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

Chapter 178 Hurry up and launch paid services
After witnessing the scale of the fishpond, Yang Siqi felt like a frog in a well, only seeing the sky from the bottom of its own lap.

You only manage a small patch of sky above your head, while Renren.com manages the entire universe.

It was at this moment that he clearly realized that the Galo Forum was basically finished, and almost all university forums across the country were finished.

Those single-purpose forums simply can't compete with others.

Chen Cheng's team witnessed the product's amazing properties firsthand that night.

A product whose overall code 70% called on the BBS source code, under Chen Cheng's magical modifications, was able to include all schools in the country, allowing all graduates to find their alma mater in an instant.

This is almost the ability to turn lead into gold.

That night, the number of posts in the fishpond increased wildly.

Ten thousand articles, fifty thousand articles, one hundred thousand articles...

The number of replies skyrocketed to several million.

In the fishpond, a large group of students were posting frantically, excitedly chatting with classmates and teachers they hadn't seen in a long time.

The younger teachers originally used the school's intranet simply to find their classmates from university.

Unexpectedly, the fishpond feature was suddenly launched.

They found their alma mater, their high school, and suddenly realized that they could also find the school where they now work.

So they all came to the fishpond where they worked.

What moved them upon arrival was that one by one, all the graduates they had mentored returned.

They kept posting in the fishpond, either introducing themselves or specifically looking for classmates and teachers by name.

This brought tears to their eyes.

In an era where information exchange is relatively difficult, people cherish this unexpected opportunity for communication.

Just then, the official Renren website released another message.

This time, the official announcement stated that the "Little Fish Pond" gameplay will be officially launched next week.

The official explanation for "small fishpond" is clear.

Once the number of participants in a large fishpond reaches 500, a small fishpond can be opened. For every additional 500 participants, an extra small fishpond can be opened.

The name of the small fishpond can be customized. The ten most active users on the forum will be invited to each submit a candidate name, and then the final winner will be selected by public voting.

Voters must be users who have joined this community, so fairness and impartiality are ensured to the greatest extent possible.

Once the selected name passes the review, the entry point is at the top of the Big Fish Pond homepage.

As soon as the news came out, the users who were chatting enthusiastically in the fishpond immediately became excited.

Meanwhile, students from a certain high school, including those from the classes of '98, '99, and '2000, all want to create their own "fishpond" within the high school's student body. However, to achieve this, they need to recruit more students from their own class so that they can win the vote.

Chen Cheng predates the enthusiasm of later generations for voting in selection events on WeChat by at least a decade.

Netizens are highly engaged and have high expectations for the small fishpond.

Chen Cheng made a special trip to the fishpond of his alma mater, Fancheng No. 4 Middle School. Because the users of the school's network were mostly college students from Jiangcheng, the number of users from the province was the largest. In just a few hours, more than 400 people joined the fishpond of Fancheng No. 4 Middle School, and the posts were everywhere.

Chen Cheng even saw two acquaintances in these posts.

One of them was Ma Tao, a suitor of Lu Youyou. This guy called on the 2002 graduating class to promote the school's intranet to each other, determined to turn the first small fishpond of Fancheng No. 4 Middle School into a fishpond for the 2002 graduates.

Another one is Lu Youyou's brother, Lu Jianyuan. This guy posted an ad to organize a reunion for his classmates in Jiangcheng, and fully demonstrated the excellent qualities of a rich second-generation sucker, claiming that he would cover all the expenses.

That night, the activity level of Renren.com users rose to a new level because of the Fishpond, and user satisfaction with Renren.com has far surpassed that of all other Chinese Internet products on the market.

The launch of the "Fishpond" feature, combined with the new user acquisition competition, has led to a rapid increase in registered users on Renren.com.
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Chen Cheng originally thought that it would be very good if the number of users could exceed 500,000 over the weekend.

But to his surprise, by Saturday night, the number of registered users on Renren.com had already exceeded 500,000.

Fishpond, as the entrance to campus-level group chats, has contributed a significant amount of traffic and new users.

At this rate, it's only a matter of time before we break one million users this weekend.

The campus network has become like a virus among college students, spreading at an astonishing speed, even making Chen Cheng himself a little nervous.

After all, he doesn't have any capital right now. A website with millions of registered users has huge costs. If he continues like this, his cash flow will be almost gone in a week.

Moreover, the referral bonuses for three consecutive days amounted to tens of thousands of yuan each day. On Saturday afternoon, he was so busy filling out remittance forms at the bank that his hands were sore.

This made Chen Cheng realize that he had to hurry up and launch paid value-added services.

So, he and everyone had a dinner party on the first floor of a Sichuan restaurant that evening. Then, at the dinner table, he announced to everyone: "I want to talk about our next development focus. After the Little Fishpond feature goes online, we will focus all our efforts on developing the next feature: Campus Membership!"

QQ Membership has been around for over a year, and now members make up at least 20% of the student body. Several of the senior students here are QQ Membership users. So when Chen Cheng mentioned the campus membership, everyone immediately understood his intention.

Xiao Peng asked him, "Mr. Chen, what services do we offer to our members?"

