Because Headline Technology originally didn't have any major issues, this was just a warning targeted at Chen Yan by some vested interests. So, after a few minor issues were found during the review, the inspection quickly concluded.

After barely surviving this ordeal, Chen Yan had officially given Qin Ming the green light to start the next plan.

Because this plan was the first major decision made by Qin Ming after joining the Headline Company...

So, once it was launched, it attracted a lot of attention.

Douyin had a reason for its rapid overseas development.

That was because the overseas markets were more mature, there were numerous social media platforms, and hence a lot of famous internet celebrities.

Douyin's main approach in overseas promotion was to spend money on buying internet celebrities.

Since overseas internet celebrities rarely sign exclusive contracts with platforms, whenever Douyin entered a country's market, they would investigate the local internet celebrities.

Then, they would sign them at relatively high prices, prompting them to join Douyin and attract their followers to the platform.

With many internet celebrities in well-developed overseas countries, and Douyin being affluent, the speed at which they poached these personalities was very fast.

After spending money to get these internet celebrities on board, the advantages of Douyin's short-form videos became apparent.

Other platforms had text and images, Douyin had short videos, which is more intuitive, more attractive to users, and more likely to retain followers, there's no need to elaborate on that, right?

So, the fans of these internet celebrities flocked in droves, all moving to Douyin's platform to follow their idols.

Additionally, with Douyin's development of various attractive filters and novel dance moves, the platform could retain users and prompt them to generate content, making Douyin invincible in overseas markets.

However, Douyin couldn't employ the same strategy in the domestic market.

Because the domestic market was just getting started, there were fewer internet celebrities on social media, and most platforms tended to sign exclusive contracts, making it difficult for Douyin to poach from them.

Moreover, with Man Shou's first-mover advantage, some internet celebrities who didn't have contracts had already joined Man Shou early on, making it even harder for Douyin to develop.

Therefore, in the domestic market, Douyin, which was restricted everywhere, could only slowly cultivate its internet celebrities.

But self-cultivation was so slow. Thus, it resulted in Douyin, unstoppable overseas, always being one step behind in domestic development.

Now, taking advantage of Tencent's ban, Qin Ming had come up with a different approach.

Tencent's banning us, right?

He simply used this as a gimmick, directly hiring paid posters to hype the topic on various social media platforms.

Then, through the influence of Mei Li, Yang Rou, Qin Ming, and even microblogging, relying on the power of Chen Yan and Lu Man, cooperating with major talent agencies and celebrity studios from the entertainment industry, they recruited over half of the top and second-tier celebrities with significant fan bases to join Douyin, bringing their fan-followers to download the app as well.

And that wasn't the end of it.

Artists, though they bring many fans, are, after all, just in a cooperative relationship, which is hard to sustain.

So, in the end, Qin Ming directly launched a competition on Douyin with a traffic pool of tens of billions and a cash prize of one billion, calling on all Douyin users to participate. Make videos, snatch traffic, and grab cash!

In plain terms, he planned to use this surge of popularity to mass-produce internet celebrities!

Qin Ming's idea was simple: if the strategy worked overseas, then the internet celebrity economy was viable.

And the slow development in China was nothing more than a shortage of in-house internet celebrities and traffic.

So why not purchase traffic, let celebrities bring in traffic, and then focus on creating a batch of top internet celebrities?

As for the candidates...

Apart from Douyin's own users, Qin Ming had another trump card up his sleeve: Mei Li's talent agency, right?

Over the past two years, Mei Li had signed many trainees.

Promising ones were sent to participate in talent shows, while the rest continued their training.

However, for internet popularity, the entertainment industry was a game-changer.

Just because Mei Li considered some average didn't mean they were average on the internet.

Thus, these multi-talented and attractive trainees were each seeds for potential internet celebrities. It might be difficult to harvest top internet stars, but producing a batch of big names wasn't too challenging.

Plus, "Creation Camp" and "Tomorrow's Star" were still airing, weren't they?

Trainees in the competition, for the sake of prestige, couldn't join Douyin, but those who were eliminated were free to do so.

