When countless media tried every means to contact Simon to verify the authenticity of a series of leaked information, in the following days, the Hurst Group continued to use its own media platform to successively throw out a number of heavyweight gossips related to Simon, including Catherine who is actually Simon's lover, Simon had an affair with the wife of a certain action male star, and the Westeros system once interfered with the 1993 New York mayoral election, etc.

Unfortunately, perhaps most of them are facts, but the Hurst Group has basically failed to produce much substantial evidence.

Without evidence, it is slander.

In a society like the United States, slander is a very serious crime.

Of course Simon would not sit still and wait for death.

While quietly launching the Westeros system's lawyer team to collect information that can be sued, the Westeros family's public relations team also launched with all their might to resolutely fight back against the revelations from media under the Hearst Group.

Not only that, Westeros also issued an ultimatum to other large American media forces with a tough attitude. In this incident, as long as you stand on the side of the Hurst Group and participate in the hustle, you will always be the enemy of the Westeros system in the future. Once the enemy is selected, there will be only confrontation and no cooperation in the future, and the Westeros system will not give any possibility of reconciliation.

Faced with Simon's strong statement without leaving any room for room, not to mention the several old-fashioned paper media groups that are negotiating cooperation with Igrit Company, many other traditional media forces quickly stopped after following the trend.

Unlike the complete breakup between the Westeros system and the Hurst Group, other media forces are very clear that if they participate this time, they will really not leave room for themselves.

Even some old media families do not understand what the Hurst family is doing.

Even if the recent tossing and rebelling, the Westeros couple really triggered a divorce war and caused a severe damage to the Westeros system, can the Hurst family suffer from what benefits?

However, there are always too many unreasonable things in this world.

Perhaps the Hurst family believed that such an action would allow Simon Westeros to experience the strength of the century-old media family controlling public opinion like many enemies of the Hurst family in the past, and from then on, he retreated and even took the initiative to seek compromise.

But now it is not a hundred years ago.

It is obvious that Hurst Group originally wanted to take the lead in triggering a public opinion storm with its own media platform to attack Simon Westeros, just like the large-scale manipulation of public opinion several times during the heyday of the Hurst family many years ago. However, when other large media companies with slightly more powerful in North America stopped, Hurst Group immediately exposed it nakedly.

Most of the public think they are very smart and can see the essence of many things clearly.

When they discovered that all the media platforms that attacked Simon Westeros had become a media group of Hurst Group, and other print media either kept neutral and watched the fun or were still saying good things for Simon Westeros, the credibility of Hurst Group's revelations suddenly dropped sharply.

Simon Westero's approach to handling tax evasion incidents of "lumbar sperm" and "leg sperm" that were first exposed has even aroused the favor of many netizens on the Internet.

After the two lovers were arrested by the IRS, the young super tycoon did not rush to publicly deny the removal of himself because of media revelations. It can be imagined that this must be a common practice for many other wealthy celebrities. However, Simon Westeros publicly let his lawyer team bail the two girls without any concealment within less than an hour, and then generously paid the tax for the two girls.

Not only that, in order to avoid the two women being harassed by the influx of media, Westeros immediately sent his own private plane to pick them up from New York.

Don’t talk about lovers, even many husbands may not be able to do this level.

Isn’t it natural for a man who can bring a true sense of security to any woman and have many lovers?

As for the Hurst family.

The whole story has been exposed on the Internet.

Such a media family that once became notorious for starting a business by exaggerating and inciting people. They do not keep their business promises, but still rely on their own media resources to retaliate. They are so despicable and despicable that there is no need to continue to exist.

Including Doris Fitcher, who has been constantly exposed to his former employer's privacy during this period, has also been poached by the media.

This waitress who once enjoyed the generous treatment of the Westeros family not only did not know how to be grateful, but was caught on the spot when she sold her employer's privacy to the Hurst Group and was forced to get out. This time, she was obviously still a woman who jumped out for the sake of interests. Is there any credibility?

When Doris Fitcher was interviewed by a local TV station under the Hearst Group, she burst into tears and revealed that she was kidnapped by Simon Westeros, who was like a mafia, and almost died in the distant island of Tierra del Fuego, but she did not gain sympathy. Instead, many people expressed their gratitude on the Internet.

For the betrayer, it was so cheap to throw her into Tierra del Fuego.

It should be thrown directly into the Antarctic to feed penguins.

