Rebirth 04: Starting from Taking an Unconventional Approach

Han Fei pulled up a chair and sat down next to Wen Jie. Zhang Ruiyi leaned against the window, watching the sunlight shine on several potted green plants.

Wen Jie turned his head, seemingly not having heard him come in, and was startled.

"Brother Fei, when did you get here?" he said, his gaze sweeping over Han Fei's pants. "What's that on your pants?"

"Never mind that for now." Han Fei turned and looked around before leaning forward and lowering his voice, "Do you know you're being watched by NetEase?"

"NetBillion?"

Wen Jie's expression of surprise was quite natural, enough to convince Han Fei that he knew nothing about the matter.

Han Fei nodded: "Hmm, think carefully, have you inadvertently leaked any information about the project these past few days?"

Wen Jie frowned and scratched the back of his head.

"No," he said. "Could it be from a few days ago...?"

"What happened the other day?"

"I ran into our former deputy director on the bus the other day. I was on my computer, checking the previous night's task log, when I noticed her standing next to me. I thought she hadn't seen me... that Fei-ge..."

Han Fei interrupted Wen Jie by raising his hand. Han Fei leaned back in his chair, his fingertips touching, lost in thought. He looked at Zhang Ruiyi. Zhang Ruiyi pointed towards the door, indicating she would wait outside, and then quietly left the office.

"Brother Fei," Wen Jie asked tentatively after a while, "I hope nothing bad has happened?"

Han Fei shook his head: "If our model becomes a huge success after it goes live, many companies will inevitably follow suit and imitate it. That's just unavoidable. However, given the size of NetEase, if they try to replicate this model among us, we'll probably have a hard time competing. But the good thing about our project is that currently only I can create it."

Why do you say that?

"Because the core of this model isn't just technology, but also content—the novels. Our real advantage lies in our time window and content barrier. Technology can be copied, but the ability to identify and accumulate content takes time. NetEase has SP channels and can quickly build a similar platform, but they can neither conceive of nor mass-produce the kind of stories we have. The information on your computer screen alone doesn't pose much of a threat to us."

"What if...they really have already thought of the same thing as us?"

Han Fei chuckled, thinking that if someone within NetEase could have figured out how to write new media novels at this time, they wouldn't have had to wait until 2006 to turn things around with games, and they wouldn't have missed the first wave of new media novel profits in 2017.

"Impossible," Han Fei said. "Besides, isn't our model going to be online soon? How's it going now?" As he spoke, he gestured with his chin toward the computer.

"Oh, Fei-ge, come and see." Wen Jie swiped the mouse and opened the website homepage.

Han Fei rested his elbows on the table and leaned towards the screen.

The website has a simple blue color scheme, with the Bluebird logo in the upper left corner, a simple blue bird in flight, and the four cursive characters "Bluebird Reading" below.

The homepage features a simple recommendation section to showcase the latest popular works, sorted by clicks and subscriptions.

On the right is the category entry, which, according to Han Fei's requirements, has three tags: Rural Tales, Urban Romance, and Suspense Thriller.

"What about the user flow?" Han Fei asked.

Wen Jie opened a test account: "Registration is simple, just use your mobile phone number and verification code. After logging in, go to the bookstore, open any novel, the first 500 words are free, after which a payment prompt will appear."

He clicked the mouse: "If the user chooses to continue reading, the system will call the SP interface and send a confirmation SMS to the user's mobile phone. The user's reply with the specified command will be considered a successful subscription, the phone bill will be deducted, and the website will unlock the user's full reading access to this novel. And..."

Wen Jie switched to another interface: "We have added a monthly subscription option to the novel details page. If users choose the monthly subscription, they will be charged as SP (Special Permit) and can read all the novels that have been published on the site and those newly published during the month without having to pay for each individual novel."

"What about the backstage?"

Wen Jie brought up the data statistics backend interface, where he saw real-time subscription numbers, paid user growth curves, single-article revenue rankings, user activity time distribution, and all the basic functions were available.

"I also wrote a simple prototype of a recommendation algorithm," Wen Jie said. "Based on users' reading history, it pushes similar works in the 'You May Like' section on the homepage. The database is also basically protected, and key operations are logged. The SP billing callback address has been whitelisted with IPs and verified with signatures to prevent forged requests."

Han Fei nodded in satisfaction: "Not bad."

Wen Jie scratched the back of his ear and chuckled softly: "That's about all there is to the reading website. As for the promotional copy for the text messages, that's something you'll have to prepare."

"Okay, can we start typing the manuscript today?"

"no problem."

......

The meeting room for the SP Innovation Incubation Project Team is located on the 17th floor of the NetEase Building.

As if a pause button had been pressed, everything in the conference room came to a standstill. The hands of the wall clock pointed rigidly to 10:37:56.

Below the wall clock is a 75-inch projection screen. A projector on the ceiling shoots a clear, cool white beam of light, projecting a photograph onto the screen without reservation.

The photograph was clearly taken in an extremely rushed manner, with an awkward angle and composition that completely violates any photographic aesthetics. The main subject of the image is the crotch area of ​​a pair of dark trousers, the zipper open, revealing a clearly male genital organ uncontrollably exposed to the air. A pale yellow droplet of water hangs from the top, seemingly hesitant.

The curtain emitted light, illuminating four frozen faces in front of it. These four, collectively known as the "Special Monitoring and Analysis Team," were primarily tasked with an informal mission: "understanding industry dynamics and assessing potential competitive dynamics." In simpler terms, they were conducting real-time monitoring and analysis of photos sent back to the company.

However, just a second before, none of them expected that such a photo would be sent back to the company.

At that moment, someone pushed open the meeting room door, breaking the silence.

Time began to flow again.

The four of them turned their heads at the same time and saw Zhao Wenlai, the chief product officer of NetEase, standing at the door, staring at the curtain with a look of astonishment.

Someone swallowed hard.

"What are you all doing?" Zhao Wenlai roared, grabbing a black object from the shelf next to the door and throwing it. The four men scrambled to dodge. The black object shattered on the ground.

"It's not our fault, Mr. Zhao! This was sent back by that kid Liu Xin!" someone said.

"Hurry up and cut it off!"

"Reporting to Mr. Zhao, without the remote control, it can't be cut off."

"Where's the remote?"

"Mr. Zhao, that's the one you just fell over."

"Then turn it off!"

"Reporting to General Manager Zhao, the projector is on the ceiling."

Zhao Wenlai leaned back and glanced down the corridor. "Xiao Li!" he shouted.

A young man wearing glasses ran over: "Mr. Zhao."

"Go get the remote for the projector next door right now and cut it off! Otherwise, if President Chen sees this, do you want us all dead?"

The young man just stared at him, dumbfounded: "Uh... Mr. Zhao, who are you talking about?"

"Don't you understand what I'm saying?" Zhao Wenlai roared, pointing a trembling index finger at the curtain.