The post-world remembers 2003 quite clearly. Besides the major events that occurred during and after this year, there was also the online feast at the beginning of 2003.
Who would have thought that within a single day, hundreds of celebrities nationwide would announce their joining of QQ Zone.
Unlike Facebook's gradual brand building marketing strategy of announcing one celebrity a day, QQ Zone opted for an explosive marketing approach. The influx of hundreds of celebrities in one day made QQ Zone the hottest platform on the entire internet.
In the following week, entertainment media and business magazines across the country excitedly followed suit with extensive coverage.
The former reported on the unprecedented scale of over 100 celebrities joining, while the latter reported on the escalating online war between Tengda and Jiangnan.
In the eyes of these business media outlets, this was an absolute great victory for Tengda, and a classic comeback, an upset win against a stronger opponent.
It was considered an upset win because the scale of Tengda and Jiangnan was vastly different. With a massive investment of 800 million RMB, Tengda's total valuation had risen to around 1.6 billion RMB.
Although the historical valuation of Tengda in January 2003 is unknown, this valuation was definitely on the higher side. After all, the original Tengda, without any competition, went public in mid-2004 with a market capitalization of only around 6 billion Hong Kong dollars.
However, Jiangnan, which was valued at 1.2 billion USD by Fortune magazine in mid-2002, would certainly have a higher valuation in early 2003. It might even be exactly 1.6 billion USD, which would directly dwarf Tengda's market value by eight times.
Therefore, in the eyes of financial magazines and media, Tengda's victory was undoubtedly an upset win.
The comeback was also easy to understand. After all, Tengda's market share had been driven down to only 41% by Jiangnan at one point. However, with the launch of QQ Zone, users who had left QQ returned, and the market share soared to 52%, once again putting them ahead of Jiangnan. This was an absolutely exhilarating and decisive victory.
And the credit for this victory went to these hundreds of celebrities. They all appeared on QQ Zone, attracting a large number of fans who also flocked to QQ Zone.
After all, most people who used computers and the internet at that time were young, and young people were the most avid fan followers. There was a significant overlap between these two groups.
Consequently, the media lavished praise on the sharp decision-making of "Little Ma Ge" and Tengda, commending "Little Ma Ge's" decisiveness. At the same time, they criticized Jiangnan Group for becoming complacent and forgetting the fundamental principle of business, which is transaction and exchange of benefits.
Jiangnan Group attracted a group of celebrities by leveraging its reputation but failed to provide them with corresponding benefits. It was only natural for these celebrities to then turn to QQ Zone. Therefore, Jiangnan Group had to learn from its mistakes and remember to promote and pay in the future.
Essentially, that was the gist of it.
Tengda enjoyed a glorious first half of January 2003. Everyone thought Tengda's luck had turned and it was about to defy fate when a new market research report and backend data were placed before "Little Ma Ge," who couldn't manage a smile.
To most quickly detect market changes, "Little Ma Ge" had specifically commissioned a third-party business research firm for a weekly market survey service, which would provide the most realistic view of the market situation.
As a result, when the market survey report for the second week of January was released, "Little Ma Ge's" brows furrowed into a deep frown because, according to this report, QQ's market share, which had peaked at 55%, dropped back to 49% in the second week, a drop of 6% in one go, and it lost its leading market advantage. This was hard for "Little Ma Ge" to believe.
Accompanying this market survey report were the company's backend data, which indicated that QQ's active users were declining, and the popularity of QQ Zone was also decreasing.
The peak of QQ Zone after its launch was on the third day, with 7.9 million visits nationwide in a single day. However, yesterday, the latest data showed 3.68 million.
Of course, compared to the overall highest record, it was much lower. But a halving of the data was still too exaggerated.
Such data made "Little Ma Ge" extremely anxious. Logically, shouldn't the data continue to rise? With so many celebrities sharing their daily lives on QQ now, shouldn't it attract more users to QQ Zone?
Why had the data declined?
"Little Ma Ge" felt somewhat bewildered by the world. But "Little Ma Ge" was someone who wouldn't rest until he found the problem. So, he began to frequent various forums and related communities, disguising himself as a regular player and chatting with various users.
