Rebirth 04: Starting from Taking an Unconventional Approach

Zhang Qiming made himself a cup of tea and returned to his desk to sit down. The clock in the corner of the computer screen showed 11:45 AM.

With a celebratory air, he swung his legs and placed them on his desk. He took his first sip of tea and stared at the internal memo he had just signed on the computer screen: a notice regarding the opening of Shanghai's active local phone number pool for use by the strategic innovation pilot project "Qingniao Reading".

The main text consisted of only three lines, ending with his electronic signature and the official seal of the Shanghai Mobile Data Business Department. This notification would circulate to the Technical Support Center, Data Business Department, and Billing Center within ten minutes to complete the final permission configuration.

Finally, this matter was settled, Zhang Qiming thought to himself. Ever since returning from the mobile headquarters, he had been thinking about providing substantial support for Han Fei's project. The successful report at the headquarters meeting, Liu Zhenhua's granting of the Qingniao qualification, Fang Jing's inspection at the publishing house, and the support from the technical team—these were all "matters from above."

What truly took effect was the notification in front of him: the pool of 200 million active phone numbers in Shanghai was officially opened to Qingniao.

This means Han Fei no longer needs to source phone numbers from shady channels in rural towns, and he no longer needs to worry about being caught by regulators for his unorthodox practices. He helped Han Fei get on the right track. For a veteran of over twenty years in the postal and telecommunications system, nothing is more gratifying than watching a promising young man transform from a guerrilla fighter into a regular soldier. Now, it remains to be seen how high that kid can fly.

Zhang Qiming kept his eyes glued to the screen, feeling as if he were sitting right next to a nuclear reactor.

As soon as the phone rang, Zhang Qiming immediately picked it up and said, "This is Zhang Qiming!"

"Mr. Zhang, the technical support center has confirmed that the number pool interface configuration is complete and the whitelist has been added. The SP channel priority on Qingniao's side has been adjusted to the highest level, and we will use the green channel as you requested."

"What about the billing side?"

"The billing center has updated the reconciliation rules. All subscriptions generated through this batch of numbers will be individually tagged, and will be automatically calculated at a 12% share during the end-of-month settlement."

"Okay. Let's wait for them to do the final verification."

Zhang Qiming hung up the phone and breathed a sigh of relief. He put his legs down from the table, but accidentally bumped into a teacup.

The teacup fell onto the carpet with a soft thud. Tea and tea leaves gushed out, spreading in a dark circle on the carpet.

Just as Zhang Qiming's teacup—or to be more precise, the teacup in the office of the deputy general manager of the Shanghai branch of China Mobile—fell to the ground, Wang Zhe picked up his cup—or, to be even more precise, the cup from Qingniao Publishing House.

Han Fei looked closely at the chubby little finger of Wang Zhe, the data engineer, and wondered how much of Wang Zhe's raised little finger was just for show, and how much was simply because his little finger was too fat.

Wen Jie and the technical team are verifying the number pool interface.

"The interface is working perfectly," Wen Jie said. "We are requesting the first batch of test numbers."

Han Fei looked at the screen and saw that the progress bar had reached 100%, with a green message below: Interface response is normal, data retrieval complete.

A new window pops up, displaying a densely packed list of phone numbers, complete with information on number ranges, districts/counties of origin, activity levels over the past three months, and spending habits.

"This data was directly pulled from the mobile side," Wang Zhe said. "All 200 million records are here, covering all districts and counties in Shanghai except Chongming. The activity level is for users who have call or SMS records within the last three months."

Wen Jie scrolled through a few pages quickly: "The data quality is much higher than what we collect from townships; at least there are no dead numbers."

"Of course." Lin Feng leaned over from the chair next to him. "This is the official mobile number pool. Every number is from a real-name registered active user. It's not on the same level as the gray channels you used to collect."

Zhou Ming sat a little behind the three of them, his arms crossed over his chest, saying nothing. He simply stared intently at the screen, nodding slightly.

Wen Jie looked at Han Fei: "Brother Fei, should we select a batch for testing first?"

"Okay." Han Fei nodded. "First, select 5000 numbers and publish two articles. The phone numbers should cover different districts and age groups to see if there are any significant differences in conversion rates. Engineer Wang, can the profiling system provide real-time feedback on the tag distribution of these phone numbers?"

Wang Zhe had already opened a window on Lin Feng's computer: "Sure. After Wen Jie draws the sample, I can pull up the portrait statistics for this group of people in just a few dozen seconds."

"Okay. Wen Jie, start smoking," Han Fei said.

"OK." Wen Jie immediately switched to the operation interface. After the numbers were drawn, the progress bar on the screen started to move: 0%......12%......34%......78%......95%......A window popped up: Test sample drawing completed, a total of 5000.

「用户画像调出来了。」王哲在屏幕上拉出来一张饼状图，念道：「男性占比68%，女性32%。年龄分布：25到35岁占41%，35到45岁占33%，45岁以上占18%，25岁以下只有8%。消费习惯标籤：高频话费充值用户占57%，夜间流量活跃用户占34%......」

"It's pretty much what we predicted," Han Fei said. "Our core users are still young and middle-aged men. So let's try these two pieces, 'Borrowing Seed' and 'The Door My Brother Closed,' choosing the ones with the strongest sense of conflict."

"Should we distribute them in two groups or mix them together?" Wen Jie asked.

"Let's post them in a mixed format," Han Fei said. "Two thousand posts in each group, let's see the overall conversion rate, and also see which one is more popular."

"Okay." Wen Jie selected two novels for push notification in the backend, and added three captions to each. Another window popped up.

Batch push task created successfully

Task ID: TS-20040812-001

Target number pool: Active local users in Shanghai (200 million numbers)

Content pushed out: Copywriting Library Group A (2 articles)

Estimated shipment volume: 5000 messages (test batch)

Status: Pending execution

Wen Jie turned to look at Han Fei.

"Let's begin," Han Fei said.

Wen Jie pressed the Enter key with his finger.

A message appears on the screen: The push task has been submitted.

The status bar changed from "Waiting to execute" to "Sending through the green channel". The real-time log window of the SP interface began to flash rapidly, and green status codes scrolled by one by one: 200, 200, 200, all indicating successful delivery.

Thirty seconds later, the first batch of feedback data began to return.

Total push notifications: 5000

Successfully delivered: 4998

User response: 0

Subscription successful: 0

Conversion rate: 0%

Lin Feng pulled up the system load monitoring graph on his laptop: "The curve is stable, without any fluctuations."

Han Fei lit a cigarette and sat down in a chair at the back of the conference room, waiting in silence.