It was late at night, the lights were still bright in the ICQ office, and Mike Dyson and his gang stayed at the office after dinner, waiting for that moment to come, while doing the final inspection. The clock "clicked" slowly forward, and the hour hand gradually moved over the "11" on the clock face......

At 23:20 on November 17, the last inspection of all servers in ICQ's computer room before going online was completed......

At 23:30, the internal circuit test of the ICQ server was completed......

At 23:40, the ICQ software download server was launched......

At 23:50, ICQ registration, login, database and other servers were completed, and the ICQ service was officially launched......

At 11:55 p.m., ICQ download links were successfully added to the homepage of some of the VisualSystem Group's websites, including the auction site that has been renamed EBay from Auctionweb, and Hotmail, which has been online for more than two months......

At 11:59 p.m., the official ICQ website "www." It's officially launched, and the first visitors are about to arrive......

Most of the other computers in the office have been turned off, except for a computer screen running the monitoring program that is still on, showing "Number of registrants: 0" and "Number of people online: 0", the hands of the clock gradually merge into one and point straight up, Mike Dyson and his gang are glued to the screen of the monitoring computer, expecting the numbers on it to change.

……

Scarlett is an ordinary 16-year-old American girl who lives at 58 Buck Street in Boston, and like many of her peers, she loves all kinds of fashion gadgets. And the Internet has also attracted a lot of attention from the recent popularity, in fact, she is not the only one who attracts this thing, almost all of her classmates are addicted to it. Two months ago, her classmate Pete found an interesting website, Hotmail, where she could apply for a free email address, so she spread it to ten, ten, hundred, and soon e-mail was one of the most fashionable ways to communicate with each other.

Almost a week ago, Scarlett got hooked on a new gadget, Pete's sister Judy didn't know where she got a software that could send messages to each other through the Internet, ICQ, unlike sending e-mails to check specifically, ICQ messages can be received immediately, the only unpleasant thing is that there are only five numbers that can be used, which is not enough at all, so everyone has to take turns to try it. Since using ICQ, Scarlett has rarely touched emails anymore, and she can't wait for emails to be transmitted at all, and just wants to chat directly at any time like ICQ.

Two days ago, Scarlett happened to see an ICQ advertisement in the newspaper, maybe many people didn't know what was going on at this time, but she understood that the time written in the newspaper must be the day when ICQ was officially released, and since she put down the newspaper, she has been looking forward to the arrival of the 18th, and she has an extra habit every day, that is, to use the latest version of the Internet Explorer browser to visit "www." this domain name.

In the beginning, the ICQ website was mostly blank, with only three huge letters "I, C, Q" and a clock counting down. On the evening of the 17th, Scarlett found that the ICQ website began to gradually have more content, and the first thing that appeared was the introduction of ICQ's functions, "ICQ ('Iseekyou') is the world's first Internet chat tool, which is a brand-new, user-friendly instant messaging software, which supports chatting, sending messages and files on the Internet. With the official version of ICQ, you can view, find and print message history, set up random chats, use multiple ways to find and add other users, and get more detailed user information ......", and later ICQ user guides and other content, ICQ website gradually enriched.

At 23:56, Scarlett received a call from Pete: "Scarlett, go to Hotmail and take a look, the ICQ download link has just appeared, hurry up and download it, don't log in if it's late." ”

Scarlett hurriedly typed the address of Hotmail on the address bar of the browser, and as the web page slowly appeared, she saw the ICQ download link, which was in the most eye-catching place on the whole page, and she immediately moved the mouse and clicked to start the ICQ download.

At 0:03 on the 18th, the download of ICQ was completed, and Scarlett immediately double-clicked the downloaded installer, and installed the official version of ICQ1.0 into her computer, and a small green daisy icon appeared on the desktop at the same time. Scarlett skillfully clicked on the little green daisy, and a dialog box appeared as before, asking for an ICQ number and password, she habitually entered the number that she had commonly used these days, and an error prompt box popped up unexpectedly, then she remembered that Pete had said before, the original number could not be used after noon on the 17th, and a new number needed to be registered, so she moved the mouse and clicked the eye-catching "Register" button on the interface, and a registration page popped up.

After filling in some simple information, the system prompts that the registration is successful, and at the same time displays a string of numbers "100012", and also prompts "please remember your number and password, so as not to cause you inconvenience after forgetting", and there is a link to the ICQ user guide under the string of numbers.

Skillfully entered the new registration number and password again, this time the verification passed, and a long software interface appeared, which was the ICQ that Scarlett had used in the past few days, but the friend bar was blank. Scarlett picked up the phone she usually used to contact and dialed Pete: "Pete, I've already applied for a number, it's 100012, come and add me." ”

"Okay, you wait a minute. Pete replied on the phone.

After a while, the little daisy in the lower right corner began to flash, Scarlett clicked with the mouse, and a prompt box popped up, which read: "100006 The user has successfully added you as a friend, do you need to add the other party as a friend", and there are two buttons under that text, one is "agree", and the other is "decline". Scarlett didn't hesitate, and directly clicked "Agree", which was different from the original version, and a friend verification dialog box popped up. Scarlett thinks this is good, neither worry about adding the wrong person, nor will there be random strangers to harass her, she casually added her name to the verification message and sent it, and the other party's reply came quickly, and at the same time, there was also an avatar in the friend bar that looked like the Son Goku in "Dragon Ball".

