Tong said that his nostalgia for Tsinghua Science and Technology Park stems from his affection for his alma mater and his sense of identity with Chinese Online and Tsinghua Science and Technology Park. There are many overlapping growth trajectories between the company and Tsinghua Science Park.
In the process of Chinese online growth, Tsinghua Science and Technology Park has also given a lot of support. In addition to the rent concessions and tax rebates for incubators, there are also various non-capital services and support provided by the Science Park. For example, in the field of investment and financing, the Science Park has introduced many investors to Chinese Online, and its current investors are all introduced by the Science Park.
But what impressed children most was the "field energy" of Tsinghua Science and Technology Park. Once, Tong met the boss of a company in the Science and Technology Building. They had a meal together and reached an important business cooperation. "We often meet upstream and downstream customers in the elevator, and sometimes we can finalize the business by saying hello. The' polymerization effect' here is very obvious. " Tong said. I have always believed that digital reading must have its feasibility. If you don't do digital reading, you will regret it all your life. -Don Lei Zhi.
1999, the internet flourished, and I was still a student in Tsinghua University. With a business plan that won the first place in the national college students' entrepreneurship competition, my classmates and I created the domestic college students' portal "Easy Ark", and Chinese online is a reading channel born out of "Easy Ark".
The idea at that time was simple. It's great for everyone to read books online, but the writer, as the creator of the content, didn't get a penny. If they don't get any benefits in this matter, these sources may not be produced in the future. So I'm wondering if we can use the form of "authorization first, then dissemination" to transform the traditional paper book publishing mode into the Internet in digital form.
Newborn calves are not afraid of tigers, so we contact writers everywhere and visit them at home. I remember visiting writer Cong Weixi at that time, thinking that I couldn't come empty-handed for the first time, but all of them were students, so I bought a watermelon and took it with me. I told my teacher that I hoped he would authorize the work to us and put it on the Internet. I didn't expect him to sign a contract with us on the spot. Later, he wrote an article in Beijing Evening News called "Literary Messenger from Heaven", saying that we brought the gospel of the digital age.
At that time, we asked the writer for authorization, one was sharing mode, and the other was paying mode. If you pay, it's about 30 yuan money per thousand words, and a work costs several thousand yuan. Today, this is very cheap, but at that time, writers were very happy to have a website to talk with them about the payment authorization of digital rights. In a short time, we signed hundreds of famous writers, most of whom gave their works to others.
In May 2000, Chinese Online held a grand press conference and announced its establishment. Yu and Yu Hua are here, too. They were invited to White to entertain us. However, after the press conference, I went to the investment institutions that have been praising our revolutionary business model, only to find that their attitudes were completely different and they refused to pay a penny. Why is this? Just a month ago, Nasdaq crashed, from a high of more than 5,000 points to 1 1,000 points, and the Internet bubble burst all the way from the United States to China.
Now think about it. At that time, China websites were all burning money to drive traffic, lacking a truly feasible business model and relying entirely on venture capital. Without venture capital, we will run out of ammunition and food soon. Like most Chinese websites, Chinese online has entered the most difficult period, with only three people left.
At first, I paid for it myself, then I borrowed it from my relatives and friends, and soon no one borrowed it. Everyone thought it was a bottomless pit. There is really no way. I will go to a central enterprise to do information strategy consulting, and I can earn tens of thousands a month to support the company with this income. At that time, our office was in Xueyan Building at the east gate of Tsinghua, and there was a small restaurant opposite. As long as we order, rice is free. We order a dish of about 10 every day and eat other people's meals there until one day my boss said to me, "This is a small business, too, or don't come next time."
When I called home, my mother kept telling me that you worked so hard and so hard, why couldn't you find a stable job? I said, this is my favorite. If I don't do digital reading, I will regret it all my life.
I have been considering two issues, one is how to make the massive digital book information benefit the society, and the other is how to make use of the emerging channel of digital publishing to make everyone become a writer.
200 1, Chen ping, chairman of hong kong ted group, wants to ask me to be CEO. As a condition to attract me to join, the other party bought Chinese online. In the following three years, Chinese Online relied on the Group's Didi to maintain its basic operation.
But I have always believed that there must be a huge market space for massive digital book information, one of which is primary and secondary schools. At that time, due to the shortage of funds, many primary and secondary schools lacked books and could not even establish libraries; On the other hand, the Ministry of Education has been pushing the informationization of primary and secondary education and opening electronic classrooms. However, due to the lack of content, the idle rate of computers in many schools is very high. Digital library has the advantages of convenient retrieval, simple management and low cost, which can solve the above two problems at the same time.
However, the process of popularizing the brand-new concept of "digital library" is very difficult, and Chinese online needs to do a lot of basic work. For example, we have trained more than 1000 principals, librarians and teachers all over the country, and conducted trial operation in a large number of pilot schools for half a year or one year. In the central and western regions, we even bought out the copyright of books and popularized them in the form of donations.
