Located at Los Angeles International Airport, only about five kilometers away from Firefly Studios, Eric had his luggage returned to Malibu and came to Firefly Studios with Jeffrey.

August is usually the busiest period for Hollywood studios, although the summer season has come to an end, most of the small and medium-sized production films for the year-end schedule and the large-scale films of the second year's summer schedule have begun to enter the formal production process during this time, and the TV series in the autumn file also start filming at this time, Eric sat in a business car and walked through the park, and saw a busy scene in the studio, the studios on both sides of the main road in the studio park were full of all kinds of vehicles, and the wide parking lot was also full。

After getting out of the car, Jeffrey and Eric walked out of the parking lot together, and said: "Judging from the current situation, the ten studios in the park can no longer meet the needs, and we discussed this problem at the regular meeting last week, and we think that it will be 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 get an idea." ”

"Well, we'll talk about that then," Eric nodded, remembering that Warner Burbank had more than twenty studios on the set, and although they varied in size, the Firefly studios were a little small in terms of number alone.

However, Eric did not express his position immediately, and it is best to wait until the final expansion plan is released, after all, his personal momentary ideas cannot be better than the plan drawn up by the strategic development department of Firefly's major, and Eric usually only gives negative opinions when the company gives a plan and the development trend of the film and television industry in his memory is to the left. I don't know much about myself and don't worry about the details that will affect the overall situation. Eric doesn't usually meddle. In the development of any company, it is impossible not to make a single mistake.

Walking through the concrete corridor outside the parking lot to the small square that borders the digital office area from the studio, Jeffrey said, "The Vampire was filmed here recently, do you want to go to the scene?"

Eric glanced at the crowded studio area and shook his head, "Not for now, I'll take the time to check the samples that have been shot recently." ”

According to the plan, Firefly will release three films at the end of the year: "Night Interview with the Vampire", "Detective Plane Head 2" and "Pulp Fiction". For commercial films that have been successful in his previous life, unless he is particularly interested, Eric will generally shoot according to the original version in his memory, and for films that he did not direct personally, Eric mainly controls the script and post-editing, and then looks for the main creator who is similar to the style of the original film, in the filming process, unless the producer and director draw the wind at the same time and work together to act arbitrarily, Eric generally will not particularly interfere, and this kind of thing has not been encountered by Eric until now.

Judging by the box office results of a series of films such as "Island Cry" a few years ago to "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" with Sony. Eric's approach has been very effective. Moreover, in Hollywood, where the process of industrialization is very perfect. Because the division of labor in each stage is very clear, there is not much resistance to the implementation of this plan, and there are very few directors in Hollywood who are strong enough to take all the control of the film, and such as James Cameron, who has the strength to get control, Eric will be very comfortable handing over the entire project to the other party.

Compared with the noisy studio area, the digital field seems to be orderly, Eric and Jeffrey chatted and walked towards the administrative building, greeting employees who passed by from time to time, and soon came to Eric's exclusive office in the studio, because of the long time no one, although it was still clean and tidy, but the empty office was obviously a little less popular.

Eric's assistant team office is located at the headquarters in Burbank, so there is no permanent secretary here, but the general manager in charge of campus management quickly sends his own secretary to help Eric and Jeffrey with the odd chores of making coffee.

Sitting down in the office, Eric's mobile phone began to ring from time to time, most of them were some calls from the firefly executives, and a few of them learned from various sources that Eric had returned to Los Angeles to call to greet him, but everyone also knew that Eric had just gone on a long flight, so they didn't mean to bother.

Jeffrey watched Eric sit down on the leather chair, skillfully opened the computer on the desk and operated, drank a cup of coffee brought by the secretary, and chatted casually, Jeffrey got up and said to Eric: "Since there is nothing to do, I will leave first, you just came back, don't be too busy, go back early to rest." ”

"I'll send you," Eric said, getting up and getting Jeffrey into the elevator before returning to the office.

Although the Internet is developing very rapidly, Hotmail's online email service is still limited to the United States, which has caused Eric to no longer be able to use email to communicate with all parties in a timely manner after leaving the United States, which is also a very difficult thing for Eric in Europe and Japan.

After sending Jeffrey away, Eric connected to the Internet, opened the Internet Explorer browser, and Yahoo's homepage quickly popped up.

After the Yahoo portal was launched at the end of last year, Eric put forward a lot of his own ideas to Yahoo's technical team based on the memories of his previous life, and according to Eric's suggestions and the support of the current software and hardware conditions, the Yahoo team revised the homepage again.

At this point, Eric sees Yahoo's new homepage, with the left subject box from top to bottom, followed by Hotmail's email entrance, Yahoo information section, and Yahoo forum section, and on the right is the URL navigation interface including search function.

In his memory, Eric saw Yahoo's homepage in the university's computer room in 1995, and Eric's deepest memory is that at that time, Yahoo's homepage Yahoo logo was marked by four red 'two cakes', which gave people the feeling that there were four mahjong cards on the homepage, plus the overall very exaggerated design, it feels very funny when I think about it now.

Now that he has the opportunity to be in control, Eric's advice to the team is to be concise, concise, and concise, and in order to look more pleasing to the eye, Eric also removed the exclamation point behind Yahoo.

Both Yahoo News and Yahoo Forums were launched at Eric's suggestion. In Eric's vision. Yahoo Info is going to get bigger and bigger. Eventually, Yahoo will be transformed into a news portal.

