When Chen Pingjiang received the call, he thought he had misheard.
After repeated confirmation, he finally believed that Gulfstream Aerospace had indeed finished building the plane he wanted.
For a Gulfstream G550 that typically requires a wait of six months to a year, Chen Pingjiang only spent three and a half months in line.
The delivery speed was just right.
Money makes things easy.
In capitalist countries, as long as you pay enough, nothing is a problem.
Just discuss with a less urgent client, cut in line, and wouldn't a few months be saved?
Chen Pingjiang also kept his word and paid a service fee to Gulfstream.
Private jets are different from cars.
When buying an imported car, the dealer will ship it back to the home country.
Private jets are delivered overseas.
The crew hired by Chen Pingjiang had to travel to Georgia in the US to fly the plane back themselves.
After Chen Pingjiang saw his own Gulfstream G550 at Dongjiang Airport, he nodded in satisfaction.
Next, it was time to send Ge Mengshi to Finland.
Ge Mengshi, over four months pregnant, was already showing and not suitable to continue working at the company.
It would have been better in winter, but in summer, with fewer clothes, others would notice at a glance.
While the Gulfstream G550 was being registered, Ge Mengshi could still seize the opportunity to spend time with her family.
"Xiao Chen, are you ready to leave?"
Ge Bingyi looked at his daughter with a touch of reluctance.
"By the end of this month. I'll take these few days to process Aunty's visa."
Chen Pingjiang hadn't visited the Ge family for a few days.
The agreed result was that Ge's mother would accompany Ge Mengshi to Finland first, and Ge Bingyi would follow after he finished his current affairs.
The CEO position at Zhizhen Catering had been handed over to Qin Suqin.
She could handle daily tasks sufficiently, and if she encountered anything uncertain, she would report to Ge Mengshi via video call.
Xu Fangjuan and Chen Guangming would go one month before the due date to jointly welcome the birth of the Chen family's first third generation.
Now, Ge's father and mother were somewhat at a disadvantage when facing Chen Pingjiang.
Let alone the saying that a mother is strong for her child, no one could remain calm when facing Chen Pingjiang, their prospective son-in-law.
"Xiao Chen, look... when can you meet your parents? We haven't met them yet."
After Ge Bingyi and the boss exchanged glances, Ge Bingyi finally said it with a hint of reluctance.
Unexpectedly, Chen Pingjiang smiled and said,
"They've been traveling recently. When they return to Europe, you can have a good chat then."
Xu Fangjuan and Chen Guangming were indeed not in Dongjiang, but they weren't traveling; they had returned to their hometown, Tongcheng.
There was a slight intention of avoiding the Ge family in this.
Empress Dowager Xu cared about her reputation; she could treat Ge Mengshi like a daughter-in-law, but felt embarrassed to face her parents.
If the two families had a proper in-law relationship, meeting would naturally not be a problem.
The difficulty was that Xu Fangjuan didn't know how to face Ge's father and mother, always feeling that her own scamp of a son was too mischievous.
...
Zhang Yiming sat in his office, nervously awaiting the 24-hour data release for Jinri Toutiao.
Having invested so much effort and time, and secured so many promotional resources from the group, if this project failed, Zhang Yiming estimated he would despise himself.
Not only Zhang Yiming, but other executives at Renren were also paying attention.
The algorithm was the foundation of Jinri Toutiao.
If it succeeded on Jinri Toutiao, then Douyin in the future would be no problem.
It was almost certain that the Douyin project would be the last piece of Chen Pingjiang's puzzle.
Jinri Toutiao utilized quite a lot of black technology.
Besides algorithms, there were also AI robots.
Yes, you heard that right.
This AI robot was called xiaomingbot, and it could write news articles in real-time, producing an average of 50-100 news reports daily.
The average time from news generation to publication was 2 seconds, almost reaching the speed of TV live broadcasts.
Xiaomingbot was an AI robot developed by the Jinri Toutiao lab, capable of producing news through text generation technology.
It generated natural language reports, or newsletters, based on tabular data and knowledge bases in the database.
In fact, Jinri Toutiao was not merely a news client; it was also a personalized information recommendation engine based on machine learning, and a platform for all information and content sharing and creation.
AI and machine learning algorithms played an important role, helping to efficiently and accurately recommend content of interest to users.
The remaining news articles were posted through reposting.
Jinri Toutiao's self-definition was never a news client, because the bottlenecks of news clients were obvious, and their shortcomings were the same: simply copying the content and models of PC portals made it difficult to meet the various demands of the mobile era.
From the very beginning, Jinri Toutiao emphasized that it was an information distribution platform.
The scope of "information" is much broader than "news."
When users browse their phones, they don't actually distinguish between "information" and "news"; from a user's perspective, it's all the same—helping them accomplish the task of seeing new things.
However, "information" can obviously provide more new things, so strategically, it is naturally a level higher than "news."
Unlike experts, scholars, journalists, and other groups with high information needs, the general public has lower information needs and will not invest too much energy in it.
What they mostly need is a leisurely reading experience.
Therefore, Jinri Toutiao emphasized "information" from the outset.
