Hollywood Hunter

The Instagram launch ceremony is very simple.

After confirming that the website is open, everyone opened a few bottles of champagne in the office building of the Instagram team. The employees started to devote themselves to the busy work on the first day of the website opening. The fine waist and legs stayed behind to take care of some companies with Girl D. For affairs, Simon took the girls A and C who participated in the online ceremony and left.

As for the executives of companies such as Eaglet, none were invited.

It is not that there is no such face, but it is unnecessary.

For Instagram, Simon does not intend to encourage the seedlings, so this time is basically D girl and several "angel investors" busy preparations in all aspects, Deborah is responsible for communicating with Igreat in order to obtain technology and traffic In terms of support, the waist fine and the leg fine used their contacts in the entertainment and fashion circles to attract a group of celebrities to open Instagram accounts for the first time.

This is sufficient in the short term.

Simon's account to Lady D is that the website should not consider anything profitable for three to five years, and focus on developing users. Funding is not a problem for Instagram.

However, Simon obviously ignored the connections of the women around him.

In other words, it is still an extension of his own personal influence.

Others may not give face to ABCD or waist and legs, but it is impossible not to give face to Simon Westeros.

Although Simon did not come forward, this website was created by several women around him, which has already explained the problem. Even if the website is just a toy Westeros gives to his lovers, everyone is sure to cheer.

As a result, the website has just launched, and many fashion and entertainment celebrities who have been stationed on Facebook have recommended Instagram on their social homepages. An article introducing this website appeared on the Igreat portal information homepage, although the location is not Conspicuous, but also enough to get millions of readings. The website navigation page of Eaglet Portal also included Instagram for the first time, and also gave a red display of special recommendations for free.

In order to protect its own interests, Eaglet has various explicit or implicit restrictions for users on its own platform to recommend other websites.

Now, Instagram, which is not affiliated with Igreat, has just launched, but it has received the kind of biological daughter-level treatment of the company's direct investment website.

On the other side, Simon left the Instagram headquarters and came to Tinkobair with Girl C.

The popularity of personal computers and digital cameras is the most basic condition for the development of the Instagram website.

However, these two aspects are no longer a problem.

In the first half of 1994, global PC shipments reached 26.3 million units in the first six months of this year, compared to only 20 million units in 1990. Although the rise of the Internet in the world has led to an increasing proportion of overseas PC shipments, North American PC shipments still account for 41% of global shipments at this stage, reaching 10.9 million units.

It is estimated that in 1994, global PC shipments will be around 55 million units, of which North America will not be less than 22 million units.

The number of PCs worldwide has exceeded 230 million units.

In terms of digital cameras, in the first half of 1994, Tinkobair’s digital camera shipments reached 3.27 million units, still successfully holding more than half of the global consumer digital camera market, accounting for 53% of the market. Annual shipments are expected to reach 8 million units.

At the same time, worldwide, the total shipment of consumer-grade digital camera products in 1994 is expected to be around 16 million units.

As the world's largest consumer electronics market, the popularity of digital cameras in North America is the same as the growth of video recorders in recent years, far surpassing overseas, with 16 million digital cameras, more than 70% of which are in North America, reaching 11 million.

Even if we don't talk about the accumulation in the past few years, we will not consider overseas users for the time being. It is only the increase of 11 million digital cameras in North America in 1994, which is enough to ensure that Instagram has a broad user base.

What's more, as long as Instagram can be popularized, which in turn stimulates user demand, the shipment of digital cameras will only increase further next year. The two complement each other.

Simon arrived at the headquarters of Tinkobair and was first taken by Lady C to view the digital video camera prototype that Tinkobail had completed.

I have applied for the entire series of trademarks in advance, and still start with ‘i’, which means ‘Record’, and the digital camera series of Tinkobair will be named iRec.

Simple and easy to remember.

"We tried CDs, flash memory, tapes and other storage media. In the end, it was the same as the boss said. At this stage, the only storage solution suitable for us is a micro hard drive. However, although the prototype has been completed, there are still many problems to be solved. At the same time, we also need to wait for hard disk manufacturers to develop larger storage micro hard disks. Therefore, iRec will be released as early as next fall. At that time, we can launch iRec with 250M storage capacity, and the cost can also be controlled within a reasonable range."

In Tinkobair's laboratory, Lady C watched Simon play with the prototype digital video camera, which was obviously still a bit crude, and introduced.

Simon took a video of the iRec prototype in the hands of the operator, and when it was played back and watched directly on the iRec small screen, he clearly felt a stutter. This is probably one of the problems mentioned by C girl.

Claire brought another new IBM laptop, connected iRec to the laptop's USB port, and started to transfer the video files that Simon had just shot.

This iRec uses 240P video resolution, which is enough to meet current user needs.

The 1-minute video just shot is only 2.2M in size according to the 240P resolution standard.

