Liu Wentao was a programmer at a major internet company, living the 996 corporate slave life.
Every day he faced urging from his supervisor and demands from product managers.
After work, he still had to figure out how to solve bugs, causing him to sleep poorly and suffer from insomnia.
The physical torment, mental exhaustion, and emotional trauma had caused Liu Wentao, barely thirty, to start losing his hair.
People who hadn't experienced seborrheic alopecia would never understand the feeling of an itchy scalp that made you want to scratch it raw, nor the horror of seeing a basin full of tangled hair like water weeds after every wash.
Yet, this wasn't the worst part; he was almost thirty-five, but still stuck at the bottom.
Many times, Liu Wentao wanted to resign and escape the city, but it was just a thought.
Back home, he still had to help his child with homework and endure his wife's complaints about not spending enough time with the family.
He felt like he was about to get sick, either a serious physical illness or a mental illness like depression.
But... life still had to go on.
He had to hang in there.
During his lunch break, Liu Wentao, as usual, opened Renren.com to browse posts and see if any of the influencers and bloggers he followed had released new videos or updates.
In just half a year, he had fallen into the Renren "parking space grab" game, settled into various communities on Renren.com, and finally stayed because of a few favorite bloggers.
In fact, he wasn't the only one.
According to Liu Wentao's observations, many people in his department alone used Renren.com.
Here, they could always find topics that interested them, learn new knowledge, or interact with new friends.
He also knew about Xiaonei.com and Kaixin001.com, two other SNS social networking sites.
However, Xiaonei.com was mostly for students, and as a white-collar worker, he found it difficult to integrate and couldn't find much resonance.
Kaixin001.com had too few users and limited content.
After expertly logging into Renren.com, Liu Wentao was surprised to find that Mu Xiaobai, a piano performance blogger he usually followed, had updated.
Mu Xiaobai never showed her face in her videos; each video featured only a piano and a pair of hands as white as jade.
What Liu Wentao liked most was that the emotions conveyed in Mu Xiaobai's music always resonated with him.
Mu Xiaobai's latest post read:
"October 17th, inspired, composed in Ning'an City."
A video was attached below.
He clicked the play button, and after a long loading time, the video began to play.
The video cover had "Castle in the Sky" written in red Song typeface.
Liu Wentao's eyes lit up; he loved this piece.
"The piano has changed, and the background too. Did she move?"
Liu Wentao murmured, putting on his headphones.
When the prelude began, Liu Wentao immediately felt a sense of peace within.
Hearing the first section of the main melody, Liu Wentao felt his hands trembling slightly, and the softness within him was deeply stirred.
Liu Wentao didn't understand music or piano pieces; he listened to songs purely to soothe his depressed mood.
But this piece itself was beautiful, and Mu Xiaobai played it wonderfully.
Winding and melodious, lonely and sad, it seeped into the depths of his soul, shaking his very being.
Liu Wentao felt his body and mind being purified.
With the ups and downs of the melody, whether happy or sorrowful, it slowly pulled at his emotions, as if feelings were slowly being drawn out from the deepest part of his heart.
After the outro ended, it took Liu Wentao a good half-minute to pull himself out of that complex emotion, and by then, his eyes were already red.
He eagerly dragged the progress bar back to the beginning...
Music possesses such magic: when depressed, listening to it can bring comfort; when agitated, it can bring calm; when dry, it can bring nourishment; when languid, it can bring excitement.
This scene played out everywhere.
"Pure music may not have lyrics, but listeners will write their own lyrics. This is the charm of pure music."
"My period came, lying curled up on the bed in pain, then I opened Doule and saw this video. My heart instantly calmed down, it felt like it eased the pain {heart emoji} Thank you."
"Felt the extreme of loneliness."
"So beautiful {flower emoji}."
"I love those hands of yours so much. {clapping emoji}{clapping emoji}"
"It's hard to imagine this piece was composed by master Joe Hisaishi in 1986, 21 years ago, but it's still timeless."
"Sheet music, please!"
"@Nick @Yunzhi @37°C"
"Why do I cry when I listen to this song? It's like all the pressure on me suddenly disappeared, feeling very relaxed, but then I just cry as I listen."
Piano performance influencer Mu Xiaobai was actually a master's student at a music academy.
Uploading her daily practice videos to Renren.com initially started purely out of interest.
She just didn't expect her first uploaded video to gain some traction.
Immediately after, an editor from Renren.com contacted her via private message in the backend, offering her a monthly subsidy of three thousand yuan, provided she uploaded three works each month.
If her popularity and followers continued to grow later, there would be room for negotiation.
Mu Xiaobai was surprised, there was such a good thing? She signed the contract without a second thought.
What she didn't expect was that Renren.com seemed serious about it, subsequently giving her homepage and works a lot of exposure.
More and more people began to like Mu Xiaobai, her videos, and the pieces she played.
Over time, Mu Xiaobai came to treat this as a job.
Firstly, the "monthly salary" Renren.com offered had exceeded ten thousand yuan, which was an unimaginably high salary in 2007, especially for a student.
Her graduated senior classmates teaching at school earned far less.
