12: Chapter 12 Borrowing the East Wind

"Douyin Sues Weikan for Plagiarism!" was followed by a red "Explosive" tag.

Clicking on it,

one would find Douyin's statement.

"Recently, our company discovered that the upcoming Short Video software 'Weikan' under Tencent Group possesses interface design, functional architecture, and interaction methods highly similar to our company's product 'Douyin,' which constitutes suspected wholesale plagiarism of the Douyin product.

We have commissioned a law firm to file a legal lawsuit against Tencent Group for their unfair competition practices."

After this trending topic appeared,

companies previously plagiarized by Tencent, as well as Tencent's competitors, also came out to fan the flames.

Soon, the second trending topic became "Tencent's History of Plagiarism."

The third trending topic was still Weikan's promotion.

The three entries lined up together looked quite absurd.

With Douyin suing Weikan, and many netizens realizing that Weikan was also a copycat, the sentiment in the comment section exploded.

"Tencent is copying again? Their traditional talent."

"I watched Weikan's promotional video; the interface isn't just similar to Douyin, it's identical."

"Hilarious. Douyin only spent a small amount to buy a low-ranking trending spot, and the public manually pushed it to number one."

"What kind of software is this Douyin? If it can be copied by Tencent, maybe it's quite interesting."

At this moment,

inside Inspur Technology.

Zhao Lei stared at the real-time data on the Weibo backend and scratched his head, as the Weibo page was actually lagging due to the refresh rate.

"Boss, the trending spot we bought was originally fifth from the bottom, but now it has climbed to the top on its own."

"We knew Weikan would copy us, but we didn't expect them to even copy our promotional video."

After saying this, Zhao Lei looked at Qin Mo.

"Boss, did you know that we only needed to buy a low-ranking trending spot to naturally go viral?"

Qin Mo simply nodded, looking at the entries on the Weibo trending list.

This was only the beginning.

The heat on Weibo was still fermenting.

And it wasn't just Weibo.

Qin Mo had previously released the statement on numerous platforms simultaneously; the name Douyin was spreading rapidly well beyond Weibo.

Meanwhile,

because of Weikan's promotion and the buzz surrounding Douyin's lawsuit against Weikan,

the term "Short Video" was finally becoming known to more and more netizens.

The same conversation appeared in the comment sections of major platforms.

"What is a Short Video?" asked those who were hearing about this thing for the first time.

"Go download Douyin and you'll know; it's quite interesting. Weikan is just a knockoff!" replied those who had already used it.

"What is Weikan? Is that the one that copied Douyin?"

Such conversations were playing out simultaneously in every corner of the internet: Weibo, Tieba, Zhihu, Hupu, and Tianya.

Douyin didn't spend a single cent to buy this traffic, but all discussions about Weikan eventually turned into recommendations for Douyin and insults toward Tencent.

Under Weikan's overwhelming promotional offensive, the concept of Short Video truly entered the public eye for the first time.

Tens of millions of users had their attention captured by Tencent's promotion and wanted to try this new thing called Short Video.

Then, they opened the app store and searched for "Short Video," and the first thing that popped up was Douyin.

When they searched for "Weikan," the first related search was "What is the relationship between Douyin and Weikan?"

They clicked on this related search and saw overwhelming discussions stating that Weikan was just a copy of Douyin and that Douyin was the original.

Then, they downloaded Douyin.

In the app store's backend data, Douyin's download curve was no longer a normal line from the moment Weikan's promotion began.

The arc of the download volume kept rising.

On the first day of the trending topic, Douyin's daily active users jumped from 310,000 to 400,000.

The second day, it jumped from 400,000 to 500,000.

On the third and fourth days, by the day before Weikan officially launched, Douyin's daily active users had exceeded 600,000.

Compared to a few days ago, the daily active users had directly doubled!

A significant portion of these 300,000 new users were hearing about "Short Video" for the first time due to Tencent's massive promotional campaign.

Then, after searching and comparing, they chose Douyin.

"They are helping us advertise."

Zhao Lei looked at the backend data, scratching his head repeatedly, feeling a sense of unreality.

"They spent millions, and as a result, all the users ran to us."

"Boss."

"This move of yours—suing Weikan while buying a trending spot—is the greatest maneuver I've seen in so many years!"

"However,"

Zhao Lei sighed softly.

"The lawyers talked to us and said that this kind of lawsuit is almost impossible to win; at most, Weikan will just have to change their interface and interaction."

Qin Mo leaned back in his chair, holding a cup of cold soy milk.

He just chuckled and shook his head.

"My goal was never to actually defeat Weikan in court."

Then, amidst Zhao Lei's confusion, Qin Mo explained.

He also knew that they couldn't defeat Weikan; he had known that from the very beginning.

But whether they could win or not wasn't important. What was important was that at the peak of Weikan's momentum, he tied the words "Douyin" and "Weikan" together, so that everyone attracted by Tencent's promotion would see Douyin while searching for Weikan.

This was the promotion he wanted.

Borrowing Tencent's knife to chop down Tencent's tree.

If they had relied on Douyin alone, they could never have achieved such massive promotion.

Zhao Lei nodded, seemingly understanding.

Just at this moment, the Customer Service Department team leader, Li Kanghai, walked over.

During this period of Douyin's expansion, there were already many departments.

Although Qin Mo had his own office, he often still sat at the workstations next to Zhao Lei and Lin Xiao.

Before Douyin stabilized,

the three of them and the other employees were still working in the same area.

"What's the matter?"

Looking at him, before Qin Mo could speak, Zhao Lei asked.

"Manager Zhao, another merchant has terminated their contract with us. They would rather forfeit the deposit than continue."

"And that party is the largest one among the merchants we have currently signed."

Li Kanghai's face was also a bit pale. He hadn't been at Douyin for long when he encountered this kind of thing.

Hearing this, Zhao Lei cursed a few times, and before he could say anything, his phone rang.

Someone had actually called his personal phone to cancel the contract.

At the beginning, when Douyin didn't have so many employees, many merchants were negotiated by him and Lin Xiao.

But these past few days,

although Douyin's daily active users were constantly increasing,

the number of cooperative merchants was getting fewer and fewer.

"Manager Zhao, I'm really sorry, we've had some issues with our funds, and the contract we signed earlier probably can't be continued…"

The other party's script was almost identical; Zhao Lei had received quite a few similar calls over these two days.

After hanging up the phone,

Zhao Lei looked at Qin Mo, and Qin Mo nodded at Li Kanghai.

"I understand. You don't need to try to keep them; if they want to terminate, just agree to it."

"Yes."

After Li Kanghai left, Zhao Lei couldn't help but curse, "Those bastards."

Although they had anticipated this earlier, they didn't expect Tencent to be so ruthless.

"Boss, it's been four days. We've lost over a hundred partner merchants in total, and only less than forty are left."

"And many merchants who had already started running ads are also demanding refunds and forcibly terminating subsequent ad placements."

At the adjacent workstation,

Lin Xiao, who hadn't said much, pushed up his glasses and looked at the statistics on the computer.

"They said they don't even want the deposit back, but they won't cooperate with Douyin anymore; they are determined to breach the contract."

"Some partners told us that Weikan is contacting them, saying that as long as they break off cooperation with Douyin, they will get discounts on Weikan's advertising slots."

"And for all merchants, if they choose Douyin, they cannot cooperate with Weikan!"