2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 320 Two Blossoms

What kind of effect will be produced by combining viral marketing with trending topics?
The answer is that the programmers at Orange Technology who are on night duty monitoring the data in real time are going crazy, and their desks are being pounded loudly by their emotional outbursts.

They are not unsophisticated people, but the growth rate is just too fast, so fast that they can't keep up.

Gu Qingqing and Gu Yanning were drawn in by the commotion outside.

"What's wrong?" Gu Yanning, who was the first to come out, shouted at the jumping crowd outside.

"Boss, we're about to make a fortune! Can you guess how many users we have by 12 o'clock today?"

After calming down, Gu Qingqing smiled calmly and said, "Judging from your appearance, the data must be very good. Tell me, what exactly is it?"

"We're just 3 users away from reaching 50 officially registered users! Oh, no, we've already exceeded 50."

"How much? 50?" Gu Yanning asked before Gu Qingqing could speak.

"Yes, 50. It's gone from 4 yesterday to 50 today!"

"Holy crap! That's amazing!" Gu Yanning exclaimed in excitement.

Gu Qingqing was also excited. What does 50 registered users mean? In the era of the mobile internet boom, 50 users are nothing.

However, in 2006, the total number of internet users in China was 1.32 million. It was launched last April and has been operating for 15 months. Despite the support of many celebrities, the most popular blog currently has only a little over ten million registered users.

Kaixin.com gained 50 registered users in just one week after its launch, a figure that surpasses even the initial launch of the blog. Apart from the viral marketing strategy devised by Boss Tan and the live photo and text broadcast of today's celebrity event, no substantial large-scale promotion was conducted.

"Haha, 50! Boss Cheng's pressure is much less now. We'll have to make him treat us when he gets back. We've drawn the fire for him."

"Yes, yes, we have to make him treat us. With these 50 users, even without MSN, we can slowly develop and operate our business."

"Wow, that's amazing! I never knew internet operations could be done like this. Boss Cheng said that Boss Tan is an excellent product manager, but I think he should be called an excellent operations manager."

Gu Qingqing was also very excited. She knew, of course, what it meant to have 50 users in a week.

"It's really great, everyone has worked hard. However, a large portion of today's new users probably registered because they wanted to vote for their idols. How to retain these users depends on the quality of our product."

"Don't worry, boss, we'll find a way to retain these users," Zhang Yunyang nodded.

Unlike users invited by email, those who vote for their idols are independent individuals. Independent individuals have no weaknesses, so the key is how to retain them. Fortunately, there will be a live text and image broadcast of the event later, which can give Kaixin.com some buffer time.

"Alright, everyone except those on duty should go back and rest. You've all worked hard in the middle of the night."

After saying that, Gu Qingqing took out 2000 yuan from her handbag and handed it to Zhang Yunyang: "Let's have a late-night snack together, then we'll head back first."

As Zhang Yunyang took the money from Gu Qingqing, he smiled and said, "Thank you, boss, but people in Beicang don't have a nightlife, so it really doesn't cost this much for a late-night snack."

"Then keep it as your budget for your next late-night snack activity."

People in Ningbo really don't have a nightlife. In this kind of weather, the liveliness on the streets only lasts until about 10:30 pm at most. In winter, it's even worse; after 9 pm, there are hardly any people on the streets.

Zhang Yunyang and his group of night owls were really not used to it when they first arrived.

Gu Qingqing knew this, of course: "Whether we can have a nightlife depends on whether we can grow bigger and stronger. If we grow bigger and stronger, the area around the Financial Building will naturally become lively."

Internet companies have many night owls who work long hours and get off work late. With the addition of night shift workers, if Orange Technology develops into a major internet company, countless small vendors will naturally come to do business nearby.

Knowing the specific data, and that the data was quite good, Gu Qingqing relaxed a lot, and drowsiness followed.

She was just a student with no management experience or technical skills. All she could do was try to be as meticulous as possible in the daily management of the company, wait for the data with the employees, and bribe them with small favors.

These are all things I learned from Tan Jincheng when I observed him.

There are no secrets on the internet. A social networking site that had just officially launched and had over 50 registered users within a week spread to every corner the very next morning. Kaixin.com did not deliberately promote it, nor did it make any response.

Tan Jincheng's strategy was to not deliberately promote how many users he had in the early stages. He wanted to lay low and develop slowly first. As for you finding out, that's not my fault.

Yesterday, Kaixin001's Alexa ranking broke into the top 200 for the first time, ranking 193rd. The social networking site, previously unknown, underwent a dramatic transformation in just one week. Meanwhile, Cheng Hao, who had been in talks with MSN for two weeks, also gained MSN's attention due to the website's sudden rise.

Two weeks ago, who did Kaixin001 even exist? It's perfectly normal for MSN, which holds the second-largest market share among instant messaging software in China and has a large number of white-collar users, to look down on Kaixin001.

