Twitter was like a huge storm when it was launched, sweeping the world. Any businessman or someone who knew a little about business would realize that this was a huge gold mine. It was the same in William's eyes. However, Li Mu said that Twitter's future profits were no longer important to him, and William could not understand it.
Normally, who would give up a chance to make money? It was just like how an oil tycoon would not be willing to give up any oil well.
However, Li Mu did not intend to turn Twitter into an oil well.
He could already guess the popularity of Twitter. In his previous life, whether it was Twitter in the West or Hua Xia's Weibo, they immediately set off a new wave on the Internet after their debut. The enthusiasm of the netizens was no less than now.
Back then, when Weibo was at its peak, the netizens gave all their internet time to Weibo every day. They even squeezed out fragmented time such as going to the toilet, taking public transport, resting, and slacking off at work. From this, one could see how attractive this product model was to the users in its first few years.
In Li Mu's previous life, these two products were already extremely popular. In this life, if Li Mu were to make this product, its popularity would naturally increase further. Therefore, when Li Mu was preparing to make Twitter, he knew that it would definitely become a global hit.
Unfortunately, in his previous life, after the development of the Internet in 2013 and 2014, both Twitter and Weibo started to go downhill. The loss of users became more and more serious, the activity of the platform became lower and lower, and the profit model of the platform could not be opened up.
On one hand, this was due to the impact of more product models on the mobile Internet. For example, Twitter was suppressed by Facebook, INS, and WhatsApp; Weibo was attacked by WeChat official account and Toutiao today;
However, on the other hand, it was mainly because these two products were making their own path narrower and narrower.
After these two products started, they were faced with the problem of monetization, especially Weibo. After one or two years of development, it fully opened up the advertising business. Moreover, the advertising business was almost unscrupulous in order to make money. Although this kind of crazy monetization increased the income, it also dragged down the user experience.
When Weibo was at its purest, all the content that users saw was what they liked and what they personally followed. However, when Weibo was at its craziest, 70% to 80% of the content that users saw was all kinds of advertisements, products, websites, games, and other applications. There were also all kinds of soft advertisements and spam messages that were forwarded with prizes.
The more spam messages there were, the more time and energy the users wasted. Over time, the loyalty of the users would decrease.
From Li Mu's point of view, Weibo in the future was almost entirely supported by celebrity gossip. Every time an A-list celebrity was involved in a huge scandal, Weibo's traffic would rise. But when the attention of the incident dropped, Weibo's traffic would drop again. Users would not be able to find any good content on Weibo, so products like Jinri Toutiao would use the content as an entry point to steal the chicken feed from Weibo.
Li Mu didn't want Twitter and Weibo to become slaves to money in his hands. He would never allow Twitter and Weibo to make money by charging for advertisements, for charging for hot searches, for charging for fans, and for other unscrupulous ways.
To Li Mu, Twitter itself was not for making money. This was something that no other team in the world could do except for Li Mu. It was completely different from the founding team of Twitter and the Weibo team.
The reason was simple. The founding team of Twitter treated it as a capital project in order to achieve financial freedom.
Back then, the heavy responsibility of the Weibo team was to try their best to use Weibo to pull Sina Waves back up.
Therefore, both teams had a heavy burden.
However, Li Mu did not have this kind of burden. He had already started to upgrade his own industry much earlier than other entrepreneurs and many steps ahead of his peers.
The so-called upgrading of his business meant that Li Mu no longer needed all his businesses to generate profits for himself. He no longer needed every cent he invested to generate income for himself. This was very different from other entrepreneurs.
Other entrepreneurs were like poor farmers. Of course, Li Mu did not have any intention of discriminating against poor farmers. He was just using them as an example.
Entrepreneurs who were still above the poverty line had to consider the profit margin for every cent they spent and every business they expanded. Just this point alone was a heavy shackle for them.
For example, buying a chicken was to generate profits. Buying a lamb was to raise the lamb and sell it for profits. Buying a sow was to breed piglets and generate profits. Even if you had the money to buy bricks and cement, you would only use it to expand the pigsty, sheep pen, and chicken coop. You would never build a bathroom for yourself. Even if you had the opportunity to buy a car, you would definitely buy a Wuling Hongguang that could make you money.
However, Li Mu was now in the high-yielding class. He did not need to be like a beginner entrepreneur who placed too much emphasis on money.
He could raise a high-cost pet dog purely for his hobby. He could also buy a Rolls-Royce that was worth millions to show off his status and pick up girls. Even if the Rolls-Royce required hundreds of thousands of yuan to maintain and maintain, he would not be able to earn a single cent back.
