Chapter 124 124. We will be recorded in history forever!

After talking about Facebook, Eric looked at Robert Mirren and Howard Hughes.

"How is the development progress of Lionheart and YouTube?"

Robert Mirren plugged the plug into his computer, then clicked on a lion head icon. MGM's classic opening animation appeared, and two seconds later it jumped to a video website page.

Compared to the simplicity and cleanliness of Facebook, Lionheart, as a streaming media platform, has a much more flashy look.

At the top are categories, including action, suspense, romance, comedy and other aspects.

Pulling down the interface, movie posters are lined up, including "Saw", "Legally Blonde", "Hart of War", "Annie Hall", "Hannibal" series and other movies.

These are all MGM's wholly-owned films, classics or not too old, and most importantly, they do not involve any copyright disputes.

For example, some joint venture films, such as 007: Die Another Day released last year, cannot be used directly because they involve Universal's investment.

Of course, you can't copy other people's works. This is not Africa. If you blatantly infringe on copyright, you may be sued and go bankrupt.

Continuing down are some less famous or older movies.

"Robert, how many movies are in here now?" Eric asked.

"A total of 1,955 films and about 8,000 episodes of TV series, accounting for about half of MGM's film library."

"It will take some time to upload all of them to Lionheart Network."

"During this process, the biggest feeling I had was the impact of the Internet speed. We had to compress the video and sacrifice the image quality to ensure the speed. The result was that the video clarity was greatly reduced, and it was not as good as watching a DVD on TV."

"How can we increase the speed? Can we add more servers? Can we upload these videos completely to the Internet?"

Robert shook his head. "This approach can only alleviate the problem, but it cannot fundamentally improve it, because the bandwidth limitation is there. If the video is too large, it will take longer to load when the user watches it online."

"We can only choose between loading time and video clarity. This is a limitation of the times and cannot be solved before broadband technology breakthroughs."

"Open one and let me see it."

Robert followed his instructions and turned on Legally Blonde. The scene changed and a cartoon lion jumped around on the screen.

He tapped the little lion a few times, and the lion immediately made some movements, which looked quite interesting.

"Boss, this is to prevent users from getting bored while waiting for the video to buffer. The fun little interactions I added in may not be very useful, but at least they can help kill some time."

"Yeah, that's an interesting idea."

It took about ten seconds for the movie to finish buffering and officially start playing.

Eric frowned slightly. "Although the clarity has indeed decreased, it is still acceptable. Let's try pulling it back."

Use the mouse to drag the progress bar directly to the middle, and the little lion jumps out again. This time, it buffers for almost half a minute before the video resumes playing.

Compared to Facebook, which can be accessed in just a swipe, this speed is indeed a bit slow.

"Robert, if there are no skips in the middle, how many buffering pauses will occur in a movie on average if you watch it normally?"

Robert flipped through his notebook and said, "On average, it only happened once. However, this data is from the local area network, and there are too few survey templates. If it is expanded to millions or tens of millions of people watching at the same time, the frequency of freezing will definitely increase."

"Is there really no solution?" Eric was a little unhappy.

"No, this problem cannot be solved until the internet speed problem is solved. Moreover, the United States already has the fastest internet speed in the world. If even we can't handle it, other countries will have no way out. They will only be slower and more choppy, with lower clarity."

"Internet speed! Internet speed!" Eric tapped the table lightly with his fingers.

Suddenly, an idea flashed through his mind.

"Robert, the speed of the civilian network is not good. Will the military network be okay? According to our simple thinking, the efficiency of the military network must be higher."

As soon as these words came out, Robert Millen stared at Eric with wide eyes.

He really couldn't imagine why he, as his boss, could always find so many brilliant points and come up with such fantastic ideas.

He wiped the dust off his glasses and stammered, "In theory, it is true. The network used by the military is different from that used by civilians. The transmission cables alone are completely different. The speed difference is several times or even more than ten times."