In the mobile era, everyone engages in fragmented reading, using time before and after meals, breaks, toilet breaks, commutes, and waiting in line to browse their phones.
This is a different logic from the PC era, where people would drop everything to sit in front of a computer and browse news.
This is also why Weibo, short videos, and even online novels became so popular.
The difference between the two is whether "information finds people" or "people find information."
"How is it?"
As soon as the time came, Zhang Yiming impatiently rushed to the workstation of the employee responsible for data statistics.
A large group of people gathered around him, all focused on the first day's data.
"Alright! Excellent! Over a million downloads on the first day!"
"Awesome! It's a success!"
"We must celebrate tonight!"
Upon seeing the data, Zhang Yiming also breathed a sigh of relief.
However, he was well aware that what played a role in the first wave of download data was not Jinri Toutiao itself, but Renren's powerful promotional channels.
Nevertheless, it was a success.
The entire project team toiled for over a year to achieve this day.
It was almost done before Zhang Yiming arrived.
After Zhang Yiming came, a part of it was redone, taking a total of 14 months.
It was almost the longest-running project in the entire group, so one can imagine the immense pressure on the project team.
What was particularly noteworthy was that all other products within the group were star products.
If Jinri Toutiao had failed, the entire project team would likely have been wiped out.
"Nothing else to say. Tonight, we're booking out Longbiju. Let's all celebrate properly."
Zhang Yiming shouted, a smile on his face.
Chen Pingjiang, who was following the progress, also breathed a sigh of relief.
This version of Jinri Toutiao had a very high degree of completion; it would have been illogical not to win.
What Zhang Yiming and Chen Pingjiang didn't expect in the following days was that Jinri Toutiao's download volume continued to surge, receiving an exceptional number of positive reviews.
This would be understandable if it were 2024, but currently, the number of smartphone terminals nationwide hadn't even reached 100 million, making millions of downloads daily truly astonishing.
The main reason behind this was still the scarcity of news-type apps.
The clients of the four major portals hadn't launched yet, and Jinri Toutiao was the only one on the market.
In this era, people were very eager for information, while entertainment options were relatively limited.
During commutes, or a toilet break, what could you do?
Nothing at all.
No mobile games!
No short videos to scroll through!
You couldn't binge-watch shows on your phone either, because data was too expensive!
What could some middle-aged men who didn't like browsing Weibo or Renren do?
The appearance of Jinri Toutiao perfectly filled their "potty time."
After all, the vast majority of male compatriots genuinely enjoyed going to the toilet.
Nothing else, just pure pleasure.
"Is anyone using the recently popular Jinri Toutiao?"
"Upstairs, that's a grammatically incorrect sentence. Since you already said it's popular, naturally many people are using it."
"Young people might not like it much, but uncles like us who are over thirty all say it's good after using it."
"As a professional, I have to give a thumbs-up to Jinri Toutiao. Don't let its small size fool you; the technology inside is very advanced. Have you mainly noticed that it seems to have a pair of eyes? Whatever you like to read, it recommends to you."
"I've noticed it too. When I read news on Sina or NetEase, I have to keep scrolling, and it's all very traditional news. But Jinri Toutiao is different; a lot of knowledge, news, and information I can't find on portal websites, or I have to scroll for a very long time to find it. Especially Jinri Toutiao's comment section, which is really interesting."
"I found a great business idea: Jinri Toutiao has a creator incentive program. You can write and upload information yourself and get paid."
"..."
It must be said that the technology of big data statistics and then recommending content based on user preferences was absolutely devastating in 2010.
It was a dimensionality reduction attack on similar products.
Large companies like Tencent and Alibaba were astonished when they saw it:
"You can play it this way?"
After all, the concept of big data only emerged in 2008.
Everyone knew about it, but how to apply it was the question.
Jinri Toutiao taught everyone a lesson.
The combination of user behavior analysis, personalized recommendation systems, big data and machine learning, similarity recommendation, and implicit inquiry systems was simply an invincible combination punch.
As the saying goes, experts look at the specifics, while laymen just watch the show.
Within just half a month, major companies frantically began investing in R&D.
Alibaba was even more direct, finding Zhang Yiming through headhunters and shamelessly poaching him with high salaries.
However, he was explicitly rejected by Zhang Yiming.
What was worse, the rejected Alibaba immediately exposed Zhang Yiming through other channels, portraying him as the key figure in Jinri Toutiao's success.
Instantly, Zhang Yiming became famous throughout the entire internet circle.
Facing the olive branches and countless temptations from various companies, Zhang Yiming rejected them all without exception.
He knew very well that if Chen Pingjiang hadn't given him the opportunity, he wouldn't be where he was today.
Moreover, the concept of big data combined with machine learning to personalize user preference recommendations was initially told to him by the big boss Chen Pingjiang; he merely led the team to complete it.
How could he shamelessly claim it as his own to the outside world?
The more he interacted with Chen Pingjiang, the more he realized his big boss's unfathomable and brilliant insights.
In response to Zhang Yiming's "loyalty," Chen Pingjiang also acted quite generously, directly promoting him to the position of Vice President of Renren.
(End of chapter)