They, having been featured on these hugely popular shows, had accumulated many fans and fame.

They might not break into the entertainment industry, but they were more than enough for Douyin.

So, with Qin Ming's combination of moves, although Douyin had been banned, its domestic traffic curve miraculously trended upward.

In the following half-month, Douyin's affairs dominated the top three trending topics on various platforms.

The first spot was #DouyinMaliciouslyBlockedByTencentGroup#.

The second spot was #OverAHundredCelebritiesJoinDouyin#.

The third spot was #DouyinTensOfBillionsTrafficBillionCashPrizeCompetition#.

These three headlines captivated people's attention.

Many netizens and users, because of these hot topics and news, all went to download Douyin to experience it.

After over two years of development, coupled with content material support from the Headline ecosystem, Douyin's content had become quite diversified.

From household gossip to sexy dancing girls, from national politics to... girls dancing, from funny skits to... girls dancing.

In any case, here, you could always find the girls of your liking.

For female users, there were rich cooking content, adorable pets, intense arguments, and... handsome guys.

With celebrities moving in and the high-quality, attractive hosts brought by Mei Li's trainees, Douyin had an exceptionally high retention rate.

Moreover, spurred by the tens of billions of traffic competition, numerous amateurs and internet celebrities began joining the ranks of Douyin content creators.

Thus, big-name internet celebrities emerged in batches.

Someone, with just a few filters and attractive moves, gained millions of followers in two days.

Someone else, with just a song, gained a few million followers.

Another, just by repeatedly dancing a move, gained tens of millions of followers.

As a result, in just a short half-month, the number of big-name internet celebrities on Douyin had doubled compared to the previous year, and the traffic soared by a whopping fifty million, reaching a staggering 130 million!

During this half-month period, Douyin's competitor, Man Shou, had not been able to react in time.

Due to the typical issues of large companies, Man Shou had been tied up negotiating financing with Tencent, which caused their response to be a bit slow.

When they finally realized what was happening, they were shocked to discover that Douyin had significantly closed the gap.

They wanted to make a concerted effort, but... the annual New Year was upon them.

During this universally celebrated time, the New Year's Gala remained the everlasting king.

No matter the media, all had to yield to this formidable beast.

Only the leading enterprises could tame this beast, and for second-tier giants like Douyin and Man Shou, the qualifications to play were not yet there.

So Man Shou's counterattack had to be put on hold for the time being.

However, even though Man Shou made no move, this New Year turned out to be particularly exciting and filled with tension.

There were originally two Internet giants in China: Tencent and Ah Lee.

Tencent mainly focused on the social realm, with traffic but distant from transactions, making monetization challenging, so they've always been studying how to convert traffic into revenue.

Ah Lee, on the other hand, delved deep into e-commerce. Close to money, even with slightly lesser traffic, the innate nature of their business made earning money particularly easy.

For years, the two juggernauts had been clashing across various domains.

Each had their wins and losses.

Both had considered targeting each other's core domains, but due to continually lacking a good approach, they never succeeded.

As a result... this time, to everyone's surprise, Tencent Group secured the naming rights for the New Year's Gala and launched the WeChat New Year red packet giveaway, directly igniting the payment field war!

With the support of the New Year's Gala, WeChat recorded 1.08 billion red packet transactions in two days, adding 150 million payment users.

To cover the ground in two days that Ah Lee took three years to travel!

Ah Lee's core bastion, the e-commerce domain, had a chunk savagely bitten off by Tencent!

This event, called the "Pearl Harbor sneak attack of the Chinese internet sector" by Ah Lee, instantly heated up the battle between the two giants!

It alerted all Internet companies to the terrifying power of the New Year's Gala.

It also made the struggle between Douyin and Man Shou seem less noticeable during this time...

...

The third day of the Lunar New Year.

Qin Island. Shan Shui Jia Yuan residential compound.

Wearing a black down jacket and a white hat, and with a face mask, Chen Yan was setting off firecrackers in the snowy ground downstairs.

Several children from the same village ran around him, clamorously insisting on joining the fun.

These were children from his neighbors and relatives.

