The Instagram website outage on July 26 turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
No matter how many media outlets ridiculed or ridiculed Simon for forcing himself to support the vase around him with various mixed emotions, the result was that because Instagram's exposure in mainstream media increased significantly, the number of website user registrations skyrocketed in the following days.
From the launch at 9 a.m. on July 22 to 9 a.m. on July 29, within one week, the total number of registered users of Instagram reached 3.79 million, far exceeding the expectations of the Instagram team’s first week of one million users before the website was launched.
Not only that, the rapid popularity of the Instagram website has also directly driven the sales of digital camera products.
Just for the iCam series of Tinker Bayer, the month-on-month sales increased by 46% in the past week, directly from 150,000 units in the previous week to a record-breaking 220,000 units in a single week. Many retailers even showed up due to insufficient stock. A rare out-of-stock phenomenon.
Simon specially sent an email to several Yigrit executives to once again use this as an example to remind them of the importance of the product ecosystem.
However, Instagram’s success has also brought a small side effect.
Friday, July 29th.
At 10 o'clock in the morning on the East Coast, the U.S. Department of Justice officially held a press conference and announced that it would launch an antitrust investigation against three companies in the Westeros system: Cisco, America Online, and Igrit.
During the Q&A session with reporters, Instagram was specifically mentioned as evidence of the Westeros system’s monopoly on Internet resources.
Simon was in New York that day, watched the entire 40-minute press conference of the Ministry of Justice, and obtained more than 60 pages of investigation documents in advance.
The antitrust investigation by the Ministry of Justice mainly involves clauses including Igret's use of its market advantage in the Internet business to force bundled sales of application software to customers, IE browser's monopoly on Internet interfaces to restrict competition, and AOL's alleged use of signatures to Exclusive agreements monopolize the market, AOL maliciously discriminates against small businesses in terms of network support, Cisco excludes competition by formulating Internet standards in tandem with AOL and Eagle, and so on.
Attorney General Janet Reno told the media that the goal of this antitrust investigation is to prevent the three companies "Cisco-AOL-Egret" from monopolizing Internet industry resources.
In order to achieve this goal, the Department of Justice may eventually force Stroll to give up its multiple shareholding structure in Cisco and AOL, and prohibit the executives of the three companies from serving as directors on each other's boards of directors in order to cut off the relationship between the three companies. closely related interests, and at the same time split some of the businesses or products of the three companies.
In the early days of Cisco and AOL's listing, in order to promote communication between the three companies and to keep power in the hands of the Westeros system, Simon asked the executives of the three companies to serve as each other's board directors.
This move is obviously inappropriate.
As calls from the federal government and various media outlets for antitrust investigations into the three companies become increasingly louder, Simon has already withdrawn Tim Berners-Lee, John Chambers, Steve Case and others from the mutual relationship in advance. between the boards.
The Ministry of Justice's "revisiting old matters" this time has actually achieved an antitrust goal ahead of schedule.
The morning press conference had just ended, and the Westeros system immediately responded to this antitrust investigation.
The Ygriet Portal published a headline article reiterating the Westerosi system's immense contribution to the entire Federation's Internet industry in recent years by creating technical standards for the World Wide Web.
Without the generous opening of various basic patents of the World Wide Web by Igrit, the current booming development of the Internet industry would not have occurred. The Westeros system has no attempt to monopolize the market. The close cooperation of the three companies is just to jointly promote The development of the Internet industry.
The article also warns at the end that this investigation by the Ministry of Justice will not only not promote the development of the Internet industry, but will also damage the enthusiasm of innovators in the new technology field.
The capital market is always the most sensitive party.
In the past week or so, as rumors of antitrust investigations by the Department of Justice against Cisco, AOL, and Igret have continued to leak out, the stock prices of listed companies Cisco and AOL have continued to fall.
The press conference on Friday morning has just begun. Half an hour after the opening, the stock prices of Cisco and AOL have already fallen by 3.1% and 2.3% respectively. More than US$3 billion in market value has disappeared. It is expected that the two companies will all The stock price will fall by more than 5% every day.
Simon had already planned this.
Since June, Cersei Capital's hedge fund Cersei Fund Management has gradually reduced its long positions in Cisco and AOL. To this end, it also conducted a super generous dividend rebate in early July to re-invest The fund size was reduced to less than $3 billion.
But Simon certainly hasn't turned bearish either.
For tax avoidance reasons, a large part of the billions of dollars in cashback funds was directly transferred to a newly established sub-fund account under Black Rock Asset Management, and will continue to be used for technology stock investment in the future.
