Reborn in 08, a heretical cultivator starting a business

Chapter 199: Progress of Community Group Buying, International Version of FarmVille Launched!

Once the truth comes out, Renren.com will be either dead or crippled.

However, how it will operate remains a question.

The capital behind Renren.com is not simple.

Jiang Fan sighed: "Right now, all the universities are on holiday, and the revenue from campus group buying has plummeted."

Wang Junshan frowned. With the holiday break, campus group buying was in a slump, YouTuan International was losing traffic, and YouTuan Technology was in even worse shape.

What about community group buying?

"Community group buying has been fully rolled out in 15 cities last month."

"We've expanded to 10 more cities this month."

"It has already been fully launched in the urban areas of 25 cities."

"But the conversion rate is very low."

Jiang Fan presented a set of data to Wang Junshan:
"Boss, look, these 25 second-tier cities have a population of about 1 million in their urban areas."

"But only 1 million users placed orders, which is about 100%!"

"We place an order on average once every five days, six times a month. We offer free delivery for orders over 30 yuan, so the average order value is around 35 yuan."

"The monthly transaction volume was 2.1 million yuan, and the daily transaction volume was 700 million yuan. Although this made up for some of the drop in campus group buying, it was not enough."

"The main problem is the low conversion rate. Especially in newly opened cities, many people don't accept it."

“In the past, we could have increased our on-the-ground promotion efforts. But now that the Lunar New Year is approaching and the holidays are coming up, even on-the-ground promotion is a problem.”

Twelve days later is Lunar New Year's Eve.

In another week, Future Tech will also be taking a year-end holiday.

Wang Junshan nodded: "Community group buying is a new thing, and it does need time to be accepted. We can only increase its promotion."

"We'll push forward with on-the-ground promotion for the next week, and then we'll call it a day."

"At the same time, we should also make some efforts online."

"The Lunar New Year shopping festival is the most important. A 1% conversion rate is too low; we should aim for 2%!"

"Okay! Boss, I can't guarantee it will double in a week, but it should increase by at least 30%!"

"Okay." Wang Junshan nodded.

Jiang Fan returned to the Excellent Team department and immediately convened a meeting to assign tasks.

Subsequently, all the senior and middle-level managers of the group buying company, except for a few who stayed behind, went home to pack their belongings.

Then they rushed to the airport and high-speed rail station to travel to 24 other cities.

One executive focused on a city, and the next day, he personally went to the community and led a team to conduct on-the-ground promotion.

Seeing that the senior management of YouTuan's group-buying department were personally involved in on-the-ground promotion, the rest of the on-the-ground promotion team members were also highly motivated and their efficiency increased tenfold.

This directly led to a rapid increase in the number of community group-buying users in the following days.

Order volume and transaction value have soared.

Five days later, the daily transaction volume of community group buying exceeded 900 million yuan, a surge of 30% compared to before!

Wang Junshan, who was in the capital, was very satisfied and decisively dialed Jiang Fan's number. However, the person on the other end of the line seemed to be busy.
"Sis, you play 'WeChat Farm' too, right?"

"We've also launched community group buying on WeChat. In the future, you can just place an order directly through YouTuan group buying for groceries, fruits, department stores, and more."

"For orders under 30, you can pick them up at the community's self-pickup point; for orders over 30, we offer free home delivery."

"It's cheap and hassle-free, and most importantly, it has a complete range of products, with everything you could want."

"You can try it out. Order today, and it will be delivered to your door tomorrow. You'll also get diamonds back."

"Yes, diamonds in WeChat Farm."

"Save money and get diamonds back, isn't that a good deal?"

Sure enough, the middle-aged woman was tempted and nodded repeatedly.

"Here's a YouTuan calendar for you. Wishing you all your dreams come true and a prosperous Year of the Ox. How to order is also here."

After seeing the female homeowner off, Jiang Fan replied, "Boss, I was busy just now. Do you have any instructions?"

"It's alright, congratulations! In just five days, your order volume has surged by 30%!" Wang Junshan said with a smile.

Wang Junshan never expected that Jiang Fan would personally go to the front line and do on-the-ground promotion.

If it's just acting, that's easy.

But Wang Junshan made the call randomly today.

In other words, Jiang Fan has been gone for four or five days!

In fact, after issuing a pledge to Wang Junshan, Jiang Fan led all the senior executives to 25 cities, with each person in charge of one city, personally overseeing the on-the-ground promotion.

A horizontal comparison of 25 cities reveals which cities have the highest growth rates, directly linking these figures to the performance of 25 high-level officials.

With such boldness, it would be strange if performance didn't improve.

"Thank you. If there's nothing else, I won't go back. I'll just postpone it until New Year's Eve. Anyway, my home is in Hangzhou. I can't lose to those guys."

