Los Angeles International Airport is only about five kilometers away from Firefly Studios. Eric had his luggage sent back to Malibu, and came to Firefly Studios with Jeffrey.
August is usually the busiest period for Hollywood film companies. Although the summer vacation has come to an end, most of the small and medium-sized productions for the end of the year and the big-production movies for the summer vacation of the second year begin to enter the official stage during this period. The production process of the TV series in the autumn file also started shooting at this time. Eric sat in the business car and walked through the park, and saw a busy scene in the studio. Outside the studios on both sides of the main road of the studio park All kinds of vehicles are parked, and the wide parking lot is also overcrowded.
After getting out of the car, Jeffrey and Eric walked out of the parking lot together and said: "From the current situation, the ten studios in the park can no longer meet the needs. We discussed this issue at the regular meeting last week. We think it is enough to expand the park to the west and build at least five more studios, and the final plan will be made in the next few days, just when you come back to make up your mind."
"Well, let's talk about it later," Eric nodded. He remembered that Warner Burbank's studio had more than 20 studios. not enough.
6. However, Eric did not express his opinion immediately. It is best to wait until the final expansion plan is released. After all, his personal whim cannot be better than the plan drawn up by Firefly’s professional strategic development department. For Firefly’s In terms of management, Eric usually only gives negative opinions when the company gives a plan and the development trend of the film and television industry in memory is to the left. For the details that I don't know well and don't expect to affect the overall situation. Eric usually stays out of the way. In the development process of any company, it is impossible to make no mistakes at all.
Passing through the concrete corridor outside the parking lot, and coming to the studio to the small square bordering the office area of the digital domain, Jeffrey said: "Recently, "Interview with the Vampire" was filmed here, do you want to go to the scene to see it? "
Eric glanced at the crowded studio area, shook his head and said, "I don't need it for the time being, I will find time to check the samples that have been shot recently."
According to the plan, Firefly will release three films, "Interview with the Vampire", "Aeroplane 2" and "Pulp Fiction" by the end of the year. For commercial films that were successful in his previous life, unless he is particularly interested, Eric will generally shoot the original version in memory, and for films that he did not direct himself, Eric mainly controls the script and post-production. Editing, and at the same time looking for a main creator with a style similar to the original film, during the filming process, unless the producer and the director have the same wind and cooperate to do whatever they want, Eric will generally not intervene in particular, and this kind of thing is up to now Eric hadn't met it yet.
Judging from the box office results of a series of movies such as "Small Island Cry" a few years ago and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" in cooperation with Sony. Eric's approach worked very well. Moreover, in Hollywood, where the industrialization process is very complete. Because the division of labor at each stage is very clear, there is not much resistance to the implementation of this plan. There are very few directors in Hollywood who are strong enough to take control of the film, and such as James Cameron who is capable of taking control , Eric will also hand over the entire project to the other party with great confidence.
Compared with the noise in the studio area, the digital domain seems to be in order. Eric and Jeffrey chatted and walked to the administrative building, greeting the passing staff or unknown employees from time to time, and soon came to the Eric's exclusive office in the film city, although it was still clean and tidy because there was no one there for a long time, the empty office was obviously less popular.
Eric's assistant team office is located in Burbank's headquarters, so there is no permanent secretary here, but the general manager in charge of park management quickly sent his secretary to help Eric and Jeffrey make some coffee Little things.
Sitting down in the office, Eric's mobile phone began to ring from time to time, most of which were calls from Firefly's senior management, and a few were from various sources who learned that Eric had returned to Los Angeles to call. However, Everyone also knew that Eric had just passed a long-distance flight, so they didn't mean to disturb him.
Jeffrey watched Eric sit down on the leather chair, skillfully turned on the computer on the desk and began to operate it, drank a cup of coffee brought by the secretary, and chatted casually, Jeffrey got up and said Eric said: "Since there is nothing else, I will leave first. You just came back, so don't be busy for too long, go back and rest early."
"I'll see you off," Eric also stood up and sent Jeffrey into the elevator before returning to the office.
Although the Internet is developing very rapidly, hotmail's online mailbox service is still limited to the United States, which means that after Eric left the United States, he could no longer use emails to communicate with all parties in time. One thing that is very tangled in Japan.
After seeing off Jeffrey, Eric connected to the Internet, opened the IE browser, and the Yahoo homepage quickly popped up.
After the Yahoo portal was launched at the end of last year, Eric put forward many ideas to Yahoo’s technical team based on the memory of his previous life. According to Eric’s suggestion and the support of the current software and hardware conditions, the Yahoo team once again carried out the homepage. revision.
At this moment, what Eric sees is the brand new homepage of Yahoo. From top to bottom, the subject box on the left is the mailbox entry of hotmail, the Yahoo information section and the Yahoo forum section, and the website navigation interface including the search function is on the right. .
In memory, Eric saw the Yahoo homepage in the computer room of the university in 1995 in his previous life. What Eric remembers most is the four red "two cakes" on both sides of the yahoo logo on the Yahoo homepage at that time. People feel like there are four mahjong cards on the homepage, coupled with the overall very exaggerated design, it feels very funny now.
Now that he has the opportunity to control everything, Eric’s suggestion to the team is to be concise, concise, and concise. In order to look more pleasing to the eye, Eric also removed the exclamation point after yahoo.
Both Yahoo News and Yahoo Forums were launched at Eric's suggestion. In Eric's vision. The section of Yahoo News will become bigger and bigger. Eventually Yahoo will be transformed into a news portal.