"Pete, you're pretty fast. By the way, how did your friend get the verification?" Scarlett skillfully clicked on the avatar, brought up the message sending window, typed a paragraph in it, and sent it.

"I'm just a little bit faster than you, that friend verified the new feature, you can check out the user guide on the website, which is introduced. Soon Pete's reply came back, just like before, and seemed a little faster.

"Oh, then I'll wait and see. Pete, it seems that the ICQ is faster than it used to be. Scarlett sent her findings over.

"Scarlett, I just found out, it seems that even the startup speed is faster than before, and some features have been added, but I'm still working on it. Pete quickly replied.

Scarlett opened the browser and entered the ICQ website, and she felt that the access speed seemed to be a little slower than before, but fortunately it was still open. After the entire homepage appeared, Scarlett clicked on the "ICQ User Guide" link next to the download button, ready to go in and take a good look at what had changed.

After some research, Scarlett found that the official version of ICQ1.0 has really changed a lot, originally only according to the number to add friends, but now there are a lot of ways to retrieve online users, which means that even if she doesn't know the other party's number, she can also add the other party as a friend to chat with the other party, and the avatar has also increased from the original dozen to the current hundred, so that she no longer has to worry about too few choices. In fact, not to mention that, the cute "uh-oh" sound alone made Scarlett like it very much, and now she can set it to other sounds, and even set it to her own recording. All in all, this is a small, user-friendly, easy-to-use and innovative software, and Scarlett believes that it will definitely be popular with her peers.

But in the hearts of some people, they may not be so confident.

……

At first, Mike Dyson and his gang were still full of confidence in ICQ under Zhang Lexing's fooling, but after a long period of testing and improvement, especially when ICQ was about to be officially launched, they suddenly felt a little weak. If Mike Dyson can call the shots, he is not even willing to advertise, in the last week or so, each of them has always involuntarily popped up in their hearts "if ICQ is not popular" worries, according to Mike Dyson's ideas, should be low-key to the market to see the reaction, if the effect is good in targeted advertising, if the effect is not ideal, you can collect user feedback for further modification. But the big boss said that he must place an advertisement, and Mike Dyson could only bite the bullet.

At 0:00 on the 18th, the ICQ service officially opened, and Mike Dyson and others gathered in the office, staring at the screen of the monitoring computer, and the "number of registrants" and "online people" displayed on it finally began to change, gradually jumping from "0" to "12" in three minutes, and then continued to grow slowly.

"The web server is under normal load...... The registration server is under normal load...... The login server is under normal load...... The database server is running normally...... The line load is normal...... The number of registered people is 18, and the number of online users is 17......" Robert Tony, who was sitting in front of the monitoring computer, shouted out the operation situation.

Everyone else, including Mike Dyson, stood behind Robert Tony, staring at the numbers beating on the screen, full of anticipation, hoping to see the magic that the big boss said, but at the same time feeling a little uneasy, worried that the actual situation was not as good as expected.

Half an hour later, Robert Tony reported the latest situation again: "The web server is loaded...... The registration server is under normal load...... The login server is under normal load...... The database server is running normally...... The line load is normal...... The current number of registered people is 128, and the number of online people is 126......"

Everyone was silent for a while, the situation didn't seem to be good, according to the current growth rate, I'm afraid there are only a few thousand people registered in a whole day, which is not a star and a half of the gap between the tens of millions of users mentioned by the big boss.

An hour later, Robert Tony shouted out again: "The web server is loaded...... The registration server is under normal load...... The login server is under normal load...... The database server is running normally...... The line load is normal...... The current number of registered people is 258, and the number of online people is 253......"

"It's been an hour, it's only more than two hundred, are we failing? Finally someone couldn't help but say it.

"Nonsense, this is just the beginning. Mike Dyson immediately retorted, but in fact, he was also a little uneasy in his heart, if he didn't advertise at all, it would not be difficult to understand the current results, but in order to promote ICQ, just newspaper advertisements and download links on the website have spent millions of dollars these days, but I didn't expect to get such a result.

After waiting for more than three hours, the number of ICQ registrations and online users finally climbed above 1000, but the growth rate was still sad that the growth rate was still slow, and the disappointed Mike Dyson simply waved his hand, sent everyone back to sleep, and he also drove back to his apartment. After a brief wash, Mike Dyson lay down in bed, but he couldn't sleep after tossing and turning too tired, and "ICQ", "number of registrants" and "number of online people" always appeared in his mind from time to time, and he tossed for more than an hour before he finally fell asleep slowly.

The rest of the ICQ company is similar to Mike Dyson, and he can't sleep back and forth when he returns to his or her own home, and he barely sleeps after lying in bed for more than an hour, and there are a few unfortunate ones such as Robert Tony, who didn't even fall asleep until dawn, and finally had to get up and make himself a cup of coffee, and then while drinking coffee, he used his home computer to log in to the ICQ official website to see if there were any user messages during this time. As a result, this look really scared him, and the official website almost couldn't be opened, just to wait for the homepage to fully appear, he actually waited for almost five minutes. Robert Tony panicked, could it be that there was a problem with the server, thinking of this, he didn't care what time it was, so he quickly picked up the phone and dialed Mike Dyson......

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