In the next few years, the overall trend of technology stocks in the U.S. stock market will inevitably continue to rise. However, due to antitrust and other reasons, the stock prices of two leading Internet stocks, Cisco and AOL, will inevitably continue to fluctuate up and down. For speculative capital that likes short-term hedging, For this reason, the stocks of the two companies have undoubtedly become the best operating targets.
Simon, who prefers non-speculative long-term investment at heart, has no intention of playing this roller coaster game with them.
The re-scaled Cersei Fund Management Company will still focus on long-term hedging of technology stocks in the future, but it will no longer involve Cisco and AOL, the two leading rafters. The target will turn to Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, and SUN, which have not encountered antitrust investigations. Technology companies may also consider traditional companies such as General Electric and Berkshire Hathaway that will also soar with the arrival of the bull cycle of the U.S. stock market.
While responding through the media, Cisco, AOL, and Igret also began to expand their legal teams to deal with the ensuing investigations and lawsuits.
This antitrust investigation is bound to be protracted, so Simon does not put much thought into it.
In the morning, Simon watched the live broadcast of the Ministry of Justice press conference with James Raybould and others at the Westeros headquarters in Manhattan. After briefly discussing follow-up countermeasures, Simon began his day's work.
The first is the North American box office data for the past box office week.
Simon is more concerned about this matter than the antitrust investigation launched today.
In fact, most of the public don't really care much about the antitrust investigation of the three companies in the Westeros system by the Ministry of Justice. At most, they read the news in newspapers and treat it as a conversation piece with people around them after dinner.
The 'Gods watch movies' topic craze set off by Daenerys Entertainment last week is different.
Because of the continued spread of this view, in the past week from July 22 to July 28, the total weekly box office in North America reached 187 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 19% compared to the previous week's total weekly box office of 156 million U.S. dollars. %. Based on the current average ticket price of US$4.2, this is equivalent to an additional 7 million moviegoers this week.
Specific box office data.
After occupying the top five in the box office list last week, Daenerys Entertainment directly gave up its top spot on the single-week list this week.
Paramount's new film "The Pursuit," starring Harrison Ford, grossed US$39.05 million in its first week, ranking first on the weekly list.
After the failure of several new films this summer, Paramount finally turned around.
Simon was also a little relieved. From the beginning in 1994 to now, there is finally a blockbuster movie that has nothing to do with Daenerys entertainment. When faced with public opinion accusing Daenerys Entertainment of also monopolizing Hollywood, one can now confidently refute: Look, there is also "The Pursuit".
Even the follow-up to "The Pursuit" will be included in Daenerys Entertainment's quarterly and annual financial reports to show that the company still has competitors in Hollywood.
This is not an insignificant little detail.
Many monopolistic corporate giants in the West will specifically list their competitors in their financial reports to show that they do not monopolize the market, even if most of the public have never heard of the listed competitors and their market share is very small. It's pitiful, but it must be done.
After Paramount's "The Blind Side", the phenomenal "Forrest Gump" was released in its fourth week. Affected by the topic of "God watches movies", the box office decline once again maintained a very impressive 21%, and it collected another US$30.78 million. , this drama movie that has been regarded as a miracle movie by many movie fans has been in operation for one month, and the cumulative box office has reached 170.73 million US dollars.
Even with a total production and promotion budget of US$80 million, "Forrest Gump" has begun to bring profits to Daenerys Entertainment. As the film's reputation continues to spread, the box office performance in overseas markets is also very good.
In order to spread the reputation of North America to overseas, Simon initially adopted the strategy of delaying the release of the film in mainstream overseas markets.
This strategy proved to be very successful.
Although the release of "Forrest Gump" is generally delayed by one to two weeks, the cumulative box office of "Forrest Gump" in various overseas box office locations has easily exceeded 110 million US dollars.
The third place on the list is "Stealing Fire".
Although the duration of this criminal action film is close to three hours, due to the word-of-mouth marketing of Daenerys Pictures' distribution team and the topic of "God is watching a movie", the number of theaters in the first week still exceeded 10,000, and the revenue in the first seven days was 2293. Ten thousand U.S. dollars. Because the three-hour duration limits the number of screenings in a single day, the film's $11,000 theater average is actually better than the $15,000 theater average of many blockbuster movies.
James Cameron's "True Lies" reached No. 4 on the charts.
In its third week of release, the film continued to earn US$20.2 million, and it was also the film with the largest decline this week, reaching 33%. For a purely commercial film, facing many strong competitors, this decline is actually within a considerable range.
