126: Chapter 126 If you make short videos, then I'll do live streaming.

After contacting the Spring Festival Gala planning team,

Xue Haixin finally found out why only xiaomi 6 phones were used during the Spring Festival Gala.

It turned out that the Spring Festival Gala had officially entered into a partnership with Huayao Communications;

they had signed a formal contract.

Regarding this,

Xue Haixin found it difficult to voice his grievances.

Before this,

he had not expected Huayao Communications to make such a strong comeback.

For the past few years,

Li Xiang Phone had always been the mobile phone sponsor for the Spring Festival Gala.

Over time,

Xue Haixin even felt that this had become a default setting,

requiring no contract at all.

As long as the Spring Festival Gala was about to start,

he just needed to send over the new Ideal phones released that year.

Because Ideal was certain

that the Spring Festival Gala had no other mobile phone to choose

besides Li Xiang Phone.

That had indeed been the case before,

but this year, a major variable appeared:

Huayao Phone.

Because they had prioritized convenience

and hadn't signed a contract with the Spring Festival Gala,

when the Gala changed its mind this time

and used xiaomi phones,

Xue Haixin and Ideal could only swallow their bitterness;

it was a hard lesson learned in silence.

For future Spring Festival Galas,

it would likely be difficult for Li Xiang Phone to be the sole sponsor again;

they would have to compete with Huayao Phone.

However, to give the shareholders an explanation,

Xue Haixin turned his attention to the software market.

Just as he had thought before,

mobile phone manufacturers like them had a natural advantage in making software.

They could pre-install the software on every phone that left the factory,

which would greatly increase the installation count.

He hadn't thought of this point before;

he had to thank that kid from the Bai family for giving him a hint.

Initially, Xue Haixin also wanted to create software similar to Douyin.

Through some personal experience,

he truly felt that Douyin had a bright future,

and this method of swiping through videos was very novel.

However, on one hand,

they had the first-mover advantage.

Moreover, from what he understood,

it wasn't just the mobile phone market;

several major domestic companies,

including Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu, and others,

were all eyeing the short video track.

Short videos seemed to have become the next big trend.

If Li Xiang Phone rashly entered the fray,

it would likely be hard to gain any advantage.

However, he could invest in a short video platform;

that way, the risk would be much lower.

Xue Haixin pondered over this day and night

and soon shifted his thinking,

spotting another way out—live streaming.

With the popularization of 4G networks,

internet speeds were getting faster,

and data was becoming more abundant.

The way people received information was indeed shifting from text and images

to videos,

and even live streams.

The live streaming market pie was also growing larger and larger.

So, partly to answer to the shareholders' meeting,

and partly because he was genuinely optimistic about this market,

he clearly defined Ideal's next investment direction at the shareholders' meeting:

short videos and live streaming platforms.

Coincidentally, Xue Haixin had noticed someone

who was also quite interested in game streaming.

If he could win this person over,

this matter would be much easier to accomplish.

Xue Haixin first sent someone to contact him,

and the other side quickly gave a reply,

expressing the same intention.

This further strengthened Xue Haixin's determination to enter the live streaming market.

And that person

was Wang Sicong, the son of Wanda Chairman Wang Jianlin.

In Xue Haixin's eyes,

this Wang Sicong was purely a foolish son of a wealthy landlord,

someone with more money than brains.

He believed Wang Sicong would be relatively easy to fool.

By bringing him on board,

he could also effectively reduce risks and costs.

Since both parties had the intention to cooperate,

they began to discuss the details of the next steps.

After the New Year passed quickly,

through the promotion and momentum from the Spring Festival Gala,

Douyin's user base experienced a massive surge.

Although many people deleted Douyin after grabbing the red envelopes from the Spring Festival Gala,

many others grew to like this way of swiping through videos

and kept Douyin on their phones.

After the New Year,

the Douyin platform reached 500 million registered users,

and the daily active users peaked at 100 million after the holidays.

It could be said that Douyin had now completely become a top-tier software.

Besides instant messaging apps like WeChat and QQ,

what other software could achieve a daily active user count of 100 million?

Zhang Yiming was extremely excited at this moment.

His daily life was very busy,

but he felt as if he couldn't feel tired at all.

To repay Boss Bai for recognizing his talent,

he was determined to build the Douyin platform well.

Despite the massive progress

and the great results Douyin had achieved at this stage,

Zhang Yiming was not at all complacent.

Because he knew

that the current situation was not the final result the Young Boss Bai wanted.

To become what the Young Boss Bai had described—

a platform that truly encompassed everything and catered to all users—

Douyin still had a long way to go.

He had to continue working hard toward this goal.

Ever since Douyin became a hit,

its high daily active user count

also attracted the attention of many advertisers.

More and more platforms chose Douyin for advertising.

By inserting an advertisement into the video stream,

if a user didn't like it,

they could simply swipe up to see the next video.

The increase in built-in ads didn't cause much resentment among users.

Douyin also timely launched e-commerce functions,

thereby attracting some merchants to set up shop on Douyin.

Doing e-commerce on Douyin also had a natural advantage:

merchants could promote their products directly through videos.

This was the primary reason many merchants chose to join Douyin.

Douyin finally began to turn a profit,

and the initial money earned was something Zhang Yiming hadn't even dared to imagine before.

But he knew the road was long;

there was still a long way to go in the future.

At this moment, he should guard against arrogance and impulsiveness,

taking it one step at a time

and moving forward steadily.

After the New Year,

although Douyin's traffic dropped slightly,

the daily active users were still basically in the tens of millions.

Everything was on the right track.

Meanwhile, the live streaming platform being discussed by Xue Haixin and Wang Sicong had also completed its preliminary development.

Under the circumstances where countless hardworking programmers worked overtime without rest during the New Year,

a prototype of the live streaming platform was finally created.

After the two reached an agreement,

they finally named the platform Panda Live.

Currently, there were three mainstream live streaming platforms on the market:

Maoya Live, Dou-sha Live, and Xingqiu Live.

Each platform had its own star streamers,

attracting many fans to download and watch.

For Panda Live to stand out from these platforms,

firstly, it could rely on the support and nurturing of a mobile phone manufacturer like Ideal.

But on the other hand,

outputting truly high-quality content

and possessing a large group of high-quality streamers who could drive traffic

was the key to Panda Live being able to go further.