Cheng Hao was also prepared for a long-term battle; if he couldn't reach an agreement, he wouldn't go back.

Unexpectedly, the situation changed after only one week of the website's launch. Although MSN's relevant departments did not understand how Kaixin001 should make a profit, the fact that it gained 500,000 registered users in one week was undeniable.

"Users are king" is an unchanging principle for internet companies. MSN saw the potential of Kaixin001 and expressed interest in cooperation.

Compared to two weeks ago, Cheng Hao is much more autonomous in his negotiations. If MSN had agreed to cooperate with Kaixin.com two weeks ago, or even a week ago, Kaixin.com would have lost even more.

Now, Cheng Hao can confidently reject some terms he doesn't like; at worst, he can just postpone exercising his share options.

A week after the website went live, Cheng Hao, who was out of town, kept a close eye on the specific data. The more he looked at it, the more he admired Boss Tan's marketing strategy. After careful consideration, he realized that this method of attracting new users was actually similar to the way Wang Xin used the lottery for student festival tickets from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University for his campus network.

They all made the most of their connections to obtain real user data. Renren.com initially used 100 tickets to obtain data on 800 real users, who were all top students from Tsinghua University. This greatly boosted Wang Xin's confidence, who had almost been discouraged after failing in several previous SNS projects.

That's right, the now-popular Renren.com was founded by that food delivery tycoon who was worth hundreds of billions in his previous life. Before founding Renren.com, he worked on several SNS website projects, all of which were developed in-house. After finding that they were useless, he started copying Facebook.

This copying actually worked, and coupled with the marketing strategies they had already learned, Xiaonei.com quickly gained a foothold in China.

Xiaonei.com is a complete copy, while Kaixin.com is a partial copy. The two have different positioning: Xiaonei.com focuses on schools, while Kaixin.com targets white-collar workers. However, they are definitely competitors.

Therefore, Kaixin.com's ultimate benchmark was Xiaonei.com. With 50 registered users in a week, Cheng Hao was confident that he could surpass Xiaonei.com within a year.

Full of confidence, Cheng Hao set off from the hotel to negotiate at MSN headquarters.

Meanwhile, Tan Jincheng, who was far away in Xiangcheng, also set off from the hotel to Tianyu's office in Xiangcheng to talk to Long Danni about Chun Ge's contract renewal.

Yesterday's event was very lively, and the vehicles sold well. Long Danni also bought 50 electric vehicles in the name of Tianyu for donation, as a way of supporting Shanchi.

Tan Jincheng could hardly believe how good their attitude was. When did these money-grubbing entertainment industry people become so easy to talk to?
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"Do you think I want to buy it? Even though we're in the entertainment industry, we still need to understand policy trends. Tan Jincheng probably hasn't realized how popular entrepreneurs like him are with local governments, so it's always good to curry favor with him before he does."

The success of FlashDrive, coupled with extensive publicity over this period, has brought it to the attention of some local governments.

Achieving profitability in just one year and maintaining large-scale expansion, with a very sound financial situation, the first phase of the Tianjin base project only required a low-interest loan of 5000 million yuan. What a tycoon!

Not only are they wealthy, but they can also solve employment and tax problems, investing without causing trouble for the local government.

Most importantly, Flash's operating model is very effective and can produce results in a short period of time!

If a project doesn't yield results within three to five years or even longer, some local government officials may lose interest, simply because it doesn't significantly contribute to their political achievements.

Three to five years from now, it's uncertain whether I'll still be in this position. But FlashTech is different. If we build the factory this year, we can achieve results next year, increase employment, and increase tax revenue. In some small places, this would be a definite achievement project for the government.

Although Tan Jincheng has realized that his current status is not what it used to be, he has not yet given it such a long time to think about it due to the limitations of his perspective in his previous life.

Unlike Long Danni, after news spread that Tan Jincheng was coming to Xiangcheng to participate in an event and to discuss Chun Ge's contract renewal with her, some local governments in Hunan Province tried to get her to help them.

The reason why the show wanted Tan Jincheng to record an episode was for this reason. Long Danni's attempt to connect the two was also a test. After Tan Jincheng clearly refused, they dared not make any more connections.

As the head of an entertainment company, she doesn't dare to interfere with her sugar daddy's schedule. If she gets caught, the contract renewal might fall through, and future collaborations will be difficult.

But these requests from local governments can't be ignored, which is quite a headache.

"Brother Chun's fans won first place in the poll on Kaixin.com. I wonder if we can take advantage of this opportunity. Also, what is the relationship between Kaixin.com and Flashpoint Technology? Why did they get the exclusive rights to live-stream the event with pictures and text from Flashpoint Technology?"

Longdanni couldn't help but ponder, but she didn't have time to think about it now.

"Let's go down and greet him. Mr. Tan should be arriving soon."

(End of this chapter)