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

Chapter 228 A good start
On the evening of November 10th, the Double Eleven hype was already getting higher and higher.

A technical team of dozens of people is also working overtime to rush the development of the first-generation topic square.

There isn't enough time to develop the trending topics list today, but the topic function itself isn't difficult, and it will be officially launched at 9 PM tonight.

Chen Cheng knew that user habits were not easy to cultivate. It would be difficult to get them to learn how to use ## to start topics right away. So he had the technology team generate popular keywords directly from the backend. As long as a user's post contained this popular keyword, it would automatically add hashtags to both ends of the keyword to automatically form a topic. When users found that their posts suddenly had a blue hyperlink, they would click on it themselves. After clicking, they would enter the topic square and know what it meant.

Once he enters the topic square, a helpful tip pops up on the screen: topics can be automatically generated using the ## format, and he can easily learn how to use it.

It's much simpler and clearer than issuing a direct announcement or sending him a message on the website.

The first keyword to be turned into a hot topic was Singles' Day.

Attentive netizens quickly noticed that their posts containing the words "Singles' Day" had suddenly changed. Originally, they had only posted, "Singles' Day is almost here, who wants to spend the holiday with me?"

The result was "#SinglesDay# is coming soon, who wants to spend the holiday with me?"

Furthermore, the #SinglesDay# section has changed color; based on past experience, blue text indicates that it can be clicked.

So when users clicked on the link, they were immediately taken to the topic square, which is the information feed page for all Singles' Day related topics.

This product logic is very similar to Weibo. Under normal circumstances, when you open the homepage of Weibo, the information feed is all the updates of the accounts that the user follows. Once you enter a topic square, the restriction of "following accounts" is lifted, and you can see all the content posted by users. It is like opening a door in your own information cocoon, allowing users to step out from here and see the world.

Users experiencing this feature for the first time are indeed very excited. Moreover, the top five posts in the feed are all popular posts with the most likes and comments. These posts are mostly witty and easy to resonate with others.

After the topic square gained attention, the number of views on each person's related posts continued to increase, and for the first time, they received likes or comments from strangers. This allowed the social relationships of Renren users to expand and penetrate on a large scale for the first time.

While everyone was having a great time on the topic forum, the second feature was launched.

This time, the system popped up a notification on the page: "If you have a post you want to share with a friend, you can @ them in the comments! Just add their name after @ and they will receive a system notification!"

Since we've opened up the information cocoon, it's natural to invite friends to experience it together, and the @user function was launched at just the right time.

This way, when you see interesting content, you can tag your friends to see it. It's convenient, novel, and fun.

Chen Cheng believes that once these two features are enabled, coupled with the algorithm that prioritizes popular jokes, it won't be long before the first batch of internet celebrity joke writers emerge on Renren.com. Don't underestimate jokes; they have made countless internet celebrities famous and even supported ByteDance boss Zhang Yiming's first entrepreneurial project, Neihan Duanzi, as well as the once wildly popular Qiushi Baike.

So he launched another event on short notice: from now until midnight on November 12th, the top 100 posts in terms of popularity will receive 111 campus coins, and posts ranked 101 to 500 will receive 11.11 campus coins.

The various activities are very novel to users. Many future joke writers have already started racking their brains to write jokes related to Singles' Day, not only for the campus currency, but also to become popular posts.
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In preparation for tomorrow's promotion, Chen Cheng increased the credit limit for each partner merchant from one thousand yuan to ten thousand yuan.

In fact, many distributors have started pre-depositing their balances on Renren.com in order to avoid delaying profits and save on remittance procedures. With an additional credit line of 10,000 yuan, they should have no problem getting through the traffic surge of Double Eleven.

He wasn't worried about these merchants fulfilling their obligations because they had already seen the potential of campus currency top-ups. With the continuous increase in turnover, it would bring their internet cafe a very stable and considerable income in the future. If they didn't fulfill their obligations, not to mention the issue of "the monk can run away but the temple can't," the loss of this income alone was far more than the 8,500 yuan payment for the goods.

Chen Cheng plans to collect one last payment. After the company is registered and the bank account is opened, everything will be done through corporate channels, which will not only be more formal but also more convenient.

Although online payment is still difficult nowadays, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has already launched online banking services. Chen Cheng hopes to build an automatic recharge system through the corporate account page in the future.

The logic of automatic recharge is to record each distributor's account, and the developed program continuously captures remittance information from online banks, identifies which distributor made the payment and how much, and immediately completes the corresponding amount recharge for their account in the recharge system.

