This excerpt from an article titled "Unknown! Keywords to Understand Chinese IT Deeply Vol. 014" focuses on China's "Singles' Day Sale," primarily initiated by Alibaba. It details the massive scale of this annual event on November 11th, where billions of dollars in transactions occur in a single day, far surpassing the sales of major Western e-commerce companies like Amazon. The article explains that while the event isn't necessarily a direct profit center for Alibaba itself due to substantial promotional costs, it serves as a crucial driver for the company's technological advancements in areas like cloud computing, payment systems (which evolved into Alipay), and logistics. It also traces the origins of Singles' Day as a day for young people to socialize and celebrate being single, and how Alibaba transformed it into a colossal shopping festival, highlighting the company's strategic use of data and its evolution into a "data technology company."