True. Elon is flexible. Some may say even desperate.
Not desperate. He is willing to take risks that no one else is willing. When such risk taking succeeds, he also benefits more than anyone else.
I have a few updates from my IQ VIP user experience. They may answer some of your questions and bring some understanding.
IQ CEO YU Gong said in an interview that though the company is focusing on serving vast Chinese speaking population in China and around the world, it is possible for the company to expand internationally 5-8 years from now. Currently most IQ content are in Chinese without subtitles. Increasing demands may speed up the subtitle service. With my USA phone number/devices, there are some content on IQ are not available to me due to “viewing rights, copy rights”).
Subscription fee: there are now three types of subscriptions:
A) gold VIP, (USD$3.99/month, USD $9.99/quarter, $37.99/year) This VIP has 7 upgrading value growth levels according to your content viewing time, tasks, referrals, IQ activities participation etc…each level update adds benefit.B) Diamond VIP with more benefit and choices: RMB60/month, RMB 168/quarter, RMB 348/year。(please do the math yourself with currency rate).
Then there is Tennis VIP at USD$4.99/month…please see my previous post.
Bundled packages: a)If you open a credit card with a IQ signed company, you get one year free VIP membership.
b)Share one year membership with JD.
c) if you buy “data package” partner up with China mobile, you could watch content with unlimited data.
Truthfully while I was impressed so many creative business operations/ideas, I do find the website overwhelming! So much going on!
Many Chinese content producers stream their content (especially reality shows, variety shows) on Youtube channel. I was a user of that option, but if I am watching a hot show, it is guaranteed that I would be showered with ads every 10 minutes. I found it quite disturbing. Majority of Chinese people do not know how to or would not bother to go through the VPN process to watch Youtube, especially with eloquent streaming platforms available in China.
Anyone could sign up VIP subscription on the website (choose translate option at the upper right corner) with credit card and phone number worldwide.
I noticed that almost all popular hot content on IQ that used to be free now are marked with VIP requirement.
If it is a hot drama series of 48 episodes, as a non-subscriber, you can only watch the first two episodes or wait around for updates…Much increased IQ self produced high quality content. One needs to understand that it is lot cheaper to make content in China due to the cheaper labor cost, but how an investor take on the operating spending loss is very subjective. I personally am not worry too much about it. Imho, subscriptions and revenue growth should be IQ’s current main focus just like most ambitious successful companies are in their early years. but there surely needs balance.
1 Like
There is an article titled “China’s Factory of Ideas” published in Quartz News. Mainly about all kinds of live-streaming. From entertainment to business startup 
Essentially videocast, a progression of podcast.
Btw, 5G is going to be BIG. I bought some VZ to ride this wave.
why in particular?
VZ is rolling out 5G, T is distracted with nonsense purchase of time-warner, the other telecom players are too small.
Video is the next BIG thing, even Apple is going after it aggressively after many years of dragging their feet.
AMZN jumps in by purchasing Twitch. Is kind of web 3.0 
From content perspective,
web 1.0 (mostly text)
web 2.0 (mostly graphics and short videos)
web 3.0 (live audio-video streaming) - Isn’t FB trying to capitalize this with Story Watch out for new startups
I’d bet on yt etc
Auto-bet. For you, the decision is whether you should hedge
I wish yt and waymo were separate stocks.
Ok, split goog into (goog, yt, wm)
5G means telecomm is spending a fortune on rollout. Avoid.
Every G, they spend a fortune. Telecom are very good at managing huge capital expenditures.
Thus it’s never good time to bet on telecomm.
I remember reading somewhere 5G has much shorter range than 4G. So you need way more base stations for 5G. Cost is gonna be astronomical. I still not sure if we will really see broad rollout of 5G anytime soon.
Buy UBNT then 
I think the big winner in 5G will come from the left field and not at all obvious to us right now. One of the biggest winners in 3G is Instagram. Suddenly cell phone connection is fast enough to upload photos. For 4G we can watch YouTube and Netflix on cell phone.
What are the next data hogs?
4/5G will bring more livestreaming like mentioned above.
Live gaming might be a thing on the phones, too, maybe games be streamed from cloud! probably not, though heh.
Interesting. Maybe more compute will be done on cloud. IoT is a thing often mentioned in the same sentence as 5G.
Check this:
We tried!
1 Like
Yes, IOT and 5G. Pardon my ignorance, what does 5G bring besides faster internet?
I think for IOT, my bet would be on UBNT, to be honest, and arm, but second no longer trades.