At the same time, the cumulative box office of "True Lies" also reached US$91.63 million, officially exceeding the US$90 million cost line.
The cost of "True Lies" once reached US$115 million. However, this time, under Daenerys' strict cost control, the film's production budget was finally US$90 million, and the publicity investment was US$30 million.
It is estimated that the total domestic box office is expected to be between 140 million and 150 million US dollars, which will definitely not be able to recover the original cost. Fortunately, including overseas box office, the two producers of Daenerys and Fox will be able to realize profits directly through theatrical distribution.
Quentin Tarantino's "Romeo Bloods" ranks fifth on the charts.
They are also crime movies. "Bloody Romeo" is a crime drama and "The Wire" is a crime action movie, and their reputations have reached the classic level. Daenerys Entertainment's publicity team in charge of the two projects cooperated with "God Sees" The topic "Movies" skillfully linked the two films and promoted them as the two most worth-watching crime films this summer.
Therefore, after the box office in the first week exceeded expectations, in the face of two heavyweight new films, "Romeo Bloody" only saw a 23% box office drop in the second week, taking in another US$18.39 million, bringing the cumulative box office to US$42.36 million.
In two weeks, according to the tiered sharing rules, Gaomen Pictures has recovered all US$25 million in production and distribution costs and has begun to make a profit.
Stimulated by the topic of 'God watches movies', in addition to the top five, subsequent films such as "The Dark Knight Rises" and "The Conjuring" have also been revived.
"The Dark Knight Rises", which ranked sixth, dropped 21% this week and continued to earn US$12.79 million. The cumulative box office reached US$345.26 million, which is still US$55 million away from breaking the US$400 million mark.
If it were other movies, with only US$12.79 million left at the box office in a single week, it might earn up to US$30 million to US$40 million in the future. However, "The Dark Knight Rises" still has a long-term screening period of at least two or three months. , it is not difficult to continue to collect US$55 million at the box office.
"The Conjuring", which ranked seventh, took in US$7.01 million this week, a 25% drop, and its cumulative box office reached US$112.67 million.
Just for these top seven movies, the cumulative box office has reached US$150 million, which is the same as last week. A series of other old movies subsequently contributed more than US$30 million in box office revenue, reaching a total of US$187 million. Although it is not the highest number in a single week in the summer season, it is already very good at the end of this summer season.
Among them, Quentin Tarantino's "Bloody Romeo" grossed 42.36 million US dollars in two weeks, and the decline in the next week was only a very impressive 23%. In the absence of other strong competitors in the future, it was promoted to the 100 million yuan box office club. The likelihood has increased significantly again.
Simon's favorite "The Wire" earned $22.93 million in its first week. This result also exceeded the expectations of Daenerys Film's promotion team.
Moreover, the film's reputation continues to grow, and due to the 3-hour limit on film scheduling, which delays the entry time of many viewers, based on factors such as media reputation and audience feedback, the publicity team determines that the film's subsequent trend may be worse than "Bloody Romeo" is even better.
With more than 20 million US dollars in its first week, it actually has the potential to advance to the 100 million yuan box office club. Whether it can finally cross that threshold depends on the specific trends in the next few weeks.
In any case, the success of "The Wire" has been confirmed.
In the new week that started on July 29, three new films were released in North American theaters, namely the sci-fi thriller "Alien" produced by MGM, the drama "The Dark Horse" produced by Warner Bros., and the romance film "Allure" produced by Fox. 》.
"Alien," starring Natasha Henstridge, is MGM's second film this summer. Compared with other major studios that have released at least three or four new films, MGM's film output is still not as high as It can be improved so much. However, "Speed", which has already been a huge success at the box office, is enough to take MGM's recovery a step further.
The production cost of "Alien" was US$30 million, which was definitely not low for MGM.
Although the feedback from early internal test screenings was not as good as expected, because of Simon's high opinion of the film, MGM still provided 2,379 opening screens.
"The Black Stallion", which tells the story of a purebred racehorse with a noble pedigree, who is constantly moved from a wealthy family to a "horse life", has received a very good reputation since its opening, with a comprehensive media score of 8 points. However, the subject matter is too niche and the box office potential is Very average.
Fox's "Allure" stars Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda. It tells the story of a romantic relationship triggered by a winning lottery ticket, satisfying many people's ultimate dream of having both wealth and wealth.
Speaking of which, the two leading actors are both from the second generation of Hollywood. One is from the Coppola family, and the other is from the famous Fonda family. Both of them have no problem with their acting skills. The film's comprehensive media score of 7.1 is not bad, and it is considered the best this week. The main competitor of "Alien".