2.2M MP4 format video, using USB transmission after more than ten or two decades, is definitely just a flash. However, this time, Simon also found the problem again. The popular USB1.0 standard has been promoted last year, and the transmission speed is only about 90K per second.

At this stage, it took about 25 seconds to transmit 240P video for 1 minute.

In this way, if you transmit 1 hour of video, it may take half an hour, which greatly affects the user experience.

Claire, who was next to Simon, was obviously satisfied with this. He noticed the change of the man’s expression and said: “The transmission speed of 1.5Mbps in the USB1.0 standard can already meet the needs of users at this stage. The theoretical transmission speed is equivalent to 180K per second. However, due to hardware reasons, we can only achieve half the transmission speed for the time being, and we will be able to get further optimization when the product is launched next year."

Simon nodded.

Indeed, the road always has to be taken step by step.

It was able to achieve the present level. Compared with the USB standard in memory, it only took shape in 1995, which was already very advanced.

I have seen the statistics in advance. With the vigorous promotion of the Westeros system, the USB interface has been promoted since the end of last year. In the first half of the year, Tinkobair released the USB flash drive as a turning point, and now, the latest release of the PC manufacturer The proportion of personal computers with USB ports has exceeded 20%, and next year this proportion will exceed 50%.

Not only that, including personal computers that do not have a USB interface in the hands of home users at this stage. If you want to use the USB function, you do not need to replace the expensive PC equipment. You only need to purchase a adapter interface worth tens of dollars.

Since the beginning of USB promotion at the end of last year, Eaglet, Microsoft, Intel and other companies have set up venture funds dedicated to investing in USB peripheral products to support start-up companies to develop hardware products such as mice and keyboards that use USB interfaces.

With the popularization of the USB interface on the Tinkobair company, the digital cameras, digital music players and digital video cameras that are planned to be released next year will all be converted to use micro hard drives and USB transmission formats.

However, the floppy disk digital camera at this stage will still be upgraded next year. In addition to the micro hard disk version of iCam-50, next year will continue to release an iCam-40s floppy disk version as a transition.

After seeing the iRec prototype, Claire took Simon to browse other products under development one by one.

Including iBooks that have not leaked out at this stage.

This is a concept that Simon has given a long time ago, and iBook is also one of the first batch of trademarks hoarded by Tinkobair.

Apple released the first Newton Tablet PC last year, which is the predecessor of Apple's Tablet PC iPad, with a very advanced touch screen design.

Unfortunately, Apple did not find the positioning of this product, but used it for personal digital assistants. Moreover, because of the expensive price of this product up to 900 US dollars, users are few.

Speaking of it, even for e-book readers, there are already similar products on the market at this stage. However, due to limitations in storage capacity and content resources, there is basically no good development.

The iBook quietly developed by Tinkobair has no plans to launch a finished product in the short term, mainly because the small LCD screen is too expensive at this stage, and it is temporarily unable to be as exquisite and compact as the same book.

It is planned that this product will be launched at least until 1996.

Simon even hopes that this product can be integrated to a certain extent by then, with a digital music player, and even further, adding digital camera functions, and adopting a touch screen design.

At that time, it will almost be the prototype of the later tablet.

In the laboratory, Claire listened to Simon's vision, but said: "If this is the case, our product may be more expensive than Apple's Newton tablet by then, and not many people can afford it."

The reason why the previous electronic products can achieve the thousand yuan level is mainly because the development of the entire electronic industry system has greatly reduced the overall cost.

At this stage, it is far from reaching this level.

For example, flash memory.

In the first half of the year, Tinker Bayer launched U disks using flash memory chips with capacities of 8M and 16M respectively, breaking through the 1.44M capacity limit of floppy disks. However, compared to the price of less than two US dollars per floppy disk, the 8M U disk is priced at 39.99 US dollars, and the 16M U disk is priced at 99.99 US dollars.

The key reason why the next generation iCam does not consider more stable flash storage is cost.

However, with the rapid increase in demand, it is expected that the iCam-60 in 1996 will be able to launch a flash storage version with a reasonable price.

The cost of the micro hard disk in its realization stage is not low, but compared to flash memory, the micro hard disk has a capacity advantage. The micro hard disk version of the digital camera that is planned to be launched next year has a capacity of 150M, which is expected to be able to store compared to the current image size. With as many as 3000 photos, users will basically no longer have to worry about insufficient space.

Simon put down the iBook prototype, which has no touch function and can only be operated by buttons, and said to Claire: "Think about it, this is actually an inevitable trend, isn't it? Tinkobair does not need to be too advanced, but since To seize the opportunity, we should ensure that we can always be one step ahead of other manufacturers."

Claire knew that her boss would not casually say these things to others, so she nodded solemnly and said to take it down.

So stayed at Tinkobair until more than 11 o'clock.