Secondly, every time she uploaded a video, watching the views and follower count rapidly increase gave her a significant sense of accomplishment.
Even more satisfying were the comments that acknowledged her work.
Mu Xiaobai had never imagined that her covers could gain such widespread affection.
She was set to graduate with her master's next year, but Mu Xiaobai didn't plan to rush into finding a job; she wanted to create better works.
......
One day in late October 2007.
A new banner appeared on the homepage of Renren.com.
"Renren Creator Program is Live!"
"We hope that more and more people can share their lives, insights, and knowledge through but not limited to text, photos, and videos, to make the entire culture of Renren.com more diverse and colorful."
"We understand that sharing and producing high-quality works incurs costs, and it's hard to sustain it purely out of interest."
"Redefining the internet ecosystem, advocating for the general public to publish their own facts and news through Renren.com."
"Everyone is a creator, everyone is media, 'We Media.'"
"The Renren Creator Ad Sharing Program is a support project by Renren.com for content creators. It is a supplementary income source for content creators, in addition to social monetization channels like advertising and paid content.
Through platform support, it aims to enable more content creators to continuously contribute quality content and enhance their influence and commercial monetization capabilities on the platform."
"Benefits include: blog post revenue sharing positions, comment stream, personal homepage ads, and content detail page ads."
"Conditions for receiving Ad Sharing Program benefits: 1. Join the Ad Sharing Program; 2. Be a Renren.com VIP user; 3. Have more than 1000 followers."
"Blog post ad sharing is comprehensively evaluated based on blog post content quality, readership, interactivity, etc."
"..."
This creator program launched by Renren.com was no less than dropping an atomic bomb in the industry.
In comparison, all previous initiatives could only be considered conventional missiles.
Because through the Creator Program, Renren.com shared a new definition—self-media, and added a new profession—self-media creator.
In this era, most people uploaded videos out of interest.
While some websites would pay some high-quality content creators, it wasn't widespread.
But this time, with the Renren Creator Program, all eligible Renren.com users could earn income, just varying in amount.
This action was a first in the industry.
As Chen Pingjiang had anticipated, the plan was widely acclaimed upon its launch.
Quite a few ordinary people joined the Creator Program with the mindset of giving it a try and earning some pocket money.
And as the number of creators grew, and the content became more abundant and refined, it would inevitably attract more users, forming a positive cycle.
At the same time, Chen Pingjiang accepted exclusive interviews with several newspapers and TV stations to elaborate on the concept of social media.
"Social media are tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and viewpoints with each other. At this stage, they mainly include social networking sites, forums, and blogs."
"Regarding social networking sites, Renren.com is the best representative; for forums, there's Xici Hutong; and for blogs, there's Sina Blog."
"Social media thrives in the fertile ground of the internet, erupting with dazzling energy. The information it disseminates has become an important part of people's internet browsing, not only creating one hot topic after another for people to discuss in their social lives but also attracting traditional media to follow suit."
"So-called social media should be a process where a large number of netizens spontaneously contribute, extract, create news information, and then disseminate it. Two points need to be emphasized: a large number of people, and spontaneous dissemination."
"The emergence of social media relies on the development of WEB2.0. If the internet doesn't grant netizens more initiative, social media loses its mass base and technical support, losing its foundation.
Without technical support for so many interactive models and interactive products, netizens' demands can only be suppressed and cannot be released.
If the strong desire of netizens for interaction and self-expression wasn't recognized, it wouldn't have spawned so many dazzling technologies. Social media has developed precisely based on its mass base and technical support."
"Undoubtedly, social media is a major trend and hot topic in the internet in 2007."
"..."
Chen Pingjiang intensively hyped the concept of social media through various means, whereas in the original timeline, the concept of "social media" was only proposed in 2008.
For a time, major newspapers and media outlets widely quoted Chen Pingjiang or participated in discussions about social media.
"Business Genius - Chen Pingjiang, the richest young person under twenty in China, proposes the new concept of 'social media'."
"In the next one to two years, social media will cross the chasm and attract more users, eventually becoming mainstream applications and even replacing traditional media to some extent."
"Renowned scholar states: Strongly agree with Chen Pingjiang's view, social media is growing rapidly!"
"Major companies are shifting their budgets to more targeted social media, and this is just the beginning."
In just half a month, various news outlets were discussing the new concept of "social media."
It seemed that not knowing this term when going out was like being out of touch with the times.
The financial sector was excited, and the internet sector was also excited.
And this was exactly what Chen Pingjiang wanted!
The reason for releasing the concept of social media now was to continue to allow Renren.com to dominate.
First, to get more individuals involved in social media; then, to compel some traditional media to settle on Renren.com; finally, through a sense of urgency, to make those large companies and enterprises switch their advertising channels to online, rather than traditional offline, such as newspapers and bus exteriors.
If large companies and enterprises invested their money in social media, Renren.com would definitely be the first choice.
In that case, not only would Renren.com make a fortune, but it would also link up with the Renren Creator Program, giving ordinary people who joined the Renren Creator Program higher incomes.
(End of chapter)