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

Chapter 210, Alumni Directory, will be available on Sunday.

Having figured out the logic behind it, Chen Cheng felt much more relaxed.

When they arrived at the hot pot restaurant, he took out Lu Youyou's bank card and handed it to her, saying with a smile, "Little Lu, keep the card safe. The money has already been transferred to your account."

Lu Youyou didn't take it, but looked at him and asked, "Won't you need money in the future? Why don't you keep it for yourself? I don't really need the money."

Chen Cheng pushed the card in front of her and said, "Don't worry, I've set aside everything I needed. You can keep the card. I'll ask you for it again when I need it."

"also."

Lu Youyou knew that Chen Cheng would feel guilty if she didn't accept the money first, so she took the card and told him, "Remember to tell me when you need it."

"it is good."

Chen Cheng also breathed a sigh of relief. He always felt uneasy about being in debt, and after paying off each debt one by one, he felt a great sense of relief.

There's still over two million yuan owed to Yan Ruoxuan, which will be paid back in a few days.

Looking at Chen Cheng, who seemed relaxed, Lu Youyou felt that the changes in him were so great that she couldn't understand them. It seemed that the gap between the two of them was widening rapidly.

Although she was happy for Chen Cheng, she couldn't help but feel a subtle sense of loss.

Just a few months ago, in their senior year of high school, they were the center of attention, and Chen Cheng didn't even dare to make eye contact with them in class.

But now Chen Cheng has easily earned millions and even created a website that is popular among college students across the country.

Perhaps he was just outstanding in his senior year of high school, but now, looking at college students across the country, there seem to be few who can compare to him.

Although she was happy for Chen Cheng, the sense of loss was indeed beyond her control.

The oblivious Chen Cheng sat opposite Lu Youyou, but didn't notice her low spirits. He was just mentally contemplating the future of Renren.com.

While Renren.com is doing well, its future is not entirely clear. In contrast, Li Xiang, the CEO of a high school, has seen his Paopao.com achieve a net profit of over ten million yuan in just one year since its launch.

Not only will we have to compete with big platforms like Tencent and NetEase, but we also need to find ways to further improve our commercialization. Internet companies are not afraid of not making money, but they are afraid of not having revenue. Even if the annual revenue is 100 million and the cost is 120 million, it is better than the annual revenue of 20 million or 30 million and the profit of a few million.

Next, we'll see if memberships and Renren Show can boost revenue. If not, we'll need to consider how to skillfully insert ads into Renren.com.

In short, earning more and spending more, and being bold and decisive, is the key to development.

After they finished eating, Chen Cheng and Lu Youyou strolled back to Renji University. He escorted Lu Youyou to her dormitory before saying goodbye and returning to Jiangda University.

At this time, the Tencent team was still working overtime to rush the alumni directory.

As Chen Cheng had predicted, their product logic was to leverage QQ's social foundation and advantages, hoping to gain an immediate foothold upon launch.

The boss's strategic goal was to surpass Xiaonei.com in registered users within three days of launch, surpass Xiaonei.com in daily active users within a week, and halve Xiaonei.com's traffic within ten days.

To achieve this goal, Tencent has reserved a lot of advertising resources for the alumni directory, the most ruthless of which is the pop-up window in the lower right corner of QQ.

In this era, QQ has many advertising slots, but the most powerful one is the pop-up ad in the lower right corner after logging in.

That pop-up window, roughly the size of a business card, was practically a forced browsing feature. Once the link was attached, it would get clicks far exceeding anything else it promoted.

The Tencent team decided to activate the pop-up without restriction for the first five days after the alumni directory was launched. In addition to promoting the alumni directory itself, as long as a user registered for the alumni directory, a pop-up window would appear after the user's friends joined the alumni directory, prompting: Your friend XXX has now joined the alumni directory. Go to the alumni directory and say hello to him!

Tencent started with social networking, and all its thinking is based on it. It's fair to say that its top-down thinking is somewhat entrenched in the social networking field. Everyone believes it's a promotional method where one plus one equals more than two, beneficial to Tencent in every way. However, no one within the team has realized, like Chen Cheng, that internet social networking cannot be generalized. Broadly speaking, internet social networking can be divided into three types: large-scale social networking, real-name social networking, and anonymous social networking.

QQ and later WeChat are large-scale social networks, Renren is a real-name social network, and apps for relationships and various special purposes are anonymous social networks.

To give an extreme example, if Tencent were to launch a same-sex dating service, especially one based on the existing social circles, it would terrify most users who have a need for same-sex dating.

However, the Tencent team in 2002 couldn't have conceived of the underlying logic.

