for the kaixin.com domain?"
Miao Bingwei had almost forgotten about it because it had been over a year, and he had so many other things on his plate.
After a while, Miao Bingwei checked with a subordinate before reporting,
"We have been continuously updating various internal modules of the website in real-time, following Kaixin.com. It can go online anytime if needed."
"Then launch it, disguised as another small company."
This move was a bit underhanded, and Chen Pingjiang originally didn't intend to use a nuclear-level weapon for his future reputation.
But Kaixin.com's Tencent imprint was getting heavier and heavier.
Tencent's claw had to be chopped off, making them feel the pain and ensuring they would never dare to meddle with SNS social websites again.
This is business warfare.
Coexistence is certainly excellent, but only under the premise that one's own survival is not threatened.
Being overly soft-hearted will only lead to bitter regret in the end.
Cheng Binghao had many resources at his disposal, and such a small matter could be handled in minutes.
The next day, the namesake "Kaixin.com" with the domain Kaixin.com was launched.
With hardly any promotion, the website's traffic surged.
Because it was siphoning off the real Kaixin.com's lifeblood.
Users found "Happy Ranch" fun, and when recommending it to their friends, they naturally mentioned Kaixin.com.
Searching on Baidu, the fake Kaixin.com ranked first.
The real Kaixin.com's domain, kaixin001.com, was ranked below it.
Users would naturally assume to enter the Kaixin.com domain.
In this way, the pirated Kaixin.com achieved its goal of hijacking traffic.
In just one month, the pirated Kaixin.com's daily active users reached a million, with most people coming for "Happy Ranch."
The user growth curve, which should have been rapidly increasing, flattened in just one month, quickly alerting Cheng Binghao of Kaixin.com to an anomaly.
After a Baidu search, he indeed discovered the trick.
The pirated Kaixin.com, leveraging its domain advantage, was practically leeching off the real Kaixin.com.
Upon seeing this, Cheng Binghao's face turned ashen.
With a distorted expression, he roared,
"How dare you, you scoundrel!"
But after calming down, the problem still needed to be solved.
What to do?
Should he bow to Chen Pingjiang?
Just the thought was immediately stifled.
He now represented not only Kaixin.com but also Tencent behind him.
Even if he agreed, Tencent would not.
But if he didn't find a solution, allowing the pirated Kaixin.com to continue siphoning traffic would quickly leave the already low-traffic real Kaixin.com anemic.
Remembering the business card Chen Pingjiang left when he last visited BJ, Cheng Binghao made a call.
After the call connected, Chen Pingjiang's voice quickly came from the other end:
"Oh, President Cheng, looking for me for something?"
After adjusting his emotions, Cheng Binghao forced a smile,
"President Chen, there's a pirated Kaixin.com on the market now, and its domain is kaixin.com, which you mentioned last time. Is that your doing?"
On the other end of the phone, Chen Pingjiang let out a surprised "Hm?"
"President Cheng, we may be familiar, but if you slander me like that, I'll sue you, you know."
Cheng Binghao was almost amused by the anger.
"So, did you sell that domain later?"
"That's right. I wanted to collaborate with you then, but you weren't willing, were you? Since that's the case, the domain was useless for me to keep, and many people wanted it, so I sold it. As for the buyer's information, I don't know it; a broker handled it."
After hanging up, Chen Pingjiang chuckled softly and tossed his phone onto the office desk.
If Chen Pingjiang were even more ruthless, he could even sell the domain directly to Chen Yizhou.
That guy would be thrilled, and after selling it for a few million, letting those two companies fight it out would be pretty good.
However, he ultimately rejected this idea.
Renren.com was eager to grow into society by entering the college student demographic, and he wouldn't hand them a knife.
It's not hard to imagine that Cheng Binghao would definitely file a lawsuit next.
Chen Pingjiang didn't care; if they wanted to sue, let them sue.
In the true and false Kaixin.com dispute back then, Chen Yizhou's Qianxiang only compensated Kaixin.com 400,000 yuan.
But Chen Yizhou siphoned off nearly ten million registered users from Kaixin.com!
Compared to Kaixin.com's losses and Qianxiang's gains, this compensation was negligible.
The world values results more and only cares about winning and losing.
"My apologies, but you can only blame yourself for picking the wrong side. You're not wrong, but I also want to survive."
......
Tencent extending its tentacles to Kaixin.com also made Chen Pingjiang acutely aware that some things cannot be avoided simply by not wanting to do them.
For example, Alipay and WeChat Pay are already on the market, so why does Douyin still need to create a payment system?
The group-buying war settled years ago, so why does Douyin want to do group buying again?
In a word, you don't have to be strong, but you cannot be without it, lest you be choked later.
"As our businesses expand, from DNF top-ups and Renren.com top-ups to Renren Group Buy and Renren Takeout, I believe we must also have a payment tool similar to Alipay internally."
Miao Bingwei felt slightly puzzled,
"Alipay exists because Taobao has a large volume of daily transactions. In contrast, our users' transaction frequency is very low. Moreover, developing such a payment tool isn't difficult technically; the challenge lies in business and security, as we need to connect with multiple banks to launch payment services."
Gao Songbin, who was in charge of the group-buying and takeout project, strongly supported Chen Pingjiang's proposal,
"President Miao, think three steps ahead. Renren.com and DNF may not need it, but our group-buying and takeout business does. With so many payment scenarios within our group, we can definitely develop our own payment tool. Not to mention relying on others for security in the future, it just feels uncomfortable."
Chen Pingjiang smiled and explained,
"Old Miao, after the mobile payment era arrives, if we integrate Alipay, and a takeout order costs 20 yuan, we can only charge the user 20 yuan. However, Alipay won't provide services to us for free; we'll have to pay a transaction fee to Alipay.
This creates a problem: we work hard to get users to pay, but because it merely passes through Alipay, we get charged a channel fee. It's okay when the transaction volume is small, but what if it increases later?"
Chen Pingjiang was 100% certain that once his various payment scenarios became richer, setting aside other things, just the takeout and group-buying businesses alone could generate hundreds of millions or even billions in sales daily.
At that point, the issue of saving on payment channel fees would have to be considered.
For data security reasons, it's more reassuring to keep such large-scale, high-frequency transactions in one's own hands.
For a platform company, the transaction link is crucial for the establishment and growth of the platform economy.
Furthermore, there's an even more important reason.
Renren.com will definitely secure a payment license in the future.
After obtaining the license, one of the most direct benefits is avoiding imminent business compliance risks.
Without a payment license, if a platform engages in e-commerce sales, it can easily lead to controversy over the "secondary clearing" model.
Under this settlement model, e-commerce platforms can easily withhold merchant payments, creating a time lag between platform collection and merchant collection, leading to fund pool risks.
Chen Pingjiang now planned to launch a mobile chat software project next year, with WeChat as the benchmark product.
By then, embedding the payment tool, which would have been developed a step ahead, directly into the mobile chat software would be just right.
After this explanation from everyone, Miao Bingwei also felt it made sense.
In short, there was no harm in doing it first; who knows, they might genuinely use it someday.
"Alright, I will arrange for our top internal experts to tackle this problem."
The matter of Kaixin.com embracing Tencent also made Chen Pingjiang realize a fact.
In China, doing internet business, there's no way to bypass these big players.
Even if you try to hide and develop secretly, you will eventually be discovered and eliminated.
Small companies lack funds, talent, and resources.
Once they face big players entering their lane, the only outcome is a dead end.
There's no way to escape; only battle!
(End of chapter)