135: Chapter 135 More Activities on Pinduoduo

Over the next few days, Pinduoduo's user fission continued, and the sinking market was exerting crazy effort.

Based on a million core users, the Slash red packet activity links spread like a virus across countless towns and rural areas through QQ, Alipay, and offline face-to-face QR code scanning.

Its speed of spread was so fast that everyone paying attention to this matter couldn't quite react in time.

However, although there were no accurate user growth figures, there was almost a consensus in the outside world that at this speed, Pinduoduo would exceed 100 million users in at most half a month.

The nearly barrier-free hundred-yuan cash activity was too tempting.

You have to know, this is the hardest shopping platform in the internet industry to acquire new users for.

User habits, trust costs, payment barriers—every item was a stumbling block.

JD.com burned an unknown amount of money back in the day to acquire new users, and its growth rate never reached this level.

Yet Pinduoduo was able to have such a fast new user acquisition speed on a shopping platform, which is enough to show how exaggerated and terrifying it was.

However, everyone understood that these users came entirely for the red packets.

They didn't download Pinduoduo because they wanted to buy things; they did it because someone told them they could get money for downloading. They didn't register an account because they recognized the platform; they did it because helping a friend with a Slash meant they could also get a red packet.

Previously, other platforms had thought about directly giving out money to acquire users, but the stickiness of users acquired this way was not high.

So at this moment, other internet entrepreneurs in the outside world were all pondering the same question: Could these users bought with money actually be retained by Pinduoduo?

If they couldn't be retained, the tens of billions that Qin Mo poured in would all be a loss.

If they could be retained, Pinduoduo would truly succeed, becoming the second national e-commerce platform outside of Taobao.

Soon, three days had passed since Pinduoduo's official update.

Countless eyes in the outside world were fixed on Pinduoduo that day, staring at its download curves in major app stores, and staring at its Baidu index.

This day was quite critical for Pinduoduo because it was the day the first batch of users who used shopping red packets for consumption would receive the goods they bought.

Although Pinduoduo had JD.com's logistics and warehousing system as support, at the beginning, because the order volume brought by the activity far exceeded expectations, and the transaction volume within the same day was too high, the warehousing sorting and packing lines were operating at almost full capacity.

Pinduoduo's first batch of goods could only be mostly delivered by today.

This was still with Pinduoduo having a logistics line; if it were changed to other platforms, like Taobao, for the same order volume, the delivery time would be at least over a week.

And the reason why today was so critical was to see if this batch of users who used shopping red packets for ultra-low-priced, or even almost free, shopping would continue to stay on Pinduoduo after receiving the goods.

Would they open the software to continue browsing, or would they delete the software directly?

This first batch of shopping users almost represented the subsequent user group that came for Pinduoduo's red packets.

It could even be said that whether Pinduoduo could survive, and whether the money spent was useful, depended on the user curve of this day.

Meanwhile, in the teaching building of that ordinary university in Guangcheng, in the same classroom and the same seat, Wei Yingjie was secretly scrolling on his phone in his old spot.

Even the teacher on the podium was the same; this teacher only had two classes a week, just three days ago and today, so there were still people in the back rows lying down to catch up on sleep.

Just as he was scrolling through Douyin, a logistics notification popped up at the top of Wei Yingjie's phone screen: "Package has been placed in the Cainiao Station."

Looking at this message, he nudged his deskmate next to him with his elbow and spoke in a low voice: "My package arrived, the one I bought on Pinduoduo using the red packet."

The deskmate also lowered his head to look at his own phone: "Mine arrived too, let's go get them together after class."

"What did you buy again?" Wei Yingjie asked.

The deskmate turned off his phone screen: "I added some money to buy a pair of shoes I've always wanted, a few hundred yuan."

"Pinduoduo's shoes were already cheaper than other places, plus the shopping red packet, it was equivalent to buying at 60% of the original price. I couldn't resist at the time, so I placed the order directly. What did you buy?"

Wei Yingjie also closed his Pinduoduo software interface: "I used the shopping red packet to buy a few pieces of clothing; they were all very cheap."

After saying that, he thought of something: "By the way, have you had the Slash red packet pop up in the last two days?"

The deskmate shook his head: "Only the first two times were there cash red packets, and there haven't been any since. I don't know if they stop giving them to old users."

The deskmate leaned back in his chair, his tone carrying some hesitation: "I'm even thinking about whether to uninstall Pinduoduo."

"I think the things on Pinduoduo are cheap probably just because they just launched and are running promotions. It won't be cheap for long; it won't always be there. Plus, with the Slash red packet and shopping red packet gone, it's not as good as going back to using Taobao."

Wei Yingjie had the same thought.

Now that the one hundred yuan cash had already been received, and the shopping red packet had been used up, if there were no more red packets in the future, this software would have no special value for him.

After all, he also felt that Pinduoduo's product prices wouldn't stay low forever, just like the food delivery war back then—it started low and would recover later.

But in the very next second, the phone made a notification sound, and Pinduoduo pushed a new message.

The pop-up window said a few words: "New activity launched, Ten-Thousand-Person Group Buy and Low-Price Guarantee, click to view details."

Wei Yingjie was stunned for a moment and clicked into the pop-up window.

On the page was a fairly formal announcement with simple and direct wording: Pinduoduo promised that all products from self-operated factories would permanently maintain the lowest price on the entire internet.

If a user found that the same product on another platform was cheaper within seven days after purchase, the price difference would be refunded double.

In addition to the low-price guarantee, there was another piece of information: "Slash red packets exist permanently; even for old users, there is a probability of triggering it again after completing every order."

"Interesting." Wei Yingjie muttered a sentence and clicked the pop-up window to jump into Pinduoduo.

Soon, he found several new channel entrances.

One of them was the Ten-Thousand-Person Group Buy activity from the pop-up window.

At first, he was still a bit worried: Ten-Thousand-Person Group Buy, are there really that many people for the same product?

As a result, when he clicked in to take a look, Wei Yingjie was completely stunned.

Under every product, the number of people currently participating in the group buy was listed—all were thousands or even tens of thousands, and the number of participants kept jumping up; every time he refreshed, there were dozens more people.

And these products were not all small commodities for the sinking market.

Lobsters, durians, air conditioners, refrigerators.

Et cetera, et cetera.

The key was that the price of the Ten-Thousand-Person Group Buy was not just a little lower than the normal selling price; on average, it was 70-80% of the original price or even lower!

Wei Yingjie scrolled down a few times and saw a snack gift pack again. He had bought it on Taobao once before; the gift pack was filled with various nuts and meat jerky, filling an entire box, costing over a hundred yuan.

But now, the price for Pinduoduo's Ten-Thousand-Person Group Buy was only half!

He didn't hesitate at all and clicked to join the group directly.

This price advantage was simply too tempting.

Just as he wanted to call his deskmate to join the group together, he turned his head and saw that his deskmate was already on Pinduoduo, having clicked into another newly launched channel.

Limited-Time Flash Sale.

The deskmate's eyes were fixed on many products in this flash sale channel, his eyes shining. Wei Yingjie took a look and found that his deskmate had already clicked into the sneaker column of the flash sale channel.

Wei Yingjie withdrew his gaze and put his phone on the table.

He couldn't help but click his tongue.

"Looking so seriously, are you still going to uninstall this software?"

The deskmate didn't even raise his head, staring at a countdown for a pair of branded sneakers about to start a flash sale.

"What kind of joke are you making?"

"I won't uninstall this software no matter what. Even if Jesus comes, it won't be deleted, I said it!"