"Classmate, do you know about Facebook?"
"No, what's up?"
"It's good you don't know. Our school's founder is still two people short. You go to the internet cafe later and create our school, then the few of us will be the founders!"
"You don't know, this founder title will be displayed on our Facebook space forever. If our school principal and teachers find out that the founders of our school are two of the bottom-ranked students from our year, they'll be so angry they'll spit blood."
"Although I don't understand what you're saying, it sounds very impressive. Let's not wait until after school. Let's climb over the wall right now."
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"Wow, Xuexue, do you know why that handsome guy Ou Haochen from the next class hasn't been to school for a week? He actually went to participate in a street dance competition! I saw his photos on Facebook, he's so handsome! It's amazing!"
"Really? But how do you know such confidential information? Even Lili doesn't know!"
"I told you I saw it on Facebook. There are only 12 people in our school on Facebook, and Ou Haochen is one of them. He's also the only one who uploaded his photos. I recognized him at a glance."
"What is Facebook?"
"No way, you don't have Facebook? Even I, a little nobody, have Facebook. Xuexue, you're such a beauty, you can't not have Facebook!"
"Ahem, I will soon!"
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"Hello, is that the old class monitor? Why are you calling me?"
"What? You created a class group on Facebook for our Class of '72 Mechanical Engineering and want me to join? This way I can find many old classmates I can't contact anymore! Okay, I understand, but how do I do it?"
"I need to create an account first? You know I can barely use a phone, how can I use those young people's gadgets?"
"Alright, if the old class monitor says so, I'll definitely do it!"
The phone call ended, and he made an internal call.
"Hello, Director Wang, didn't your department recruit a batch of talented computer science students this year? Send someone over, I have a difficult task for him!"
As Facebook was released, such conversations were happening in various occasions. As long as someone had studied, they would have school connections. When Facebook, a platform based on schools, was launched, coupled with the massive traffic of QQ, a phenomenon of word-of-mouth spread occurred the next day.
Many Facebook users began to solicit their classmates, colleagues, or old classmates to join the Facebook platform the next day.
So after breaking through 4 million users on the first day, Facebook gained another 2 million new users on the second day, and another 2 million on the third day. Although the growth rate slowed down in the following days, within a week, the total number of users still surpassed expectations, becoming the fastest software in China's internet history to break through ten million total users.
However, to be honest, many of these were just accounts created by clicking, without any actual messages posted or personal spaces managed. The number of truly active user accounts was around 3.6 million. But this was already a very large number.
3.6 million active accounts could generate a massive amount of information every day. Although this information was created by individuals and thus of uneven quality, with much of it needing to be censored, it was all interesting. It was viewed from the perspective of ordinary people, not news media. More importantly, because Facebook's recommended news prioritized recommendations according to same school, same district, same city, same province, and finally national release, users saw almost exclusively things happening around them, creating a strong sense of immersion and familiarity.
More importantly, at this time, there were no competitors on the entire network. Social networking sites like Facebook, which could provide a space for self-expression, were non-existent.
Facebook was like a mouse jumping into a rice bowl, with the added bonus of QQ's massive traffic. Frankly speaking, as long as the Facebook product was made, even if a pig were to operate it, Facebook could quickly sweep the entire Chinese internet space.
Furthermore, the person in charge of the actual operations was not a pig, but a shrewd Huang He.
Now, people are accustomed to using Sina Weibo. But many may not know that Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo once had a battle, and Sina Weibo miraculously defeated Tencent Weibo. This was also Tencent's biggest defeat in the social circle.
It was also the first time someone had defeated Tencent in the social field.
Huang He had studied this war and discovered that besides Tencent's arrogance at the time, another important reason why Tencent Weibo failed and Sina Weibo won was that Sina Weibo attracted a large number of topical celebrities and marketed many topical events.