In 2002, Chinese Online undertook the task of the Tenth Five-Year Plan of the Ministry of Education and took the lead in launching the "Digital Library for Primary and Secondary Schools" in China. It snowed heavily on the day of the signing ceremony, and Chinese Online won the first order in the past three years.
At that time, I repeatedly proposed the development plan of Chinese online to the group, but it was not supported. Realizing that digital publishing has never been the strategic development goal of the group company, I decided to "redeem" the company and start my own "second venture".
In this process, the digital library for basic education has developed rapidly. At first, the traditional digital library we provided could only be used by users on school computers; In 2009, the new digital library "Shuxiang China" based on cloud computing was launched. As of 20 1 1, the cumulative number of visitors to the platform has reached hundreds of millions.
I also noticed that during the three years of Chinese online "dormant", great changes have taken place in the digital publishing industry at home and abroad, mobile novels in Japan have begun to rise, and domestic online original literature has begun to have its own place. At that time, I communicated with Yu Hua that the traditional publishing channels were still too narrow for young writers with "literary dreams". "If there is a digital platform that can make everyone a writer, that would be great."
So the original online literature website "17K novel network" under Chinese Online came into being. It creates a free and paid mode, and some works will be opened as free reading chapters. If you are interested, you can spend a few cents to read a chapter and finish the rest.
This model makes young writers earn income, and also makes online writers truly become a profession. 17K's signing author, Nothing Want, Nothing Want, is particularly typical. In 2008, this Guangdong youth who loves writing was still a water bearer, and even without a computer, he used his mobile phone to "knock out" the first half of a mystery novel. Although the author is not well-known, the editors of 17K novel network have a vision. They communicate with the author on creative ideas and plots, and choose appropriate channels for planning and promotion. The mystery became an instant hit, occupying the top of China Mobile suspense classification list for two years 10. After it was published as a paper book, its sales volume exceeded 6,543,800,000 copies, and it was adapted into a TV series by Hairun Film and Television. "I don't want anything", so I accumulated millions, and I joined the Guangdong Writers Association. Internet original literature has completely changed the fate of this young man.
Our vision is that "anyone can get any content at any time, anywhere and by any means", but the development of digital reading can not be achieved by the strength of one company alone.
In 2005, Chinese Online began to develop mobile phone reading business. At that time, I went to talk to China Mobile, and my first reaction was, how can I read a book on such a small screen? I have trouble watching the news. Indeed, at that time, the mobile phone screen could only display 70 words, and it had to be a big screen.
But a few years later, the construction of 3G network and the popularity of smart phones have completely changed mobile phone reading. By the end of 20 12, the number of mobile phone users in China had reached 420 million, and the growth rate of various indicators of mobile phone network exceeded the traditional network in an all-round way, and mobile phones surpassed desktop computers to become the largest internet terminal. This means that the positioning of operators is changing from communication service providers to integrated information service providers. Now, we provide mobile phone reading service for operators through China Mobile's mobile phone reading base.
The development of mobile phone reading stems from two important driving forces of digital reading development: the development of network and terminal. The 10 year that I worked in was the great development of China's network: from dial-up internet access to broadband, from wired network to wireless network, from computers and black-and-white screen mobile phones to smart phones, handheld readers and tablet computers. This makes the user experience of digital reading really guaranteed.
Another important reason for promoting the development of digital reading is the increasingly good intellectual property environment. From 65438 to 0999, Zhang Kangkang, Bi Shumin and Wang Meng sued a website for pirated works, but at that time, there were no concepts of online copyright and digital copyright in the Copyright Law. The lawsuit was fought for a long time, and the final compensation was very small.
200 1, the right of information network communication is written into the copyright law, and the protection of network copyright is truly legal. Subsequently, various judicial interpretations were introduced one after another, and the landmark event was the promulgation of the Regulations on the Protection of Information Network Communication Rights on July 1 2006. The state's emphasis on intellectual property work is the greatest support for enterprises.
In terms of copyright protection, I also hope to do my best to contribute to the country. As one of the responsible units of the national copyright protection technology research and development project, Chinese Online is conducting comprehensive research and development, hoping to finally realize the complete application of the digital publishing copyright protection system in the copyright protection project.
At the end of February 20 12, the infringement case of 12 Chinese Online v. Apple Company was formally pronounced, and the court ruled that Apple Company would stop infringing on the information network communication right of Beijing Chinese Online Digital Publishing Co., Ltd. for works involving Family, Spring and Autumn Annals and Emperor Kangxi, and compensate the economic losses. This is a victory on the road of Chinese online rights protection for many years. Since copyright protection and rights protection began in 2005, Chinese Online has operated more than 500 rights protection cases involving tens of thousands of works.
Digital reading is entering the era of "one content, multiple media, simultaneous publishing". What will digital reading be like after 10? I think it should be-"anyone can get any content at any time and any place by any means."