Chapter 359 - 356: D Station Goes Online

Chapter 359: Chapter 356: D Station Goes Online

February 28, 2010. The fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the Lantern Festival.

Jiang Xia hadn’t given the company the day off. Many employees were gathered in the development department, waiting for Dili Dili to launch.

For the past while, the company had been conducting high-intensity internal testing. Whenever a bug appeared, Fang Jianzhong and his tech team would swiftly fix it.

The user feedback they’d received was extremely positive. The videos didn’t lag, the picture was clear, and the bullet comment feature was a lot of fun. The development team had also imported a huge library of excellent domestic and international animation, including but not limited to early-style remix videos, gaming content, and otaku dance choreography, all of which significantly boosted the site’s ACG vibe.

In fact, at this point in time, Dili Dili was the world’s first video streaming site with bullet comments to focus primarily on ACG culture.

Most importantly, it was a legitimate site. Watching videos was free and there were no ads. On top of that, users could use bullet comments to chat with fellow fans who were watching the exact same video at the same time.

The bullet comments created a peculiar sense of shared, real-time experience, fostering a virtual, tribe-like viewing atmosphere. This would allow D Station to become a cultural community built on interaction, sharing, and derivative content.

This would truly transform D Station from a simple one-way video streaming platform into a two-way platform for emotional connection.

These technological and cultural advantages, in turn, created a unique bullet comment ecosystem and user environment.

For internet users of the era, this was an experience that felt like it was from the future—and it was utterly novel.

「At 12:00 PM, the Dili Dili video and bullet comment site officially launched.」

Backed by a massive, web-wide promotional campaign, the name "Dili Dili" almost instantly took over the front pages and headlines of major web portals, news sites, and online forums.

Many users flocked to check out this site that was being advertised everywhere as "the best video platform for young people." In an instant, the backend traffic data skyrocketed, breaking one hundred thousand visits in just a few minutes and continuing to climb rapidly.

Seeing this, Fang Jianzhong finally let out a sigh of relief. Although the company had poured a ton of resources into promotion, for a brand-new site to get this much traffic was more than enough to prove how different their little site was from the other video platforms out there.

After all, this was 2010. It wasn’t like later years when every household had a computer. Many people still had to go to internet cafes to get online, so it was clear that these numbers were already staggering.

"Teacher Fang, the servers aren’t going to crash, are they?" Jiang Xia asked, a little worried as he watched the traffic numbers jump by hundreds, even thousands, every second.

’If it crashes on the very first day, we’ll be a laughingstock across the entire web.’

"Don’t worry, President Jiang. Our servers can handle data interactions from a million concurrent users. They shouldn’t crash," Fang Jianzhong said with a confident smile.

There was still a long way to go from one hundred thousand to one million. Besides, there were fewer than 20 million computer users in the country last year. If one out of every 20 people currently at a computer was visiting D Station, it would mean they were a massive hit.

Hearing the veteran programmer’s confident assessment, Jiang Xia immediately felt relieved.

"The traffic numbers look high now, but who knows what the actual user retention will be. A lot of people are just here for the novelty," Fang Jianzhong said.

Jiang Xia couldn’t agree more. Internet users were a fickle bunch, always flocking to the next big thing.

The biggest hurdle was that registering for a D Station account required passing an exam. It was a 100-question test with a 60-minute time limit, and a score of 60 was needed to pass. The questions covered topics like bullet comment etiquette and knowledge related to popular anime, manga, and gaming memes.

Jiang Xia had seen the question bank. To be honest, anyone who wasn’t a true ACG fan wouldn’t be able to answer many of the questions. This would inevitably filter out a significant number of potential users.

Of course, anyone patient enough to look up the answers online could still pass.

"President Jiang, are you sure this exam feature you insisted on adding... isn’t just counterproductive?"

Fang Jianzhong was genuinely puzzled by this. ’Why would anyone actively turn users away? That’s all potential traffic!’

"For now, D Station only wants users who genuinely love ACG culture. Those who don’t—the trolls and troublemakers—are pests. For a new site like D Station, they do a hundred times more harm than good," Jiang Xia said with a faint smile. "D Station needs a healthier environment to grow and thrive."

Fang Jianzhong remained noncommittal. It was the kind of trade-off where only time would tell who was right.

"Teacher Fang, can you check if there are any new users yet?" Li Weiya asked curiously.

Fang Jianzhong took a look and shook his head. "Nope. Still at 237 users, and they’re all employee accounts."

Jiang Xia just chuckled, unconcerned. Dili Dili had only just launched, and the registration exam took time. Even if someone knew the answers to the 100 randomly selected questions by heart, it would still take them ten to twenty minutes to finish the test and get their score.

Besides, he’d had Fang Jianzhong create a "New User" badge that would be displayed under a user’s ID, signifying that anyone who passed the entrance exam was a qualified "ACG Guardian."

"Alright, Teacher Fang, just keep an eye on the servers and be ready for any emergency maintenance."

"Will do, President Jiang."

Jiang Xia returned to his office, turned on his computer, and casually browsed the web. He soon discovered that the top trending topic on Weibo and the number one search term on the major search engines was "Dili Dili’s exam is so hard."

He patiently clicked on a few posts and found they were all full of complaints.

People were complaining that they’d find an interesting video, but the quality would be low. To increase the resolution, you had to become a registered D Station user—and the same went for using the bullet comment feature.

But then they’d register, only to find they had to take a test. ’Are these questions even meant for humans?! Who the hell watches cartoons with a magnifying glass?!’

For instance:

How many whiskers does Tom have on his face?

In total, how many times did Jerry’s cousin beat up Tom?

In which episode does Tom do the splits into a tree?

What does the emoticon "orz" represent?

In *Full-time Warrior*, what’s the line that comes before "backstep with a burst of sword energy"?

In the original *Contra*, who is the boss of the third stage?

In *Tetris*, how many different kinds of blocks are there in total?

Even Jiang Xia was stunned looking at these questions. They definitely weren’t things an ordinary person could answer. He was suddenly reminded of the terror he’d felt in his past life when he was first trying to register for B Station and was faced with a similar gauntlet of questions.

’The final user retention rate might be much, much lower than I thought,’ he mused.

’But,’ he thought, ’as bullet comment culture gradually takes off online, the appeal of free, legally licensed content will continuously attract new users.’

He watched with glee as countless users were defeated by D Station’s entrance exam. At the same time, it stirred up a defiant spirit in many of them. ’Is this damn test really supposed to be harder than the college entrance exams?’

Finally, after more than ten minutes, Jiang Xia saw the first user post a screenshot of their "ACG Guardian" badge. The post was captioned:

"The D Station entrance exam? That’s it? Wasn’t even hard. [smug_face.jpg]"