Chapter 207 Sina Business Adjustment
On March 20, Liu Zhou organized Sina's first senior management meeting.

In fact, up to now, Sina doesn't have many senior management members.

Chairman and CEO Liu Zhou, President Wang Yan, Vice President and CFO Cao Guowei, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Chen Tong, and Vice President Zhong Lifang were the only five people who attended the meeting.

Looking at the somewhat empty conference room, Liu Zhou felt no emotion at all.

Duan Yongji no longer has any other options. The turmoil will soon end and Sina will set sail again.

After everyone arrived, Liu Zhou didn't waste any words and said directly:

“The fact that we can sit together now means that you still trust me.

I know that not only the outside world, but also people within the company are not optimistic about my ability to lead Sina forward.

But since I paid such a huge price, it is impossible that I did not have any preparation. I did not acquire Sina for fame or simple benefits.

But I have a detailed strategic plan for my career, and Sina is a very important part of my career plan.

So everyone can rest assured that I will never joke about Sina, let alone my own career."

Liu Zhou's words were actually meant for Wang Yan, Cao Guowei and Chen Tong.

He didn't know how much trust these people had in him, but Liu Zhou at least wanted to let them know how much he valued Sina.

"So now that we are sitting together, I also hope that we can work together to make Sina the world's number one Chinese portal website, instead of just having a false name now."

After saying these words, Liu Zhou also got to the point:
"During this period, I also learned about Sina in detail. To be honest, I was a little disappointed.

Except for the blog business which has developed well, the performance of other business segments are not very ideal.

Although our wireless value-added service ranks first in the industry, I have noticed that the revenue growth rate has been slowing down in the past two years, and the gap between us and other companies is also narrowing rapidly.

If the growth rate cannot surpass others, it actually means regression!
I think the reason why our revenue has been able to grow is that the entire market is growing rapidly. In fact, we are still stagnant or even regressing. "

After saying this, Liu Zhou looked at Wang Yan and said seriously:

"Mr. Wang, I don't care what happened to our company before. I hope that the wireless value-added service and advertising business will have better development under your hands.

I will give you absolute power. You can directly fire those who are disobedient. If you need anyone, hand it over to President Zhong and let her recruit for you.

I hope that by this time next year, Sina will have completely consolidated its position as the industry leader in this field and will be able to give me and all shareholders a satisfactory answer.”

"Okay, Mr. Liu." Wang Yan said solemnly.

Liu Zhou has given me such great support, but I still can't develop these two businesses. Then he will not be able to continue to hold this position, and he will not be ashamed to sit in this position.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Liu Zhou also felt Wang Yan's determination, nodded, and then looked at Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Chen Tong.

Chen Tong noticed Liu Zhou's gaze and sat up straight.

After getting to know him over this period of time, Chen Tong no longer dared to underestimate the young new leader in front of him.

If he didn't do well, or even went against his wishes, Chen Tong was sure that he would kick him out of Sina without hesitation.

"Mr. Chen, portal news is where Sina started. Although it is developing well now, I think we can do better."

Chen Tong immediately listened carefully. Although he didn't think Liu Zhou could provide any good suggestions, he still had to listen to the boss's words.

However, as Liu Zhou continued to talk, Chen Tong was suddenly surprised and began to listen carefully.

“I think we can create a hot news list on our homepage. It doesn’t need to be too many, just ten pieces of news will do.

We put the major or popular events that are currently happening on the news hot list, so that users can see the latest hot news as soon as they open our Sina website. "

"Mr. Liu, do we collect and post this hot news ourselves or do we decide based on the number of views?"

"Of course it is determined by the number of views, but I hope we also have a manual adjustment function in the background."

Chen Tong immediately understood what Liu Zhou meant. Isn't it better to keep these hot news under control?

“Also, netizens are now used to reading news online and are willing to accept longer articles, which is an important reason why blogs are developing so fast.

So we also need to open up a new section to deeply process some news information and give it our own flavor and voice. "

Chen Tong is very good at running portals.

He pioneered the model of online media:
Fast, comprehensive, and short.

Put massive amounts of information online as quickly as possible to satisfy netizens' curiosity.

It was Chen Tong's model that enabled Sina.com to seize the global hot events at the time and established Sina.com's advantage among global Chinese websites.

Later, Sohu and NetEase also quickly learned Sina's model.

