lerbook Chapter 301 Happy Farm
Chapter 301 Happy Farm
8 PM.
In the monitoring room of Xingchen Technology's office building, everyone was standing.
The curves on the screen were no longer curves, but vertical straight lines. The line for new user registrations went directly out of bounds on the chart, and the monitoring system automatically adjusted the vertical axis before it reappeared.
"How many?" David's voice was hoarse.
"From 4 PM until now, four hours, new users..." Eric tapped his fingers on the keyboard a few times, "Two million seven hundred thousand."
The room was silent for three seconds.
"Adding to the previous data," Eric continued, "today's total new users are expected to exceed four million. That's twenty times the highest single-day increase in Star Language's history."
What about server load?
"The peak value has reached eight times the normal value." Eric pulled up a chart. "We've expanded our capacity three times, and we still have some spare capacity. But at this rate, we might have to expand again tonight."
"What about paid conversions?" Catherine asked.
"Happy Farm itself is free," Eric said, "but users have started buying speed-up cards. In the past hour, speed-up card sales have been thirty times that of yesterday. Red Diamond and Yellow Diamond sales have also quadrupled. Users want to unlock more land, buy skins, and decorate their farms."
Catherine glanced down at the printed paper in her hand. On that paper, after the numbers U1 to U20, there were now dozens of lines of handwritten notes for each number—all of them detailing how many people they had invited, how long they had played, and what they had said.
U3: Invited 37 people. Original quote: "This stuff is addictive."
U7: Invited 52 people. Original quote: "I created a group specifically for stealing virtual crops."
U12: Invited 81 people. Original quote: "My mom asked me why I kept looking at my phone, and I said I was researching investments."
Catherine looked up at Ling Yun.
Lingyun stood by the window, his back to everyone. Outside, the night was deep, and the lights of Silicon Valley spread out like an inverted starry sky.
"What's next?" she asked.
Ling Yun didn't turn around. "Users will get it running on their own," he said. "We don't need to push it anymore."
Nine o'clock in the evening.
On the Reddit tech section, a new post has been pushed to the top with the title "What is ICQ headquarters feeling right now?"
The main building only has one sentence: "Who can go to Redmond and take a picture?"
There are already over two thousand replies below.
The first highly-rated reply: "It should be similar to what Netscape did back then."
Second comment: "I just checked the ICQ official website, and the homepage is still promoting the Space and group chat functions. It's hilarious."
Article 3: "ICQ: We also have social features! User: Oh, I'm going to plant vegetables in Xingyu."
Article 4: "Microsoft spent 430 million to buy ICQ, and Xingyu spent an afternoon building a farm. We all saw the result."
Article 5: "This isn't about money, it's about thinking."
Article 6: "I just switched from ICQ to Xingyu. Not because of the features, but because all my friends are playing online farming games there. Nobody's playing with me, so what's the point of staying on ICQ?"
Article 7: "The only thing ICQ can do now is copy. But by the time they finish copying Farmville, Star Language will have already released its next one."
Article 8: "What's next? Who knows?"
Article 9: "I don't know. But it's definitely being done."
10 PM.
The San Francisco Chronicle website updated its technology section headline: "Happy Farm Goes Viral on Social Media, Record-Breaking Daily New Users."
The article begins: "A simple farming game allowed Xingyu to gain over four million new users in 24 hours. This number surpasses ICQ's total over the past three months. Analysts call it one of the most successful viral marketing cases in the history of social products."
The main text quotes several user interviews:
"I didn't originally use Star Language," said Kyle, a college student in San Francisco. "But my roommate kept asking me to help him harvest crops and register an account. After registering, I started planting crops myself, and now I have more than 30 friends, all of whom I met while playing Star Language."
"My mom registered for StarCraft today," said Emily, a Stanford student. "She added me as a friend and then stole my tomatoes. I called her about it, and she said, 'That's the point of games.'"
"Everyone in our office is playing this now," said Mark, a programmer in Silicon Valley. "During lunch breaks, everyone's exchanging tips on how to steal crops in the game. Someone made a spreadsheet to calculate when everyone's crops mature. We now call it 'farm economics'."
The article concludes: "Xingyu proved with a simple game that the core of a social product is not the number of features it has, but whether it can create an 'inevitable participation' impulse in users. ICQ may be able to replicate its features, but it cannot replicate this impulse."
It's 11 p.m.
Redmond, ICQ War Room.
Meyer was still sitting at the control panel. Most of the workstations around him were empty, with only a few people still working overtime. On the screen, the ICQ online user curve was as calm as stagnant water, occasionally jumping a few times before settling back down.
The engineer next to me answered a phone call, said a few words, and hung up.
"Meyer." He walked over, his voice soft. "Just received news. Xingyu has gained... 4.2 million new users today."
Meyer didn't say anything.
He stared at the ICQ user curve on the screen. The line had been slowly declining since the afternoon and was now 8% lower than at the same time yesterday.
Eight percentage points.
In one day, it lost eight percentage points.
"We'll say something tomorrow..." The engineer started to say something, but didn't finish.
Meyer stood up and walked to the window.
He recalled three years ago, when he was still at Netscape. Back then, he was in his early twenties, full of enthusiasm, and believed that good products would win. Later, Netscape lost, and he told himself it was because Microsoft used unfair methods. Then he came to ICQ, telling himself that this time was different; this time, backed by Microsoft, they wouldn't lose again.
Today he realized that he lost not because of his methods, but because of his mind.
It's not because others are too strong, it's because I'm too slow.
It's not because the functionality is insufficient, it's because the imagination is insufficient.
"Meyer?" the engineer called out again.
He turned around.
"Inform Mr. Ballmer," he said. "I need to see him tomorrow morning."
"What did you say?"
Meyer was silent for three seconds.
"We need to rethink," he said. "Rethink everything."