Chapter 122 - Opening That Door Early

"Living in H33, what do you think of your three housemates?" Ginny smiled gently, but the question she asked was not gentle at all.

Lin Ming Yang nodded, "They're all pretty good, I think they and I should be in the same category."

"The same kind of people?" Ginny froze, "Including Green Nutt?"

"Have you seen me rumored with any Hollywood actor?" Lin Ming Yang helplessly explained, "My sexual orientation is normal, I mean they are all different, with their own independent personalities and ideas, yet full of passion and vigor, which is very similar to me."

"Including Glyn Nutter?" The same question Ginny asked again.

"He's the most unique among us, even to the point of saying that he's ahead of everyone else's thinking. In the preface to his book, Tolerance, Fannon tells the story of a pioneer. This chapter's preface tells us that we should have a more rational and tolerant attitude towards things that are ahead of their time."

"That's what you think of homosexuals?" Ginny made a quick note with her pen.

This woman was not only pretty, but her mind reacted quite quickly, she brightly devised a trap of questions, and Lin Ming Yang could only stick his neck out righteously even if he could see it.

This evoked Lin Ming Yang's curiosity about her, "Ginny, what course did you major in at school?"

"Law!"

Ginny smiled sweetly, Lin Ming Yang nodded in relief, coming from such a "prestigious house" as Harvard Law School, she did have enough capital to be proud of herself.

----

Ginny was satisfied to get the interview she wanted, but the next day her interview did not appear on the front page. Although Ginny had the upper hand in the interview with Lin Mingyang, Luna got there first and broke the news about Lin Mingyang's disguise to get into the school.

Luna got the first-hand information from Jim, poor Jim didn't even know that the exploding head who lived in the same room with Mark Zuckerberg was Lin Ming Yang when he was interviewed by her, Luna easily got out of his mouth the whole process of Lin Ming Yang's encounter with them, and also got one of the photos of them together.

Luna's and Ginny's reports made the front page of the Harvard Crimson the next day at the same time, with the two articles taking up the entire page. Luna dominated the headline with her novelty, but Ginny got the most space with her detailed interview. Their reports were both related to Lin Mingyang, but the articles were diametrically opposed to Lin Mingyang's roommate.

Mark Zuckerberg was the one who had completely offended Luna, so in Luna's report, Jim's original quote was quoted extensively, and he was extremely mocking of Mark Zuckerberg, and then Green Nutt became an exhibitionist under her pen, and the only one who was spared was Billy Olsen. Her article completely portrays Lin Ming Yang as a victim of deception.

While Ginny's report was relatively more impartial, even though she didn't like Mark Zuckerberg either, considering that she would often have to visit dormitory H33 in the future, in order to get on good terms with that group of guys, she didn't bring her personal emotional coloring to her report, and she had a pretty good opinion of Mark Zuckerberg, especially since Lin Ming Yang had categorized them as a group of people like himself, and this had made a lot of people's impression of the dormitory drastically change.

Lin Mingyang had seldom accepted exclusive interviews with reporters before, so Ginny's report was quoted by many newspapers at the same time. Lin Mingyang's views on homosexuality were praised by many gay organizations in the United States. Coincidentally enough, two days after this article appeared in the newspaper, the Massachusetts house passed an amendment to the law, and this state legally began to allow homosexuals to marry.

Both Ginny and Luna successfully passed the test and officially became reporters for the Harvard Crimson, but there were still some differences in their status in the newspaper; Ginny's interview with Lin Mingyang was a great success, and the story became a bridge for her to initially build up a relationship of mutual trust with Lin Mingyang, and she became a regular visitor to dormitory H33. Luna, on the other hand, because of her slanderous comments about other members of the H33 dormitory in her report, she was put on the blacklist of visitors that the H33 dormitory refused to have.

Lin Mingyang buys an upscale apartment near the school, but he still moves into the dormitory and honestly lives the life of a cohort. Compared to his previous exposure, Lin Mingyang's time at Harvard can be described as a deep living, and most of his time, he either stayed in the dormitory or soaked in the library.

