My capital is quite large.

"Should we prevent the CPU from rendering particles in real time?"

Old Chen was stunned, staring blankly at Li Feng. "Mr. Li, if we don't render the particles in real time, how will the dynamic effect of the juice splashing appear? We can't cut open a watermelon and there won't be a single splash, can we?"

Li Feng picked up a whiteboard marker, turned around and quickly drew several consecutive squares on the office whiteboard, then banged the whiteboard heavily.

"Old Chen, games are for players' eyes, not for machines to do physics experiments! Players care about the exhilarating feeling their retina captures the moment the juice is cut; they don't care whether that drop of juice was calculated using computing power or just drawn on!"

"Cut off all the underlying dynamic particle physics collision algorithms!"

The pen tip drew a sharp straight line on the whiteboard. "Have the art department create a separate set of 2D sequence frame textures for each type of fruit to show the juice splashing! The system won't need to calculate how the juice will fly the moment the player cuts the fruit; it can just play that fraction of a second of 'sequence frame animation' texture at the cut point!"

Old Chen suddenly understood!

"Pseudo-3D! Replacing real-time particle calculations with 2D sequence frame animation!"

"Yeah! How could I have gotten so fixated on that! Players' fingers swipe so fast, the juice splashing happens in an instant. With high-quality 2D textures streaming continuously, the naked eye can't tell the difference! This will drastically reduce CPU and memory usage, so even if you're slicing ten watermelons on screen at the same time, there won't be any lag or frame drops!"

"Why aren't you going to fix it yet?" Li Feng tossed the whiteboard marker back into the pen holder. "Technology is meant to serve the user experience. Don't let those engine algorithms limit you."

"Mr. Li is amazing! I'll take the brothers to reconstruct the underlying structure right away!"

Old Chen grabbed the testing machine and rushed out of the president's office like a gust of wind.

……

Two days later.

Han, the director of the film and television department, knocked on Li Feng's office door with a beaming smile.

"Mr. Li! It's all set!"

Old Han gently placed a signed contract on his desk. "Tianyu Media has signed the contract! We've bought out Li Yuchun's exclusive rights to post images and text on social media platforms and interact with fans for the next three years at a price of eight million per year!"

"Do those guys at Tianyu Entertainment think we're stupid and rich?" Li Feng flipped open the contract and glanced at it.

"you do not say!"

Old Han couldn't help but laugh. "When Tianyu's legal department saw that we spent eight million just to buy the exclusive right to 'vent online,' they thought that Haofeng Network had too much money to burn. They were afraid that we would back out, so they signed the papers overnight."

In the eyes of traditional entertainment companies, a star's commercial value lies in making movies, taking on commercial performances, and selling records.

Who would have thought that the main battleground for the fan economy in the future would be the currently inconspicuous social media accounts?

Li Feng put the contract away in the drawer with satisfaction. "Li Yuchun's 'Corn' fan group is currently the only fan group in China with both fervent fighting spirit and organizational discipline. This eight million isn't buying the right for Li Yuchun to post photos, but rather acquiring the first batch of tens of millions of die-hard fans! Once our platform goes live, this traffic will explode, shattering all other competitors!"

Just as Lao Han was marveling at his boss's foresight, the landline on his desk rang.

It was a call from the newly appointed platform project manager in the Internet R&D department.

"Mr. Li, the PC and mobile beta versions of Weibo have been fully packaged. Do you have a moment to take a look at the initial version?"

"Coming right away."

Li Feng hung up the phone, a glint of shrewdness flashing in his eyes.

Whether we can make a breakthrough in the domestic internet ecosystem by the end of the year depends on this.

……

An independent, enclosed testing area within the R&D hall.

The project manager brought out a computer and two beta testing phones, and showed Li Feng the initial version of the software called "Haofeng Weibo".

Because of its simple functionality, the page's UI design is very clean and uncluttered.

On the left is your personal information and following list, on the right is a scrolling timeline of your friends' activities, and in the middle is a large input box: [What are you thinking about?]

Word limit: 140 characters.

Li Feng sat in front of the computer, registered a test account, posted a status update with a picture, and then used the mobile phone next to him to like, share, and comment on it.

