Chapter 417
Qin Shaoyan quickly received feedback from Davis, who called him overnight and said that Mr. Bill Gates was willing to cooperate.
"That's great!" Qin Shaoyan said happily, "Help me say thank you to Mr. Bill Gates."
"I will." Davis said casually, "There is one more thing I found two translators here, and they offered me $250,000."
"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars..." Qin Shaoyan frowned and thought, "I can agree."< br>
"But they asked for a signature, and they also asked for a share of the royalties when the book is published."
"Are they crazy about money?" Qin Shaoyan laughed angrily, "This book will not be published at all, just It will be put on the Internet for everyone to watch for free."
"That's what I told them," Davis sighed, "but they think it is. As a translator, you should have corresponding rights and ask for this book to be published."
"Then let them go," Qin Shaoyan said without hesitation, "I don't need to find anyone to translate here in China. Translated writer."
"Okay." Davis hesitated, "One more thing, John."
"Keep talking." Qin Shaoyan was keenly aware that Davis seemed to have something important to say.
“Mr. Bill Gates asked me if I could buy Facebook.” Davis said quickly, “I didn’t express my position at the time. I just said that I would write a report to him.”
"Then how do you plan to write this report?" Qin Shaoyan asked.
“Well, I don’t know either, so I came to ask for your opinion.” Davis said awkwardly, “John, we are friends.”
“Well, we are Friend." Qin Shaoyan smiled, "We have known each other since Facebook's Series A financing, and you are very optimistic about Facebook's prospects."
"Facebook is a groundbreaking Internet social platform. Its future achievements will exceed everyone's imagination. It will become the king of social networking sites!"
"YES!" Davis agreed. , "I think so too, and I will truthfully write down my views in the report."
"Microsoft is my important partner." Qin Shao Yan said enthusiastically, "I plan to actively raise funds in the next two years to promote Facebook's listing. If Microsoft is interested, it can participate more."
"But I hope Microsoft can give a fair and reasonable price. "
"Don't worry, John." Davis promised, "I will give a fair and reasonable assessment."
"OK!" Qin Shaoyan said happily, "Davis, I will never treat my friends badly."
"I know you are a good person, John." Davis said happily, "I wish you good night . ”
Good night, it’s daytime here.
Qin Shaoyan sneered after hanging up the phone. If you give me money, you are a good person.
It is a good thing that Bill Gates is interested in Facebook, otherwise Qin Shaoyan would be worried about who to sell the website to.
Of course, selling directly is definitely not possible.
YouTube has sold it once before, but it won’t work the same way again.
Facebook needs to be sold in pieces to get a good price.
No matter what happens, it is serious to take action as soon as possible before 2008, whether it is financing for cash or reselling shares and taking the money to leave.
As for who takes over, Qin Shaoyan doesn’t care.
...
Qin Shaoyan quickly found Xiong Jiajia and asked him to find some translators who knew English.
Xiong Jiajia has a subtitle group that he often collaborates with. They are usually responsible for translating American dramas, Hollywood blockbusters, foreign variety shows, etc. All of them have pretty good English skills.
Qin Shaoyan directly spent one million RMB and asked them to translate the novel.
The eyes of several members of the subtitle team turned green at that time, and they immediately patted their chests and said, "Don't worry, boss, we can get it done for you even if we don't sleep."
They have never seen such a large sum of money before, and this order is different from the order for subtitles. This is legal!
The members of the subtitle team started working overtime without mobilization, working hard with the energy of sudden death.
This science fiction novel doesn’t need to be beautifully written, just about the same.
But the people in this subtitle group strictly control the quality and strive to be the best. They have to consider every word repeatedly and even the punctuation marks are carefully proofread.
Soon, the first chapter of the novel renamed "The Martian" was released on Facebook.
The Facebook backend immediately intervened and began to recommend accounts that published novels according to a pre-planned plan.
……
Tom Plank is a student at MIT. He looks no different from ordinary students.