But with the current scale of Internet users, it is still impossible for Yahoo News to compete with print media and TV media, and it is still in the groping stage. At this stage, Yahoo is mainly focusing on the development of the forum. In order to quickly expand the user base of the forum, Yahoo has directly connected to the user group of Hotmail, and has not established a separate user database. Although this has been criticized by the Yahoo team, but in AI Rick insisted on the boss. This measure was implemented very quickly. After Yahoo and Hotmail developed independently for a few years, Eric planned to integrate the two companies. After all, with Hotmail, it is impossible for Eric to let Yahoo Develop email service independently.
Although Yahoo News has just developed, through cooperation with some media, the information in the Yahoo News section is much more than the few newspapers that ordinary people read every day. Although a lot of information lags behind, it is just suitable for Eric People who have not paid attention to current affairs in the United States for a long time.
Open the news section. Through the search function, Eric quickly found some information about Hollywood that he was most interested in.
In addition to a lot of Jurassic Park box office news. The biggest thing that happened in Hollywood in the past year was, of course, Viacom and qvc's bid for Paramount.
After the two sides raised prices at the beginning of the year to no avail, there were several small-scale confrontations during the period, but then, in order to accumulate more strength, Viacom's Redstone turned the spearhead of the merger to the largest video rental company in the United States. Blockbuster, the sales company, Viacom turned their heads, and Paramount also put the negotiation with qvc on hold for the time being.
According to some recent news, Redstone has basically completed the negotiations with Blockbuster. It is expected that the merger and acquisition between the two parties will be completed by September at the latest. Once Viacom takes Blockbuster and the video tape With the huge cash flow of the rental company and the debt financing brought about by this asset mortgage, Viacom's chances of winning Paramount will greatly increase.
As for qvc, although Barry Diller did not relax his efforts to acquire Paramount, Telematics, one of the two shareholders of qvc, has already started M&A negotiations with AT&T, another US telecommunications giant. The main body is AT&T. Once AT&T completes the acquisition of the telecommunications company, the support for QVC's acquisition of Paramount will be reduced by half. Therefore, most of the American media are currently not optimistic about Barry Diller's acquisition of Paramount.
Eric read the news, but he was thinking about other things. In his memory, after Viacom completed the acquisition of Paramount with a huge sum of tens of billions of dollars, within a few years, because of a company named The rise of Netflix's online rental chain has caused Blockbuster, which Viacom acquired with huge sums of money, to shrink sharply both in terms of business and market value.
Thinking of Netflix, Eric's habitually wicked smile appeared on his face again, but there is no rush for this matter. To establish Netflix, you must first realize a convenient online payment channel. If you want to realize convenient online payment, E-commerce must be developed.
Everything has to be done step by step.
Eric sighed, but closed the Yahoo information page, and opened the Yahoo forum. Due to the limitation of network conditions, the Yahoo forum currently only provides targeted sections. Users want to create a topic forum they are interested in. Build a website by yourself, but in any case, the Yahoo Forum with its hotmail user base is definitely the largest communication community on the Internet.
Internet exchange forums are very new to many Internet users. Eric randomly selected a few forums and browsed around, and found that users in each section were very active. However, he also found some small problems. The users of , apart from their personal nicknames, do not have any other identification at all.
In my memory, the simplest user identification is, of course, the classification of levels. Moreover, the introduction of a user level system can also greatly improve the user stickiness of the website.
After briefly thinking about Cisco for a while, Eric opened his mailbox, intending to send this suggestion to the Yahoo and hotmail teams.
Although Eric is not in the United States during this time, there are still dozens of unread emails accumulated in the mailbox from various sources. Of course, the number of mailboxes stored by ordinary users is limited, but this problem cannot exist in Eric body.
After writing out the thoughts just now and sending them out, Eric began to deal with the accumulated emails in the mailbox.
When he had almost finished reading the email, he suddenly heard a new email notification.
After a glance, it was sent by the current person in charge of the hotmail company, the person named Steve Mitnick that Chris mentioned.
Eric opened it curiously, and found that there was only one sentence inside: What is user stickiness
Because English is written in pinyin, if there is no special explanation, if you suddenly see a new word, although most people can read it according to the commonly used grammar, it is impossible to know what it means. This is why Westerners often suffer from it. Causes of Dyslexia.
When Eric first sent the email, it was impossible to create a new word. He just put together a new phrase from the two words of adhesion and degree, and he didn't know if it was suitable.
Seeing the other party's question, Eric thought for a moment, then quickly typed out an explanatory sentence and replied.
A reply email soon appeared on the computer again, and it was still Steve Mitnick: Very interesting theory, and you are also a very interesting person.
Eric replied: If you are complimenting me, then thank you.
After tens of seconds, the reply came again: Of course I am praising you, for us, you are Jesus.
Eric was surprised: Why do you say that
Steve Mitnick: Because you have invested more than $50 million in three companies without any prospect of profit. This is a lot of money. We didn’t have enough funds to realize many ideas before. , but now you can make these things, so of course you are like Jesus to us.
Eric couldn't help laughing: I'm just investing in the future.
Steve Mitnick: Can you see the future
Eric: I can't answer that question for you, but I see a future right now.
Steve Mitnick: Oh, what
Eric: Instant messaging software, if we can develop an instant messaging software, then we can chat without emails, do you think this idea has a future
The other side was silent for a while before replying again: It’s a very good idea, and the technical requirements are not high, give me 5 million, and I will make the finished product within three months.
Eric replied decisively: No problem, besides, you are also a very interesting person, see you when you have time.
Steve Mitnick: Good. (To be continued..)