How Meituan Built a P2P Internal Library That Grew 720% in One Week

Project Background

Meituan released an internal peer‑to‑peer (P2P) book‑library system in December 2014 after several earlier prototypes (Google Docs/Wiki‑based shelf, a 2012 internal system, and a 2013 Hackathon prototype). The service lets employees share legally purchased physical books and borrow them by scanning barcodes or QR codes with the corporate messaging app.

Identified Pain Points

Borrowing required manual admin approval and lock handling, causing delays.

High management overhead because engineers acted as volunteer librarians.

Long collective procurement cycles; books often arrived after the need had passed.

Limited collection size (initially ~325 books) leading to frequent out‑of‑stock situations.

Closed access: only administrators could open cabinets, restricting cross‑department sharing.

Unfriendly user interface.

Key Requirements

Expand the catalog to satisfy employee learning needs.

Simplify the borrowing workflow to increase circulation.

Provide efficient management tools and reduce loss risk.

Design Solutions

Optimized procurement workflow : Users submit an ISBN; the system notifies administrators, checks existing inventory and departmental budget, and routes the request for approval. Upon approval, the requester receives a real‑time notification and can purchase the book, then submit a reimbursement claim.

One‑click sharing : Scanning a book’s barcode adds the title to the library in under five seconds. The book remains owned by the contributor but becomes searchable and borrowable by all employees.

Distributed borrowing process : Borrowers scan a QR code printed on the book to create a P2P borrowing record. No administrator mediation is required; the current holder becomes the book’s manager.

Open access : Physical locks on cabinets were removed. QR codes on each book allow any department to borrow directly, breaking departmental silos.

Loss‑risk control : An API is exposed to the HR system so that when an employee leaves the company, a reclamation request is automatically generated.

Adoption Data (first week)

Catalog grew from 325 to 2,413 books (≈720 % increase).

Personal shared books: 1,845 copies (≈76 % of total); 923 books added in the final 24 hours of 2014.

Participating departments expanded from 3 technical teams to 12 headquarters departments.

By the time of reporting, 188 users across 18 departments had shared 1,973 books.

Performance Targets vs. Actual

Target: 180 books shared within 6 days → Actual: 97.5 hours.

Target: >50 % of department members share within 36 hours → Actual: 27.5 hours.

Target: Increase from 700 to 1,024 books within 26 hours → Actual: 1.3 hours.

Target: Reach 1,024 shared books within 13 hours → Actual: 5.7 hours.

Target: Grow from 1,400 to 2,015 books within 5 hours → Actual: 1.5 hours.

Other Technical Notes

Book metadata (title, author, cover, etc.) is fetched from Douban’s public API.

Only legally purchased physical books are allowed; e‑books are excluded to comply with copyright regulations.

The system is planned to be open‑sourced internally, with a possible external release in the future.