At noon, I had lunch with John Chambers. In the afternoon, I went to see the construction of the Eaglet Park in Mountain View and participated in a conference call on AOL.

After five o'clock in the afternoon, Simon got on the plane returning to Los Angeles.

Inside the Boeing 767 cabin.

Girl A came to the study room in the front cabin of the plane with a thick stack of documents. While handing the documents to Simon, she said: "D just called. As of 5 o'clock in the afternoon, the number of registered Instagram users has reached 370,000. It can exceed 1 million by the weekend."

Although Simon did not personally intervene too much, just listening to Alison said that, he roughly understood what happened.

Shaking his head and smiling, Simon picked up a document handed over by Girl A and said, "D is in a hurry."

The number of users exceeded one million in just three days. Even if Instagram has the strong support of the Westeros system behind the scenes, the various problems that have arisen are enough to make this small company, which has only been established for three months, to be in a hurry. If this affects the user experience , Then the gain is more than the loss.

However, on the other hand, the number of users has exceeded one million, which means that this company is already very valuable for the new technology industry that is already boiling at this stage.

After this weekend, if the D girls want to cash out, they will directly ask for 20 million US dollars, and there will definitely be a bunch of people rushing to ask for it.

In comparison, the girls only invested more than one million U.S. dollars in the early stage, and in a few months, the return was dozens of times.

Alison heard Simon say this, and said: "D just said on the phone that she wants to transfer some shares in exchange for more support from Igreat."

Simon smiled and asked, "How much?"

Girl A said: "20%."

Simon nodded and said, "You talk to Jeff for yourself, I don't care."

From a purely interest perspective, Instagram’s transfer of shares is of course the best way to sell it directly to Westeros. After all, the current Eaglet company is no longer 100% owned by the Westeros system and transfer the shares to Westeros. Tello and Simon can also get Igrete to give Instagram enough support.

However, if you really do this, it somewhat breaks the rules.

Interest binding is the most solid foundation for cooperation.

Simon is also more inclined to be in business.

Although Instagram received widespread attention right after it went online because of Simon, the transfer of part of its equity to Yigrete did not actually suffer at all.

Now that there are countless small companies in Silicon Valley who want to cooperate with Igreat, they often have nowhere.

After talking about this, Alison saw Simon open the box office report for the past box office week, and said: "One more thing, about the EA video game "Warcraft: Humans and Orcs."

Simon didn't look up, just hummed.

Alison continued: "Preliminary statistics show that the sales volume of this real-time strategy game in the first week of launch was about 76,000 sets, with sales reaching 3.8 million U.S. dollars. EA has directly recovered the cost and expects this game to be in the entire sales cycle. The shipment volume can reach about 1.5 million sets, breaking the total sales volume of 1.1 million sets of the first generation of the same type of "Dune Castle"."

The price of "Warcraft: Humans and Orcs" is $49.99, which is the common pricing of video games in this era.

It is estimated that 1.5 million sets of total sales, which means that 75 million US dollars in revenue.

In comparison, the development cost of this game is only about 2 million US dollars, which is completely profitable, more profitable than drug trafficking, and legal.

The first generation of "Warcraft" in Simon's memory was a success, but the total sales volume was actually only about 300,000 sets.

However, just this has allowed Blizzard, which has just been renamed, to gain widespread attention in the industry. The most important point is that the success of the first generation of "Warcraft" also allows Blizzard to have more sufficient funds to develop a sequel, the second generation of "Warcraft" Contest for Hegemony also reached a phenomenal 2.5 million sales.

This time, the sales volume of the first generation of "Warcraft" is expected to exceed one million, which can be said to be the result of a full-line upgrade of the game's production and distribution specifications with the support of EA.

The game industry is the same as Hollywood. For the same movie, the seven major studios and second- and third-line independent film companies operate separately, and the box office is definitely not at the same level.

In the original prospectus, Daenerys Entertainment regarded the game business as the group's next important growth point.

Over the past six months, while maintaining its own vigorous development in console games, EA has also launched a phenomenal online game "Happy Farm". Now, another PC game "Warcraft: Humans and Orcs" has been a big success, which is undoubtedly another good news for Daenerys Entertainment's stock price.

The three lines of console games, PC stand-alone and online games are advancing side by side. With the continuous expansion of the electronic game market, as long as the current market position can be maintained, and only the electronic game business in the future, it is expected to support Daenerys Entertainment 100 billion US dollars The market value of the level.

The market value of the Disney Group at its peak in my memory has only just reached the US$200 billion threshold.

For Simon, this is definitely not a ceiling.

Although Daenerys Entertainment’s current market value of more than 100 billion U.S. dollars is very exaggerated in the eyes of many people, in Simon’s view, it is not difficult for Daenerys Entertainment to break through the scale of Disney. Future TV and games , Music, streaming media and other fields, as long as they achieve the ultimate, each is expected to reach the level of 100 billion US dollars.