February 1st, 2003, marked the day.
"It's finally here!" Huang He sighed deeply as he saw posts from users in Guangdong province on Facebook.
Huang He had actually tried to prevent this disaster. However, he didn't have many clear memories of the event. He only knew that the source of the problem originated in Guangdong, but he had no recollection of the specific location, city, or person involved.
He had made some efforts. Starting in December, as soon as Facebook was launched, Huang He made sure that related news on Facebook was more prominent, attempting to attract more attention.
Concurrently, in December, using Facebook as a platform, he collaborated with many relevant organizations on joint promotional activities.
Of course, the promotion was about the flu season, which had started in November, and advised all citizens nationwide to wear masks to prevent influenza. At the same time, Huang He arranged for methods to report unusual cases to higher authorities, to avoid delays.
This was all Huang He could do. Doing more would be problematic.
However, Huang He's efforts were not in vain. Historically, a national expert group only entered Guangdong province on February 9th, 2003.
Today, February 1st, Huang He saw news in the media about the expert group entering Guangdong. With his efforts, the matter received national attention nine days earlier, which he believed would save many lives.
However, on this day, besides this rather disheartening news, there was also good news: according to the latest market and backend data investigation, Facebook's active users had surpassed 12 million, with an astonishing market share of 78%.
Although the number of active users for QQ Zone was unclear, judging by its mere 22% market share, it should only have around 3 million active users.
Huang He had specifically commissioned a third-party research company for this market survey report, so the data was trustworthy.
Thus, after a month, and following the initial excitement of its launch, Facebook had completely suppressed QQ Zone.
This was easily understandable. Facebook offered a smoother and more seamless user experience, and it contained more interesting content than QQ Zone. It was only natural for Facebook to gradually erode the market.
Even though QQ Zone had subsequently announced the entry of over 300 celebrities who had opened their exclusive QQ Zones, it could not reverse the decline.
Of course, Tengda had not given up its resistance. For example, two days prior, they had massively updated QQ, giving QQ Zone a large-scale upgrade. While calling it an upgrade, it was essentially a copy of Facebook. They also introduced campus circles and a fast-displaying dynamic system, among other features.
In short, they tried their best to emulate Facebook's design. However, these efforts were ultimately a step too late. Users had already voted with their feet and returned to Facebook. Furthermore, Tengda was now facing new problems.
This new problem wasn't exactly new; it was an old one: server issues.
Tengda's servers were once again insufficient.
Historically, Facebook was created in 2004. It wasn't that no one had thought of ideas like Facebook before, but rather that the network conditions at the time did not support Facebook's operation.
Jiangnan could forcefully implement Facebook because it had its own massive servers, using a strategy of heavy investment to accelerate the creation of Facebook. However, Tengda Group was merely trying to appear more prosperous than it was. xxs壹贰
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"Everyone, we still possess a significant advantage, which is the celebrity advantage. The most famous celebrities from all over China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan have opened exclusive spaces in our QQ Zone. We have monopolized all domestic celebrity resources. As long as we increase our servers and improve our service quality and user experience, we will definitely be able to leverage these resources to seize an opportunity for a counterattack!" Ma Huateng said, trying his best to speak to the company's investors.
This was actually a regular operational report for the company on February 1st. Such reports were held every quarter, where the management team would report the company's operational status for that quarter to the shareholders.
This could be considered an exam, where investors evaluated the company's operations over the past three months.
And clearly, this time, Tengda had delivered a very poor report.
Although Tengda's own market survey report tried to gloss over the details, the stark data told all investors that QQ Zone had failed. With only 25% of the market share remaining and 2.74 million active users, it indicated that QQ Zone was truly losing its user base.
The situation for QQ was even worse. Its market share had dropped to only 41%, leaving only a 1% margin before triggering the line for a team change... there was practically no room for error.
In fact, if the investors could see Jiangnan's market survey report, they would find that Jiangnan had proudly declared that his "oo" already held a 62% market share.
And now, Ma Huateng was still asking investors at this meeting to continue investing in purchasing servers. One could imagine how terrible the investors' expressions were at this moment.
