Instagram website went down on July 26, which proved to be a blessing in disguise.
No matter how many media with all kinds of complex emotions or ridicule or ridicule Simon's forced support of the vase around him, the result is that instagram's exposure on the mainstream media has increased significantly, and the number of users registered on the website has soared in the next few days.
From 9:00 a.m. on July 22 to 9:00 a.m. on July 29, the total number of registered users of instagram reached 3.79 million in one week, far exceeding the expectations of millions of users in the first week of instagram's website launch.
In addition, the rapid popularity of instagram website has directly driven the sales of digital camera products.
Just the ICAM series of tincobail company, the month on month sales in the past week increased by 46%, directly from 150000 units in the previous week to a record of 220000 units in a single week. Many retailers even ran out of stock due to insufficient stock.
Simon sent an e-mail to several igritte executives to remind them of the importance of the product ecosystem.
However, instagram's success has brought a small side effect.
July 29, Friday.
At 10 a.m. on the east coast, the U.S. Department of justice officially held a press conference, announcing that it would launch an anti-monopoly investigation against Cisco, AOL and igrit at the same time.
In the Q & a session, instagram was specially mentioned as evidence of westrow's monopoly of Internet resources.
Simon was in New York this day, watching the Justice Department press conference for 40 minutes, and got more than 60 pages of investigation documents ahead of time.
The main clauses involved in the anti-monopoly investigation by the Ministry of justice include igritte's use of its market advantages in network business to force customers to bundle application software, ie's monopoly on Internet interface to restrict competition, AOL's suspected monopoly of the market by signing exclusive agreements, and AOL's malicious discrimination against small businesses in network support Cisco set Internet standards by connecting with AOL and igritte to eliminate competition, etc.
Attorney General Janet Renault told the media on the scene that the goal of the anti-monopoly investigation is to prevent the three companies, Cisco AOL igrit, from monopolizing the Internet industry resources.
In order to achieve this goal, the Department of justice will eventually force strow to abandon the multiple ownership structure of Cisco and AOL, and prevent the executives of the three companies from serving as directors of the board of directors among the enterprises, so as to cut off the close interest relationship among the three companies, and split part of the businesses or products of the three companies.
At the beginning of the IPO of Cisco and AOL, in order to promote the communication between the three companies and control the power in the hands of westero system, Simon let the executives of the three companies act as the board directors of each company.
This move is obviously inappropriate.
As the federal government and various media calls for antitrust investigations on the three companies are growing, Simon has let Tim Berners Lee, John Chambers, Steve Case and others withdraw from each other's boards of directors in advance.
In fact, the Ministry of justice has achieved an anti-monopoly goal ahead of schedule by "bringing up the old story again".
The press conference in the morning has just ended. Without igritte's generous opening up of the basic patents of the world wide web, vistro system will not see the current vigorous development of the Internet industry. Vistro system has no attempt to monopolize the market. The close cooperation of the three companies is just to jointly promote the development of the Internet industry.
At the end of the article, the author warned that the investigation by the Ministry of justice is likely not only not to promote the development of the Internet industry, but also to damage the enthusiasm of innovators in the field of new technology.
The capital market is always the most sensitive side.
In the past week or so, as the rumor of the anti-monopoly investigation against Cisco, AOL and igrit by the Ministry of justice has been released, the stock prices of Cisco and AOL, which have been listed on the stock market, have continued to fall.
The press conference on Friday morning has just begun. Half an hour after the opening, the stock prices of Cisco and AOL have dropped by 3.1% and 2.3% respectively. The market value of more than $3 billion has disappeared. It is expected that the stock prices of both companies will drop by more than 5% throughout the day.
Simon had a plan for that.
Since June, cersei capital's hedge fund cersei fund management company has gradually reduced the long positions of Cisco and AOL. For this reason, cersei capital also carried out a huge dividend return in early July, reducing the fund size to less than $3 billion.
Simon, of course, did not turn short.
For the sake of tax avoidance, a large part of the billions of dollars of cash back has been directly transferred to a newly established sub fund account of Heiyan asset management company, which will continue to be used for investment in technology stocks in the future.