The entire interaction logic is very smooth, almost a one-to-one replica of the purest version of Sina Weibo from its previous life.

"It should be available by the end of the month."

Li Feng nodded, first acknowledging the team's efficiency, but then his brows furrowed slightly.

He swiped the mouse, looked around the page, and pointed to a large blank area on the right.

"The UI is clean, and the release logic is fine. But, have you overlooked the core functionality?"

The project manager was taken aback and asked somewhat nervously, "Mr. Li, what function are you referring to? We've already written it strictly according to the 'follow + broadcast' architecture you provided."

"Social media platforms are not just about letting users see what the people they follow are posting; more importantly, they should let users know what the entire internet is currently focused on!"

Li Feng pointed to the blank space on the screen, "Where's the trending topics list? Where's the topic aggregation page?"

The project manager wiped his brow: "Mr. Li, topic aggregation can be searched using tags with '#' symbols. But the trending topics list... currently we've only done a simple statistical sort based on the absolute number of posts in the backend, and we haven't had time to..."

"Absolute value statistics are a useless mechanism!"

Li Feng interrupted him, "If a group of online trolls frantically spam the same meaningless hashtag, can they dominate the top spot? The trending topics list is the soul of Weibo! It requires an extremely complex and precise 'popularity weighting algorithm'!"

"This algorithm must comprehensively consider search volume, repost level, and comment growth rate per unit time, and even incorporate Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology to filter out invalid data from bots! Only in this way can it truly reflect the most authentic sentiments of netizens across the internet!"

After being bombarded with a barrage of technical jargon from Li Feng, the project manager and several back-end engineers exchanged bewildered glances and gave each other wry smiles.

"Mr. Li... our team mainly works on standard front-end and back-end interactions. The kind of large-scale natural language processing and real-time data capture statistical algorithms you mentioned... that's already at the pinnacle of big data mining. Our current team simply can't write such a sophisticated algorithm model in the short term."

Li Feng's expression darkened slightly.

He knew the project manager wasn't lying; this kind of sentiment algorithm, which can resist online trolls and accurately capture social hot topics, is definitely cutting-edge technology these days.

Without this algorithm, Weibo would just be a large-scale version of a friend's circle, unable to become a public forum for igniting nationwide public opinion.

Haofeng Networks does indeed lack expertise in data mining.

Just as the testing area fell into a brief silence, Ms. Zhao, the administrative director who was standing to the side accompanying the inspection, suddenly remembered something.

"Mr. Li, if you need a ready-made data mining and public opinion statistics algorithm team, I've thought of a company."

Sister Zhao flipped open the memo in her hand and said quickly, "A couple of days ago, a startup tech team from Shenzhen came to us looking for investment. Since our company's main business at this stage is games and film and television, we didn't pay much attention to them."

"That team consists of a group of tech geeks from Baidu and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, specializing in internet public opinion monitoring and text data mining. Not only are their algorithms mature, but coincidentally, the name of their shell company is 'Weibo Storm,' which perfectly matches the name of our software that's about to launch!"

"The Weibo frenzy?" Li Feng's eyes suddenly lit up.

"What is their company's current valuation?"

"There's no valuation involved. It's just something a few tech geeks came up with in a rented house. They haven't even figured out a profit model yet, and they're almost at the point where they can't even afford instant noodles. If you're willing to put in the money, we'll buy not only the algorithm, but all the people in the company," Sister Zhao replied.

"Excellent!"

"Old Chen!" Li Feng turned to look at the technical director.

"Yes, Mr. Li!"

"Go to the finance department and withdraw ten million RMB!" Li Feng held up one finger. "This afternoon, you personally lead a team to 'Weibo Storm.' Ten million RMB—to acquire this company outright!"

"Bring all their data mining algorithms and those tech geeks back to Haofeng Network! They need to seamlessly integrate the trending topics algorithm into Weibo's backend within half a month!"

"Yes!" Old Chen responded loudly.

Li Feng looked at the "Haofeng Weibo" logo on the computer screen, a confident smile playing on his lips.

The celebrity matrix has already begun to reap the rewards, and the core public opinion algorithm is about to be in place.

All is ready except for the opportunity.

The end of the month will be the time to fire the first shot against Tencent's social media dominance!