Once this feature is developed, the recharge process will basically no longer require manual handling.

At midnight on November 11th, the Singles' Day Bonus Card on Renren.com was officially launched.

Netizens have already done the math: They recharged 111 yuan worth of Renren coins, then bought an expansion card (also costing 111 Renren coins), which expanded to 122.1 Renren coins. They then used 108.89 Renren coins to buy an annual membership, leaving 13.21 Renren coins. After the purchase, Renren gave them an additional 11.11 Renren coins, leaving them with 24.32 Renren coins. So, with 111 yuan, they bought a 120 yuan annual membership and still had 24.32 Renren coins left. In the end, a one-year membership only costs a little over 80 yuan.

Therefore, as soon as the expansion card was launched, it became the most popular product on Renren.com.

In the first hour, they sold over 80,000 tickets, a great start.

This is over eight million.

Of course, annual memberships are essentially borrowing money from the next few months' income, but Chen Cheng knows that if you don't find a way to get him to sign up for a full year, he might stop renewing his membership someday.

Therefore, even with a large discount for annual memberships, it's still worthwhile.

By 11 a.m., the sales of the expansion card had reached 200,000. Almost every user who bought the expansion card used the expanded campus currency to purchase an annual membership.

The remaining campus coins were almost all used to buy various campus shows, with the campus shows for Singles' Day (November 11th) selling the best, since everyone loves to join in the fun.

Around 11:11 AM, the number of posts increased by nearly fifty times compared to the same period last year. Many people were worried about missing the timing, so they posted multiple posts in a row.

The series of activities on Renren.com successfully mobilized user enthusiasm, and the amount of discussion surrounding the topic surged.

As Chen Cheng watched the sales figures on the back end climb steadily, breaking through the 20 million mark, he felt increasingly impressed. The internet truly was the best breeding ground for overnight riches. If he could achieve 30 million in sales today, he would immediately sign the second phase contract with Inspur. He wouldn't have to wait for the first phase to be completed before the second phase could start immediately.

By the afternoon of Singles' Day, everyone in the internet industry was closely watching everything happening on Xiaonei.com.

In their view, Renren.com's operations and products represent an unprecedented high-end approach in the industry. Although it doesn't offer instant messaging, its social networking features are already maximized, and its user stickiness is unmatched by other websites.

In contrast, although Tencent does a great job with instant messaging, its expansion into other social areas is almost non-existent. The alumni directory was finally launched but has barely survived, and QQ Show has been restarted and is only in the internal testing phase.

At midnight, the first "Singles' Day" on Renren.com finally came to a close amidst widespread attention online, with sales of expansion cards exceeding 300,000 and final sales revenue reaching 325,000 cards.

The lucky users who posted at 11:11:11 were also selected and their names were made public. At the same time, the school currency reward they received was directly credited to their accounts by the system.

Chen Cheng was quite disappointed that the development time was too rushed, and there was simply no time to design an animation effect for the red envelope.

If we could create the animation effects like those in WeChat red envelopes and put them on the school's intranet, it would definitely cause a sensation.

It can be used when the system issues rewards, and it can also be used when users exchange campus coins with each other.

Moreover, currently, the virtual currency of the school itself, such as campus currency, will not cause any trouble when gifting it to each other. As long as this virtual currency adheres to two bottom lines, such as not designing gambling games and not enabling official withdrawals, there will be no risks.

Many desired features are currently subject to various limitations, such as server bandwidth, technical constraints, or team size, which Chen Cheng finds somewhat regrettable.

However, the small surge during Singles' Day gave him enough confidence to expand rapidly, and it was time to build an off-campus team.

While my seniors are very enthusiastic, they are still quite inexperienced. We need to recruit a group of experienced researchers with several years of research experience to build a more efficient team. In that case, the on-campus and off-campus teams will each have their own focus and priorities, making it easier to manage them.

Unfortunately, Jiangcheng is currently facing a shortage of skilled professionals. To attract such talent, the city should start by looking to Beijing and try recruiting top students from Zhongguancun.

For those willing to come, I can offer salaries no lower than those in Beijing, or even more competitive ones. I can also provide them with housing subsidies in Jiangcheng. In addition, the cost of living in Jiangcheng is much lower than in Beijing, so working here will be more cost-effective overall. Moreover, Xiaonei.com is developing rapidly and will definitely become a major internet company in China in the future, which is a good opportunity for them!

(End of this chapter)