To Li Mu, Twitter was such a luxury car.
Li Mu had plenty of ways to make money. He did not need to drive a Rolls-Royce to Didi. He would also not sell his Rolls-Royce to a wedding company to make money. He would feel embarrassed if he did that.
This was the biggest difference between Li Mu and other entrepreneurs at this stage.
At this stage, the overall ecosystem of YY was already very profitable. There would be even more profit margins in the future. Under such circumstances, Li Mu had to make rational choices. He had to decide which money to make and which money he could or should not make. He had to sacrifice some of his profits for other pursuits. Twitter was the most suitable product for other pursuits.
Twitter did not need to make money. Li Mu wanted to use the purest and best experience of Twitter to add bricks and tiles to the entire YY ecosystem. He wanted to make the overall YY ecosystem stronger and more stable. Even if he did not make a single cent, it would be worth it.
Moreover, if Twitter and Weibo did not become slaves to money, things like Jinri Toutiao and WeChat would not have any room to grow in the future.
William could not understand Li Mu's logic, but he always felt that Li Mu's temperament had a hint of detachment.
When he thought about Li Mu's current net worth, William had a rough idea of what was going on.
When he thought about how he had only expressed his respect to Li Mu yesterday, Li Mu had mentioned his name on Twitter and gained the attention of millions of fans, William felt that it was necessary for him to maintain a good relationship with Li Mu. This man's influence in the world had exceeded that of any European tycoon, and even a member of the royal family.
…
In order to prevent Li Mu from harming her and the Goldberg family, Wendy Goldberg personally went to the banquet hall and invited Anne Hathaway, who was dining with her assistant.
Anne Hathaway originally felt wronged, but when she heard that Li Mu had invited her and Prince William to dine together, she immediately felt much better.
She could be ignored, despised, and even deliberately ostracized by the Goldberg family, as long as Li Mu did not treat her as a dispensable person. Now it seemed that Li Mu at least thought of her, which was very gratifying for her.
He followed Wendy to the restaurant where Li Mu was. As soon as he saw Anne Hathaway come in, Li Mu stood up like a gentleman and greeted her with a smile. He also helped her pull out the chair next to him and said with a smile, "Anne, come and sit down."
Li Mu's action of pulling out a chair for her attracted the attention of everyone in the restaurant. Even Prince William was a little surprised. When he came in just now, Li Mu did not even get up to greet him, but when Anne Hathaway came, Li Mu actually took the initiative to pull out a chair for her. Although this was a gentleman's action, it could be seen that in Li Mu's eyes, Anne Hathaway had a certain status.
Anne Hathaway was a little nervous herself, so she hurriedly nodded and thanked Li Mu.
Li Mu then introduced her, "Anne, this is Prince William. William, this is my good friend, Anne Hathaway, an A-list actress in Hollywood."
William immediately stood up and kissed the back of Anne Hathaway's hand in a very gentlemanly manner. He praised, "Miss Anne, you are so beautiful. It's a pleasure to meet you."
Anne Hathaway hurriedly said a few polite words, then sat down next to Li Mu. After sitting down, her originally nervous mood eased a lot.
At this time, Li Mu said to Wendy, who had come with him, "Miss Wendy, are you sure you don't want to sit down and eat together?"
Wendy knew that she could not agree, so she hurriedly waved her hand and said with a smile, "Mr. Li, Prince William, and Miss Anne, you three enjoy your breakfast. I won't disturb you any longer. I have something to do anyway."
Li Mu nodded and said with a smile, "Since you have something to do, then go ahead. Let's sit together when we have the chance."
After saying goodbye to the three of them, Wendy immediately returned to her room. Although she did not get to have breakfast with Li Mu, the photo in the camera was still a big gain. This was because the photo was taken by Li Mu with the camera, and she was sitting next to him. The two of them looked relaxed and even a little intimate.
After returning to her room, Wendy turned on her computer and found that she had more than 20,000 new followers and more than 3,000 comments on Twitter. She was immediately excited. She clicked on the comments and found that most of them were expressing their envy for her. The reason for their envy was that she had the opportunity to take a photo with Li Mu.
Wendy then imported the photos from the camera into her computer and uploaded the photo she had just taken to Twitter with the caption, "Mr. Li Mu just taught me a new way to take photos. I've never tried taking a selfie from an oblique angle, but it looks like this angle is really special. I love this photo!"
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