Chapter 744: Calm response

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"Remove Eric Schmidt as CEO of Facebook and replace him with Randy Hammer. LinkedIn CEO John Belden, News Today CEO Rick Bray, Global Wealth Network CEO Monroe Pahlavi, Skype CEO Mike Donald, PayPal CEO Marcos Levchen, Facebook CEO Randy Hammer, YouTube CEO Chen Shijun, Ruby Institute CEO Dave Drainey. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Ruby, Peter Thiel, President and COO, Dunko Verne, Chief Financial Officer, Kelly Dorothy, Chief Human Resources Officer, Chris Chang, Chief Technology Officer, and 13 people, including me, make up the LinkedIn Executive Committee and are responsible for all major decisions of the company. ”

Listening to Guo Shouyun's series of reforms to the company's management structure, everyone looked at each other. It is clear that the big bosses are prepared for the departure of Tim George and others. Otherwise, it would not have been so quickly filled in the vacancies of various departments as soon as the other party left. And once again, the company's management structure was reformed.

"How much liquidity does the company have at its disposal now?"

"If we don't jeopardize the normal development of our subsidiaries, we can buy back LinkedIn shares for $1.59 billion. ”

"Then buy it back. We will collect as much as the market sells. If I don't have enough money, I will inject capital into the company. When Ruby holds more than 90% of LinkedIn shares, it will be forced to buy and then delisted. ”

"Delisted?"

Looking at everyone's surprised looks, Guo Shouyun nodded.

"In the future, LinkedIn, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ruby, will no longer be listed independently. Your previous shares in each subsidiary will also be converted into shares in the head office based on the total assets of Ruby. In the future, Ruby will be the only entity to be listed. ”

"Alright, now let's have the 2004 Ruby Company year-end meeting. … Erik, as the CEO of the company, this meeting is up to you!"

Guo Shouyun is well aware that he wants to downplay the impact of the resignation of Tim George and others. Aside from his calm response as a big boss, the best way is not to take this matter too seriously.

January 2005 is coming to an end, and Ruby's total revenue for 2004 has already been made.

"Do you want to remove the share that originally belonged to the Ruby Mall?"

Eric Schmidt asked.

Ruby Mall was removed from Ruby by Guo Shouyun in the third quarter of 2004 and is now integrated with Guo's industry.

"Hmm!"

After receiving Guo Shouyun's affirmative reply, Eric Schmidt said: "In the case of excluding the ruby mall, the total revenue of Ruby Company in 2004 was 7.438 billion US dollars, net revenue accounted for 34.5%, research and development expenses were 53 million US dollars, fixed asset investment was 1.289 billion US dollars, depreciation expenses were 47 million US dollars, general administrative expenses were 373 million US dollars, interest expenses were 28 million US dollars, and net profit after tax was 808 million US dollars. ”

“… The company's total assets are US$21.39 billion, total liquid liabilities are US$983 million, and long-term loans are US$578 million. Deferred income tax of $143 million. Other long-term liabilities amounted to $432 million. Liabilities totaling $2.136 billion!"

Through Ruby's financial statements, it can be found that after excluding Ruby Mall, the company's data in all aspects have declined to varying degrees. In particular, revenue is down about 20% from 2003. However, the corresponding depreciation expense has also decreased by a large amount.

Previously, the hundreds of container ships and tens of thousands of trucks under the shipping department of Ruby Mall had an annual depreciation cost of up to $470 million.

In addition, during the expansion stage, Ruby invested very much in fixed assets, mainly for the construction of new data centers.

Ruby now has 9 data centers around the world, each with 5,000 servers. And it's constantly expanding. Because Guo Shouyun's requirement is that the margin of the server will always be 30% more than the actual demand.

There is also a reason for this, in the current era when the Internet is still in a stage of rapid development and the Internet population is constantly increasing. Maybe in two or three months, the number of registrations and visits to the website can increase by 50%, or even double.

For the best user experience, the data center must of course set aside a sufficient amount of lead time.

Similar to Friendster, the originator of Internet social networking, when Facebook was first founded, it was already the largest social networking site in the United States, with 40 million registered users. However, due to the explosion of registrations, the server load was exceeded. Friendster, the leader of the social field, did not want to optimize the website or raise funds to increase the server, but began to restrict user behavior, resulting in fewer and fewer functions on the Friendster website. Such a stupid trick can be described as self-defeating.

It also gives Facebook, a latecomer, a chance.

As for another competitor, Myspace, after it was acquired by the deep-pocketed News Corp., because the latter is a publicly traded company, there is pressure on performance. Cumbersome ads create a very poor user experience. In addition, Myspace allows users to customize and modify their own web pages, but due to technical flaws, some defective code often appears, resulting in a very slow opening of the website.

And after being acquired by News Corp., Myspace became bloated, losing the fast and flexible nature of an Internet company, and being plagued by cumbersome approval processes and fierce personnel battles.

Just like ICQ, which was acquired by AOL, the original good hand was broken alive!