The product manager of the alumni directory even suggested to Mr. Ma: "Mr. Ma, Renren.com has done several rounds of paid user acquisition activities before, which I think are quite creative. So when our alumni directory is launched, I also want to do a user acquisition activity."

Mr. Ma pushed up his glasses and nodded, saying, "Tell me in detail."

The person in charge explained, "What I'm thinking is that while we can cover a wide range of information through push notifications, we're still lacking in depth. Ideally, we should encourage users to recommend the website to their friends. The feeling of being invited by the website is different from being invited by a friend. So, we'll use the membership service to launch a new user acquisition campaign with different tiers of rewards, such as giving a one-month membership for inviting 50 people and a three-month membership for inviting 100 people. This will turn all users into our promotional specialists."

Mr. Ma nodded in agreement and said, "I think we can give it a try. Right now, our most important task is to promote the alumni directory in the shortest possible time. This is of paramount importance, and everything else must give way to this goal."

The operations manager was increasingly frustrated and said helplessly, "Mr. Ma, if we keep offering free memberships for registering, free memberships for completing profiles, and free memberships for referring friends, our revenue in the first quarter of next year will be greatly affected."

Each department has its own KPIs, and in most large teams, the departments cannot achieve mutual understanding and consideration.

Just like how WeChat grew by relying on QQ's friend base, if it weren't for the approval of Tencent's top management, the person in charge of QQ would never have been willing to do the work for WeChat.

However, Mr. Ma, with his foresight, waved his hand and said, "Your operations department doesn't need to worry about revenue KPIs. I will factor in how many members we send out into your KPIs, so it won't affect your performance evaluations or bonuses."

At this point, he added, "Xiaonei.com is actually an excellent advertising platform, but its founders and team haven't realized it yet. Xiaonei.com connects with millions of college students and tens of millions of young college graduates. These people have above-average spending power in the entire internet industry. Take Hasee computers for example, they spent nearly 10 million yuan on advertising with Tencent this year. If Xiaonei.com also connects with Hasee, it can take at least half of our advertising revenue. We need to take advantage of the fact that they haven't realized it yet and replace it as soon as possible. If we can replace it, companies like Hasee will have to increase their advertising budget by at least several million yuan every year on our alumni network. Computers, games, and mobile phones are the main areas of consumption for college students and graduates, and the profit margin here is huge."

Many technical staff don't understand strategy, but Mr. Ma sees it very clearly. The reason why he puts the alumni directory at the top of the company's current development tasks is because it has a very strong appeal to young people.

Replacing Renren.com would not only allow it to further capture the time of young people, but more importantly, it would generate huge advertising revenue.

He also paid attention to Li Xiang's PConline, a website dedicated to computer hardware. It earned tens of millions of yuan in advertising revenue from hardware manufacturers every year by popularizing computer hardware knowledge and showcasing the parameters and performance of computer hardware.

While others might not understand the intricacies of the process, he was intimately familiar with it.

If there are four mainstream brands for the same model of graphics card, then whichever brand pays the most will be recommended. If one of the brands spends hundreds of thousands on advertising, the website can produce an irresponsible or secretly biased review, packaging that brand's graphics card as the best or most cost-effective among the four brands.

This review not only earns the graphics card manufacturer hundreds of thousands in advertising fees, but also allows them to piggyback on advertising for monitors or keyboards and mice. For example, if a monitor manufacturer can pay 50,000 yuan, this review will only use their monitor; if a peripheral company can pay 30,000 yuan, then their keyboard and mouse will be used.

Tencent has always wanted to make money from all kinds of sources, especially from young people aged 18 to 35.

QQ's age coverage is too broad, and it doesn't have a special advantage in this age group. But Renren is different. It's a great product tailored for young people aged 18 to 35. I definitely need to take it over as soon as possible. Once I do, there will be so many ways to make money with Renren in the future. What about Paopao.com? I can just open a digital section and even if I'm just moving some data, I can still earn advertising revenue.

Complete computers, laptops, computer hardware, mobile phones, MP3 players—these electronic digital products all have high average order values ​​and high profit margins. Manufacturers are also very willing to spend money on advertising. As long as the alumni directory can be successfully established, these areas can be harvested one by one.

Thinking about his strategic plan, Mr. Ma was also quite spirited. He urged everyone on the team: "Everyone, please work hard these next few days. Let's all work together and strive to launch on November 3rd!"

November 3rd was a Sunday.

Nowadays, high school students and working professionals only have one day off a week, so Sunday is when Tencent QQ experiences its highest traffic.

Launching on Sunday will naturally boost the number of alumni users as quickly as possible.

If you miss this Sunday, you'll have to wait another week. Otherwise, if it launches on a weekday, it won't create a buzz, so it's better to launch it later.

(End of this chapter)