"Hi kids, do you remember who I am? By the way, I am the actor who voiced Blue Cat - Ge Ping!"
As a representative work of early domestic animation, "Blue Cat's Three Thousand Questions" and its various derivative works are childhood memories of many people born in the 1980s and 1990s. Its main feature is that it cleverly combines some scientific knowledge while telling stories. Depending on the series, it includes knowledge in various fields such as military, animals, and common sense of life.
But with the development of the Internet era, netizens began to be active in various forums, and comments praising the Blue Cat series as the first masterpiece of domestic animation continued to emerge. Naturally, there were also many voices of opposition. In addition, the reputation of a series of sequels in recent years has gradually declined. In the process of constant controversy, Ge Ping, as the voice actor of the main popular character Blue Cat, has also been subjected to many spoofs.
This ghost video uploaded to Station C is only 3 minutes long, but it has been played more than 3,000 times in a week.
3,000 times may be just a small amount in the Internet age of the future, where millions of views are easily available, but for Mei Fang and Lin Youxi's small C Station, it was a dimensionality reduction attack. They spent several nights rushing to deal with the problem of server traffic overload and crash.
“Why are people talking about this kind of video so much?”
Lin Youxi also watched the "Ge Pao" ghost video herself. She didn't like it very much. "This kind of crude editing is just a simple spoof attack on Teacher Ge Ping. Why are people so happy about it?"
“I think it’s because of different perspectives.”
Mei Fang explained, "For example, heavy metal music and death punk, many people don't like them and think they are noise, but many people also enjoy them. It's normal that you find ghost animal spoof videos offensive, while some people just think they are funny. After all, everyone has a lot of pressure in life, and watching some originally serious characters doing crazy ghost animal videos can relax to a certain extent."
"However, personal attacks are indeed not good, and this is true. But if the person involved doesn't mind, then it should be fine..."
Mei Fang himself actually doesn't like the creative content of ghost animals. He only occasionally watches some funny ghost animals that are not very aggressive, but he clearly remembers that this incident in his previous life was a very important event that broke the circle. It seemed to have happened on Station A that year, but this time it appeared on Station C by chance.
Mei Fang saw that the number of people registering to become official members was soaring, from two or three per day to forty or fifty per day now.
Becoming a formal member also means they have the right to post comments and upload videos, but... by the way, are the bandwidth fees serious
Streaming video sites often have to pay two parts of server fees. One part is the cost of storage resources, that is, the resources stored on your website, such as videos uploaded by everyone and your account data.
Another expense is the bandwidth fee. Whether website users can play your videos online smoothly depends on the capacity of your bandwidth.
If your bandwidth is small, but there are many users playing videos online at the same time, there will be insufficient bandwidth and cause lag.
Mei Fang previously had a 20M server bandwidth, which supported up to 100 people watching online videos at the same time without lag, and the monthly fee was 1,200 yuan; now he wants to increase the speed to 100M, and the fee has soared to 100,000 yuan a year, or 8,000 yuan a month.
No wonder many people say that running a video website is just burning money. Then where did Station A and Station B get so much money back then
We really rely on financing to make a living!
After seeing the exaggerated bandwidth costs, Mei Fang now has a feeling that he has made a wrong move. On the one hand, C Station is indeed replicating the prosperous path of Bilibili in its previous life, but it does not have a very stable cash flow. As for C Station itself, it will have to wait for several years before it can make money.
He created C Station because he was eager to occupy the Bilibili track that did not exist in his previous life, and was unable to focus his already limited energy on game production. It is still too early for BIK currency to play a role. Although his savings are already quite scary, considering the way video websites burn money with their bandwidth, he does not have that much money to burn.
Mei Fang did not let Lin Youxi worry too much about money. He just asked her to concentrate on studying the website technology. At the end of June 2010, Lin Youxi, who was in charge of maintaining the website operations, brought Mei Fang a new message. She said that she received a private message from an Internet company called Manhattan Technology. Mei Fang had never heard of this company's name in her previous life, but the other party offered to pay 100,000 to buy the domain name of C Station, plus the development source code of C Station.
Mei Fang was not in a hurry after receiving this, nor did he show much excitement on his face. He looked at Lin Youxi who was staring at the private message.
"If the other party really wants to buy it, are you willing to sell this website to him?"
Lin Youxi shook her head. "You made the website yourself, Fang. You decide on it."
"How could I have done this?"
Mei Fang smiled and said, "I just worked with you on the basic module at the beginning, and you will be responsible for the time and energy for the subsequent maintenance."
"But I didn't pay you, did I?"
Lin Youxi stopped talking.
Mei Fang continued, "You should know that the name of this site is C Station. It is your website. You decide whether to sell it or not."
It is indeed a bit difficult and cruel for a child like Lin Youxi to make this decision. After all, for a child to earn 100,000 yuan is already a remarkable thing.
But selling it also means that all the hard work of the past few years has turned into this little money.
Youxi has been studying the technology of streaming video websites for a long time and has a rough idea of where he stands.
If this is all she values about the website, Mei Fang cannot expect her to lead Station C to go further on her own. It would be better to ask her to concentrate on making games. Besides, there are many well-known game developers waiting for Mei Fang to invest.
"Ah Fang... I still don't want to sell it."
Lin Youxi shook her head. "I think our C Station can go further. If we don't have enough money now, the bandwidth can be left as it is now. I can continue to play as a power leveler, and I can deduct some money from my meal card... As long as C Station can continue to gain popularity, we will be able to attract investment one day, what do you think?"
Mei Fang shook his head.
"The wheel of time is rolling forward. Now is the era of 3G. If C Station has lags even when playing 360p videos, it will lose its competitiveness in the market. If it continues like this, C Station's reputation will only get worse and worse, and it will not attract any investment at all."
"So... you think we should sell this website?"
Lin Youxi looked a little dejected. "Since Ah Fang also thinks so, there's nothing we can do..."
"Ah, don't get me wrong."
Mei Fang explained, “What I mean is that Station C must increase its bandwidth, otherwise it will not be able to continue to expand and will not be able to attract large capital investment.”
"But... just to upgrade the bandwidth to 100M, it will cost nearly 10,000 yuan a month, right?"
“It’s okay… I think it’s ridiculously expensive, but maybe I don’t need to stick with it for a year to attract investment?”
"Ah Fang... do you really have so much money?" Lin Youxi looked very surprised. "Did you earn it from playing games?"
Mei Fang nodded and smiled, "Just believe me."
Damn, commercial plots are so hard to write.
But if I don't write it now, it will be very troublesome to fill in the gaps later.
When it comes to theoretical knowledge, I would like to ask all-knowing readers to give me more advice. My understanding of this is limited.
There will be another update later, I owe it to the leader.
(End of this chapter)