【Full text reading】2005, early December

Snowflakes are falling across California, and Stanford University, near San Francisco, is covered in snow after the snowfall

In a lecture hall in the teaching area, the elderly professor Charles is using slides and detailed data to do some analysis of today's international financial markets, and the content of the day is mainly a summary and summary of the past few months of learning

After he spat for a while, he looked down at the time, then raised his eyes, with a slightly regretful tone and sparse students said, "Happy time is always very short," the whole lecture hall burst into a burst of good-natured laughter, this sentence is the old professor's mantra, 'happy time is always very short' and every time he says this sentence must be said after the end of the class, at first it was fine, but later every time the old professor spoke, everyone couldn't help laughing

With a warm smile on his face, the old man glanced at the crowd, and suddenly took out a Santa hat with great comedy, "It's time for you to enjoy your private space again, this is our last international financial analysis course of the year, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, please don't forget to send me the paper before December 18"

Saying that, the old professor put the Santa hat on his head, grinned widely, and clapped his hands, "Ladies and girls, we'll see you next year" The whole collective classroom stood up and applauded with laughter, and then left the classroom one after another with their own things, only the old professor was still sorting out his lesson plans and slides on the wide podium

It wasn't until ten minutes later that he raised his head a little slowly, took off his Santa hat and put it in his bag, and then raised his head to leave the classroom, but he saw the boy with thick black hair sitting in the corner stunned, thought about it, he took his things and walked forward and said, "Xia, why don't you leave, don't you have a date?" He laughed, a wrinkled look on his wrinkled face

Sitting here is Xia Ruxuan, who has been studying at Stanford University for a few months, the old professor's expression makes Xia Ruxuan laugh involuntarily, he has deeply felt what kind of difference the learning environment on the world's first-class university campus is from domestic universities, and he has indeed benefited a lot from the three months of study here

I finally felt that even though I had studied with Xia's financial elite for a period of time, this financial knowledge system without a perfect system was so thin that in short, at Stanford, he was just a silent international student who was unheard of in most people's minds, like a sponge, trying to absorb all the knowledge he could touch

In Xia Ruxuan's opinion, the professors' teaching attitude is probably the biggest manifestation of the cultural differences between China and the United States

But this old man, who was able to teach in such a first-class university, still had a virgin heart, and even a rigid and boring class like international financial analysis often made people laugh in his classes, and he often mingled with young students after class

"No," Xia Ruxuan shook his head truthfully, "I'm just interested in this course...... And a few small problems."

"Oh?" The old professor laughed, but he said with a serious face, "Young people don't always put their minds on such boring academics, they should relax and relax when they should take a break, I am still thinking about how to make those girls notice me every day when I am your age, you know, I am not so conspicuous" The professor straightened up, and then gestured his height, it is indeed not high, "Girls like handsome guys like you"

He said with some regret, "My favorite girl back then fell in love with a strong guy, oh my God, his arms are so thick" The professor made a somewhat exaggerated comparison of the thickness, which made Xia Ruxuan can't help but wonder, such a thick thigh is about the same, and the old professor is still chattering, "So I told myself that such big guys are simple-minded...... Oh, of course, I didn't say what you meant, you know...... You're not that ...... yet Belch... In the end, the professor laughed, and I have to say that the difference in culture between the two countries has led to a very different point of laughter

However, Xia Ruxuan still smiled kindly, and the old professor patted Xia Ruxuan on the shoulder, "Say, what kind of doubts will a genius boy from the East have?" ”

This old professor is very knowledgeable, and when it comes to talking about financial issues, it is a classic quotation from the ancient world, which makes Xia Ruxuan have to be amazed, and those problems that have been confused in his heart for a while are all solved under the explanation of this old professor, Xia Ruxuan is like an enlightenment

"If there is anything you don't understand in the future, you can send a message to my email, or leave a message in my Fri Bo, you should add my Fri Book friend" The old professor winked and laughed, "Sorry, you know, there are too many students and I don't remember every single one"

"Well, I know, not yet" Xia Ruxuan nodded, stood up with his own things, but he didn't expect that this professor was also using Fri Book, but it was nothing, although Fri Book was not open to the society at this time, but every employee working in the university would have an email provided by the school, but since the professor mentioned Fri Book, this made Xia Ruxuan a little curious, and suddenly smiled, "Mr. Charles, what kind of site do you think this Fri Book is?" ”