However, with the current scale of Internet users, Yahoo Information is still unable to compete with print media and TV media, and is still in the exploration stage. At this stage, Yahoo mainly focuses on the development of the forum, in order to quickly expand the scale of forum users, Yahoo directly connected to the Hotmail user group, and did not establish a separate user database, although this was criticized by the Yahoo team, but at the insistence of Eric, the boss. This measure was quickly implemented, and after a few years for Yahoo and Hotmail to develop separately, Eric planned to integrate the two companies, after all, with Hotmail, Eric could not let Yahoo develop its mailbox service alone.

Although Yahoo Information has only just developed, through cooperation with some media outlets, the information in the Yahoo Information section is much more than the few newspapers that ordinary people read every day, although a lot of information is a little behind, but it is just suitable for people like Eric 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 of the information about Hollywood that he was most interested in.

In addition to a lot of "Jurassic Park" box office news. The biggest thing that has happened in Hollywood in the last year is, of course, the bidding of Viacom and QVC for Paramount.

After the two sides raised prices at the beginning of the year to no avail, there were several small-scale exchanges during the period, but then, in order to accumulate more strength, Viacom's Lei Shidong turned the spearhead of mergers and acquisitions to Blockbuster, the largest video tape rental and sales company in the United States, Viacom turned the spearhead, and Paramount also put the negotiations with QVC on hold for the time being.

From some recent news, Lei Shidong has basically completed the negotiations with Blockbuster, and it is expected that the merger and acquisition between the two parties will be completed by September at the latest, once Viacom wins Blockbuster, and the huge cash flow of the video rental and sales company and the debt financing brought by this asset mortgage, Viacom's chances of winning Paramount will be greatly increased.

In terms of QVC, although Barry Diller has not relaxed his efforts to acquire Paramount, remote communications, one of the two shareholders of QVC, has begun to negotiate mergers and acquisitions with AT&T, another giant in the communications industry in the United States, and the main body of this merger and acquisition is AT&T. Once AT&T completes the acquisition of telecommunications, then QVC's support for the acquisition of Paramount will be less than half. Therefore, most of the media in the United States is not optimistic about Barry Diller's acquisition of Paramount.

After reading these news, Eric thought about some other things in his heart, and remembered that after Viacom completed the acquisition of Paramount with a huge amount of money of tens of billions of dollars, within a few years, because of the rise of an online rental chain called Netflix, Blockbuster, which Viacom acquired with huge investment, has shrunk sharply in both business and market value.

Thinking of Netflix, Eric's habitual evil smile appeared on his face again, but this matter is not in a hurry, to establish Netflix, first of all, we must realize convenient online payment channels, and if we want to achieve convenient online payment, we must develop e-commerce.

Everything has to be done step by step.

Eric sighed, but closed the Yahoo information page, and opened the Yahoo forum, because of the limitations of network conditions, the Yahoo forum currently only provides targeted theme sections, users want to establish their own interested theme forum, can only build their own website, but, in any case, the Yahoo forum with Hotmail user base is definitely the largest communication community on the Internet at present.

Internet communication forums are a very new thing for many Internet users, Eric randomly selected a few forums to visit, and found that the users in each section are very active, however, he also found some small problems, the users in the forum except for personal nicknames, there is no other identification at all.

In memory, the simplest user identification is, of course, the level division, and the introduction of the user rating system can also greatly improve the user adhesion of the website.

After a brief Cisco moment, Eric opened his mailbox and planned to send the suggestion to the teams at Yahoo and Hotmail.

Although Eric was not in the United States during this time, he still accumulated dozens of unread emails from all sides in his mailbox, and now the number of mailbox storage for ordinary users is of course limited, but this problem cannot exist in Eric.

After writing out the idea and sending it out, Eric began to process the mail that had accumulated in his mailbox.

When he was almost finished reading the email, he suddenly heard a new email prompt.

At a glance, it was from the current head of Hotmail, the man named Steve Mitnick that Chris said.

Curious, Eric opened it and found that there was only one sentence inside: What is user stickiness?

Because English is a pinyin script, if there is no special explanation, suddenly see a new word, although according to the commonly used grammar, most people can pronounce it, but it is impossible to know what it means, which is why Westerners often suffer from dyslexia.

When Eric first sent the email, it was impossible to create a new word, but he just pieced together the words sticky and degree into a new phrase, and he didn't know if it would fit or not.

Seeing the other party's question, Eric thought for a moment, and then quickly typed out an explanatory sentence and replied.

Soon after, a reply email appeared on the computer, and it was still Steve Mitnick: "Very interesting theory, you are also a very interesting person.

Eric replied: If you're complimenting me, then, thank you.

After a few dozen seconds, the reply came again: Of course I am praising you, for us, you are Jesus.

Eric: Why do you say that?

Steve Mitnick: Because you've invested more than $50 million in three companies without any prospects for profitability, that's a lot of money, and we didn't have enough money to make a lot of ideas that we didn't have the money to do, and now we can make these things, so of course you're like Jesus to us.

Eric couldn't help but smile: I'm just investing in the future.

Steve Mitnick: Can you see the future?

Eric: I can't answer that question, 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 having to chat by email, do you think this idea has any prospects?

The other side was silent for a moment before replying again: 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, you have time to see you.

Steve Mitnick: Okay. (To be continued......)