Since they are reborn, they must be supported by the school beauties.

Chapter 169 Establishment and Improvement of Algorithms
Yan Ruoxuan was in her dorm room with her laptop, constantly refreshing her school's intranet homepage.

She brought a brand new ThinkPad laptop with her when school started, but she hadn't had internet access before.

But after Chen Cheng set up the campus network, she immediately activated the campus network in her dormitory so that she could keep track of various situations on the campus network.

Seeing her fan count soaring, she felt a surge of joy. Not only was there a chance to win this new fan acquisition competition, but more importantly, she could actually do something for Chen Cheng.

Although she is relatively introverted and reserved, she is actually very smart and has always been very interested in and talented in computers and the Internet. She can see the soil and logic behind Renren.com's establishment and knows that the most important thing now is to make Renren.com popular among college students across the country as soon as possible.

Generally speaking, as long as a university can attract one or two active users, those one or two people will continuously bring more alumni to the campus network.

As more and more people are brought in, and those who are brought in also keep bringing in more people, the number of users on Renren.com will grow exponentially.

The college students in our company come from all over the country, and with several thousand people, we can cover at least several hundred universities. Once these several thousand people join Renren.com, it will definitely greatly help the growth rate of Renren.com.

Just as she was basking in the glow of her rapidly growing number of followers, she received a call from Chen Cheng. To her surprise, Chen Cheng immediately asked her if she had told her family about Renren.com.

Yan Ruoxuan asked in surprise, "How did you know?"

Chen Cheng said, "I can see the backend data. Almost all of your new followers are from the IP addresses of Su Nan. I don't need to think to know that you must have asked your family for help."

"whee."

Yan Ruoxuan smiled smugly and asked, "Impressive, right? Don't let me give you the bonus tonight, I want to collect it."

Chen Cheng laughed and said, "They were issued yesterday and we're receiving them today. Anyone who didn't know better would think we were doing something shady."

Yan Ruoxuan asked him nervously, "In that case, would it be better if I withdrew from the competition?"

Chen Cheng said, "I was just joking with you. Your number of followers speaks for itself, who can question that?"

After saying that, Chen Cheng added seriously, "Thank you, class monitor. I just took a look, and these users are all senior students who have already graduated and started working. The users I promoted at the school mainly attracted current college students. I haven't been able to find a good entry point for the graduate student group. You've helped me open up the market right away."

"really?"

Hearing Chen Cheng speak so earnestly, Yan Ruoxuan was very happy. However, she was also afraid that Chen Cheng was just saying nice things to comfort her, so she couldn't help but ask another question.

"of course it's true."

Chen Cheng explained, "The biggest barrier between social circles is actually age. If Renren.com is only used by a group of current students, it will be difficult to develop a graduate group."

"Think about it, university is only four years long. Excluding graduate school, the social circle you can connect with during university is only about four years apart. Once the age difference exceeds four years, even though you are both alumni, you will never have the chance to take classes at the same school or add each other as friends on the school's intranet."

"So, the social circle on Renren.com is also a four-year level. I am now leveling up from the first level, fighting my way up. You have already helped me reach the second and third levels."

Yan Ruoxuan asked curiously, "What about the highest level?"

Chen Cheng said, "The highest level should be to break through layer by layer to the first batch of college students in our new China. They are at least seventy or eighty years old. If the Internet becomes more and more popular in the future, it may really attract these users to join Renren.com. At that time, Renren.com will be considered complete."
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The second user acquisition competition started at 8 pm last night.

Therefore, Chen Cheng will announce the list after 8 o'clock and distribute the prize money to all the users who come to claim their prizes tonight.

So he talked to Liu Shiyu and they planned to go to the music room to practice at seven o'clock.

After the afternoon classes ended, the five of his roommates went to the on-campus printing shop, while he went to a nearby Sichuan restaurant.

Upon arriving at the second floor of the Sichuan restaurant, I was surprised to find that all the senior students were still at their posts.

I asked around and found out that everyone's schedule wasn't too full, and it wouldn't be a problem to skip some of the less meaningful electives, so they all came to start working early.

Xiao Peng broke down Chen Cheng's needs in detail and said to Chen Cheng, "Mr. Chen, I think we can launch the large fishpond after we develop it. In that case, the fishpond feature can be available to users this weekend. Didn't you say that the small fishpond can only be applied for after everyone has reached 500 members? I think this feature can be launched next week. These few days in between will allow users to familiarize themselves with how the fishpond works."

Chen Cheng greatly admired Xiao Peng's logical thinking.

He hadn't originally planned to rush the fishpond's progress; launching it next week was perfectly acceptable to him.

However, Xiao Peng was able to break down his requirements well. With the overall project completion time remaining unchanged, he was able to prioritize the early launch of some functions of the project. This way of thinking shows that he genuinely wanted to do things well, rather than just doing the job that the boss assigned.

Moreover, Chen Cheng saw Xiao Peng's split as beneficial and harmless. Launching the large fishponds of various universities ahead of schedule over the weekend would also give users of the campus network more to play with.

So he agreed and said, "Senior Xiao's consideration is very detailed and thorough. I think we can follow your proposed pace. Let's get the big fish pond online this weekend."

