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

Chapter 237: Lightweight App Launch

Chen Cheng included the message in a bottle in the development plan, as well as the campus game platform.

Campus games are a major weapon for binding users. Chen Cheng plans to first emulate online entertainment platforms like Lianzhong and online card and board games, and then gradually penetrate into PC games.

Chen Cheng had also considered how to stand out from the competition with Lianzhong. He planned to use the gameplay of Guandan as the exclusive killer feature of the campus game platform.

However, he is not yet sure whether Guandan can be patented or has intellectual property rights, but he has decided to register the Guandan trademark first, regardless of whether it can be patented or has intellectual property rights.

When Guandan is launched on the school's gaming platform, it will immediately be labeled as a new poker game developed by the school, and any imitation by any platform will be prohibited and prosecuted.

Then, find a law firm known for its persistent and unscrupulous practices to work with, specifically to keep a close eye on the copyright of Guandan (a card game), and immediately sue anyone who dares to imitate it.

As long as a lawsuit is filed, it will be accepted. Once accepted, you can apply for property preservation. Even if you might lose the case in the end, you can still annoy the other party.

At the same time, they will launch a verbal attack against him online. Anyway, everyone knows that Guandan is a unique game invented by Xiaonei.com. Anyone who dares to imitate it will be exposed by Xiaonei.com online. It is only natural to expose them one by one, and it will definitely ruin their reputation.

Putting everything else aside, the popularity of this poker game, Guandan, is so immense that it's bound to become a hit as soon as it's introduced.

With the arrival of team members, the development capabilities of the school's intranet have been greatly improved.

The team managed to develop the chat function of the lightweight application by the end of November. The UI design of the chat section embedded in the page is fresh and unique. With Chen Cheng overseeing the process, the UI of this product is far superior to QQ.

The message-in-a-bottle feature that Chen Cheng wanted to implement actually consisted of two main parts: the animation design of the message-in-a-bottle and the functional logic of retrieving and throwing it, and the anonymous chat function.

Therefore, Chen Cheng plans to officially launch the new chat app, chat history roaming, and message in a bottle feature on November 30th.

Prior to this, Tencent QQ Show was launched.

Because Renren.com set a high bar and became incredibly popular, QQ Show didn't generate much buzz.

Moreover, according to Tencent's own backend data, QQ users' enthusiasm for purchasing QQ Show items is not very high. Although it has brought in some revenue, it has not caused any sensation.

As for Tencent's alumni directory, it is now completely stagnant.

Tencent's top management also realized that they were not naturally suited to developing a real-name social networking platform, so they have completely abandoned the product.

However, to their relief, they discovered that while they had inherent shortcomings and deficiencies in the field of real-name social networking, Renren.com was the same in reverse. Their core principle was real-name social networking, which could not meet the needs of users to communicate with strangers. So, each of them had their own advantages and their own moats.

Tencent felt that its team was more complete and its financial situation was better. Since neither side could shake the other's flagship product, they had to focus on developing the surrounding ecosystem.

Therefore, their most important new project internally right now is the QQ Games platform.

This happens to be Chen Cheng's top priority for future development.

However, Tencent's current target competitor is Lianzhong World, which is currently the largest online card and board game platform and has already gained a large number of users in China. However, Tencent believes that it has a natural advantage in doing this, as it will be completely integrated with the QQ ecosystem. Users can directly invite each other to play games through QQ, which will save a lot of trouble.

The internet ecosystem is sometimes like other people opening various shops, while you've opened a comprehensive supermarket.

Just like in the Ballad of Mulan, she bought a fine horse in the east market, a saddle in the west market, a bridle in the south market, and a whip in the north market. In the past, users didn't find it troublesome. They thought that to buy a horse, they should go to the east market, and to buy a whip, they should go to the north market. For chatting, they used QQ, and for playing card and board games, they used Lianzhong. But once QQ can include card and board games, users no longer need to run around. It's like a supermarket has opened near Mulan's house. She doesn't need to travel back and forth. She can shop in one place and prepare to set off to join the army in place of her father.

So after surviving its initial survival crisis, QQ already had this idea in mind.

Because their overall revenue level is currently very high, they have begun to prepare to incubate multiple product lines to complement QQ.

To put it bluntly, they were the first generation of Frankenstein's monsters in the Chinese internet industry; with just QQ, they incubated countless products, both big and small.

However, they did not expect that Xiaonei.com did not just want to gain a foothold in the real-name social networking field. His idea was almost exactly the same as theirs, and the two companies would have a lot of competition in the future.

When they noticed that Xiaonei.com was focused on organizing a cover song competition for "Mice Love Rice," everyone felt that Xiaonei.com didn't have such big ambitions and just wanted to consolidate its position in the vertical field of real-name social networking for college students.

