"Mr. Gu, are you looking for me?"

A few days later, Zhang Yiming, who was one year older than Gu Cheng and had only worked for more than three years, was called in front of him by Gu Cheng to give a personal lecture.

After three years of experience, this young man in Fujian Province has climbed to the position of middle and senior management through his talent and hard work, and is currently a deputy director of the Push Intelligence Research Institute under YY Network Technology, and if he makes some big achievements, he is very hopeful to be promoted to the director and get more equity incentives.

Gu Cheng is still quite optimistic about Zhang Yiming. He has always believed that if it were not for his crossing and letting history develop along the original trajectory, Zhang Yiming would be the most qualified hero in China to benchmark Zuckerberg, while Ma Teng would not be qualified at all.

At least his technical line still has a bit of unyielding fighting for free will.

Gu Cheng personally pulled a chair for Zhang Yiming and encouraged: "The 'owner preference analysis' you provided to Aimi's virtual assistant 'Ai Jiang' is okay." However, there is no end to the kind of thing pushed by artificial intelligence. As long as she's not as empathetic as a commentator who really listens to her friends' complaints, you'll still need to work hard. ”

He knew that Zhang Yiming, a technical nerd, was still relatively timid and restrained, and it was unlikely that he would dare to sit on the sofa in front of the big boss.

Zhang Yiming sat down, deeply excited by the leader's affirmation, and was busy trying to explain: "I...... I'll try. I can explain to you how far the current algorithm has reached......"

Gu Cheng waved his hand and stopped the other party from talking about the details first: "You talk about the technical details slowly, and I will talk to you about the significance of what I want you to do later." ”

Zhang Yiming sat back in his chair in a daze: "Uh...... Well, your time is too precious to listen to me talk about why......"

"You have been studying the application of deep learning algorithms in content push in the past few years, and you are in the right direction. But I think you are not clear enough about the media logic of the content industry itself, and getting to this point today has limited your further development. It's time to broaden your horizons. ”

Gu Cheng kindly pointed out the other party's shortcomings, confirmed that Zhang Yiming was very modest and focused, and then he threw out the question: "Do you watch the Internet?"

"Uh...... How can I have time to look now. Before my sophomore year, when I was about '03, I saw some. I heard from my colleagues that the books are much better now than they were in previous years. Zhang Yiming replied a little shyly, as if he was ashamed that he had watched too little on the Internet.

Gu Cheng said encouragingly: "In the future, we should pick more types and look at them with a critical eye." A person who engages in push algorithms lacks basic logic for the advantages and disadvantages of the content itself, which is not good, and the algorithm designed in this way will have much lower data identification efficiency. ”

"Okay, I'll take the time to see more. "It's not that Zhang Yiming doesn't like to play, he's just too busy.

"Today, I'm going to talk to you a little lightheartedly - I heard people from YY literature say that since last year, a new type of network has emerged, called 'infinite streaming'. Have you heard of it?"

Of course, Zhang Yiming hadn't heard of it, so Gu Cheng concisely explained what the hell Infinite Flow was and explained to Zhang Yiming.

"It turned out to be a dozen novellas of 300,000 or 400,000 words pieced together into a stinky and long book. After Zhang Yiming listened, he sighed with emotion.

Although it was not very accurate, Gu Cheng's explanation was not clear in the first place, so he went with him.

"It's okay if you understand it that way, but the details are different. When changing maps, you can inherit the level, equipment, skills, and teammates of the previous map. The continuity of more or less upgraded growth will be much better than that of N independence - but these are not important. What I want you to think about now is, what is the reason why this type of book is becoming more and more popular, even more popular than the traditional Internet?"

"What is the reason? I don't look at the Internet, this problem is a bit difficult for strong people. Is it because you can fight monsters and upgrade to a higher level?"

Even from the perspective of a push technology expert, Zhang Yiming thought about it again and again, but still failed to understand why this situation occurred.

Gu Cheng knew that he was a little strong, so he tried to inspire the other party from a different angle.

"You have always seen the Hollywood blockbusters every year, haven't you noticed that in recent years, Hollywood's sequel disease has become more and more serious - the best box office movies every year are filled with "Fast and Furious 4" is "Transformers 2", or "Batman 3" and other sequels. And the conscience work painstakingly arranged by aspiring famous directors is relatively box office hit.

In fact, this phenomenon is the same as the rise of infinite streaming in the Internet world, and the principle behind it is the same - that is, because the cost of consumers' time is becoming more and more valuable, and there is more and more junk information on the market, which gradually wears out consumers' patience——"

When Gu Cheng said this, Zhang Yiming finally reacted.

