Chapter 452: Heavy Losses
Huang Weicheng was so angry he was practically fuming, wishing he could crawl through the phone and give his assistant a thrashing.
"What time is it, and you're still mumbling and hesitating."
Don't you know, for every day the platform is shut down, we're losing at least several million in gifts revenue.
The most critical part is, it will lead to a loss of users.
Attracting traffic nowadays costs a fortune.
For an ad placement, $1,000 for 100,000 displays is considered a good deal.
And of the 100,000 displays, maybe about 1,000 people will click through.
Out of those 1,000 people, it would be good if 100 downloaded the app.
And if 10 out of those 100 who downloaded the app stick around to consistently watch the live streams, that would be great.
That means, it costs a hundred bucks to attract one person.
If we lose 10,000 viewers in one day, we'd need a million to attract them back.
Not making money and having to spend on attracting traffic, this loss would be huge.
Even Huang Weicheng found it a bit too much to bear.
So, he immediately cursed, "Are you fucking stuttering? What is the reason for the punishment, hurry up and fucking make it clear to me, read the reason for the punishment to me now, word for word, without missing a single one, and if there's one extra or missing word, you can get the hell out of here tomorrow!"
The assistant pursed his lips, looked at the written penalty notice, and read the reason for the punishment word for word: "This is what you get for messing with me!"
"What the fuck, what are you talking about?!"
Huang Weicheng immediately flew into a rage.
Since when did his assistant become so arrogant as to speak to him like that.
But he quickly realized and asked hurriedly, "Is this the punishment reason?"
The assistant replied, "Yes, Mr. Huang, I've never seen such a reason for punishment. This is an official notice from the municipal government, but it feels like we are being targeted."
Huang Weicheng's gaze sharpened.
This was definitely Xu Yang messing with him.
This was Xu Yang's retaliation, his revenge.
He hadn't expected that the kid could have such a powerful network to get his livestream platform shut down directly.
And to get the municipal government to issue such a notice.
This was no small feat; even as the third richest person in the province, he didn't have such clout.
How on earth did Xu Yang manage it?
However, Huang Weicheng had no intention of admitting defeat.
I'm the third richest man in the province, how could I lose to someone like you, a newcomer from Jiangcheng?
You're just worth a few hundred billion, and I'm worth well over a hundred billion.
Fuck it, I'll play this game with you to the end to see who can outlast who!
"All right, I know who's behind this, I'll take care of it right away!"
After speaking, Huang Weicheng hung up on his assistant.
Then, he dialed Xu Yang's number: "Xu Yang, nice moves, shutting down my livestream platform just like that, but if you think you can do anything to me, think again. I'm telling you, you've thought wrong, I'll show you the difference between us. I can clearly tell you, you're finished!"
Xu Yang gave a faint smile: "You have no more chances, unless you can knock me out right now, but unfortunately, you didn't do that, and once I make my move, I won't give you another chance."
Huang Weicheng snorted coldly, "You don't have as much money as I do, I don't believe you can be this impressive, but no matter what, let me tell you, I'll take down your Jiangcheng's Haidilao first, wait until your..."
He hadn't finished speaking when Xu Yang directly hung up the phone.
"Fuck! You fucking dared to hang up on me, I'll destroy your family!"
Huang Weicheng cursed and dialed a number from his network of connections.
First restore the operations of the livestream platform, then deal with Xu Yang's company.
But to his surprise, the call didn't go through.
No problem, he thought, just call another person from his network of connections.
After all, he had many contacts, many who could intervene.
The one he had tried was just more convenient; there were others he could turn to if necessary.
So, he dialed another number from his network of connections.
But the result was the same, the call wouldn't go through.
"What's going on?"
Huang Weicheng furrowed his brows, feeling that something was amiss.
Next, he persistently continued to dial the numbers of others in his network, including Boss Chen's phone, but without exception, all calls went unanswered.
"What exactly is going on?"
Huang Weicheng felt that the situation was not looking good.
While he was making calls, another one of his companies also encountered a problem.
…
It was evening, and tonight was still Friday night.
Tomorrow would be Saturday, meaning many people wouldn't have to go to work, so many netizens would stay up late.
There's a local forum in the provincial city called "Mastering Provincial City."
The function of the forum is similar to Tieba, and "Mastering Provincial City" is a niche forum; only local residents of the provincial city know of and visit this forum.
Therefore, the forum only has a few hundred thousand active users each day.
While it may just be a few hundred thousand, the value of the forum should not be underestimated.
After all, these are precise and real active users.
Advertising here is different than advertising on Tieba.
Advertising on Tieba may seem to have a high exposure, with hundreds and thousands or millions of views.
But with users from all over the country, they just glance at the ad and move on without pausing.
Advertisting on "Mastering Provincial City" is extremely targeted.
If you post saying a store in the provincial city has tasty offerings, by the next day if you visit that store, you will definitely see a long line of customers waiting.
Thus, "Mastering Provincial City" forum is valued at ten billion yuan.
Its daily advertising revenue yields a net profit of over six hundred thousand yuan, with an annual net profit of more than two billion yuan.
Today is Friday, and "Mastering Provincial City" has even more active users than on a regular workday.
Posts discussing food and drinks, seeking entertainment or dates, renting houses, buying various things, etc., all receive a huge number of replies.
Your next read is at empire
Just when everyone was enjoying themselves, they suddenly discovered that the web page could not be displayed.
"Mastering Provincial City" had collapsed!
It didn't take long for this news to spread throughout the provincial city's social circles.
Not only that, forums in other cities in the Southern Province experienced the same issue.
The local forum in River City, "Mastering River City," had collapsed.
The local forum in Mountain City, "Mastering Mountain City," had collapsed.
The local forum in Meng City, "Mastering Meng City," had collapsed…
All twelve local forums in the twelve cities of Southern Province had collapsed.
All of these forums had one common owner, Huang Weicheng.
When the first forum collapsed, the management team under Huang Weicheng thought it was a normal situation and worked hard to investigate and aimed to restore service as quickly as possible.
But with all twelve forums collapsing, the management team could no longer sit still.
So, while Huang Weicheng's calls to his contacts were fruitless and he was in a state of great distress, he received a report from the general manager of the company that managed the forums.
Huang Weicheng asked angrily, "What exactly is the reason, have you figured it out?"
The combined valuation of these more than ten forums exceeded one hundred billion yuan, and they could bring him more than ten billion yuan in cash income each year.
If all the forums were to collapse and become unusable, his loss would be enormous.
That was a cash cow indeed.
The general manager said, "Boss Huang, the relevant departments said there was illegal information on our forums, so they forcibly shut them down."
Upon hearing this, Huang Weicheng was somewhat stunned.
The forums were all local forums that had been around for so long; where could there be illegal information.
If there was illegal information, the company's review team would be able to identify it.
In this respect, the company was doing quite well.
One could say that such a situation had never occurred before.
Then he asked, "The relevant departments must have a penalty notice, right? What exactly does it say? You tell me clearly, I want to hear their exact words!"