A standard otaku who doesn’t like to go out to parties or date female classmates.
Normally, he likes to hide in his dormitory and surf the Internet. On the Internet, he changes his shy and autistic personality and becomes a very active technology blogger.
Privately, Tom is a member of a geek league and occasionally goes to cause trouble for certain websites.
Tom is also a UFO enthusiast and likes to collect information on various mysterious events. He always believes that the US government is covering up the truth about the existence of aliens.
At the same time, he is also a fan of science fiction novels and spends two or three hours every day chatting with other fans on science fiction fan forums.
After class today, Tom hurried back to the dormitory, threw the books aside, and carefully picked up a photo frame from the table.
In the photo frame was a photo of a couple. A beautiful blonde girl was wrapped in a bed sheet and clinging tightly to Tom's arms, while looking at the camera with a sweet smile.
"Oh, Jennifer." Tom wiped the glass on the picture frame carefully, over and over again.
He met Jennifer on Facebook. The two dated online for a while. After one date, Jennifer disappeared.
Tom is still obsessed with this beauty. He printed out a photo of the two of them and put it in a photo frame. He would look at it for a while every day.
After putting the photos away, Tom opened Facebook, first checked to see if there were any messages in the private message, and then went to Jennifer's account to browse.
Jennifer's account has still not been updated, and the last updates are still from a year ago. It seems that the owner of this account will never appear again.
Tom regretfully closed the other party's homepage and prepared to go to the science fiction fan forum to chat with everyone.
Before he could make any move, a small pop-up window appeared in the lower right corner.
“A masterpiece not to be missed by science fiction fans, how an astronaut survives alone on Mars.”
“The science fiction version of Robinson Crusoe, exclusively released, free to watch!”
Science fiction, survival on Mars, and it’s free!
These few words stimulated Tom. Without even a second's hesitation, he immediately clicked on the pop-up window to jump to the page where the novel was published.
Tom quickly finished browsing the first chapter. Still not satisfied, he scrolled down and found that the comment area was already occupied by dense praise.
"Great book!" "Great science fiction novel!"
"The best novel I have read in the past ten years!"
"A rare masterpiece, update quickly!"
Most of them are short praises and reminders, and some have written a long paragraph of disgusting praise, but the core meaning is the same, reminders!
Tom thought for a while and wrote a good review.
Anyway, it’s a free novel. Give it a good review to encourage it.
Just after posting the message, I saw another voting prompt.
"Are you willing to recommend this novel to your good friends?"
What's not to like about free novels? Tom happily clicked on the yes option, and then posted the novel's URL to the science fiction fan forum.
As a senior member of the Science Fiction Fan Forum, Tom has a high reputation in the forum.
After seeing Tom’s recommendation post, people immediately followed the link to taste it.
People who had finished reading the novel came back to express their thoughts, and soon Tom's post formed a heated discussion area, and everyone expressed their opinions one after another.
Tom soon joined in, starting with the novel itself and then extending to the possibility of colonizing Mars, and finally whether there were any remains of prehistoric civilization on Mars.
In the evening, Tom found that there were more and more discussions about Mars on Facebook, which immediately triggered his desire to write.
He himself is also a senior science fiction fan and has done a lot of research on Mars. In addition, he has discussed Mars-related things with his online friends for a long time.
Tom immediately picked up the keyboard and wrote an article about Mars colonization on Facebook. It elaborated on various problems that colonization may encounter. It can be said that it is full of useful information.
The next day, when Tom opened his account, he was immediately confused.
He found that the article he wrote about the colonization of Mars went viral. It was forwarded and commented by thousands of people overnight, and the private messages in the background were almost full.
The popularity of that article continued to increase, and soon it reached the scale of tens of thousands of comments.
The customer service of Facebook soon called and asked if Tom would like to share the advertising plan. Officials were willing to recommend his articles and share a portion of the advertising revenue with him.
Tom agreed without hesitation, and soon five hundred dollars entered his account.
