Chapter 1631: Each Sticks to Their Own Views

Dong Chenxi thought Zheng Yao could persuade Zhao Fusheng.

But unfortunately, she was wrong.

After receiving her call, Zheng Yao hesitated for a long time before giving an answer that surprised Dong Chenxi.

“His idea, though crazy, is actually not wrong.”

Facing Dong Chenxi’s doubts, Zheng Yao said solemnly, “In fact, we really need the courage to burn our boats and make some choices. Otherwise, sooner or later, we’ll face even more troublesome problems.”

“Are you crazy too?”

Dong Chenxi was speechless. Was everyone crazy, thinking Zhao Fusheng’s decision was right?

“I’m not crazy.”

Zheng Yao said helplessly, “You and I both know that Future Group has developed too fast, so on the surface things look good, but in reality, we know it’s not as smooth as outsiders think.”

Dong Chenxi was silent.

Zheng Yao’s words hit the nail on the head. The biggest problem with Future Group’s development up to now was exactly what she said.

Too fast!

But Dong Chenxi still felt that nearly giving up Twitter shares was too risky, almost like gambling.

Bet big or small, place your bets and settle!

That was what Zhao Fusheng was doing in her eyes.

Zheng Yao had a meeting to attend, so after a few words with Dong Chenxi, she hung up, leaving Dong Chenxi alone to stew.

Seeing this, Zhao Fusheng smiled and said, “It’s almost noon. How about we eat and talk?”

“No appetite.”

Dong Chenxi shook her head. “How can I have the mood to eat?”

“Come on, food is the foundation of life. You have to eat no matter what.” Zhao Fusheng waved his hand with a smile. “Even if we disagree now, that doesn’t stop you from eating with me. Let’s go, I’ll have someone book a table.”

With that, he stood up and pulled Dong Chenxi out of the office.

They went downstairs and, with their bodyguards, arrived at a restaurant near the company.

“Ms. Dong, would you like some wine? Red wine, beer, or fruit wine?” Zhao Fusheng asked with a smile.

Dong Chenxi glared at him. “What, are you insulting me? Am I that old? Calling me ‘Ms. Dong’? Besides, I’m not married yet!”

Zhao Fusheng laughed heartily and quickly changed his address: “Miss Dong, what would you like to drink?”

Dong Chenxi said, “Whatever.”

Zhao Fusheng nodded. “How about some red wine?”

Dong Chenxi said, “No, it’s like blood, sour and unpleasant.”

“Then rice wine?” Zhao Fusheng thought and offered another option.

“No, it smells like spoiled food,” Dong Chenxi said irritably.

“Then how about fruit wine? It’s smooth,” Zhao Fusheng said helplessly.

Dong Chenxi shook her head. “That’s called wine? Sweet, with no taste of alcohol.”

Zhao Fusheng was momentarily speechless. “What do you want to drink, then?”

“I said, whatever!”

Dong Chenxi’s words nearly drove Zhao Fusheng crazy.

Women, such hard-to-please creatures!

That was the only thought left in Zhao Fusheng’s mind at that moment.

Thinking carefully, it was true. That’s how women are: when you ask their opinion, they often say “whatever.” Then after you make a choice, they start nitpicking, expressing all kinds of dissatisfaction with your choice. Yet when you ask again, the answer is still “whatever.”

A woman’s heart is like a needle at the bottom of the sea—the ancients did not deceive me.

Looking at Dong Chenxi, Zhao Fusheng sighed helplessly and said slowly, “I understand. Watching those investments grow bit by bit—to you, Facebook and Twitter are like your own children, watching them grow up, right?”

Dong Chenxi’s body stirred, but she didn’t speak.

Zhao Fusheng’s words were like a sword, piercing the softest part of her heart.

In fact, as Zhao Fusheng said, Dong Chenxi truly valued these projects that Future Investment had taken on.

To Zhao Fusheng, they might just be a few projects he chose to invest in, but to Dong Chenxi, they were companies she had watched grow. Their place in her heart was undeniable.

“I have no choice either.”

Zhao Fusheng said helplessly to Dong Chenxi, “We need to make a choice. Compared to Jingdong or Twitter, Alibaba and Facebook have better development potential.”

Dong Chenxi was silent for a moment, then nodded. “I understand the logic, but the problem is, this choice is essentially gambling. How can you guarantee which of these companies will develop better in the future?”

“Well…”

Zhao Fusheng hesitated.