These small rooms on the third floor of the Kirkland dormitory were overcrowded, and yet the boys lived here more intimately than they would have if they had lived in a more spacious environment. Lin Mingyang's ideas were unique and his thinking was often pie-in-the-sky, but extremely creative. Zuckerberg is straightforward and sometimes even frank without scruples, something he probably inherited from his mother.

The group communication in H33 is usually led by either Lin Mingyang or Mark Zuckerberg. Because of Lin Mingyang's presence, their conversations are often joined by boys from other dorms. To be able to enter Harvard, none of them were at a bad level, and they saw things as their own ideas. Being able to be the leader of the group was simply because Lin Mingyang and Mark Zuckerberg's ideas often led the way.

Thus, straightforwardness became the usual style of conversation in this suite, where there were not many hidden secrets. Everyone gets along here in part because they know where everyone stands. Aside from H33's fixed four hosts who remained constant, the people involved in their discussions were always changing. When there were fewer than one or two, everyone could occupy a very comfortable place on the sofa in the living room, and when there were more than five or six, the sofa was crowded beyond the point where some people had to stand to participate in the discussion.

They talk about a wide range of topics, from politics and economics to nature and culture, and the sparks of wisdom often collide during the discussions. These discussions were held about 2 to 3 times a week, and the ones who came in the beginning were the boys from this dormitory who were closer to H33. Billy Olsen, the guy who reunited, played his part by organizing these discussions and putting them in his weblog, originally to increase the hits on his homepage, but inadvertently publicizing the seminar. As the influence continued to grow, some very famous guys from the school also began to now in the H33 dormitory, unchanged, the discussion participants are only boys.

The only exception was Ginny, who, with her good relationship with H33 dormitory, was given the exclusive right to report on the discussion, so she could record every discussion from the side, and sometimes she would make jokes when the atmosphere was cold, but never participated in the discussions between the boys.

During this time, Lin Mingyang had been observing Mark Zuckerberg attentively, in fact, the other party was doing the same thing as him. Lin Mingyang realized that when surrounded by strangers, Mark Zuckerberg was quiet and reticent, but that was just an illusion, because once he opened his mouth, he became another person. When other people fully express their ideas, Zuckerberg usually does not open his mouth to speak, but stares at the other person. He is used to looking at the person who is speaking and remaining completely silent himself.

If the other person speaks inspirationally, he ends up rattling off his opinion. But if they talk for too long, or if it's all obvious, he'll recognize it, and when they're done, he'll gently say "yeah" back and change the subject, or turn away.

In fact, from the time he learned that he and Mark Zuckerberg the same dormitory, Lin Mingyang heart has a hidden intention, Mark Zuckerberg Facebook has just been established, the site from the moment it appeared on the show a strong vitality, but as a new thing to let people accept there is still a process. In Lin Mingyang's memory, Facebook as early as get next year, Mark Zuckerberg officially dropped out before the first venture capital, before this, the money has always been the reason to limit the development of this site. Of course, in addition to money, there is a more important issue is how to get people to accept this emerging way of online socialization.

With the vision and gaze of a reborn person, Lin Mingyang is optimistic about more than just Facebook, he has a much larger network development plan in mind, but Facebook is another very critical part of it. Whether or not Lin Mingyang's plan can be successfully implemented depends largely on what level of trust can be established between him and Mark Zuckerberg.

From the moment Lin Mingyang walked into H33, Mark Zuckerberg also had a vague idea in his mind, and in the continuous contact with Lin Mingyang, the idea in his head became clearer and clearer.

In this case, a separate appointment became inevitable.

Harvard University is located in the small city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the nearby Tsars River winding through Boston three miles away. Like Boston, Cambridge is a city where history and culture meet modern civilization. The city's dual culture of tradition and innovation has also deeply influenced Harvard University. Harvard has no walls, and its campus is integrated into the city, with art galleries, concert halls, museums, and, of course, elegant and chic cafes.

