At ten in the morning on September 23, 2001, OO officially launched its voice chat function. By seven o'clock, Huang He was already in the OO server room, observing the real-time backend data displayed on a large projection screen.
Unlike three months prior when he had first seen the half-empty server room, it was now filled with rows of large server racks. All OO staff were seated at their workstations, ready to respond to any potential issues.
"Where's Zhimeng?" Huang He asked, scanning the room. He was surprised not to see Leng Zhimeng, as she had been sleeping at the company the previous night, and he expected her to be present during this crucial launch.
"Big sis is at the electrical room!" Huang Zheng replied.
"What's she doing in the electrical room?" Huang He muttered before heading over. Even before reaching the room, he heard Leng Zhimeng's usually clear voice, now somewhat hoarse, shouting, "Lao Liu, I told you three days in advance that the new electrical cabinets must be installed by today. The server circuits need to be isolated from other equipment, and the wires must be thicker. Our thickest wires aren't enough; we need three wires twisted together for the connections. Why haven't you done it? If you had done it on time, would I need to be here overseeing you?"
"Boss, you're overthinking it. It's just a few machines. Our electrical cabinets were installed last year and can support the power for an entire workshop. They'll be enough for some computers, so there's no need for another cabinet or independent power supply. It's a waste of time and money!" the factory's electrical manager, Lao Liu, grumbled. If he weren't busy with his crew, Leng Zhimeng would have kicked him out of sheer frustration.
"Lao Liu, stop rambling. Zhimeng is doing this for the good of the company; it's called being prepared for the unexpected!" Huang He intervened. Lao Liu finally quieted down.
"Brother-in-law, these old, unyielding employees of yours are driving me crazy! Also, the factory's layout doesn't meet the needs of a modern network center. Could you find me a piece of land to build a new server room?"
"But this server room shouldn't be in a busy area. Ideally, it should be in the mountains where the temperature is naturally lower, which is better for heat dissipation. The current server room can't accommodate any more air conditioners, so I had to buy a central air conditioning unit just for this room, hoping it can manage the temperature!"
"Oh, and the servers. Compaq's servers are decent quality, but their after-sales service is terrible. My 50 million yuan worth of servers arrived nearly three days ago, and the installation personnel still haven't shown up… No, I can't wait any longer. Brother-in-law, I can't stay in the server room directing things. I need to take people to install and debug these servers. If I had any other choice, I'd never buy Compaq servers again!" Leng Zhimeng continued her continuous complaints, making Huang He's head spin.
"Zhimeng, I think you're worrying too much. We've prepared thoroughly. We've invested 150 million yuan in hardware, which should be more than enough!" Huang He said.
"Who knows? Our initial plan was to estimate a peak user traffic of two million people on the first day. But what if more than two million people log in? Won't our server room completely collapse?"
"Two million? How is that possible..." Huang He shrugged. The highest traffic OO had ever seen was less than 400,000 users. How could it possibly jump to two million all at once?
Besides, the previous server room configuration was designed for two million concurrent users. Now, the total computing power and traffic capacity have been increased more than threefold, which should be more than sufficient!
Of course, Huang He knew that with the launch of OO's voice chat, the traffic would be vastly different from the text-only era. But still, estimating for a two-million user limit should be more than enough!
So, Huang He forcibly brought Leng Zhimeng back to the server room, preventing her from doing anything else, and they waited for ten o'clock to arrive.
At this very moment, in many homes, people were logging into OO, waiting for ten o'clock. After all, achieving voice communication through a software was an unprecedented feat and experience in the entire Chinese internet landscape.
Moreover, internet users of this era were at their most curious. They were eager to experience true internet chat. Thus, they collectively waited for ten o'clock.
Some might wonder if such a significant new feature required an update.
An update was indeed necessary, but not a major one. From the very first line of code OO wrote, Huang He had incorporated the framework for the voice chat function as a core requirement. The research and development for the voice chat feature had also begun at the same time.
Therefore, OO didn't just develop the voice function in a little over a week; it took a full three months to produce the finished product. Because of this, many voice function codes and features had been subtly integrated into new versions of OO with each update.
Consequently, no large-scale update was needed this time; a simple hot update was enough to activate the voice chat feature within the OO client, which had been dormant until then.
It wasn't just personal computers. The OO grassroots promotion team, newly formed, began a full-scale campaign to all internet cafes, reminding cafe owners to update their host machines with the latest version of OO.
These owners were aware that OO was launching a major event and were generally cooperative. Therefore, most internet cafes had completed the OO version update. If any hadn't, it was no issue; users only needed to manually update when they opened the software.
Internet cafe owners quickly realized that updating OO in advance was a wise decision. Their internet cafes saw more users than usual, and these additional users were almost entirely drawn by OO. A large portion of them didn't have computers at home, while others were well aware that their home internet was too slow and it was better to use the cafe's high-speed broadband.
Finally, amidst widespread anticipation, the clock struck ten.
"Open the OO voice channels!" Huang He commanded without hesitation. Then, all internet users simultaneously discovered that the previously greyed-out OO voice function had instantly lit up and become usable.
Naturally, their first action was to send a voice invitation to a friend.
10:00:05, "400,000 people!!" an employee exclaimed. This indicated that within five seconds of its launch, OO's voice chat had reached 400,000 users.
10:01:25, "600,000 people!" After 80 seconds, the number reached 600,000.
10:05:02, "We've broken a million!" In just five minutes, the number of people using OO voice chat surpassed one million. The data curve resembled a straight line, astonishing everyone.
Such rapid growth indicated that users who had tried the voice chat found it very comfortable and continued to use it, while new users kept joining, leading to this terrifying surge in numbers.
10:48:56, "Two million! We have two million concurrent users!!" Suddenly, a huge cheer erupted from the entire backend. OO's concurrent online user count had historically surpassed two million. Before this, only QQ had announced reaching this number, and now OO had too.
Of course, this was temporary. It was due to the launch of the voice chat feature, the publicity from programs like JDDF, and the curiosity surrounding online social interaction. Under these favorable conditions of timing and circumstances, OO had achieved the astonishing figure of two million concurrent users within less than four months of its launch.
However, this figure seemed to be temporary, as the concurrent online user count was still increasing, suggesting they might continue to break historical records.