Xiao Peng nodded and said, "We've done an evaluation and selected the most suitable BBS source code. We've already started refining and secondary development. I think the Big Fishpond feature should be online as early as Saturday afternoon."

"Okay." Chen Cheng said with a look of satisfaction, "Then let's tentatively set it to go online at 6 pm on Saturday. At that time, I will push the news of the Fishpond launch to all users in the background. We also need to add a Fishpond icon after the school section on the personal homepage as the entrance to the school's Fishpond."

"no problem."

Xiao Peng agreed, and then asked him, "By the way, Mr. Chen, the essence of Fishpond is still a BBS. In that case, we must have the role of administrators or moderators to maintain the content and order within the forum. How do you think we should select these moderators?"

Chen Cheng waved his hand: "I won't elect a moderator. Moderators have too much power. Once the number of people in the community increases, moderators are likely to have ulterior motives."

Many of the so-called moderators on Baidu Tieba prioritize personal gain. At best, they suppress and eliminate dissidents within the forum; at worst, they directly collaborate with unscrupulous merchants and scammers, using Tieba as a tool for making money. The chaotic and corrupt atmosphere of many Tieba forums is a direct result of this kind of corrupt structure.

So Chen Cheng told Xiao Peng, "Let's set up a 'like' and 'dislike' button under every post in the fishpond. Let users decide whether a post should be featured or blocked based on their own actions."

Then, Chen Cheng explained in detail: "If a post has received fewer than twenty likes and dislikes, it's assumed that the number of likes is too low, and no action will be taken for the time being."

"If a post receives more than twenty likes and twenty dislikes, and the number of dislikes exceeds the number of likes, we will prevent it from appearing on the first page."

"If a post receives twice as many dislikes as it receives likes, it should not appear on the first three pages."

"If a post receives three times as many dislikes as it receives likes, it will be buried on the last page. If more than one page of posts are buried, they will be sorted by the number of dislikes, with the post with the most dislikes appearing at the bottom."

"If the number of dislikes is five times the number of likes, the post will be blocked and not seen by any user other than the poster."

Xiao Peng found this logic quite refreshing, so he asked, "Should this logic be made public to users?"

"of course not."

Chen Cheng said earnestly, "This is our basic algorithm, an important asset for our future development, and it must be kept strictly confidential."

A truly fair and impartial recommendation mechanism is algorithmic recommendation.

When you attract different products to your mall, and then entrust one person with deciding whose products to include, whose products to display, and how much display space to allocate, that person will inevitably use that authority to line their own pockets.

The drawback of human recommendations is that even if a product is not the consumer's favorite, but it offers the highest rebates, decision-makers will allocate resources to that product for their own benefit, thereby making money for themselves while reducing the platform's profits.

However, algorithm-based recommendations do not have these problems. Algorithm-based recommendations analyze the products with the highest conversion rates and profit margins, and then place them in the best positions to drive higher sales.

This is also the foundation for ByteDance's future rise.

Why are Toutiao and Douyin always the products that understand users best? It's because their algorithms are the most advanced and understand you best.

ByteDance's algorithms may even become advanced technologies that countries restrict from export in the future.

Before ByteDance was founded, many domestic internet products had almost no algorithms.

Every portal website, whether it's Sina, NetEase, Sohu, or later Tencent, displays and promotes information in the same way as traditional media. There's an editorial department operating behind the scenes. Like a newspaper editorial department, they pre-edit what news to put in each position and then push the page to all users.

The result is that an 18-year-old girl and an 80-year-old man receive exactly the same inquiries after opening the portal website.

But for many years, no one in the self-proclaimed advanced internet industry has realized this problem.

They don't realize that some people only like to read celebrity gossip, some only like to read about national affairs, some pay attention to international events, some pay attention to military development, and some even like to read about family matters and all sorts of oddities in real life.

In the eyes of internet people of that era, it was impossible to please everyone, so I simply didn't try to please anyone. I was like a university cafeteria, just serving out a whole bunch of food and letting everyone choose what they wanted to eat.

Later, ByteDance changed its approach.

Although he also provided a lot of information for users to choose from, he was clearly smarter in that he developed an algorithm to monitor the entire selection process and to remember and analyze what each user liked to see.

Just like each customer has a thoughtful waiter by their side, after serving you a few meals, the waiter will learn your tastes and then try to bring you some of the dishes he thinks you like the next time you come.

Previously, users were always thrown into the cafeteria to queue for food, and they had never received such thoughtful treatment before. They were suddenly spoiled into scumbags by this algorithm, and if you let them choose what to eat, they no longer have the patience.

Chen Cheng plans to start building and improving the algorithm from the very beginning of the fishpond's establishment.

Editing an algorithm is like writing a law from scratch; it requires developers to refine it bit by bit. As the algorithm's rules become more numerous, reasonable, and precise, the law's authority also increases.

The underlying logic of "likes" and "dislikes" is just the tip of the iceberg of an algorithm. As the algorithm accumulates more and more rules, its adaptability to users becomes higher and higher.

Once this algorithm is built, we can use it to create a portal, or other products, and in the future, we can even use it to create news and short video apps.

As long as your algorithm is advanced and efficient, whatever product you make will become the most popular with users, and this core algorithm will keep you in a leading position!
(End of this chapter)