In the next few years, the overall trend of technology stocks in the U.S. stock market is bound to be all the way up. Just because of antitrust and other reasons, the stock prices of two Internet leading stocks, Cisco and AOL, are bound to fluctuate continuously. For speculative capital that likes short-term hedging, the stocks of the two companies will undoubtedly become the best operating targets.Simon, who is inclined to non speculative long-term investment in his heart, is not going to play this roller coaster game with them.
Cersei fund management company, whose scale has been reduced again, will continue to focus on long hedging of technology stocks in the future, but it will no longer involve Cisco and AOL. Its target will turn to technology enterprises such as Microsoft, Intel, Oracle and sun, which have not been subject to anti-monopoly investigation. It may also consider that general electric and Berkshire Hathaway will also follow the US Stock market bull cycle and the arrival of a soaring traditional companies.
While responding through the media, Cisco, AOL and igritte are also expanding their legal teams to cope with the ensuing investigations and lawsuits.
This anti-monopoly investigation is bound to take a long time, so Simon didn't pay much attention to it.
In the morning, he watched the live broadcast of the press conference of the Department of justice with James Leibold and others at the headquarters of Manhattan westero company. After discussing the follow-up measures, Simon began his day's work.
The first is the North American box office data of the past box office week.
Simon is more concerned about this matter than the antitrust investigation launched today.
In fact, most of the public are not too concerned about the Department of justice's anti-monopoly investigation of the three companies in the westero system. They can see the news in the newspapers at most, and chat with people around them as a conversation after dinner.
Denise Entertainment's "God sees a movie" boom last week was different.
Because of the continuous spread of this view, the total weekly box office in North America in the past week from July 22 to July 28 reached 187 million US dollars, an increase of 19% compared with 156 million US dollars in the previous week. According to the average ticket price of $4.20 at the present stage, it is equivalent to an additional 7 million viewers this week.
Specific box office data.
After dominating the top five at the box office last Monday, danelis entertainment gave up the top spot this week.
Harrison Ford, produced by paramount, starred in the new film "burning eyebrows", took the first place in the weekly box office with $39.05 million.
After losing several new films in the summer season, paramount finally turned around.
Simon was also a little relieved. From the beginning of 1994 to now, there has finally been a blockbuster movie that has nothing to do with danielis entertainment. In the face of public criticism that Denise entertainment has also monopolized Hollywood, we can now refute it: look, there's "burning eyebrow pursuit".
Even the follow-up of "burning eyebrows" is to be written into Denise Entertainment's quarterly and annual financial reports to show that the company still has competitors in Hollywood.
It's not a trivial detail.
Many monopolistic giants in the West will deliberately list their competitors in their financial reports to show that they do not monopolize the market. Even if most of the listed competitors have never been heard of by the public and occupy a poor market share, they have to do so.
After Paramount's "burning eyebrow pursuit", the phenomenal "Forrest Gump" was released for the fourth week. Affected by the topic of "God sees the movie", the box office decline again maintained a very considerable 21%, and received another $30.78 million. This plot movie, which has been regarded as a God movie by many fans, opened for one month, with a cumulative box office of $170.73 million.
Even if the total budget for production and publicity reaches US $80 million, "Forrest Gump" has begun to bring profits to danielis entertainment. With the continuous fermentation and spread of the film's word-of-mouth, the box office of the overseas market is also excellent.
In order to spread the word-of-mouth of North America to overseas, Simon initially adopted the strategy of delaying the release of overseas mainstream markets.
This strategy has proved to be very successful.
With a general delay of one to two weeks, the cumulative box office of the released overseas tickets of Forrest Gump has easily exceeded 110 million US dollars.
Third on the list is stealing the wire.
Although the length of this crime action movie is nearly three hours, stimulated by the word-of-mouth marketing and the topic of "God sees the movie" of the danilisi film distribution team, the first week of the movie still achieved more than ten thousand, with a revenue of $22.93 million in seven days. Because the time of three hours limits the number of film rehearsals in a single day, the average price of $11000 is actually better than the average price of $15000 in many big movies.
James Cameron's "true lies" ranked fourth.
In the third week of release, the film continued to earn $20.2 million, and it was also the biggest film decline this week, reaching 33%. For a pure commercial film, in the face of many powerful competitors, the decline is actually within a considerable range.
At the same time, the cumulative box office of "true lies" also reached $91.63 million, officially breaking the cost line of $90 million.
