[ps: There will be another chapter later, but it may be after midnight.]
July 27, 2001, was a very normal day for everyone, indistinguishable from any other.
However, from a historical perspective, this day was a memorable one for the entire Jiangnan Group, and even for the entire network industry.
Because on this day, Jiangnan oo, which had been postponed for more than a week, was finally launched across the entire internet. The official website of Jiangnan 00 was opened, and download packages for 00 appeared on all download platforms.
But overall, the launch of Jiangnan 00 did not create even a ripple, to the extent that Tengda in Shenzhen had no idea they had gained a competitor.
This was not Tengda's incompetence, but rather that too many people had tried to challenge Tengda over the years and ended up losing their shirts. Tengda had formed a consensus that nothing other than MSN could challenge Tengda's market.
And on this day, near the entrance of a middle school.
"Boss, any new games today?" A fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy excitedly asked the owner of a music and video store as soon as class ended.
"Of course! You've come at the right time today. We just got a batch of new game discs today, all big titles released in foreign countries!" The boss said with a smile, and placed a shoebox full of game discs in front of the boy.
"Let me see!" The boy began to carefully search through the shoebox, but most of them were older games, with only a few he hadn't seen before.
However, the boy quickly found a game he liked, a shooting game called "Counter-Strike 3," which looked quite interesting.
Just as the boy, satisfied, was about to rush home to play the game eagerly, he suddenly stopped. A pure white, beautiful figure had also walked into the music and video store, causing the boy's pupils to bloom with the colors of spring.
This was naturally a beautiful girl, the "white lotus" of the boy's three years of junior high.
It's just that this white lotus was too beautiful, so dazzling, and the boy was not outstanding enough. This left the boy with no other option but to secretly have a crush on his beloved.
"Boss, do you have something called... QQ... a software like a penguin?" The girl's voice was like fragrant flowers (truly fragrant), and the boy was captivated.
"Yes! Yes, we have new QQ installation discs too!" the boss immediately said, and proactively handed some brand-new packaged discs to the girl. The girl glanced at them and confirmed that the cover indeed said QQ, so she nodded and paid the other party five yuan.
"He Anrong, you can actually download it directly online, for free!" The boy suddenly said to the girl, ignoring the boss's threatening gaze. This was an opportunity he discovered to speak to his goddess.
"I don't understand downloading!" The girl frowned with some difficulty. "I only know how to install from discs."
Well, don't think this is strange. In 2001, a girl who knew how to download software online was definitely a rarity. In fact, even knowing how to install from discs was considered being a computer expert.
"I'll come to your house and help you install it!" The boy wanted to say this, but he didn't have the courage, so he just smiled awkwardly and fled home as if escaping.
"If only I knew her QQ number!" The boy muttered to himself as he ran home, but then he thought, she just installed QQ, so she definitely hasn't registered a QQ number yet. I'm so stupid.
When he returned home, the boy subconsciously opened his computer. After waiting for more than a minute, the computer finally booted up. The desktop displayed many program icons, including the QQ icon. It turned out the boy was already a QQ user.
The boy logged into his QQ, wanting to find friends to chat with, but after looking around, he found that his familiar friends were offline, and those who were online were not too familiar. He kept opening the add friend option, imagining himself adding the girl as a friend.
"I'm such an idiot!" The boy was lost for more than ten minutes, cursing himself again. Then he took out his newly purchased "Half-Life: Counter-Strike" game disc and began the long installation process.
This was a game with a capacity of up to 890MB. The installation alone required three discs, which was definitely a big production at that time, and it took over an hour and a half to install.
During this period, one generally couldn't do anything else on the computer because it would be too slow and could lead to installation failure. Therefore, besides changing discs, the boy didn't touch the computer. It wasn't until after dinner, and after completing his homework under his mother's supervision, that he sat down at the computer. However, it was already 10 o'clock. The boy only completed some finishing work and then shut down the computer, completely unaware that the penguin on his desktop had turned into a panda.
The next day, the boy went to school again and unexpectedly heard his goddess talking to her friends: "I've installed the QQ you mentioned, but I entered your QQ numbers, and I couldn't find you!"
"Oh dear, did you install it incorrectly?"
"Or did you type the QQ number wrong?"
Her friends chattered, and the girl said with a helpless look on her face, "How about this? You guys add my QQ number. My name is 'Summer Snow'."
"Oh, Summer Snow, Rongrong, you're still so poetic!"
"Exactly, our literary girl!"
"But yours is a name, not a QQ number. Isn't it a string of numbers?"
"Ah, I only saw my name, I didn't see any numbers!"
"It seems you really don't know how to use QQ very well, but it's okay. You can still search for people by name, but there might be duplicates. What does your avatar look like, and what address did you fill in? That way we can confirm which one is you!"
"My avatar is an Eevee, the red, unevolved Eevee from Pokémon. I didn't fill in the address because I was afraid someone would find me through my address!"
"Alright, when it comes to things online, if you're not acquaintances, how can anyone find you!" As the friends said this, the school bell rang, and class began. However, our boy's mind was completely elsewhere. With an excited and dazed smile on his face, he began to eagerly await the end of class, then rushed home and logged into his QQ immediately.
"Huh, strange, why have my desktop icon positions changed?" The boy suddenly realized that the icons on his desktop seemed to be disordered, but this was also normal. Sometimes after installing new programs, the icons would get mixed up.
Sometimes, even if you do nothing, the desktop icons will inexplicably become messy.
The boy looked around the desktop and finally found that his QQ icon had moved to the last position in the desktop list. He quickly double-clicked to log in.
It was smooth at first, but after successfully logging in, he found that he had to re-enter his account name.
"Damn it, what a garbage server Tengda has, did they lose my data!" The boy had no idea that his QQ had been swapped. He only thought that the QQ server had data loss.
In the early days, for most network programs like QQ, losing user data was a very common occurrence. Of course, it would usually be recovered, but sometimes it would act up for a while.
Helplessly, the boy had to re-enter his username.
"Summer Snow... Then I'll call myself Winter Light."
"No, wouldn't that be too obvious? He Anrong will definitely realize I deliberately chose the same name as her. No, I need to choose a name that's not too similar, but equally literary and unique!"
After thinking for a long time, the boy solemnly chose a very literary yet somewhat similar name: "Momo."