Becoming a Russian Oligarch After Rebirth
Chapter 593: Reappearing Before the Eyes_1

Chapter 593: Chapter 593: Reappearing Before the Eyes_1

"Boss, should we create an account for you on Facebook? Recently, this website has become very popular among young people. As an idol for many youngsters, if you have an account and occasionally post some personal information, you should be able to expand your influence..."

In the office, Rossiyana, holding a slim Sony laptop, gleefully floated this idea to Wang Ye.

Facebook?

Wang Ye paused momentarily. This should be the website he had invested in!

On the first day back to school, he had returned to his dorm on a whim and found his roommate Sergei working on a rudimentary website. It had a creative idea, quite similar to the "future" Facebook.

Wang Ye casually invested some money, not much, just a million US dollars, and let Sergei play around with it.

Only two months had passed. Could Sergei really have made significant progress?

With a chuckle, he peered at the display on Rossiyana’s laptop. Indeed, it bore the name he came up with, "FACEBOOK"!

The website’s interface design is now far more attractive than it was before, and the content is also considerably rich.

It seems that Sergei didn’t waste the money he gave him. He put it to good use!

The website was an improved version of the popular blogging platforms of the time, primarily featuring short blog posts with images.

Anyone could register an account and post a few words or one or more photos at will.

This was quite simpler than extensive blogging and the combination of images and text attracted the younger audience.

At this time, although most mobile phones either didn’t have camera functionality or had poor camera performance, digital cameras were already popular.

Especially among university students, digital cameras were quite popular, with the cheapest ones costing a little over a hundred US dollars, and the more expensive ones costing several hundred dollars or more.

People were frequently spotted taking pictures with their digital cameras at famous locations like Red Square.

Therefore, the launch of Facebook was perfectly timed.

......

Wang Ye didn’t know, or rather he hadn’t noticed that Sergei had accomplished a lot over these two months.

After receiving the one million dollars in venture capital from Wang Ye, with the help of a professional team sent by Polar Bear Investment, Sergei established a full-fledged company.

They also rented office space in the YANDEX headquarters building at a relatively low rate and recruited numerous employees.

The servers were rented from YANDEX’s data center, and the cost was significantly lower than the market price.

Additionally, they secured advertising slots on YANDEX’s website and MAIL.RU portal – at friendship price considerate rates!

With the strong support from these two significant websites and various activities carried out by Sergei’s team in various universities, within just over two months, Facebook had become enormously popular in Russian universities and began to gain traction on the Russian internet.

It could be said that apart from the one million dollars in venture capital that Wang Ye invested, the intangible support and help he provided was priceless!

Of course, this all happened without Wang Ye’s intentional nurturing.

It wasn’t necessary for him to make deliberate arrangements; the knowledge that he invested in the website was sufficient...

When the site reappeared in front of Wang Ye two months later, it already had sizable recognition.

Even Rossiyana had become a "regular user", recommending Wang Ye to sign up for an account.

......

Looking at Facebook, Wang Ye asked with a smile, "Have you registered? What do you think of this site?"

Rossiyana fiddled with her computer for a moment before turning the screen toward Wang Ye, "Look, this is my account. I’ve been using it for nearly a month now, and it’s really nice. I already have hundreds of followers. Every time I post a picture, I get plenty of comments."

Looking at Rossiyana’s personal page, Wang Ye observed that she had indeed posted many text and photo contents.

There were recommendations for personal outfits and pictures of her working at her desk. She also posted photos of her new Land Rover.

She was quite active in interacting with her followers; there were numerous comments under each post.

Actually, Wang Ye wasn’t really looking at what Rossiyana had posted, but rather at how this personal page compared with his memories of Facebook.

Since it’s a web version, Wang Ye felt it was quite similar to the later Weibo, although its functions were not as complex.

It was like a simplified version of web Weibo!

This was just the beginning. Having too many functions wouldn’t be good either. Simplicity and user-friendliness are key.

From what he could see, the website was shaping up nicely.

After some thought, he agreed readily, "Alright then, create an account in my name. That way, I’ll have a channel to communicate with everyone. However, we can’t post too much personal information on my account. Let Yelena and the others maintain it. They can post more work-related information. If I want to post personal messages, I can use this account too."

As someone from the "future," Wang Ye knew better than anyone the power and influence of social media.

If he took the lead and became a so-called "big V" or "opinion leader" on the Russian internet or even the global internet early on, it would greatly facilitate his future career growth!

......

Rossiyana proficiently created an account for Wang Ye using his name, Mikhail, on her laptop.

This was also a convention on Facebook, where a vast majority of users used their real names.

At the beginning, the people one followed or were followed by were usually classmates or friends. Using real names was convenient as people wouldn’t have a hard time figuring out who one was.

As Facebook grew, many unknown netizens would start following you, but the "tradition" of using real names persisted.

"Boss, do you want to post something? How about this? You could sit at your desk, appearing to be studying a document intensely, with quite a few documents and other materials arranged around you, stacked if possible. I could snap a photo for you and caption it as ’A typical workday for Member Mikhail.’" Rossiyana suggested, half-jokingly and half-seriously.

Surprisingly, she had posted a similar photo herself.

A pile of files sat beside her, giving off an impression of being very busy...

Wang Ye chuckled. It seemed that this so-called "staged photography" didn’t require any formal training. Rossiyana had just been introduced to social media in the form of Facebook and had already learned how to use it effectively.

However, of course, he didn’t need any staged shots.

Since he had a better way to attract a massive number of followers, his methods wouldn’t just help him gain extensive attention but could also modestly promote Facebook’s growth!