For example, the famous "poisonous flower" adulterous big mouth was a typical example that Sina Weibo vigorously marketed. It was through these celebrities, one after another, that Sina Weibo gradually gathered more users, eventually defeating Tencent Weibo, which had the entire QQ as its foundation, creating an unbelievable miracle.
This trick, although not brilliant and somewhat unsavory, was undeniably effective, and Huang He naturally would not let it go.
On the eighth day after Facebook was launched, a news report was published in one of the largest entertainment newspapers at the time: "Shocking! Zhang Rong opens personal social account online, uploading eight pictures in one day. Ordinary people can have such close contact with celebrity life!"
Then, almost at the same time, major newspapers across the country, except for some very serious official media, reprinted this report. In any case, everyone who cared about entertainment news knew that China's top star Zhang Rong had opened his Facebook account.
At the same time, these media outlets also reprinted the messages posted on Zhang Rong's Facebook. In one day, he posted eight space messages, four of which were purely image messages, consisting of a simple picture without even a single sentence.
However, many media outlets began to analyze the hidden meanings behind each of these pictures. For example, Zhang Rong posted a photo of holding hands, and then a media outlet confidently stated that they had carefully studied the shapes of these two hands, as well as the skin textures of these hands, and finally concluded that both hands appeared to be men's.
Two men shaking hands might not be a problem, but this was not a business etiquette handshake; it was a clasping of hands.
Of course, anyone could see that this media outlet was trying to gain attention by speculating wildly. Many people cursed this media outlet, but this was exactly what this media outlet wanted. They gained a lot of fame.
In addition to the four photos, there were four text messages, all written in Zhang Rong's own voice. One described his mood upon waking up that day, two described an old event, and one expressed his longing for love.
These were very ordinary articles, but for Zhang Rong's massive fan base, they were extremely attractive. So, when this news broke out, Facebook saw another significant increase in its user base.
Regardless of whether they were Zhang Rong's fans or not, many people flocked to Facebook to observe. As a result, they had close-up views of his space. In just one day, Zhang Rong's space had over 4 million "space-time visitors" and received 1 million "space-time beacons." Users could choose to leave a space-time beacon in someone's space, so even without adding them as friends, they could directly enter Zhang Rong's space by clicking on the beacons in the beacon bar. Moreover, whenever the space of someone who had left a beacon was updated, it would be immediately updated in the "Space-time Dynamics" option.
At the same time, if two people left each other's space-time beacons, they would be directly transferred to the friend list and become "space-time friends."
Well, these things, if not mentioned, are generally well understood. They are old settings, but in 2002, they possessed extremely terrifying appeal.
In fact, Zhang Rong was just the beginning. Every day thereafter, one celebrity... and it was a top-tier celebrity, announced the opening of their Facebook account. Ten days after Zhang Rong, Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai, Aaron Kwok, Jackie Chan, Hu Jun, Li Youbin, Ekin Cheng, and Dicky Cheung successively announced their official Facebook accounts.
The reason for calling it an "official announcement" is that the Facebook space lobby, which is the hall that gathers all recommended space information, displays a scrolling notification bar at the top of the homepage, informing the entire Facebook of major events in the most prominent font.
News of celebrities opening Facebook accounts that appeared in this notification bar were referred to as official announcements.
With one official announcement per day, it was obvious to anyone that Facebook's official team and these celebrities had pre-arranged this to attract attention.
But the effect was astonishing. National entertainment media, and even some official media, rushed to report this news, speculating about who the next celebrity to join would be. It truly caused a great stir in the country.
Especially on the tenth day, fifteen celebrities were officially announced to have opened Facebook accounts at once, led by Jay Chou and Six-Year-Old Monkey. Half were from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and half were from mainland China, completely igniting the atmosphere of Facebook. In just 25 days, Facebook became known to everyone in the country, with registered users exceeding 20 million and active users exceeding 5 million. Before all the internet companies in the country could react, it had completely occupied the entire social media market, leaving everyone stunned.