Chen Cheng said, "The privileges I've planned for first-generation members are as follows:"

First, the member's name is highlighted in gold and accompanied by a prestigious VIP gold crown icon;

Second, the number of photos in a member's personal album has increased from five to twenty, with the additional five photos that members could get for having over one hundred followers added on top of that.

Third, members can see the visitor list;
Fourth, members can improve their search ranking. When others search for users with the same name, members will be ranked at the top. Among members, users will be sorted in descending order of the number of followers.
Fifth, when members post in the fishpond, a crown icon appears at the end of the post title to signify their VIP status.

Xiao Peng thought for a moment and said, "Highlighting names and crown icons aren't difficult. It's just a matter of designing an icon and changing a few lines of code. The photo album is even simpler. Just a few lines of code plus a member check, and if it's a member, adjust the number to 20 or 25. The visitor list isn't hard to implement either, and the search is the same. Just change a few lines of code and write a new sorting logic. If you're in a hurry, we can work overtime tonight and get everything done within an hour."

Chen Cheng waved his hand: "Senior Xiao, developing the membership features is simple, but the difficult part is the backend for the membership business!"

"Backstage?"

Xiao Peng asked him, "What kind of backing do you have?"

Chen Cheng said, "First, I need Tang, a security expert, to build a backend that enables membership services. In other words, once you enter this backend, you can add membership services to any user and instantly turn them into a member."

"At the same time, we also need a membership service timer function. For example, if a user activates a one-month membership at 3 pm on the 15th, then if he has not renewed by 3 pm on the 15th of the following month, his membership service should be automatically canceled. If his photo album takes up membership space, we will give him an extra 48 hours to transfer the pictures. Otherwise, the excess pictures will be automatically deleted in order from the last to the first."

Xiao Peng then realized what he had overlooked and said awkwardly, "Sorry, I only thought about how to implement the membership function, I didn't think that this function would require a management function."

Chen Cheng nodded and continued, "Management functions are only one aspect; sales functions are the most troublesome."

In the team, a member named Huang Xiaobo raised his hand and asked, "President Chen, what sales methods do we plan to use?"

Chen Cheng smiled and said, "Senior Huang has asked the key question. My idea is that we develop a backend specifically for merchants to use, so that they can help us sell memberships."

Launching value-added services is not difficult; the challenge lies in establishing one's own payment channels.

With hundreds of thousands, even millions, of campus users nationwide, how to get them to buy memberships is a big problem.

If it's a user in Jiangcheng, it's fine; at worst, we can set up an offline sales point so people can come and buy directly.

However, since the school's intranet covers users nationwide, the key is to make it convenient for users across the country to make purchases.

There are currently no online payment channels that can be integrated; the only model that can be referenced is the sales model of online game point cards.

Even a company as powerful as Shanda, which is currently one of the most profitable, does not have its own payment channel; their prepaid card sales rely almost entirely on offline channels.

As far as Chen Cheng knew, the two main offline channels were internet cafes and newsstands.

Internet cafes and newsstands can sell physical game cards, which are the kind where the card number and password are covered with a film and users scratch it off to verify the card online.

However, Chen Cheng currently does not have a large-scale team. These game cards not only need to be produced, but also need to be distributed to distributors at all levels. To build such a network, it would require either a lot of time or a lot of manpower.

Therefore, Chen Cheng rejected the physical point card model.

Aside from physical game cards, the only other option is virtual game cards sold in internet cafes.

The biggest difference between internet cafes and newsstands is that internet cafes allow for online interaction.

In other words, the card number and password that originally needed to be printed on the card can be directly provided to the internet cafe owner online.

They could even omit the card number and password, simply granting the internet cafe owner authorization and permissions, allowing them to directly recharge memberships for specific users through their own backend system.

When I first started out, I didn't expect internet cafe owners to prepay, so I could create a postpaid model.

In other words, he can grant each internet cafe owner a credit line of 1,000 yuan. The owner can then use the backend system he provides to recharge users with 1,000 yuan worth of membership value-added services. Once the 1,000 yuan credit line is exhausted, the owner must pay him back the 1,000 yuan in order to continue receiving credit.

Of course, we also need to leave them enough profit margin.

Currently, distribution channels take a cut ranging from 10% to 30%.

Powerful platforms may only offer 10%, such as Shanda's Legend of Mir. Internet cafe owners can even go without making a profit, but they absolutely cannot do without this service.

Otherwise, if his users are attacking Shabak and their game time expires, he'll hurriedly shout: "Boss, recharge your game time!"
The boss replied: "Sorry, we don't have that."

That would be incredibly disappointing.

Even if you give a 30% commission, it's meaningless if you can't sell game cards. Nobody plays them, and an internet cafe owner might not sell a single card in a whole year.

After weighing the options, Chen Cheng decided to initially give the distribution channels a 15% profit margin.

If 15% motivation isn't enough, it can be increased to 20%.

Of course, these are all things to follow.

The most important issue now is to develop this sales backend system first, and then find a way to establish cooperation with internet cafe owners across the country.

(End of this chapter)