"Mr. Ma, have you already spent all of the 800 million within just over two months?" an investor couldn't help but question.
"There's still some left!" Ma Huateng replied. "But not much, enough to maintain the company's normal operations. As for how this money was spent, I have provided detailed reports to all of you, and every expenditure is traceable. The largest consumption was in purchasing HP servers, totaling around 400 million yuan."
"Additionally, about 200 million yuan was used to sign contracts with these over 300 celebrities to join QQ Zone. Although I know this might sound inappropriate, I swear on my conscience that every cent was used for its intended purpose, and there was absolutely no waste or embezzlement!" Ma Huateng stated frankly.
In reality, they had already reviewed this report, and some investment institutions had conducted their own investigations, confirming that the money was spent without any irregularities. However, such a result only made them more fearful.
Spending money itself wasn't frightening; after all, these investment institutions specialized in spending money. What was frightening was spending money without seeing any results.
Since Ma Huateng had invested six hundred million yuan, yet was still unable to compete with Facebook, did this mean that even with more investment, QQ Zone would remain a lost cause?
"Mr. Ma, although you are adamantly stating here that there are no irregularities, I don't think this money was spent very appropriately!" Fan Jie suddenly spoke up.
"Please elaborate, Mr. Fan!" Ma Huateng said.
"Very well. I won't discuss the minor expenditures; those are too complex to clarify at the moment. I'll focus on the two most significant expenses: the purchase of servers and the cost of inviting celebrities to QQ Zone!" Fan Jie paused here and then continued, "Let's start with the server purchase. 400 million yuan for 40 HP servers – isn't that price incorrect?"
"There's no problem with this price!" Ma Huateng replied without hesitation. "These are HP's most advanced commercial servers. The unified sales price in China is 9.8 million yuan per unit. Among them, 20 servers are more expensive storage-type servers, each capable of storing 100,000 TB of data, with each unit priced as high as 14 million yuan. The total price actually exceeded 400 million yuan, but through our strenuous efforts, HP gave us significant discounts!"
"These are necessities to meet our data needs. Without these servers, QQ Zone would be unable to operate normally. Therefore, not a single cent of these servers was wasted. If you don't believe me, you can check our financial transactions with HP China, and you'll know I'm telling the truth!" Ma Huateng said.
"It's true that HP servers are priced like that. But why did you choose such expensive servers? Couldn't you have purchased cheaper ones?" Fan Jie asked.
"But HP is already the cheapest server on the market. There are no cheaper servers than HP!" Ma Huateng replied, slightly taken aback.
"Is that so? But I heard that domestic servers are much more affordable nowadays?"
"Domestic?" Ma Huateng was surprised again, and a look of disdain involuntarily appeared on his face.
"Mr. Fan, you are in investment, so you might not be very familiar with our industry. Although China has server manufacturers, and their prices are indeed cheaper, they only produce very low-end servers, and their quality is completely unassured. They are prone to various accidents and bugs. In China, almost all large-scale network companies use and purchase HP servers; this is the most cost-effective choice!" Ma Huateng earnestly educated Fan Jie.
"Oh, is that so?" Fan Jie's face showed a cold sneer. "But this is completely contrary to the intelligence I've received. According to a friend in the network industry, the quality and stability of domestic servers are currently very good. For the same computing efficiency, the price is only a quarter of HP's. Especially for storage servers, under the same capacity, the price is only 1/10th of HP's."
"Why didn't Tengda choose such cost-effective domestic servers? If you had purchased domestic servers, you could have bought your HP servers for less than 100 million yuan. This way, you would have had an additional three hundred million yuan left, and you wouldn't need to come here crying poverty and asking us to invest more funds to buy servers for you!" Fan Jie said sarcastically.
"That's impossible. There are no companies with such capabilities in China! If there are claims of such companies, it's just propaganda, deceiving people who don't understand the industry into buying their products. What they sell are just products with inflated specifications, or outright refurbished second-hand foreign products!" Ma Huateng suddenly felt exhausted. Talking about technology with someone like Fan Jie, who didn't understand the gap in international technological levels, was too arduous.