He had no choice. This was his biggest secret. He couldn’t tell Dong Chenxi that he was a reincarnator with foreknowledge, so he knew that Twitter was destined to struggle, and while Jingdong was doing well, it wasn’t as attractive as Twitter.

And Alibaba and Facebook would become two behemoths, creating thousands of billionaires.

“See, you can’t even guarantee it yourself.”

Seeing this, Dong Chenxi said seriously to Zhao Fusheng, “At least for now, Twitter’s development trend is better. Giving it up would be such a pity.”

Zhao Fusheng smiled slightly. “I understand.”

In fact, he knew that Dong Chenxi meant well and couldn’t bear to see such a good situation abandoned.

“Then tell me, why do you think Twitter’s development is inferior to the other companies?” Dong Chenxi looked at Zhao Fusheng and asked word by word.

By now, if she still couldn’t see that Zhao Fusheng had no confidence in Twitter’s development, she would be a fool.

“It’s simple. Twitter has very low user satisfaction among social platforms. For many people, Twitter is just a window to post updates or moods.”

Zhao Fusheng thought for a moment and explained to Dong Chenxi, “Would you prefer a place to express your feelings, or a space of your own?”

Dong Chenxi was taken aback.

Zhao Fusheng’s words were straightforward and not hard to understand.

Twitter’s 140-character limit, in a sense, made it faster but also limited it. Dong Chenxi had known this before, but she hadn’t thought it would become a key factor restricting Twitter’s development.

In fact, in the original timeline, Twitter was already losing money around 2014.

In 2015, Twitter’s third-quarter revenue grew 8% to $620 million, higher than market expectations, but the growth rate was a sharp slowdown from 20% in the second quarter.

For an internet company, such paltry growth data was nothing short of a disaster.

In the capital market, Twitter’s market cap at IPO was $30 billion. Driven by investor enthusiasm, it once reached $40 billion, but after that, the company failed to impress, with lackluster operations and sluggish growth. Stock prices fell year after year. By the third quarter of 2015, signs of difficulty in independent development emerged, and rumors circulated that the company would be acquired. After acquisition attempts failed, the stock price plummeted, and the market cap fell to just over $10 billion.

Compared with Facebook, which had a market cap of several hundred billion dollars and kept acquiring other companies with rising operations, Twitter was in a situation where it couldn’t even find a buyer. Their fates were worlds apart.

Fierce market competition was certainly an important reason for Twitter’s decline. But more importantly, Twitter’s business model had inherent limitations, and the company itself had long failed to make breakthroughs in this area.

Twitter is like China’s Weibo—a social media platform for the masses, mainly discussing public affairs. Due to low user correlation, verbal bullying is common, which affects its reputation and commercial value.

Facebook is like China’s WeChat Moments—a social network based on high correlation, with relatively higher trust among users. More importantly, Facebook’s underlying big data is more advantageous than Twitter’s. Besides basic age and gender information, Facebook also has massive user data, knowing users’ preferences, hobbies, family relationships, and other data. Twitter, however, does not have as much data on user composition, preferences, or likes.

The basic characteristic of the internet advertising industry is “those who have data rule the world,” so Facebook has an absolute advantage over Twitter in advertising competition.

Twitter’s decline in fierce competition ultimately stems from the company’s lack of innovation and poor execution.

Zhao Fusheng knew very well that with the development of smartphones, social media functions on a single platform were becoming increasingly diverse. But Twitter’s product feature improvements and iteration speed were too slow to keep up with the rapidly changing market. The 140-character limit, support for images and videos in tweets—these features improved too slowly.

Under such circumstances, it was hard for Twitter not to decline.

Therefore, Zhao Fusheng no longer planned to hold Twitter shares.

Although Twitter’s market cap would eventually reach tens of billions of dollars, compared with Alibaba and Facebook, it was far behind.

Even if his shares in Facebook were eventually diluted to only 10%, that would still be tens of billions of dollars. On the Twitter side, even if he owned all the shares, it would only be over ten billion.

As for Alibaba, needless to say, with a market cap of nearly $300 billion, if he could secure more than 20% equity, that would be an astronomical figure.

Of course, Zhao Fusheng also understood that achieving this goal would not be easy.

So he hoped to persuade Dong Chenxi to fully support his plan. After all, she was the general manager of Future Investment, and his plan could not be realized without her cooperation.

Although Zhao Fusheng could use his position as chairman to force Dong Chenxi to obey his orders, he didn’t want to do that, because once he did, the bond between them would be broken.