"Oh, oh my God," the old professor slapped his head, "Xia, you Oriental students always like to devote all your energy to the academic field, but this is not necessarily a good thing, I think you should really focus more on some interesting things, if you don't even know Fribook, I think your life will be extremely boring, you know, you have to stay here for two whole years, or even a long time, Fribook, a popular social network of colleges and universities across the United States, can make you make more friends, I guess your language isn't an issue now, so do as I say," Charleston paused, glancing at his mouth, the corners of which were curled with a funny curled mustache, "Sign up for a Fripook account and send an email to every girl on the Stanford popularity list, 'Hey, I'm a handsome guy from the Orient, can I have a drink?' The old professor imitated the tone of the young man, with a special energetic look, and then he looked at Xia Ruxuan, "I promise you will gain something" As he said that, he looked at his watch, and then patted Xia Ruxuan's shoulder, "Enjoy your Stanford career, this is something that most people in this world will never enjoy, by the way, the girls here are very enthusiastic" The old professor laughed a few times and then left, the entire lecture hall was quiet all of a sudden, Xia Ruxuan watched the old professor leave, Then he looked down at the textbook in his hand again, picked it up and left the classroom

Looking back on the whole of 2005, it can be said that Fribook swept every college and university in the United States with lightning speed, and walked in front of every social network with an amazing coverage rate

In September 2005, the information obtained by Fribook has officially covered almost every university in the United States, more than 90% of American college students are its users, and more than 75% of users log in to the website more than once a day, Fribook has increased the number of colleges open to register to nearly 2,000, and the number of users has exceeded 8 million, approaching 9 million, and you should know that there are less than 11 million college students in the United States, which means that if the strategy is not relaxed, So Fri Book will stop here, which is obviously not in line with the ambitious hearts of Xia Ruxuan and Zuckerberg, so in August after Xia Ruxuan came to the United States, the whole team held countless meetings and discussions on the question of 'what's next', whether to prepare to take an international route, or to keep the graduated users and at the same time win over young adult users...... In Zuckerberg and Xia Ruxuan's project, these are not the most important, the important thing at this time is to win the hearts of high school students

Fripook has to go in a 'ubiquitous' direction, there are 11 million college students in the United States, but there are 16 million high school students, and conquering the city on high school campuses will bring a lot of user growth to Fripook

In August, under the auspices of Xia Ruxuan, Fribook officially decided to start attacking the high school campus

However, some people in the team are questioning that the brand of Fripook is now immutably associated with universities, and college students may not want to see high school students join them, so it was proposed that Fripook, which is open to high schools, should be operated independently, and the name should not be the same, or change to FribookHigh

This is not the only problem encountered in the development, there is also a serious problem is that if high school students connect to Fripook, how to determine the identity of the user, protect the real-name system and real identity, which belongs to the cultural tradition of Fribook, is extremely important, the reason why universities can guarantee this is because they will send educational emails with suffixes, but among high school students, only a few private high schools will issue email addresses to students

In response to such a question, the company's legal counsel initially launched a small campaign to convince high schools to issue email addresses to students as an online safety measure, but the plan did not work

At a time when everyone is in a dilemma, Xia Ruxuan proposed a method that makes people scream, that is, the real identity must be identified within a period of time after Fri Book is registered, that is to say, a high school student must have an online friend to guarantee the authenticity of the identity, which is tantamount to encouraging first-year college students to invite their friends who are still in high school to join, that is to say, the first problem is also solved in this way - after all, high school students come in through social circles, not independent existence, Even so, Xia Ruxuan initially decided to create a separate network and user base for 37,000 public and private middle schools across the United States, and at first the two separate networks led to slow user growth

In the month of contact, there was no phenomenon of college students rejecting high school students, and even many college students became more active after discovering the existing social groups, so in the middle of September, a month later, the two businesses were finally merged, and many people in the team were quickly eliminated by the actual situation

Constant communication between high school students and college students, and the result of the merger has led to the overall growth of the website, up to now, there have been nearly one million high school student users Today, Fri Book is already a behemoth with a user group of nearly 10 million, and at the same time, more than half of the users log in to the website once a day, and users have more than 300 million pages on the website every day, which has led to the website revenue reaching more than two million dollars per month, which has been close to the monthly expenditure, It's just that in general the site is still in the red, but no one is worried about that

According to the predictions, just this evening, in the headquarters of Fripook, there will be a celebration party of 10 million users, you must know that this day has only passed a little more than a year since the queue of 1 million users, in the first year the website went from zero to 1 million, and in the second year, the website went from 1 million to 10 million, which is an order of magnitude leap, and of course the small apartment on Emerson Avenue in Palo Alto can no longer accommodate the increased number of website employees, and now the company has moved to a building not far from Stanford University. The building is a modern glass office building just across the street from Google's first headquarters

Don't worry if you don't like foreign friends, this part won't be too much, it's just necessary to write about the development, and the province will suddenly rise in the end inexplicably.