After receiving an unexpected fortune, Tom immediately went to the science fiction fan forum to show off, making other people jealous.
Then various popular science articles about Mars appeared on Facebook, and these articles all recommended the novel "The Martian" without exception.
The free novel "The Martian" quickly spread in a very short period of time and became the most popular topic on Facebook within three days.
Several leading Facebook influencers posted their reading experiences on their accounts for several days in a row and invited fans to discuss it.
There are a large number of fans who follow the trend among small and medium-sized Internet celebrities, and they have imitated it one after another. Some of them have started to share their reading notes, and the popularity has been further fermented.
The entire Facebook network seems to be discussing this novel. People who have not read the novel almost become a symbol of being behind the times.
As a result, countless passers-by joined in to watch the novel.
In one week, "The Martian" became popular all over the Internet from Facebook, and some people even reposted the novel on their blogs.
"The Martian" has formed a real Internet popularity.
Facebook’s plan exceeded its set goals. The marketing team first targeted the hard-core group who loved science fiction and then spread it by them.
The second step is intelligent recommendation. As long as you put the tags of science fiction and literature, you will often get recommendations for novels.
The third step is to promote the novel to other groups through recommendations from Internet celebrities and popular lists.
Through three-step marketing, Facebook has become the birthplace of the storm, and the huge user group has given the storm more and more energy.
The storm quickly took shape and then swept across the Internet.
"The Martian" has become very popular on the Internet. Several science fiction writers also said on their blogs that this novel is great and the plot is full of twists and turns.
The popularity of novels also quickly spread from the Internet to traditional media.
This comes from an interview that Bill Gates gave to a reporter.
Bill Gates talked about the future development of the Internet, and then recommended the science fiction novel "The Martian" that he was reading recently.
The reporter reported the entire conversation of Bill Gates, and the name "The Martian" appeared in the newspaper for the first time.
After the report was published, several newspapers and magazines came to the door the next day, contacting the author to obtain the right to reprint the novel.
Facebook officials directly came forward and negotiated cooperation with newspapers and magazines regarding reprinting.
"The Martian" has been upgraded from a free online serialization to a newspaper serialization.
The popularity of the novel also turned into TV news and was heavily reported.
Amid the explosion of popularity, more than a dozen science fiction writers also stood up to praise this novel and predicted that this novel would win the Hugo Award.
Of course, the novel-themed website also appeared. On the day the website was established, it gathered tens of thousands of fans. In just one month, the number of website users exceeded 200,000.
There are also enthusiastic fans who have launched a petition to request that this novel be adapted into a live-action movie.
These fans quickly collected 100,000 signatures, and hundreds of people even came to Facebook headquarters holding banners, asking them to face the fans' demands.
People at Facebook headquarters were shocked. They did not expect that marketing would have such an effect.
The people in the operations department were quite confused, but they reacted quickly and immediately invited fan representatives and reporters to the company and held a press conference.
The person in charge of marketing listened carefully to the fans' demands, and then solemnly stated that they would contact Hollywood to discuss cooperation, and invited fans to send several representatives to supervise the work process at any time.
Fans are very satisfied with Facebook's official statement. One of them vowed that if Hollywood is unwilling to adapt, he is willing to launch a crowdfunding call for donations to raise funds for filming.
The person in charge of marketing reacted very quickly and said on the spot that Facebook would be willing to donate US$5 million if there was a crowdfunding campaign.
The fans were overjoyed and applauded one after another.
The reporter had never seen this kind of scene before. He took crazy photos and recorded everything that happened at the scene.
Fans are crowdfunding to make a movie. How popular will this book be?
Even Harry Potter doesn't get this treatment.
Unfortunately, the crowdfunding situation that reporters expected did not happen.
Hollywood is not blind. The novel is so popular, how could they not see it?
On the second day of the press conference, a Hollywood film company approached Facebook and expressed its intention to cooperate.
(End of this chapter)