First-Day Results
This line of text is like an incredibly tough slap in the face of the entire Silicon Valley internet community.
It's worth noting that, according to the latest industry report, the total number of internet users in North America is only slightly over 2 million.
This means that one in ten people who went online yesterday clicked on that simple blue link.
In a café in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, several young entrepreneurs stared at their screens, their coffees growing cold.
"1.2 million clicks—" one of the bespectacled programmers muttered to himself, his voice hoarse, "Our site's total clicks just barely broke 5,000 last month."
"This has absolutely no technical skill involved!" another person angrily slammed their mouse down. "It's just a bunch of hyperlinks! I could write that too! Give me half a day, and I could write something ten times better than this!"
"And then?" The companion next to him coldly poured cold water on the idea. "Where will you post it? On your personal homepage that only your mother will visit? Don't forget, Silicon Valley Online controls the largest BBS community in the US. They can get users to come like tap water with just a few clicks. You want to compete with them for users? What are you going to use to do that?"
Similar conversations are taking place in countless corners of Silicon Valley.
Envy, jealousy, resentment—all sorts of emotions fermented in the cramped office, almost to the point of causing plasmolysis.
Many envious peers rushed into the "Web Chatter" section of Silicon Valley Online BBS, trying to find some sense of presence in that pinned hot post.
A user with the ID "Net-Warrior" left a sour comment. "The fact that something with no technical content can become popular is a step backward for the internet! It violates the spirit of decentralization; it's just an online version of a yellow pages directory, completely devoid of innovation!"
The message was flooded with hundreds of replies in less than two minutes.
"Hey upstairs, is it so hard to admit that someone is smarter than you?"
"You can do it, no one's stopping you. Oh, by the way, I checked yesterday, and it seems all the good domain names with 'Directory' and 'Web' are already registered. Maybe you could register a Wb-..."
"Give it a try?"
"Stop being so sour. As someone who's only been using the internet for two weeks, I think this website is a lifesaver. I never want to go back to those days of having to memorize domain names."
1
Frank sat in his office, flipping through the comments while listening to the eager inquiries from GG on the other end of the phone. His smile was brighter than the California sun.
"Yes, Mr. Smith, I know your banner is urgent. But you've also seen the data; the current price is definitely different from yesterday—by how much? No, no, no, we're not talking about price increases; we're talking about a revaluation."
Frank hung up the phone, tossed the receiver back onto the landline, and turned to look at Tom Kalinske, who was flipping through a magazine on the sofa.
"Is this what Takuya meant by 'dimensional reduction attack'?" Frank grabbed the data report on the table, flicked the paper hard, making a crisp sound, "This feeling—it's fucking awesome."
Tom closed the magazine, glanced at the report, and said, "That was great, but you'd better pray the server can hold up."
"Let them add servers, add bandwidth, and if they can't add more, let the carriers add new equipment and new lines!" Frank waved his hand, completely abandoning his previous stinginess about bandwidth costs.
Inside a trailer office in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.
The air was filled with the stale, sour smell of coffee and the heat waves emitted by the cooling fans.
David Filo pulled the baseball cap with the Stanford logo over his face, slumped into his chair, and let out a long sigh.
On the screen, the webpage named Webdir was flashing a faint blue light, and the number "200,000 unique visitors" on it was like a slap in the face, making one's head buzz.
"It's over, Jerry." Filo's voice, muffled beneath his hat, carried a death wish. "Our 'Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web ' was killed before it even came into being. Look at this traffic; if ours had gone live, it probably wouldn't have even gotten two hundred users."
Jerry Yang remained silent.
He sat cross-legged on the table, a half-eaten French fry dangling from his mouth, his brows furrowed deeply.
That's really too fast.
They were initially quite pleased with their creative idea for that category directory, thinking they had found a gold mine on the internet.
Who knew that the people at Silicon Valley Online would act so quickly? It was as if they had peeked into their brains and seen the blueprints, and even did something more ruthless than they had imagined – they directly monopolized all the easy-to-remember domain names.
"Maybe we should just forget about it." Filo pulled back his hat, revealing messy hair and a look of utter despair. "Let's focus on writing our paper. At least the professor won't fail us just because we didn't do Webdir."
"Etc."
Jerry Yang suddenly jumped off the table, leaned close to the screen, and quickly clicked the "Business Cooperation" link at the bottom of Webdir.
The page redirects, displaying a simple and straightforward price quote.
"Look at this." Jerry Yang pointed to the screen, the dejection in his eyes fading. "Homepage recommendation slot bidding mechanism," and this "popular category featured fee." See that price? Starting at five thousand US dollars.
Filo leaned closer for a glance, then clicked his tongue and said, "Isn't this just money-grubbing? Typical corporate behavior, their greed is truly disgusting."
"Yes, it's just too commercial." Jerry Yang's lips twitched, the expression of a hunter spotting a weakness in his prey. "David, think about it, if you were the owner of a personal website about 'how to raise lizards,' or the homepage of a university club, could you afford to pay thousands of dollars in GG fees to grab that spot?"
Filo shook his head. "Only a madman would pay that. I'd rather buy a new server with that money."
"That's right." Jerry Yang snapped his fingers. "Webdir's current strategy is very clear: it's designed for large, wealthy companies and commercial websites. It's the ' Fifth Avenue ' of the internet, selling only luxury goods."
He paced back and forth in the narrow aisle, his speech quickening as his thoughts gradually cleared. "But the internet isn't just Fifth Avenue; it's mostly alleyways like ours, filled with quirky, poor but interesting personal homepages. Those who want to find like-minded people, want to share but don't have the money to promote, Webdir doesn't look at them, or rather, they're on Webdir..."
It can only be listed after page 100, and no one will ever see it.
"Since Webdir is going to be the tail of the phoenix, then we'll be the head of the chicken."
Jerry Yang picked up a pen and drew a heavy circle on the architecture diagram on the whiteboard that he had originally intended to erase, saying firmly, "Webdir indexes a thousand top websites, and we'll index the ten thousand, one hundred thousand mid-tier and bottom-tier websites."