Chapter 894 The King of Social Networking

Although Ivanta said in the interview that Android will participate in the acquisition of Nokia's equipment and services department.

But in fact, she is not very interested in this - after all, she has completed the acquisition of Motorola Mobility, and the company's operating conditions have improved now, but it is far from returning to its original scale.

It's just that both Microsoft's WP system and Nokia's mobile phone department are in competition with the industries involved in Ivanta's IC Capital.

Therefore, she is happy to disrupt the situation through this interview.

If she can help Nokia raise prices and make Microsoft pay more - or simply mess up this cooperation between the two parties, it would be great.

Just like Ivanta's answer, the connection between Stephen Elop, the current CEO of Nokia, and Microsoft can also create pressure for Stephen Elop in the acquisition negotiations with Microsoft - the other party must fight for a good price for Nokia, otherwise it will be easy to be considered as still "loyal" to Microsoft...

Having said that, even if Nokia chooses to sell their equipment and service departments, it does not mean that Nokia will withdraw from the mobile phone industry. It can only be said that they have withdrawn from the mobile phone manufacturing industry. However, Nokia's accumulation in the mobile phone industry for so many years, not to mention their research and development capabilities of related technologies, even the many patents in their patent library, just by charging patent fees to those mobile phone manufacturers, is enough for them to still make huge profits from this industry.

"There is news that Twitter will go public this year. I wonder what IC Capital, as Twitter's largest investor, thinks about this?"

When reporters asked about Twitter's listing again, Ivanta said:

"Twitter is currently developing very smoothly, with more than 250 million active users. It has been developing for 7 years, and it is the right time to go public. This matter is still in progress. If there is definite news, Twitter will issue an announcement to the media."

So far, Twitter has gone through 5 rounds of financing. IC Capital has participated in all of them except the last round of financing. Therefore, they currently hold about 32% of Twitter's shares and are the largest shareholder of Twitter.

In the E round of financing completed last year, they received up to $500 million in financing, and Twitter's valuation has reached $8 billion.

At present, in addition to IC Capital's holdings, Twitter founder Evan Williams holds the largest share, reaching 10.5%; another co-founder Jack Dorsey holds 5%; and the current CEO Richard Costolo holds 1.5%.

In addition, venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, DST Global and KPCB also participated in Twitter's investment, and their shareholding ratios ranged from 6% to 10%...

As Ivanta said, Twitter currently has more than 250 million active users - of course, this number is still far from the scale of Woaw's more than 800 million active users per month.

But at the same time, Twitter's users are particularly active, and information can be widely shared in a very short period of time.

For example, as early as the 2008 US presidential election, Ao Guanhai's Twitter popularity has been rising all the way, and he used it as the "center" of his grassroots campaign plan.

In November, after being elected, Ao Guanhai publicly thanked his Twitter followers.

In addition, Twitter is not only a giant in the mobile social network field, but also a new channel for business promotion.

The company makes money by selling embedded targeted advertising models, and the advantage of Twitter is that businesses can publish advertisements based on their user preferences and geographical distribution, and can also invest in relevant advertisements based on what they are doing, which fully locks in the target customer group, and the content is similar to the content published by users and is easy to accept. Therefore, Twitter's successful advertising model has become a new model for mobile advertising. Woaw also borrowed Twitter's successful advertising model and launched a similar advertising product last year.

Currently, Wall Street giants such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase and Standard Chartered-Merrill Lynch are interested in becoming underwriters for Twitter's IPO. Most of these investment banks initially estimated Twitter's market value to be around $10 billion.

But Ivanta insisted that Twitter's market value could not be lower than $15 billion, and the specific details of its listing are currently under discussion.

After all, Barron knew that in his previous life, Twitter's market value exceeded $25 billion on the day of its listing...

In addition, when it comes to Woaw Technology, IC Capital is also one of the major shareholders of this technology company, which has now become an Internet giant.

Woaw first emerged in the PC Internet era. After the rise of mobile Internet, Woaw was also the first social network to launch a mobile APP version, and the Woaw Chat they launched has now replaced the status of Whatsapp in the original time and space. Even because it was initially backed by Woaw's huge user base, Woaw Chat has developed more rapidly than Whatsapp in Barron's previous life.

In addition, in May last year, Woaw also acquired Instagram (IG), an online photo-sharing service provider, for a high price of $1 billion. This is a very popular photo-sharing application on Apple Appstore and Android Paly Store.

After being acquired by Woaw, relying on its larger user scale, Instagram has also achieved a leap in development. Last year, it topped the download rankings of Appstore and Play Store for several consecutive weeks.

It is worth mentioning that IC Capital is also an early investor in Instagram. It was Ivanta who facilitated Woaw's acquisition of Instagram, which also led to a slight increase in IC Capital's shareholding in Woaw.

Currently in the United States, 4G networks have covered most states. Therefore, after being acquired by Woaw, IG (Instagram) has timely launched a short video sharing function in addition to the original photo sharing function.

IG users can quickly create a 15-second MV by matching their own videos with music from the music library, or choose their favorite popular hit songs and make music videos through lip syncing and body movements.

After the launch of this function, it was quickly welcomed by users, especially young users.

Those high school and college students see this as a very cool thing, and the number of young users of IG is increasing rapidly.

In particular, many filters and gameplays added to IG later were very popular with users, and triggered a wave of craze in the United States and even Europe.

It is through launching new applications and acquiring potential companies that Woaw Technology currently occupies the largest share of the global social network. Although companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo also have some applications similar to Whatsapp, Skype, Yahoo Messenger, etc., the number of active users is far less than that of Woaw's applications.

It is also for this reason that Woaw Technology's advertising revenue has now surpassed Yahoo, and the gap with Google is gradually narrowing.