"I get it, because there's so much garbage, consumers are going to be more cautious before they go to the cinema. I'm afraid that if I not only spent dozens or hundreds of dollars in vain, but also spent a few hours in vain, I ended up watching a bad movie that was neither new nor to taste.

In this case, because of the bombardment of garbage, it is difficult for sincere new works to be sorted out by the waves, and publishers can only concentrate their resources on those popular IP themes that have been verified by consumers and reliable. And then the sequel disease also got worse and worse.

And this situation has been moved to the field of online literature because there are too many bad books, and there are too many 'gods' who eat old books. Coupled with the fragmented FEED display mode in the era of wireless reading, users are recommended to go, and the ability to actively find books gradually deteriorates, and finally loses the loyalty of the author——

I know this about the market. I occasionally hear the person in charge of the literary website talk about how the PC era can create gods, and readers are prone to form stickiness to the author. In the era of mobile phone reading, it can only create gods, not gods. In this way, many people choose to 'never finish a book' once they enter the high-quality product, try to borrow this shell that has been recognized by readers to write as long as possible, and continue to earn no matter how much water they have.

In this case, the rise of infinite streaming is easy to understand - for the same 5 million word book, an infinite stream only requires the reader to pay the cost of identifying garbage once. And if you choose to write 5 compact, high-C medium-length novels with a length of 1 million words each, it is likely to lead to the loss of readers due to the lack of patience for the next 4 books. The reason in this is that Christopher Nolan will watch "Batman 3: The Dark Knight", but if "The Dark Knight" is filmed directly, the number of people watching it may be greatly reduced. ”

Gu Cheng didn't interject during the whole process, and watched Zhang Yiming look at Zhang Yiming with satisfaction.

Zhang Yiming said as he spoke, and finally gradually stopped, as if he sensed some strange crux that he couldn't fathom.

"However, the original network, before the advent of infinite streaming, could also write millions of words, why don't those who want to write long continue to choose the traditional mode of creation? Wouldn't that avoid the copyright and setting problems brought by infinite streaming? In this way, there is still no way to explain why infinite streaming became popular. ”

"You can see this, it shows that you still have your brain. If you don't understand the content industry, it's okay if you can't see through that. Gu Cheng took a sip of coffee and replied with relief,

"In fact, the reason behind it is easy to understand: because readers who are purely for the sake of being cool will develop mental 'addiction resistance'. The first time a person reads a book of 'Jiangnan Seven Monsters vs. Black Wind Double Evil, and Accidentally Opened and Won' This kind of bridge section is 350,000 words on the water, it will feel cool. Even the 'Black Wind Village vs. Five Tigers Broken Door Knife' can make readers feel awesome.

But what about after reading three or five books? Readers will have higher and higher requirements for the compactness of the plot and the frequency of escalation. They may still allow the protagonist to be weak and useless at the beginning, but they will hope that he will be upgraded from being beaten by the Five Tigers with a broken door knife to being able to compete with the Seven Monsters of Jiangnan with only 20,000 words, and then use 30,000 words to destroy Mei Chaofeng, 100,000 words to do five uniques, and 200,000 words to reach the innate realm and shatter the void. 300,000 words to survive the catastrophe, 500,000 words to destroy all the gods and Buddhas......

It's like a person who is addicted to Y tablets, and then he has to take HLY, and then morphine, and even all kinds of new poisons. At this time, the traditional rhythm could no longer satisfy him. And if the pace is accelerated, the author finds that by 500,000 words, he has already done all the gods and Buddhas, and he can't continue to cheat money.

At this time, the best way is to stream indefinitely, every 500,000 words in a new world to do a round of gods and Buddhas, but also a large amount of full, do not worry about every 500,000 words to let readers pay again 'identify whether the book is a good book or a spicy chicken' time and energy costs, do not need to count on the website every 500,000 words to give a round of Sanjiang, strong promotion, selection, omni-channel...... Wouldn't everyone be happy?"

This is an endless war of pandering to obscenity, all the people who come out to sell, only on the one hand to compete faster and faster, on the other hand, but also to try to meet the contradiction of "although the pace is getting faster and faster, but to do the water is getting longer and longer and can not collapse, can not be really invincible too fast", and make enough money.

"So...... What you mean is that as long as we can reduce the time cost for users to identify whether this book is a good book or a spicy chicken, so that users are no longer afraid to identify new books and have the courage to identify new books. Then the author can also be liberated, and he doesn't have to worry about the possibility that 'once the book is finished, the reader will not recognize the pen name at all, have no sense of loyalty, and will not come to read the new book', and refuse to finish the book?"

That's what it means. Reducing the cost of users' selection and identification time is the only good medicine to save the infinite content of Huaxia online and prevent the sequel of Hollywood blockbusters. In this era of information explosion, selection and evaluation are higher values than creation. ”