Although this is a formal meeting, whether they can reach a consensus or not will even deeply affect the fate of their respective lives, but Lin Mingyang did not very deliberately let himself dress more formal, and Mark Zuckerberg directly stepped on his pair of rubber slippers to come to the appointment. Anyone who sees this picture can't imagine that what these two young people talk about will turn into a company's market value of tens of billions of dollars a few years later.

When Mark Zuckerberg came, he realized that Lin Mingyang still had a cup of unfinished coffee sitting opposite him, that was obviously not prepared for him.

"Looks like someone beat me to the wait."

Mark Zuckerberg smiled casually, but a very casual reply from Lin Mingyang caused his smile to freeze on his face.

"Mr. Saverin just left."

Saverin was Facebook's finance director and one of the company's current partners, and where the website was being built, he had come up with an investment of $10,000, which was not a small amount of money for Facebook at the time.

The fact that Lin Mingyang was meeting with the company's finance director without any knowledge of it himself, Mark Zuckerberg was immediately on guard, but he was also a little confused, if the content of their conversation was not favorable to him, then Lin Mingyang didn't need to tell him about it.

The expression on Mark Zuckerberg's face was cloudy, but Lin Ming Yang could easily guess what he was thinking. "Before this, you should have talked to Mr. Saverin about what you really think, so he found me. But the conversation between us was limited to a very superficial exchange, nothing that touched the core. I can sit here quite frankly and tell you this, and with your intelligence you should understand what I mean."

"What did Saverin tell you?" Mark Zuckerberg nodded as he asked the waiter to get himself another cup of coffee.

"Mainly some of your differences on the development of the site, he wants to use ads to support the site's operations, but you think that getting as much revenue as possible with ads isn't nearly as important as keeping your users happy all the time. Since some of the commercials couldn't keep up with the humor and playfulness of the students on Facebook, you turned down a number of companies, including Mercer Consulting and Goldman Sachs."

Mark Zuckerberg candidly said, "That's the biggest disagreement between Saverin and I. I don't want to put out ads, but Saverin is a businessman."

Among the elite of contemporaries with unique ideas about the web, Mark Zuckerberg is not the only one who has no intention of advertising revenue. Classifieds sites Craigslist and Wikipedia were already rapidly rising rapidly on the Internet at the time, and sites like them clearly didn't take a commercial approach to placing ads.

"I'm actually really concerned about Facebook's user demographic, and Saverin told me that Facebook is now perfectly capable of expanding to schools with larger student populations, like the University of Arizona. But you seem to insist that the site should still be open primarily within Ivy League institutions, or at least at those schools that users have asked him to add, the latter category of schools being included in Facebook because some of the users' friends attend there."

According to Lin's initial understanding, the social circle on the Facebook site was always small and exclusive during the first few months of operation. Even advertisers couldn't log on to the site because Zuckerberg insisted that users be limited to students, faculty, staff and alumni of the schools that were on the network. It was unheard of for them not to be able to see the advertisements that their company was putting out.

"Do you also think I should open up more schools and get more people on the site?" Mark Zuckerberg's initial positioning of Facebook was similar to Harvard's, taking the elite route. This has a lot to do with the fact that the site was born at Harvard, but has evolved into a growth spurt.

"A true elite is not trapping itself in a castle piled with condescension, only by going to the masses can the value of the social elite be realized." Lin Mingyang felt the need to give Mark Zuckerberg a lesson, because this guy had some arrogance in his bones, and after entering Harvard, this fault became more and more obvious.

"If you only intend to maintain the users of your website in Ivy League institutions, then there's no need for us to talk at all today, the Facebook in my imagination shouldn't be limited to campuses. It has to go into thousands of homes, transcend national boundaries, and use online socialization to connect the virtual world into a whole, influence and change people's lifestyles, and even build a second world on the Internet independent of reality!"