Chen Yan was more than a generation older and had watched them grow up, so they got along pretty well.

The residentialarea where Chen Yan's parents lived was reclaimed housing, inhabited by people from their village.

Most people there were related in some way and would reminisce about who's father and who's uncle had climbed trees together or which aunt and uncle had gone to school together when meeting.

Even in modern society, vestiges of the old village customs still lingered in such communities.

It was only here that Chen Yan could feel truly relaxed.

Here, he was not the billionaire entrepreneur nor the helmsman of the Chen Group, deciding the fate of thousands with his words.

He was just the son of the Chen family's third child...

If someone who didn't know Chen Yan's identity visited this compound to greet relatives, they would probably not recognize that he was the famous billionaire of the Qindong Peninsula, let alone someone renowned nationwide...

After leading a group of snotty kids in setting off fireworks for a while, Chen Yan stamped the snow off his feet and climbed the stairs home, hands tucked into his pockets.

The house was bustling with people.

Although village relationships were genuine and simple, human nature still tends towards self-interest, and everyone knew Chen Yan was doing well.

In the internet era, stories about this newly wealthy man could hardly be concealed.

Also, with the beverage factory he had set up with the help of He Mengxue finally showing results — being Qin Island City's most considerable project in recent years — Qin Island City had given Chen Yan plenty of publicity.

Supported by He Mengxue and the He family, Chen Yan ultimately did not decide to build a beverage factory from scratch.

After all, selecting a location, constructing a plant, and purchasing beverage production lines were all complex and extensive projects.

So, in the end, Chen Yan decided to acquire a local mineral water company on Qin Island and convert their production lines to produce beverages.

As the mineral water company itself was not profitable, they were eager to accept the olive branch Chen Yan offered.

Since industrial types of companies offered cities more employment and added value compared to the internet industry, the influence on the city was far greater.

Hence, Qin Island City facilitated the process with all green lights, swiftly clearing procedures and approvals.

Through this interaction, Qin Island had shown great appreciation for Chen Yan, the emerging wealthy man who didn't forget to contribute to his hometown after making money, featuring him in several promotions at the year's end.

So Chen Yan had become quite famous among his neighbors and relatives. During the new year, numerous relatives and friends, near and far, came to visit one after another.

Some came to congratulate, as everyone felt honored when someone from their village achieved such status.

Some hoped to ride on his coattails and seek their fortune.

Others were simply curious... curious about this young man from the Chen family, whom they might have seen a few times but did not know well — just what made him so extraordinary...

Chen Yan had seen many such relatives and neighbors these past few days, so he didn't pay much mind.

After getting some items from his room and greeting a few relatives he knew, then telling his parents, Chen Yan left home.

His parents didn't mind.

Chen Yan had always been independent, and they were used to it. They continued chatting with the relatives and neighbors.

Offhandedly, as Chen Yan was leaving, he heard Lao Chen boasting to them, "Let me tell you, I knew early on that my kid had the makings of a big-shot!"

"Back in the day, it was me who sponsored a house for him, so he could work on his games without disturbance!"

"And you know, I even charged him rent every month for his own good."

"What? How is charging rent good for him?"

"Let me tell you. You need to give your kids some pressure. For us resettlers, it's too easy for our kids to become slackers. They need some pressure to grow up!"

"Here, let me tell you about how I used to discipline our Chen Yan when he was a kid..."

Listening to his father's stories, which seemed factual yet had nothing to do with the truth, Chen Yan just smiled and shook his head.

Parents, huh? It's their little hobby...

Understanding, just understanding...

After these few years, he had indeed grown up...

Having descended the stairs, his driver was already waiting there.

Seeing Chen Yan come down, the driver hurriedly opened the car door for him.

Chen Yan got into the sleek, newly-washed luxury car worth millions, under the curious and runny-nosed gaze of a bunch of kids.

The driver returned to the driver's seat and started the car, speeding away.

On the way, the driver asked Chen Yan, "President Chen, where are we heading next?"

Chen Yan thought for a moment and replied, "First, let's go to my place to pick up some stuff. Then, we'll head to... the He family."

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