"Okay, you've all worked hard. There wasn't enough time before the New Year, but the year-end bonuses will be distributed after the New Year, and your department will all get the highest bonuses!"

"Thank you, boss." After hanging up the phone, Jiang Fan resumed his door-to-door sales pitch.

"President Jiang also went to the field promotion!" Shen Huaijin was somewhat surprised.

This kind of thing could be done by the subordinates, but I didn't expect Jiang Fan to personally go to the front line.

"He's a talented person. Only a leader like him can make his brothers follow him wholeheartedly," Wang Junshan said with a smile.

In my past life, I had only heard of Chairman Liu delivering packages, but now I've seen Jiang Fan doing on-the-ground promotion.

But that's just how it is.

Ability is ability, and willingness to work is willingness to work.

"Is this scientific?" Shen Huaijin couldn't help but ask.

"How is it not scientific? I'm the chairman of Future Technology, and I still code all the time!" Wang Junshan laughed.

“That’s true.” Shen Huaijin had seen Wang Junshan coding late into the night on many occasions.

Simple development tasks can be delegated to subordinates.

However, for some difficult technical challenges, Wang Junshan still had to personally work on the source code.

There's no other way. These technical challenges can be delegated to subordinates, who can handle them, but it might take two months for just one technical difficulty.

But Wang Junshan can get it done in a day or two, or even half a day!

In order to shorten the time required to tackle the problem and for the sake of future technological development, Wang Junshan had to personally take charge.

Just like the technology that ensures tens of millions of users are online at the same time in "WeChat Farm," what a company in the past couldn't do in five minutes, Tencent can do, but it still needs one or two months of hard work!
That's why Tencent only took three months to create QQ Farm.

It took another month or so for the secondary creation project to be completed, but it still wasn't enough.

It will take an extra month or two to overcome the technical challenges of supporting tens of millions of users while ensuring smooth gameplay.

All in all, it would take at least six or seven months.

The same thing happened with Tencent in its previous life. In May, QQ Farm was only tested by QQ VIP users, and it couldn't support tens of millions of people online at the same time.

It wasn't until August that it was fully opened to all users.

The two months in between were dedicated to overcoming the technical challenge of having tens of millions of people online simultaneously.

To put it simply, farm games aren't difficult; the challenge lies in the technology to support tens of millions of people online simultaneously.

With Wang Junshan's help, this technology was completed in just one day!
The advanced distributed architecture of YouTuan.com, which allows it to handle order surges with ease, was also something Wang Junshan accomplished in a short period of time.

Otherwise, it would have crashed countless times, just like 12306.

"To be honest, I think highly of Jiang Fan."

"Next, we need to get community group buying going!"

Wang Junshan had a plan. He then went to the Beijing branch of ShouChuang Games.

"Boss, you are here."

Luo Jingsong, the head of the first game company in Beijing, quickly stood up.

"Let me see how Farm Ville is performing after its launch?"

Farm Ville, the international version of WeChat Farm, began development in September.

We have adopted a comprehensive Westernization approach to cater to the reserved culture of Omega users.

Even the game's "stealing vegetables" mechanic has been changed to helping friends harvest their crops.

The most difficult part is not the technology.

The WeChat Farm game has been successfully developed, and there are no technical difficulties involved.

The real challenge is Westernization.

Wang Junshan was quite troubled by the hypocrisy, no, the reserved spirit of Omega users.

I simply couldn't be bothered with it and handed it all over to Luo Jingsong's team to handle.

Professional people do professional things.

To ensure the success of this game, Luo Jingsong specifically recruited several foreign engineers and experience officers.

To achieve the most authentic Westernization.

By late December, Farm Ville was fully completed and tested, and was ready to launch at any time.

However, it requires data integration with Facebook and going through certain procedures, which is quite troublesome.

The game concept of "WeChat Farm" didn't work in Europe and America, so they could only promote "Farm Ville".

After all, a group of people who admire pirates and like to portray themselves as gentlemen would be ashamed by the "stealing vegetables" mode in "WeChat Farm," so it definitely won't work.

Furthermore, since WeChat lacks sufficient influence overseas, it had no choice but to choose the Facebook gaming platform and leverage Facebook's resources for rapid development.

Until January 12th, a week ago, the day before the launch of the WeChat Nokia client, Farm Ville was successfully launched on the Facebook Games platform.

"Boss, in the first two days after its launch, Farm Ville performed only so-so, with only a few users, but they all gave it good reviews and recommended it to their Facebook friends."

"It's been lukewarm at best, with only a little over 10,000 users in two days."

"The turning point came on the third day, with more than 50,000 new users in a single day; on the fourth day, more than 100,000 new users in a single day; on the fifth day, more than 170,000; on the sixth day, more than 280,000; and on the seventh day, more than 350,000!"

