"Brother-in-law, you really gave our advertising slots to the Forty Thieves' company!" Leng Zhimeng ran over with displeasure after the signing was complete. If it weren't for Huang He specifically calling to tell her to behave, this child wouldn't have agreed to the deal.
"15 days of advertising earned 146 million, why wouldn't I earn easy money?" Huang He retorted with a smile.
"But aren't you afraid these people will snatch all our mall's business away?" Leng Zhimeng asked again.
"Afraid! Of course I'm afraid, but does being afraid mean I stop doing business?" Huang He tapped Leng Zhimeng's head. "You need to understand, there are countless people watching your brother-in-law right now. If your brother-in-law makes even the slightest mistake, they'll seize it and criticize him fiercely."
"Believe it or not, if your brother-in-law had refused them today, there would immediately be a flood of media commentary slamming your brother-in-law as petty, unwilling to do business fairly, and using his channel advantage to suppress the development of other competitors," Huang He said with a slight smile.
"Let them say what they want, we develop ours, why do you care about these people's opinions?" Leng Zhimeng said indifferently.
"I don't care about the media's remarks, but I can't give others an excuse!" Huang He said earnestly. "What if someone comes at me with the big stick of anti-monopoly laws?"
"So we can't give anyone an excuse. If they want to advertise, let them advertise. Whatever they want to do, I'll let them do it. If I don't, how can I send them to the heavens?"
---
Jiangnan Group's actions were extremely swift. They took the money and got to work. In the early morning of the 16th, all advertisements for Gou Kuaisuan Mall appeared on Facebook's homepage, in Facebook's classified ads, and even when you searched for a product name on Facebook, the official Facebook page of the Gou Kuaisuan platform and many messages posted by that account would appear below.
It's worth mentioning that this was the first time operating a Facebook account, and they had no prior experience. Their staff didn't even know how to post a vibrant dynamic post. In the end, Jiangnan's own service department took over the responsibility, helping the Forty Thieves' staff post their prepared dynamic content.
Indeed, just paying money allows you to enjoy high-quality service!
Furthermore, within the OO software, various Gou Kuaisuan platforms also appeared. They even provided a direct link icon on the homepage UI, which could be clicked to go directly to the Gou Kuaisuan official website homepage. In addition, a set of Gou Kuaisuan stickers was released overnight.
Of course, this set of stickers was designed by Jiangnan Group itself and was originally intended to be distributed as free stickers for players.
Now, it was presented as a gift from Gou Kuaisuan to all OO users. Therefore, even though it was still a gift, Jiangnan Group earned a full 8 million RMB in advertising fees for this sticker pack. They had really won big.
This situation stunned many onlookers. These people knew who was behind Gou Kuaisuan. They had originally expected to see a fierce battle between Jiangnan Group and Gou Kuaisuan. Who would have thought that Jiangnan would actually advertise for the Forty Thieves?
Of course, most people were unaware of these details. In their understanding, the Gou Kuaisuan platform seemed to be a new shopping platform launched by Jiangnan Group.
In any case, Jiangnan Group's traffic advantage was immediately evident. The Gou Kuaisuan platform practically swept across the entire network overnight. On the 16th alone, over a million people visited the Gou Kuaisuan official website. This caused the Gou Kuaisuan official website to crash for about ten minutes before it was restored by technical staff, a situation that greatly startled Old Ma.
"As expected, mastering social media means mastering the secret to traffic!" Sitting in his own company's office and looking at his servers, which had crashed due to an advertisement, Old Ma couldn't help but sigh.
At the same time, the deep desire for social software within him began to grow infinitely.
"If only I had my own social software and traffic entry point, then we could direct a lot of traffic to our own websites. Otherwise, why would we need to pay 146 million to Huang He to strengthen the enemy?" Old Ma lamented in his heart.
However, upon further thought, how difficult it was to get such a traffic entry point. The Forty Thieves had missed the entrance to the social media era. If they entered the market now, wouldn't it be even more miserable than QQ's earlier days?
Various thoughts swirled in Old Ma's mind, but his desire for social media only grew stronger. He then made up his mind that as soon as Gou Kuaisuan Mall captured a majority of the e-commerce market, he would immediately venture into the social media industry, determined to get a traffic entry point from Huang He.
"If I can defeat Huang He in e-commerce, I can definitely defeat Huang He in social media!" Old Ma told himself, his confidence in himself always unparalleled, as if Gou Kuaisuan had already eliminated Jiangnan Mall.