So, after all this trouble, the impact of the whole thing on Simon was probably the only difference between the stock prices of a series of listed companies in the Westeros system fluctuated again due to the market's concerns about the possible divorce of the Westeros.

However, when some hedging capitals realized that the short contracts they had sold were immediately absorbed by the market, and the related capitals of the Westeros system were still generously lending stocks of various subsidiaries, they immediately suppressed the idea of ​​selling large shorts.

In March 1994, the ups and downs of the technology stock market have made many short capitals that have suffered huge losses like frightened birds.

Sensitive movements in the hedging field are rapidly transmitted to the stock market.

Even if we cannot obtain the exact news from the Westeros system, due to the conservative market, in the last few trading days of March, although the stock prices of listed companies such as Cisco and American Online, which are the core of Westeros system, fluctuated continuously, they did not show a downward trend in the first half of March.

Even, many sensitive people realize that Simon Westeros is deliberately not making clarifications.

Because March is the last delivery month of the first quarter, many hedging contracts will be delivered in the near future, and there are also a large number of brand new positions that need to be established.

The market remains uncertain, which is the best state to attract capital to take risks.

If the Westeros publicly clarified that there is no rift in the marriage, whether true or false, the stock prices of Cisco and other companies will tend to stabilize. Many hedging capital, which had just suffered heavy losses in the fluctuations of technology stocks in March, will inevitably be even more sluggish and will not enter the market rashly.

This is indeed the case.

In recent days, Cersei Fund Management has closed about $5 billion in stock long contracts and continued to establish a new long position of $2 billion. The total long scale for technology stocks is still as high as $9 billion.

At the same time, as of March 31, the total book capital scale of Cersei Fund Management has increased from US$5 billion at the beginning of the year to US$6.7 billion now, but the book profit in the first quarter reached US$1.7 billion, with a growth rate of 34%, which has exceeded the annual yield of many hedge funds.

This momentum continues. In 1994, Cersei Fund Management, which continued to bet on net longs in technology stocks through large-scale low-leverage, is still expected to bring investors a full-year net income of no less than 100%.

The operational trends of Cersei Fund Management, coupled with the lessons learned in March, have led more and more hedge funds to turn to net long positions in technology stocks, which is the main reason why Cersei Capital's recent long positions in technology stocks have shrunk from $12 billion to $9 billion.

There are fewer and fewer short sellers, and no one accepts orders for long contracts. Cersei Capital's operating team is already preparing to operate directly through the stock spot market.

With the continued rise of the Nasdaq technology stock sector, buying technology stocks directly at this stage can also achieve very generous returns as long as you can suppress your greed and exit at the right time.

Overall, under the strong suppression of the Westeros system, although the storm initiated by the Hurst Group did allow the public to see some unknown side of Simon, if the substantial impact on the Westeros system is basically equivalent to nothing.

Users did not refuse to use the World Wide Web because of Simon's negative refusal, nor did they stop watching Daenerys Entertainment videos because of Simon's scandal. The capital market continues to pursue Westeros concept stocks, and the development momentum of various subsidiaries of Westeros system is still strong in the first quarter.

As for Simon's personal reputation, as a person who is strong and hard and cold inside, the troubles from the outside world over the years have never really changed his mood.

The public is always forgetful.

When the tide passes, more people see only a figure standing at the top of the world pyramid, so that everyone can only look up to. Even if they are still in a negative mind, it is hard to say whether this kind of thinking is based on true moral norms or pure jealousy.

Friday, April 1.

April Fool's Day.

On this day, Hurst Group was still using its media platform to launch tireless attacks on Simon. In the morning, Egret suddenly released an April Fools Day joke industry news. The content was about the first web social game in the history of Internet, "Happy Farm", which opened last Friday. This is the first practical application of Flash animation technology developed by Egret Company in the field of online games.

It was officially opened at 9:00 am last Friday, and it was approved for 7 days on April 1st, and the homepage of the Igret Portal was recommended directly. Relying on the Facebook social network with a huge user base, Happy Farm, it has gained 6.97 million gamers in just one week.

6.97 million, what is this?

A series of Nintendo console games that have been sold in recent years, all of which have sold more than 5 million.

Therefore, a social game that has already gained 6.97 million users in just one week of release, besides "miracle", it is difficult to find other more appropriate words to describe it.

Of course, some people realize the difference between this game at the first time.