"Because the military network is facing war, for example, when a reconnaissance plane flies around a battlefield, the amount of image data transmitted back is immeasurable, so not only speed but also quality is required."

"If we can use the military network for commercial purposes, all problems can be solved. The only problem we face is the capacity of the server. We may need a room, a floor of an office building or even an entire building as a data storage center."

"But boss, I've never heard of a military network being converted to civilian use. Will this involve security issues? The Ministry of Defense won't allow it either."

Eric took a sip of water and said, "Don't worry about it. This is the problem I need to solve. There is no precedent in this regard because no one has proposed it. Any field always needs a pioneer."

"Okay, keep talking."

Robert hummed: "Boss, in addition to the limitation of network speed, another difficulty lies in the algorithm."

"According to your request, we have been simulating the development of Netflix's user preference recommendation algorithm, but the progress is still insufficient. As far as I know, it took Netflix more than a year from research to launch of this feature, and it is still being improved. We need more time."

The algorithm that Eric asked to be developed is actually equivalent to the big data recommendation of later generations. It remembers user preferences and continuously pushes similar content to increase user stickiness.

Although Netflix is ​​still in the video rental business, it developed a similar function several years ago.

Just log in to their official website and click on the purchase button. As the number of times increases, the website will recommend the same type of movies to you when you log in later.

There is no need to say how important this function is, especially for streaming platforms and YouTube, and even short videos after the advent of the mobile Internet era, it is the most core technology.

"With our current R&D team, how long will it take to develop this algorithm?"

Faced with this question, Robert did not give a definite answer, but hesitated and was speechless.

"Robert, what's wrong with you? Are you suddenly losing confidence?"

After thinking for a while, Robert hesitantly gave a vague answer.

"Next year, I think it will most likely be the second half of next year. Please forgive me, I really can't be sure of the specific month."

"Boss, your requirements are more accurate and sophisticated than Netflix's recommendation algorithm, which requires the underlying logical operations to be improved by an order of magnitude."

"In fact, in our technology circle, many people believe that artificial intelligence will become popular in the future, and perhaps one day it will develop self-awareness."

"It will be able to learn, identify and even evolve autonomously, just like the robot Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey."

"And the algorithm you are asking to develop can probably be understood as the prototype of this type of artificial intelligence. Creating such a thing is very difficult."

"I'm sorry, my expression may be confusing. Anyway, it's difficult. Can you understand?"

Robert Millen is what the public considers to be a traditional tech geek who only knows how to stay in his room to do development. He has little interest in socializing and over time he even began to fear it.

Seeing him flustered and incoherent, Eric spoke to comfort him: "Relax Robert, I'm not putting pressure on you, relax, okay?"

Robert Mirren took a deep breath and calmed down. "Boss, in short, when a website can recommend suitable products to users, it is equivalent to a salesperson with independent consciousness."

“If Netflix’s algorithm is compared to a new employee, it needs the same customer to buy 10 times before it can figure out the customer’s preferences.”

"And I want to increase this number to 9 times. It seems that it has only been reduced by 1 time, but the amount of calculation required behind it is increasing exponentially."

Eric rubbed his temple. He didn't understand this kind of technical stuff, so he simply asked, "What about Howard's team? The algorithms of Lionheart and YouTube should be compatible."

Howard Hughes pressed Robert Mirren's wrist, signaling him to stop.

The latest novel is published first on Liu9shuba!

How could Eric possibly understand what you said? They provided so much money, and they just wanted results! "Boss, the basic architecture of the algorithm can be used universally, but there are differences in the details. YouTube is more complicated."

“So my team and Robert’s team have been working together, but even with joint development, the progress is still slow.”

"If you want to see the algorithm out by the end of this year, the only way is to add more people. I suggest hiring another group of technicians."

Eric nodded secretly. Howard's words became much clearer and more logical. He didn't even mention the time, but he gave the end of the year deadline.

What a good employee who puts a tight rein on himself.