"The number of new users per day continues to climb. After one week of operation, the total number of users has already reached 100 million!"

"And this is just the beginning. Next week, we expect to add more than 300 million new users, bringing the total number of users to 400 million!"

“Very good. This is the normal level for Farm Ville.”

"Boss, aren't you surprised?"

"An accident? Why was it an accident?" Wang Junshan smiled.

"WeChat Farm can add hundreds of thousands of new users a day in the domestic market alone. Farm Ville targets the global market, so what's so unusual about adding 300,000 to 400,000 new users a day?"

“Uh…that makes sense.” Luo Jingsong thought that made sense.

What he didn't know was that in his previous life, Farm Ville was launched six months later. At that time, there was already Happy Farm and Happy Farmer in China, where you could buy a house and get a garden as a gift, and Farm Town was also available abroad.

However, Farm Ville quickly became a hit, with over 10 million users in a month and over 80 million monthly active users in six months.

It's just so scary.

It's safe to say that the "vegetable stealing" game has become incredibly popular worldwide.

However, nowadays, it's all about pioneering games.

The domestic version of "WeChat Farm" has surpassed 100 million monthly active users.

In the international market, FarmVille earned a million in its first week and easily reached ten million in its first month!
With a global reach, Future Technology is the absolute king of this field!
"Chairman, guess how much revenue we have?" Luo Jingsong asked mysteriously.

"The user base in the first week wasn't large, probably around $80?" Wang Junshan guessed.

"We're very close. We generated $117 million in revenue in the first week, and the key point is that it all belongs to us, with Facebook taking zero cut!"

"Not bad." That's a big plus.

Currently, Facebook's open platform, Facebook Platform, does not take a cut of revenue from third-party games.

That's right, all revenue generated from in-game items on the Facebook Platform goes to the developers; Facebook doesn't take a single penny.

Facebook doesn't care about payment methods or make them mandatory; you can even pay directly with a credit card.

"Boss, do you think Facebook is a philanthropist? Or is it just rich and capricious, not only opening up the Facebook Platform to allow third-party developers to develop applications, but also taking zero commission!" Luo Jingsong was somewhat incredulous.

Domestic major platforms split profits 90/10 or 80/20.

Small platforms split profits 70/30 or 60/40.

WeChat's game platform offers a 50/50 revenue split, while the promotion and operation package offers a 40/60 split, which is considered quite reasonable.

Facebook didn't take a single cent; they're such a philanthropist!

Wang Junshan laughed: "You're overthinking it."

"Facebook is not being willful, nor is it being self-righteous. On the contrary, it's simply because Facebook has big ambitions and grand schemes!"

"This..." Luo Jingsong was stunned, but quickly understood the reason:
"MySpace is currently the world's leading social media giant!"

"Facebook wants to overtake MySpace and become number one in the world, which is why it's waiving its commission!"

"Yes."

In 2007, Facebook launched its open platform, Facebook Platform, specifically to take down MySpace.

The goal is to attract countless developers and create a thriving ecosystem through full openness and zero commission.

This will enhance Facebook's stickiness and appeal to users, making them more inseparable from Facebook.

Compared to becoming the world's number one social media giant, this share of the revenue is not important.

"Without a doubt, Facebook succeeded." Luo Jingsong suddenly realized:

"At the end of last year, Facebook surpassed MySpace globally to become the world's number one social media giant."

"Like many other capital firms, will Facebook next shift to charging fees and start taking a cut?"

Wang Junshan waved his hand:
"There shouldn't be any major problems this year or next. Facebook just surpassed MySpace, so they can't afford to be too aggressive."

"If another free social platform emerges and becomes fully open, Zuckerberg will have nowhere to cry."

"In the past two years, Facebook has remained open and still operates on a zero-commission basis."

"But by the year after next, Facebook will have firmly established itself as the world's number one social media giant, crushing all its competitors."

"Even MySpace is no longer a direct competitor to Facebook, and emerging platforms are no match for it either."

"At that time, Facebook may show its capitalist fangs and start forcing all developers to use Facebook Credits for settlement and forcibly collect a certain percentage of revenue."

Luo Jingsong nodded: "I see. The dragon-slaying hero has become the dragon himself!"

"I was naive. I thought Zuckerberg and Facebook were really doing charity."

"Really doing charity? Hahaha."

Wang Junshan seemed to have heard a huge joke: "There aren't that many true philanthropists!"

"You probably can't imagine what's buried under many churches in the West."

"This..." Luo Jingsong fell silent, all his admiration for Zuckerberg vanished.

On the contrary, he admired Wang Junshan's open and honest nature even more.

"However, the commission-free period of the past two years is indeed a good opportunity!" Wang Junshan said with a smile.

It was during this period that gaming giants such as Zynga emerged.

Of course, those were all in my past life.

(End of this chapter)