Chapter 217: Let's spray!

At the famous Sunflower Restaurant, Zhou Ming met Xiao Xue's friend, the forum administrator. He was a very sunny young man named Li Tao, who was pursuing Xiao Xue, so much so that when he first met Zhou Ming, showed hostility, and it was only when he learned of Zhou Ming's relationship with Tang Ran that he was relieved. As an apology, Li Tao said that if Zhou Ming was in any way in need of help, he would do his best to help.

Regarding the request to help moderate discussions on the bbs, Li Tao readily agreed. Originally he didn't want any reward, but Zhou Ming accepted the proposal of one dollar per post with sufficient replies after being persuaded by Li Tao that 'he could do without the reward, but others couldn't work for free'.

Through a chat with Li Tao, Zhou Ming learned that the administrators of this era were not yet responsible for reviewing posts or adding them as featured on the forum, as they would be in later generations. as the administrator of the Stanford community, his job of creating topics on the bbs and guiding other users in discussions to increase the volume of the bbs and user activity is the same.

'You don't worry, I will definitely make the discussion about whether toys have a soul the hottest topic on the Stanford community!'

Li Tao finally assured Ming Chow by patting his chest in front of Xiaoxue, and of course he did have that confidence.

On the very day Li Tao gave his assurance, Ming Chow received a phone call from Steve Jobs in San Francisco: 'Mr. Ming Chow, can you tell me how you actually did it? My technical consultant told me that today in the Stanford community, there are several other bbs, the number of visits and user discussions on the post about whether our toy has a soul has increased more than five times compared to yesterday. This is incredible!'

Zhou Ming knows that the bbs was first developed through the computer system of the company Appier. Although several years have passed, the current bbs has developed its own independent system and server. However, as the developer Jobs of Appier, he of course knows a lot about this. Therefore, in order to further grasp the full situation on the bbs, he recruited technicians to use some technical means to developer Jobs of Apple, of course, knows a lot about this, so in order to further grasp the overall situation on the bbs, he recruited technicians to monitor the bbs data through some technical means.

'I met a Stanford community administrator in Palo Alto. He and his classmates were responsible for all the guidance and promotion, and I just promised to pay them one dollar for every meaningful reply.'

Zhou Ming had no need to hide anything and told Jobs everything that had happened to him since returning to Palo Alto.

'This was a really cheap way of driving up labour, because a lot of people thought they could easily earn a few hundred dollars a day, but In reality, at the speed most people type, it takes at least half a minute to write a single reply, not to mention the time spent thinking. It's hard to earn more than fifty dollars an hour.'

Jobs Jobs went on to say: 'But they will think that they are just playing on the BBS. In the past, they couldn't make money playing on the BBS, but now they can make money while playing, which is the best of both worlds . What's more, many of these people are alumni of Stanford University. The idea that just one dollar can motivate these high-achievers is already very exciting just to think about it.'

'That's true, but I think the most important thing is to see what the result is. Don't let it end up being just us playing ourselves,' Zhou Ming teased with a smile.

In the end, proved that Zhou Ming had underestimated the ability of rumours to spread. The next day, Zhou Ming received another phone call from Steve Jobs in the morning. He didn't say anything, but just told Zhou Ming to go to the bbs to see what was going on.

Due to the need for publicity , Ming temporarily installed a computer at home. He turned it on and logged onto the bbs, where he immediately saw the discussion thread about whether toys had souls. His floor had already exceeded 10,000.

'It's over 10,000! . Our post is now the most popular on the board, with the most comments. It's incredible!'

Jobs said excitedly excitedly to Zhou Ming, and even his voice trembled a little. But this was hardly surprising. It had only been six or seven years since the invention of bbs, and it had only become popular in the last two or three years. Most users were group of young people at school. Despite being a trend, there is a group of die-hard bbs users, but the time is still too short, and young people's enthusiasm for online content is fleeting, so it is easy to be distracted by other information.

Under these influences, there are many posts on the bbs, but not many can reach very high floors, let alone reach 10,000 floors, which many people have never heard of.

Facing this news, Zhou Ming was also a little surprised, because after more than 20 years, apart from flooding, he rarely sees posts with more than 10,000 floors, let alone now. More importantly, Zhou Ming read the post once more. At that time, the number of posts was only just over 6,000. How did it break 10,000 overnight? If this continues, won't the number of posts on this floor just explode?

It seems that only students are the main force behind online discussions, no matter when and whether it's domestically or internationally.

With a sigh, Zhou Ming eased up a little and asked, 'What about data monitoring? It would be nice if it weren't all our own army.'

Previously, Zhou Ming explained to Steve Jobs that the term 'Internet army' refers specifically to online personnel who post messages to create a buzz, so Steve Jobs quickly replied: 'According to preliminary statistics based on technical monitoring combined with costs, at least 3,000 of the more than 10,000 people in this building are not our Internet army.'

