Red-Hot GG
Redwood City, Silicon Valley Online operations center.
Frank Marshall stood before the screens.
The technical director pulled up the latest load-monitoring charts.
"After the Olympic Committee's exclusive materials went live, bandwidth usage shot through the roof," the technical director reported. "The image-rich, text-heavy behind-the-scenes reports consumed a huge amount of server resources. We urgently leased several backup nodes in Seattle before we managed to keep access latency within the safety line."
"Money isn't the problem," Frank replied. "Guarantee the page loading speed. Netizens have very limited patience. We can't let them close the webpage while waiting for images to buffer."
"The cross-platform call data for the pass system is out too." The technical director switched screens. "Seventy percent of users remain online on ICQ while browsing the Olympic section. They see hot news on the webpage, then forward it directly to friends through ICQ. Social interaction and information have formed a perfect closed loop."
Frank recorded this set of data.
"Categorize and package the collected user preferences," Frank instructed the technical director. "Send them to the GG Sales Department. Tell them to take this data and negotiate with the sponsors. We can accurately pinpoint every potential consumer interested in a specific event."
At the Atlanta Olympic Committee's volunteer recruitment center, the phones rang far less than usual.
At this time in the past, the operators had not even had time to drink water.
Michael Jones stood in the office, looking at the two reports in his hands.
One was the call record from the traditional hotline; the other was the online registration data faxed over by Silicon Valley Online.
"Thirty thousand." Michael slapped the fax paper onto the desk and said to the supervisor, "In just forty-eight hours, more than thirty thousand volunteers submitted complete application forms through