As a boss, you can't be stingy.

"How many people do you want?"

"At least 150!"

Eric didn't hesitate at all: "Okay, then I'll give you 150. I'll arrange for someone to recruit as soon as possible. You two can also participate, or those who are interested can directly propose. If you are from other companies, poach them for me!"

"I want to see your results before Christmas 2003, understand?"

Howard and Robert looked at each other and patted their chests to promise to complete the task.

"Boss, what about the launch of Lionheart.com and YouTube?"

"After the basic functions are completed, we will launch them normally, and other functions will be improved later. In addition, I would like to ask that the accounts of the three platforms be interconnected, so that users only need to register once to log in to the three platforms. Is it difficult to implement this function?"

Heisenberg smiled and said, "No, this is very simple. As long as the architecture is similar and the database storage is adjusted to the same format, it is easy to implement."

"Is it that simple?" Eric was a little bit unbelievable.

"Yes, it's very simple."

"Then why can't Google's products be interconnected? I thought it was a technical issue."

Howard shook his head. "It has nothing to do with technology. It's probably because of the distribution of benefits. Many of Google's software belong to different subsidiaries."

"Some of these subsidiaries are wholly owned by Google, while others are only partially owned by Google."

"Once the accounts are interconnected, it will greatly facilitate users and drive the flow of traffic, just like breaking up the fork of two rivers."

"Once traffic increases, it will lead to an increase in profits, and once profits increase, we will face the problem of distribution."

"Google's wholly-owned companies are managed by different teams, factions and groups, and there is fierce competition among them."

"Not to mention the holding companies, which also have to face the demands of their partners. Just the negotiations are torturous enough."

After knowing the reason, Eric laughed and said, "It seems that we have created a precedent in the industry."

"Yes, boss. Under your leadership, the absence of internal struggle will be a great advantage for us. So Heisenberg, Robert and I are willing to follow you."

“We always believe that under your leadership, the company will become a new generation of Internet giant, comparable to super giants like Google and Microsoft!”

Eric tapped the table lightly. "Then it's settled. Today is May 24th. Go back and prepare carefully. Facebook will be officially launched on the market on June 1st."

“At that time, we can proudly announce one thing: the world’s first social network was born!”

"And you, my friends, you are all heroes! You will all be recorded in history forever!"

On the way back to Silicon Valley, people from the three teams were chatting excitedly on the bus.

Most of them are not very good at interpersonal communication, but they get along very well with their colleagues. One girl in Howard's team has become a couple with a young man in Heisenberg's team.

"Hey! Have you noticed? Although Eric Cooper doesn't understand technology, he is really good. The ideas he puts forward always hit our interests accurately."

"Charlie, this is called creativity. That's why others can become bosses at a young age, but we can only write code." An old programmer who is almost 30 years old sighed.

"I heard that he is also a director. Directors are people with explosive imagination. No wonder he came up with Lionheart, Facebook and YouTube. Moreover, the three are mutually supportive and can provide resource support to each other. Eric Cooper is simply a genius!"

"Hahahaha, compared to being a genius, I think his attribute as the vice president of MGM is more important. Without financial support, no matter how good the idea is, it cannot be realized."

"Boss, since Eric is a big shot in Hollywood, can you ask him for a suggestion and invite a few stars to the company to liven up the company at the end of the year?" A young man wearing a baseball cap looked at Howard Hughes and asked.

Howard smiled and said, "As long as the algorithm is ready before Christmas, I will go to Eric to make a request. How do you think?"

"Agreed! I'd love it to be Julia Roberts, I loved her in Notting Hill."

"Julia Roberts' mouth is too big. Cameron Diaz is better. She was so sexy in Charlie's Angels."

"Are you kidding me? Can you guys say something about young actresses? I think Jessica Alba is great."

"Discrimination! Why are they all actresses? You guys are a bunch of nerds. I like Orlando Bloom."

(End of this chapter)