Just as Old Ma was envisioning the future traffic of social media, the phone on his desk rang. Upon answering, he heard his secretary's voice.
"Boss, Mr. Huang He from Jiangnan Group is looking for you?" the secretary whispered.
"What? Who did you say?" Old Ma was startled.
"It's Chairman Huang He of Jiangnan Group. He said he has business to discuss with you and asked if you're interested?" the secretary said.
"Put him through!" Old Ma actually wasn't interested in talking to Huang He, but since Huang He had called proactively and he hadn't refused him before, Old Ma felt he couldn't refuse Huang He out of reason or sentiment.
Not to mention, Old Ma was actually very curious about what Huang He wanted to discuss with him.
So the call was connected, and Huang He's hearty voice came through, "Old Ma, I heard your servers crashed for about 10 minutes, is that true?"
"..." Old Ma's face darkened, and he said, "Mr. Huang, did you call just to mock me?"
"No, no, no, I don't have time for such boring things!" Huang He said with a grin. "I'm just reminding you from the perspective of someone who's been through it. When your 1020 shopping festival officially kicks off, the traffic you'll face might be ten times, or even a hundred times, greater than today's. If your servers are still in the same state as today, I guarantee that your website and backend will consider it good luck if they operate normally for even 10 minutes a day."
"So?" Old Ma's face darkened even further.
"So our Jiangnan servers can provide you with comprehensive services. There are still four days until the 20th. If you hurry, it's still possible. I'll send a car to deliver servers to you now and have technical personnel come to help you debug them, striving to expand your servers before the 20th to meet the huge data access demands."
"By the way, have you prepared your broadband? Don't let the network fall behind and cause an outage, that would be very embarrassing. These things need to be prepared in advance. I must remind you!"
"These can all be handled by Jiangnan Group. From broadband to server clusters, I estimate that if you purchase about 300 million RMB worth of products from Jiangnan Group, you should be able to support this 1020 event." Huang He spoke ramblingly, like an old woman.
So Old Ma quickly ended the conversation with Huang He, almost failing to put the receiver back properly.
About half an hour later, Old Ma felt his composure returning. He gave his secretary orders to contact several server manufacturers, both domestic and international, to see if they could quickly acquire another batch... Old Ma, being the stingy fellow he was, had truly forgotten about the server data.
The result was, as expected, predictable. Facing a demand with only four days remaining, no server company, domestic or international, dared to take on the job. After all, shipping alone would take nearly four to five days. How could they possibly meet the deadline? Even gods couldn't accomplish this.
So Old Ma had to put aside the server expansion issue and pray that the servers would hold up at that time.
Then, in the blink of an eye, it was the early morning of October 20th, 2003.
Although at 0:32, due to a large volume of access, the servers experienced a minor collapse, the situation that followed was quite good. There was no network outage. Instead, the platform's transaction volume began to increase. In just the first hour after midnight, Gou Kuaisuan Mall sold 40,000 orders.
This result made everyone at the Forty Thieves company ecstatic. After all, when they did cross-border shopping before, they hadn't even reached 100,000 orders in a month, and today they had 40,000 orders in one hour. Was this the effect of advertising?
Seeing such brilliant company data, the always worried Old Ma could finally go home to sleep, thinking that the servers probably wouldn't crash.
Then, when he arrived at work at 9 AM, he found the entire backend in a state of panic. Upon inquiry, he learned that starting from 8:40 AM, the traffic had directly overloaded the servers, and they were currently restarting.
However, this wasn't the first restart, but the third restart within 30 minutes. The previous two restarts had both resulted in crashes again after only a few minutes.
Moreover, more traffic was converging, people wanting to see the prices on this legendary Gou Kuaisuan platform. Then they found their browsers spinning for an hour without opening the website.
Subsequently, the entire company dedicated a large amount of manpower and resources to rescue the servers. However, no matter how strong the software was, it couldn't compensate for the lack of hardware.
And with server crashes, the traffic that the Forty Thieves had spent a lot of money to acquire was all wasted.
In this critical moment, the only solution was to improve server performance. But now it was the 20th, and where could they find available server resources?
Just as the entire Forty Thieves company was collectively in a frenzy, Old Ma, who had been silent for a long time, finally spoke, "Quickly, go invite Mr. Huang He! Call him! Go now!"