In the past, the cost of "true lies" reached 115 million US dollars. However, this time, under the strict cost control of Denise, the production budget of the film was 90 million US dollars and the publicity investment was 30 million US dollars.It is estimated that the total box office between us $140 million and US $150 million in the mainland will not be able to recover. Fortunately, considering the box office outside Shanghai, danelis and fox can make profits directly through cinema distribution.
Quentin Tarantino's Romeo stained with blood came fifth on the list.
It's also a crime movie, "Romeo stained with blood" is a crime feature film, and "stealing the line of fire" is a crime action film, both of which have reached the classic level of public praise. The publicity team of danielis entertainment, which is responsible for the two projects, skillfully linked the two films with the topic of "God sees the film", and promoted them as the two most worthy crime movies in this summer program .
As a result, after the box office exceeded expectations in the first week, the box office of "blood stained Romeo" fell only 23% in the second week in the face of two new heavyweight films, and then closed at $18.39 million, with a cumulative box office of $42.36 million.
In two weeks, according to the step-by-step rule, gaomen pictures has recovered all the production and distribution costs of $25 million and started to make a profit.
Stimulated by the topic of "God sees the movie", in addition to the top five, the follow-up films such as Batman: the rise of the dark knight and evocation are also rejuvenated.
Batman: the rise of the dark knight, which ranked sixth, fell 21% this week. It continued to earn $12.79 million, with a cumulative box office of $345.26 million. It is still $55 million away from breaking the $400 million mark.
If it's any other movie, with only $12.79 million left at the box office in a single week, it may earn up to $30 million to $40 million in the future. However, Batman: the rise of the Dark Knight still has a long-term screening cycle of at least two or three months, and it's not difficult to continue to earn $55 million at the box office.
The seventh ranked "soul" made $7.01 million this week, down 25%, reaching a cumulative box office of $112.67 million.
But the cumulative box office of the top seven films has reached 150 million US dollars, which is the same as last week. A series of other old films have contributed more than 30 million US dollars, reaching 187 million US dollars in total. Although it's not the highest in a single week, it's already very good at the end of this summer season.
Among them, Quentin Tarantino's "Romeo stained with blood" earned $42.36 million in two weeks, and the next week's decline was only 23%. Without other strong competitors in the future, the possibility of being promoted to the 100 million yuan box office Club increased sharply again.
Simon's favorite "stealing the line of fire" earned $22.93 million in the first week, which also exceeded the expectations of the Denise film publicity team.
Moreover, the film's word-of-mouth continues to ferment, and because of the three hour time limit on film arrangement, it delays the entry time of many audiences. Considering the media word-of-mouth and audience feedback and other factors, the publicity team judges that the follow-up trend of the film may be better than that of Romeo stained with blood.
In fact, the first week with more than 20 million US dollars already has the potential to be promoted to the box office Club of 100 million US dollars. Whether we can cross the threshold in the end depends on the specific trend in the next few weeks.
In any case, the success of steal the wire has been confirmed.
In the new week of July 29, three new films were released in North American Theaters, including MGM's sci-fi thriller alien, Warner Bros' feature film Black Steed and fox's love story.
Natasha henschucci's amazing film "the alien" is MGM's second film in the summer season. Compared with other big studios that have launched at least three or four new films, MGM's film production still hasn't improved much. However, the box office has been a great success of the "speed of life and death", enough to let MGM's recovery further.
The production cost of alien is $30 million, which is definitely not low for MGM.
Although the feedback from the early internal audition was not as good as expected, MGM still gave 2379 opening screens because Simon was optimistic about the film.
"Black Steed", which tells the story of a pure race horse of noble blood who has been wandering from a rich family to "Masheng experience", has a very good reputation after the painting. The comprehensive media score has reached 8 points, but the theme is too small and the box office potential is very general.
Fox's story of a fallen city, starring Nicholas Cage and Bridget Fonda, tells the story of a romantic relationship triggered by a winning lottery ticket, which satisfies many people's ultimate dream of both money and sex.
In a word, both of the two stars are from the second generation of Hollywood, one is from the Coppola family, and the other is the famous Fonda family. Their acting skills are all right. The film's comprehensive media score of 7.1 is also good. They are the main competitors of this week's "alien".