These well-known Internet company survival experience is now faithfully implemented by Guo Shouyun in Ruby's various subsidiaries and sub-websites.

Whether it is LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, or LinkedIn's blogs and libraries, these sub-sites all pursue concise pages, and website optimization will be done every month according to user experience.

In addition, the designation of a specific person in charge of each subsidiary must not lead to the phenomenon of prevarication.

"How many people are registered in Ruby now?"

"Integrating various subsidiaries, there are currently a total of 1.179 billion registered users and 8.5 billion monthly visits!"

LinkedIn currently has the highest number of registered users, with 215 million registered users worldwide. This is followed by Facebook with 167 million registered users. The third is Skype, which has 159 million registered users worldwide. The fourth is YouTube, with 132 million registered users. The fifth is PayPal, with 113 million registered users. Global Wealth Network, LinkedIn News, and Ruby Research Institute, which is engaged in big data and cloud services, none of the three have more than 100 million registered users.

"What about the revenue structure?" Guo Shouyun continued.

"Online advertising accounted for 67.4%, platform sharing accounted for 19.33%, and financial management and investment income accounted for 13.27%. ”…

It's no surprise that online advertising accounts for more than half. Whether it's Facebook or Google, advertising revenue will always be the bulk of a company's revenue. Platform share is mainly the royalty of Internet applications embedded in the various platforms of Ruby. and the sharing fee of various documents and materials with copyright and even patent rights in the library.

In the United States, the price of patents, especially copyright patents, is high. An ordinary book costs about $20, and if it is a professional book such as business and illustration, it can easily cost hundreds of dollars. This is also the reason why the people who eat melons in later generations bought second-hand books when they were studying in college in the United States and envied the cheapness of Chinese books.

Financial management and investment income are easy to understand, and now LinkedIn holds 15% of the shares of Shipsa and Korn Ferry, and can get dividends. In addition, Facebook has also invested in some promising application Internet companies on its platform, acting as an angel and VC.

This is a development strategy often used by platform-level Internet companies, and there's no reason why Ruby would miss out.

After Eric Schmidt had introduced the company's revenues, it was the turn of the branches to make presentations. Just as LinkedIn CEO John Belden took out the papers and was about to make a report, there was a sudden knock on the closed door. Judging by the degree of urgency, it is clear that something very important has happened.

Guo Shouyun was inexplicably a little uneasy in his heart. After he waved, Wu Xiaojing, who was closer, got up and opened the door.

In came a young woman with eyes. Guo Shouyun knew her, Mary Morgan, Eric Schmidt's assistant.

Seeing her, Eric also looked a little surprised.

"Mary, what's wrong?"

"Boss!"

After greeting Eric Schmidt and Guo Shouyun respectively, Mary Morgan said in a hurried tone with concern: "... LinkedIn's customer profile was leaked. Now that the CNN news channel has exposed the news, our customer service has received hundreds of complaint calls. ”

Guo Shouyun frowned and asked, "When did this happen?"

"Just ten minutes ago!"

At this time, Wang Jue, who knew his mind very well, had already turned on the TV hanging on the wall in the conference room with a remote control and found the CNN news channel.

“… At present, the data of 1,200 LinkedIn users has been leaked, including key information such as phone numbers and social security numbers. Let's have to put a question mark on Internet security. In addition, no LinkedIn or Ruby executives have come out to explain. We don't know if the user data leak was a technical breach on the LinkedIn website or a hacker attack. But as you can see from our previous interviews. LinkedIn users were outraged when their information was leaked. I hope that the senior management of LinkedIn or Ruby can give you an explanation sooner. ”

Guo Shouyun and others only watched one ending. But the leakage of 1,200 user profiles is enough to show the importance of the matter in a private society like the United States.

"Boss, I'll find out about this as soon as possible!"

Looking at the sharp eyes of the big boss, LinkedIn CEO John Belden's scalp was numb, and he quickly assured.

"I'll give you a day. ”

"Yes!"

I wanted to say that a day was a bit short, but looking at the cold eyes of the big boss, John Belden swallowed back the words that came to his mouth.

"The leakage of 1,200 users is not only a problem for LinkedIn, but also for the entire Ruby company. If this matter cannot be resolved smoothly, it will affect the trust of 1.179 billion registered users of Ruby's eight subsidiaries. The 2004 year-end meeting was therefore suspended. From now on, we will form an 'emergency response team', with Eric Schmidt as the team leader, and Ross Brown, the director of public relations, as the deputy team leader, to deal with this leak with all our might!"

Guo Shouyun's categorical words made everyone understand the importance of this matter in his heart.

"Your offensive is really wave after wave. But I wasn't that easy to get knocked down. ”

Thinking of this, Guo Shouyun turned his head, "Deng Ke, the Ministry of Finance immediately prepared funds and was ready to repurchase shares at any time." ”

"Yes!"

Dunko Verne nodded hurriedly.

。 Reading at zero o'clock