Soon, "Little Ma Ge" found a clue, although this clue made "Little Ma Ge" feel very uncomfortable.
"QQ Zone is too boring. It's not as rich and fun as Facebook!" This was the feedback "Little Ma Ge" received most often. It was also the most disheartening answer for "Little Ma Ge."
Even more frightening was that when "Little Ma Ge" experienced it according to these people's descriptions, he genuinely agreed with them.
These users said that when they used QQ Zone, they only felt interested for about 10 minutes a day because during this time they could browse various texts and updates posted by celebrities. This was relatively interesting and engaging.
But after these 10 minutes were up and they had seen everything the celebrities had posted, they felt deeply bored because they could only see the QQ Zones of friends they had added.
The reality was that most of their QQ friends were people who didn't update their QQ Zones much, and their QQ Zones were almost blank.
Even if there were one or two friends who were very enthusiastic about posting on QQ Zone, they were a small minority. Moreover, to see their QQ Zones, they had to click into QQ Zone from the QQ list.
The process was very troublesome. Switching from one zone to another took about 10 seconds, and that was assuming a very good network speed.
In reality, China's network speed at that time was still quite poor. To open a decorated QQ Zone would generally require 30 seconds to a minute for material loading. Just loading these zone skins was a very slow process, and it often happened that the loading would freeze midway, requiring a refresh.
In summary, the user experience of QQ Zone was extremely poor. Apart from celebrities, it was difficult to find friends who updated their zone status daily. Even if such friends existed, one had to open their zones one by one, and each time they opened a zone, it would take several minutes.
After going through such trouble a few times, these QQ Zone users would simply give up on using QQ Zone.
In fact, "Little Ma Ge" was well aware of these issues, but he had no immediate solutions.
Firstly, regarding network speed and broadband issues, Tengda couldn't possibly invest trillions in infrastructure itself, so that was not feasible.
Then there were server issues. Yes, Tengda was once again facing server and bandwidth issues. Originally, with continuous investment, Tengda's server problems had been resolved.
But soon, Tengda discovered that QQ Zone required more bandwidth and server resources than they had imagined.
Unlike QQ, which simply displayed text and audio, QQ needed to store a large amount of images and documents, as well as text information. These files were stored on servers, requiring QQ to allocate a significant amount of server space to store information. As a result, QQ's server resources had crashed several times during the days celebrities logged in, but Tengda managed to pull through.
They thought that after the peak passed, the server situation could last for a longer period. However, with the accumulation of various data, Tengda found that although the server's computing power was idle, the storage space was constantly shrinking. It was estimated that within another month, Tengda would run out of storage space for user data and information.
But if they continued to purchase servers, Tengda's 800 million financing might not last long, and Tengda's accounts would soon be empty again.
This was because QQ Zone's data was a destructive magnitude of data for Tengda.
Historically, Tengda launched this feature in 2005, when server performance had improved by two orders of magnitude, and prices had dropped significantly. At the same time, broadband began to be popularized nationwide. Most importantly, Tengda went public at that time, raising over 2 billion Hong Kong dollars in capital, so Tengda had plenty of money to purchase various servers.
However, now, QQ Zone's appearance time had been forced forward to early 2003 by Huang He. Although the technology at this time was not incapable of supporting QQ Zone's existence, the hardware requirements were extremely high.
It was like wanting to play a top-tier AAA game released in 2021 on a PC in 2018. Although not impossible, the PC would struggle to support it.
These were all problems that Tengda found difficult to solve in a short period.
"But why? Why doesn't Jiangnan have these problems!" After "Little Ma Ge" understood these issues, he became even more confused about his opponent.
Because Facebook didn't have such problems. Although loading a user's zone also took a considerable amount of time, each switch was generally controlled within 10 seconds.
Furthermore, apart from early 2002, when Tengda heard that Jiangnan's servers were insufficient, Tengda had also used SoftBank to block Jiangnan's server supply, preventing them from buying servers even with money.
But why?
Why had Jiangnan never experienced server issues? Where did they buy their servers, and why could their servers support such a massive demand?
"Little Ma Ge" couldn't figure out these questions.