Although Tencent lost the battle with Xiaonei.com in the Xiaoyou Road battle, they felt that they had just encountered a thorn in their side during their expansion. It didn't matter if they couldn't conquer it, because the other party certainly wouldn't make any significant progress. So, through several internal meetings, the leadership rekindled everyone's morale. Now, Tencent's goal was no longer to eliminate Xiaonei.com, but to continue expanding its territory in the entire internet industry, and finally come back and spend a sum of money to acquire Xiaonei.com.
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On November 30th, without any prior announcement, Renren.com launched a new chat application. After a forced refresh in the background, users discovered a semi-transparent, slightly folded list in the lower right corner of the page.

Immediately afterwards, a prompt box appeared on the page, informing the user: "The new friend chat interface is ready. You can chat with your friends in real time here. Click to experience it and you may have the opportunity to receive a reward of 1.88 campus coins."

Nowadays, chatting is not a strong need for users of Renren.com, because they are already heavy users of QQ.

Therefore, when Renren launched its chat function, it was essential to guide users to understand it effectively and learn how to use it proactively.

Otherwise, it will be like the forum's internal messaging function, which is always there but almost no one uses it. Even if someone does use it, it's just to send one or two messages when greeting strangers. Once two people are ready to communicate closely, they will definitely exchange QQ numbers and move on to another platform.

In this situation, offering some benefits to guide users and leading them through the entire process without any negative emotions is the most important thing in promoting this feature.

Chen Cheng wasn't arrogant enough to think he could replace QQ's position in users' minds and its importance in daily life.

His idea was to guide users as much as possible to gradually get them to start chatting on the school's intranet.

If a user's need for online chat is 100 points, then Tencent currently holds 95% of that demand, with the remaining 5% distributed across various products, such as online games.

Under this premise, any move by Renren.com to snatch even a single point from Tencent's 95% market share would be considered a victory.

Today you grab one spot, tomorrow you grab two spots. It's a zero-sum game where one side gains at the expense of the other, like two gamblers betting against each other at a gambling table. The money that either side wins comes from the other's pocket.

As Chen Cheng predicted, users were indeed not interested in the chat function of Renren.com, because they were already very satisfied with the current QQ.

However, for the sake of the school's currency, almost every online user followed the prompts and began their experience.

The experience is also very simple: just place the mouse over the semi-transparent area to directly bring up the entire friend list.

The moment it's activated, the semi-transparent, simplified list enlarges. Originally, it only showed the avatars of the 10 users you've recently interacted with, but after enlarging, it displays a list of 25 people, including each person's name and part of their personal signature. This personal signature is directly retrieved from the Renren (校内网) profile.

The first part that amazed users is here, because in the early 21st century, the internet had almost no aesthetic sense. The interface and UI design of every product were very rigid, lacking beauty, smooth edges, and natural transitions.

However, the chat list on Renren.com is different. It is more like QQ from around 2010. The UI has become much more rounded and full, and it is also fresh and natural.

The development of aesthetics on the internet is different from that of industrial design. Industrial design often sees retro trends, just like cars such as the Porsche 911, Volkswagen Beetle, and Volkswagen T1. They have hardly undergone any major changes over the years, but they are still very popular.

The aesthetic of the internet is always forward-looking; once it goes out, it never comes back.

Originally, no one thought there was anything wrong with QQ's UI, but when they saw the UI of the Renren.com chat interface, they immediately felt that QQ's UI was outdated.

Next, the system guides users to familiarize themselves with the new product.

Similar to QQ's basic logic, if a friend sends you a message, their avatar will flash. Of course, the flashing avatar that every user sees now is from the official Renren account.

So, at this point, the page pops up a prompt: "You can use Ctrl+Alt+A to quickly bring up the information, or you can double-click the avatar with the mouse. Come and try it!"

For users, this is very simple. QQ's hotkey has always been Ctrl+Alt+Z. Ctrl+Alt+A was added later as a screenshot hotkey, but the screenshot function is not yet available, so this hotkey is unused on most computers.

Chen Cheng dared not use Ctrl+Alt+Z, as that would conflict with QQ's hotkeys. He had no right to do so; he only wanted to grab a share of QQ's business, not to force users to choose between him and QQ. Therefore, he had to avoid conflict with QQ regarding hotkeys.

Out of consideration for the school's currency, users clicked on the messages sent by the official school account using hotkeys or the mouse.

The official Renren account sent a second message that amazed users: "Renren can save all your text chat history with your friends for free. In the future, no matter where you are or what device you log in to your Renren account, you can synchronize all your previous chat history with your friends. You can choose whether to enable this function or not. You can enable it for all your friends, disable it for all your friends, or enable it for individual friends, or disable it for individual friends. If you are worried about the risk of your chat history being leaked, we also provide a separate encryption function for the chat history. You can set a separate password to view the chat history."

This feature immediately caused a stir among users.

Internet users in this era have no concept of "cloud". They never dreamed that chat logs could be saved in this way!
(End of this chapter)