This result was very satisfactory to Zhou Ming. Although it was only 30, it was a very good trend, indicating that their hiring of online trolls to stir up a controversy had attracted the attention of other users and got them involved in the discussion. You have to know that Before yesterday, of the more than 4,000 posts they had made, at most only 500 were from real users, the rest were all from the paid trolls they had hired.

'I think we can now start the next step of the plan,' Zhou Ming then asked, 'Have the technical means of posting video files on the bbs been solved?'

In those days As the bbs was just getting started, many functions were in a state of development. At the time, there were only two ways to post on the bbs: text and pictures. methods, which obviously cannot meet the needs of publicity. Therefore, as early as the beginning of the publicity, Zhou Ming discussed with Steve Jobs to solve this problem through network technology.

'I'm sorry . It's very difficult,' Jobs replied. 'Because the bbs server has limited capacity, if we try to force-mount the video directly, it could easily crash the server.'

'What if play it through a third party?' Zhou Ming said, 'That is, we set up a server that can accommodate video files. We place the video files on our own server and then mount our server's network on the bbs. As long as the user can directly download or play it.'

'That's right and it can also be played by transferring to a third party. Mr. Ming Zhou, you are really smart!' Jobs suddenly realised, 'To be honest, I really doubt now whether you are the president of an information technology company. Your understanding of internet technology is simply too advanced!'

Facing Steve Steve Jobs' praise, Zhou Ming could only smile embarrassedly. In fact, for Zhou Ming, he didn't want to act like this, but there was no way. After all, he was reborn. With a little common sense that is nothing out of the ordinary in the future, it is incredibly advanced thinking in the present. More importantly is that these ideas have been tested over time and are completely achievable. Even Steve Jobs would be amazed.

'Don't say that, I'll be very proud,' said Zhou Ming.

In fact, Zhou Ming was just being polite when he said this, but he didn't expect that Steve Jobs would take it very seriously and say, 'If it were anyone else, I would tell them Pride is the devil that prevents people from progressing, but when it comes to you, I think you deserve to be proud.'

Hearing Jobs sticking up for himself like that, even Zhou Ming, with his thick skin, felt embarrassed. He then hastily gave a few words of explanation before hanging up.

Zhou Ming continued staring at the computer. Originally, Ming was going to go for a workout, but Jobs had just told him that transferring to a third party for playback was not a technical problem, and that since Pixar Animation Studios also had its own server for business needs, it would be resolved quickly.

As it turned out, really was as Steve Jobs had promised. Zhou Ming waited for about a minute in front of the computer, and when he refreshed the page again, he saw that there was a new post on the bbs.

'Surprise! Risking death to announce the real world of toys, with video and the truth!'

This was the new post's title, which Zhou Ming listed according to the standards of those clickbait titles in the post-submission forum, because although clickbait titles are detestable, there is a reason for their existence. So Zhou Ming saves wasting brain cells and uses the same title as the title party, because he does have content in it.

Click on the post and there is a picture hanging inside, with a few words underneath: I have been wrong all along, toys really do have their own souls, and when I'm not at home they really do live their own their own world. The above is a picture taken by my home camera that I accidentally forgot to turn off. If you can't see it, please leave your email address and I will send you the file.

Zhou Ming's picture will immediately jump to the video, and then there is a video. Although the picture quality looks a bit blurry, you can clearly see the toy inside walking by itself after the owner leaves, and running and jumping around the room.

After Zhou Ming and refreshed the page, he quickly saw the following replies:

'Oh my god! This is unbelievable, I really didn't think that toys actually had souls. If I hadn't seen this video, I would never have believed it!'

'My god God, I have to go back and confess to my toys right away. I really treated them badly. I was the worst owner ever. I hope they can forgive me.'

'I feel I definitely need to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist and psychiatrist, because I saw something that completely overturned all my perceptions. It reminded me of Star Wars, but it was even more shocking than when I first saw those sci-fi images with their very metallic feel!

Zhou Ming wondered which replies were from the army and which were from real users, but he quickly typed his own reply: Is the video really the truth? I'm reluctant believe it, because the video is too blurry. Perhaps it should be handed over to the FBI or a more authoritative organisation for appraisal and judgment. Otherwise, I really dare not sleep in the same room as the toys again. I can't be sure that they won't kill me while I'm asleep.

Zhou Ming replied intentionally replied in this way. With his wealth of marketing experience, he knew very well that real topic creation should involve two opposing voices. It's like two people chatting. If one person asks a question, and the other person just nods and says yes, then the conversation will be difficult to continue; on the contrary, if the other person says no and expresses their own opinions, then the two people can debate endlessly.

As expected , and as soon as Zhou Ming's reply was refreshed, he was immediately besieged by other netizens: Are you an idiot? This has already been shown on film, how can you still doubt it? Oh my God, you actually believe the inaction of the FBI bureaucrats, then I think you'd be better off thinking about how to get into the White House and pretend to be the president to go to work instead of him. This is more reliable, and I think this can also be believed. It's definitely a stupid pig who has never been to school...

Watching these Zhou Ming laughed at the comments that kept popping up: Go ahead, make fun of it, that's the only way to get more people to pay attention to the news!