But now, fast-rolling news can no longer meet the needs of netizens. Sohu has already started this change, and Sina cannot fall behind.

In particular, Sina has always had a greater advantage in the news field, and most netizens generally choose Sina as their first choice when browsing current political news.

Since the company has such an outstanding brand image, Liu Zhou feels that it cannot be wasted and that these advantages can be magnified.

"Mr. Liu, in this case, we are short of editors, and we need to process the information in depth, which requires considerable editorial ability."

"Since we are short of staff, we should recruit more qualified people. We can start slowly and reprint some news from other newspapers, and then slowly build up our Sina brand characteristics."

"Okay Mr. Liu."

Thinking of this, Liu Zhou felt that there was an application in the future that was very suitable for Sina today.

The majority of Sina's users are young and middle-aged people, mainly urban white-collar workers.

These people can now be considered social elites. In addition to attaching more importance to the authority of news, they also have a greater demand for information and knowledge.

"Mr. Chen, do you think we can create a new app and a Q&A community where everyone can ask questions and if someone happens to be able to solve the problem, they can give an answer."

"Mr. Liu, isn't this similar to Baidu's Zhidao?"

“It is somewhat similar, but we can make it more high-end and professional, and we can’t let the respondents give random answers.”

After saying that, Liu Zhou also briefly recounted some of his understanding of Zhihu in his previous life.

After listening to this, Chen Tong said excitedly:

"Mr. Liu, this application is perfect for Sina and is also completely in line with Sina's user base.

The main body of this application consists of two parts: respondents who produce content and users who consume content.

Users are satisfied when they produce content and can discover better things about themselves. They also solve problems, grow and reflect while consuming content.

It’s a two-way reward, and this app is sure to be a big hit.”

"Since you think it's good, then after you finish redesigning the news portal, go ahead and make this app. You still need to discuss in detail how to set up this app."

"Mr. Liu, what should we call this app?"

“Let’s just call it Zhihu!”

"Zhihu? What a good name, let's call it Zhihu."

"Mr. Chen, I think Sina needs to strengthen its entertainment and sports news. Sports news is our strong point, and we need to strengthen our advantage.

As for entertainment news, we can contact Golden Harvest more often and arrange more reporters to pay more attention to news in the entertainment industry."

"Okay Mr. Liu."

After saying this, Liu Zhou brought up those miscellaneous applications:
“I am a little confused as to why we have businesses operating in the market in search, instant messaging and e-commerce.

And now the half-dead plants are not cut down, just left there to fend for themselves.

Therefore, all businesses of Yipai.com and Sina Travel were cut off, and the relevant personnel were transferred to other business departments.

SIUC Instant Messaging has been withdrawn from the market and this application is only used within the company.

The same goes for Sina Search, which will withdraw from the market and only be used for search applications within the Sina system.”

In these areas, they have already established absolute advantages and there is no need for market-oriented operations.

Instead of wasting time and money, it would be better to spend it on Sina's advantageous projects.

"I understand, Mr. Liu." Wang Yan replied.

He is the president of the company and he needs to handle these matters.

Finally, there is only one business left, the gaming business, which is also the project that Liu Zhou plans to focus on in the future.

"Next, I plan to focus Sina's business development on games, especially Sina Legu, and increase investment in online games.

So Mr. Zhong, I need you to increase the recruitment of game development and operation talents.”

"Okay Mr. Liu."

Liu Zhou pondered for a while and said:
"Let's temporarily hand over the gaming business to Mr. Wang."

Wang Yan was stunned for a moment, then immediately said:

"Ok."

"Finally, I decided that the company should start a new project, which is a video website. It will have the same priority as the blog and will be a key project for Sina."

Ever since YouTube was established last year and became popular in the United States, there has also been a craze for video websites in China.

Some video websites such as Youku and Tudou were mostly established last year and early this year.

In October this year, Google spent a huge amount of US$16.5 billion to acquire YouTube, which further stimulated the mainland Internet industry.

At that time, there were hundreds of video websites established one after another. Sohu couldn't help but join in and established Sohu Video.

However, with the standardization of copyright in China, video websites have officially become a money-burning business.

Ordinary people can’t stand it at all, even Sohu is the same.

After the great waves, only Penguin, Qiyi and Youku, owned by the three giants BAT, survived, as well as Mango TV, which is backed by the Shonan Broadcasting and Television Group.

(End of this chapter)