The Dispute over Distribution Channels

In the perspective of Lu Zhou, the priority of Dream Grain Advertisement is higher than that of the banana market, but the importance of the banana market is much greater than that of Dream Grain Advertisement.

The reason for this result is simple: Dream Grain Advertisement must seize the title of the first mobile internet advertising company, so its urgency and priority are higher.

The reason why the banana market is considered more important than Dream Grain Advertisement is related to Lu Zhou's future blueprint.

Whether it's Alibaba Penguin or Baidu, one day they will establish their own application distribution channels, which is a crucial aspect of the ecosystem of giants.

Baidu took action first by acquiring 91 Assistant for nearly 2 billion US dollars. Tencent is planning to invest in building its own app store. Alibaba, on the other hand, made a strategic move by acquiring Wandoujia for 200 million US dollars.

Lu Zhou's perspective is that if we consider these three companies, Baidu seems to have suffered losses because 91 Assistant almost exhausted 30% of Baidu's cash flow for that quarter. However, if we compare them with second- and third-tier internet companies, it may not be a loss. The different attitudes of these three companies towards distribution channels are also related to their own situations. Baidu has a huge traffic entrance in the PC market but lags behind in the mobile internet. Tencent has a billion users and it would be easier for them to build their own mobile distribution channels. On the other hand, Alibaba focuses on e-commerce, and after acquiring UC, a huge entrance to the mobile internet, the distribution channel becomes less significant for them. Acquiring Wandoujia is just an added bonus for them.

Imagine if a user in 91 Assistant wants to find video applications, then 91 Assistant can adjust the sorting algorithm to prioritize displaying Baidu's own AiQiYi.

Regardless of the effectiveness of AiQiYi's investment in the mobile side, the channel traffic distributed by 91 Assistant alone can bring immeasurable value in terms of traffic to AiQiYi.

This is the charm of the ecosystem theory. It is difficult to see the effect of a single product line, but the entire system formed by multiple products has infinite possibilities due to the chemical reactions between them.

Therefore, if Lu Zhou wants to develop a product ecosystem, he must have control over the distribution channels, and the banana market is a must.

As for prioritizing the banana market early on, it serves as an ice-breaking measure for the initial promotion of Dream Grain Advertisement.

"Let's not waste any inspiration. Anyway, it's the weekend, and it won't affect the development of Dream Grain Advertisement for now."

"Yutong, Xiaoqin, come here," Lu Zhou called the two people.

"Your market work needs to start next week. Later, you should coordinate with Dong Junda on the integration module for advertising partners and prepare a user manual for them to read. Besides that, I have a list of gaming companies. Starting Monday, try to contact their marketing departments and recommend our Dream Grain Advertisement to them."

After arranging the market work, Lu Zhou made a phone call to Wen Xuwei. "Wen Ge, how is the server debugging situation for Dream Grain that Huiteng prepared? We need to start debugging and deployment next week."

Wen Xuwei complained, "Didn't I tell you the day before yesterday that it would be delivered on Monday? It's Saturday morning, don't you let people have a rest?"

Lu Zhou hurriedly apologized, "Sorry, I got caught up in coding and forgot that it's Saturday today."

"It mainly took a while to obtain the operating license. If you're in a

hurry, you can also go to the data center and debug the hardware yourself. You did it at Huiteng before, so you should know the process. It's just that General Song wanted to implement standardized procedures."

"In that case, it's not necessary. After all, I'm no longer an employee of Huiteng, so it won't be compliant. Please help me take care of it, and I need to go live before next Friday."

Wen Xuwei was curious, "You just left the company, and now you want to achieve results within two weeks?"

"That's right. This week, the Dream Grain team has been working overtime for more than ten hours every day."

"Haven't seen you for a few days, and now Mr. Lu has become a ruthless boss."

Lu Zhou didn't mind, "No, they are all young people with strong motivation. I didn't force them to work overtime."

"If you say so, I'm curious to see the progress of Dream Grain's work."

"When Wen Ge comes, Dream Grain will be ready to welcome you at any time."

"Alright, if I have time, I'll come over."

After hanging up the phone, Lu Zhou finished writing the sorting algorithm for the banana market and handed it over to Wang Zhengye to familiarize himself with it.

Lu Zhou then immediately started preparing the server architecture so that he could quickly deploy it once he received the server from Huiteng on Monday.

Currently, the Dream Grain Advertisement server is primarily for internal use, and there is no need to allocate idle resources externally. Therefore, Lu Zhou did not choose to implement a distributed architecture from the perspective of cloud computing but opted for a traditional cluster architecture.

Cluster architecture is suitable for small and medium-sized business needs, and using this architecture for Dream Grain Advertisement can shorten a significant amount of development and deployment time.

Although it may face scalability and fault tolerance issues, once Dream Grain Advertisement needs to increase servers due to business growth in the next phase, significant adjustments will have to be made.

"Well, from a future perspective, distributed architecture and cloud computing are inevitable. Dream Grain Advertisement went live at the end of March, and the banana market was completed in early April. The server architecture and programs for both projects' version 2.0 need to be redeveloped towards a distributed direction. Based on the timeline, it shouldn't exceed two months, or even be compressed to be completed by May. Otherwise, if any aspect exceeds the expected development, the system will be prone to collapse."

For internet companies, both business and technical architecture are not achieved overnight and often require a development process.

In the early stages, simpler implementation methods are adopted to shorten the product cycle and achieve a quick launch. In the midterm, multiple modules are split and a composite distributed system is implemented.

If the order is reversed, in the fast-paced internet environment, the product may not have been fully formed and launched before a competitor seizes the market.

For Lu Zhou, he is well aware of the intricacies involved and is familiar with every step of the product lifecycle.

Currently, the biggest challenge for Dream Grain is the lack of manpower. Whether it's Dream Grain Advertisement or the banana market, Lu Zhou still needs to play a leading role in both projects. It will take some time for the others to grow to the point where they can grasp a project.

Fang Qiang may barely pass in terms of programming, but when it comes to server architecture or system design, he is still in the dark.

So, Lu Zhou needs to lead Fang Qiang in the development from the server cluster of Dream Grain Advertisement and the banana market to the distributed development of version 2.0.

At that point, Fang Qiang may be capable of handling the project, while the four interns' progress will depend on their comprehension and diligence.

"If I could convince Wen Ge to join us like in my previous life, I wouldn't have to guide Fang Qiang's growth at all. In my previous life, their golden partnership made me unstoppable on the road to success." Lu Zhou thought to himself.

Of course, calling it "unstoppable" was just a joke. Lu Zhou focuses on cutting-edge research in trending technologies and serves as the helmsman of the entire team in terms of development and direction. Fang Qiang and Wen Xuwei, on the other hand, focus on business logic implementation and system architecture.

"Well, this idea is quite bold, but it might get me killed by General Song."

Lu Zhou couldn't help but laugh, "It's not easy to convince someone when you have nothing to offer at the beginning. But once 2.0 is out, I don't believe you, Wen Ge, can resist getting on board. Just like in my previous life, if I could convince you to join, you won't be able to escape it in this life. Whether you want to come or not, you'll have to come."