"Happy Farm" is a free social game. Although it has an in-app purchase system, most users can play it without spending money. Therefore, this disadvantage seems to be immediately exaggerated by the actual sales of the console game.

According to the high selling price of single-player games of 60 or 70 US dollars, if the sales volume is 6.97 million, the concept will be completely different.

However, the Igrit portal also announced the first week of revenue of this first-ever Flash social game.

In seven days, not only did the increase of players up to 6.97 million, but through the relatively simple fertilizer props in "Happy Farm", the game brought Igret's revenue of US$2.61 million in just the first week.

$2.61 million, which seems to be not much, but the sales volume of console game cassettes is only about 30,000 to 40,000 boxes.

But one thing that no one can ignore is that this is just the income from the first week of "Happy Farm" opening.

Even if we do not consider the continued increase in the number of users of Happy Farm, if we maintain a single-week income of US$2.61 million, the theoretically, the total annual revenue of this game will reach US$135 million.

$135 million, this is no longer the revenue scale that most console games can match.

However, the actual total revenue of "Happy Farm" must be far exceeding the figure of $135 million.

Because this social game, which has shown a phenomenal trend just one week after it was opened, is still in the early stages of continuous explosion in user scale.

In the press release of the Igrit Portal, the official forecast that the total number of users of Happy Farm worldwide is expected to reach 50 million in the next two years, and the annual revenue figure is also expected to reach 30 to 400 million US dollars.

Although the article also confesses that the life cycle of social games may be short, with a maximum of only two years, but an average annual income of US$300 million to US$400 million is earned per year. Needless to say, based on the total revenue of US$700 million, both developer EA and operator Facebook are definitely making money and making money.

You should know that a famous Facebook game blogger revealed that the social game "Happy Farm" has a development cycle of only two months. The budget expenditure is mainly the salary of the development team, and the overall production cost is even less than $1 million.

The budget expenditure of less than $1 million has been exchanged for a huge income of $700 million in two years, which can be described as grabbing money.

With the official report of Igrit Company, many users who were not very interested in "Happy Farm" have clicked on the game direct interface of the Igrit portal. Users who had not originally opened Facebook also specially opened their own social platform for this game.

Whether it is online portals or traditional media, with this report from the Igret Portal, they were attracted by the sudden popularity of this game in a very short time.

Then, as media reporters gathered information to prepare for the relevant reports on the next day, more and more people realized that the success of "Happy Farm" may not lie in the game itself. Of course, for players, this web game that integrates casual social interaction and is the first web game that uses Igret's Flash animation technology, which is very interesting and playable, but the fundamental reason for its success is that Igret's company almost monopolizes the huge user base of the Internet portal.

In recent years, industry analysts who have been paying attention to the Internet industry have been curious about how the Igrit portal should monetize its huge user base. After all, in the past few years, the main source of revenue of Igrit Company has been software sales, and the rapidly growing advertising business and e-commerce. Although they all rely on the Igrit Company's huge user base, the connections are not very direct and close after all.

This has led to some media even predicting that as the scale of Internet users continues to increase exponentially, facing the rapid expansion of huge operating costs, Igret is likely to have to actively distribute its own exclusive network interface in order to reduce costs.

Or this is the reason why the previous MSN portal and AOL portal were opened.

Now, a social game with a production budget of less than $1 million has been released, which directly proves the huge commercial potential of the huge user scale of Igrit Company.

In two years, the total revenue is expected to be 700 million US dollars. According to the sharing rules discovered in the industry, Egret will first take 20% of the total revenue as operating expenses. In fact, there is still a possible amount of water. The remaining 80% will be shared equally with the developer affiliated with Daenerys Entertainment.

Overall, Egret Company was able to earn more than $400 million from its estimated total revenue of $700 million. Even if all expenses such as marketing operation costs and later taxes are excluded, its expected net profit will not be less than $200 million, and its average net profit will be $100 million per year.

Among the Fortune 500 companies in the 1993 Fortune magazine's 1993 company, there were only 129 companies with annual net profits of more than US$100 million.

For Egret, this is just the benefit of a social game.

Since this model has been proven to be successful, will Egret Company only launch this game?

Of course it is impossible.

It can be imagined that the future is just an online game. Relying on its own terrifying large user base, as long as it operates properly, it can bring a steady stream of huge profits to Igrit.

For Simon, who flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco on Friday because of "Happy Farm", the popularity of this game was both a bit unexpected and expected.
To be continued...