Global Monopoly of Technology

After confirming the development schedule for the first half of the year, Luo Sheng convened 150 internal employees to form a development team, led by Xu Yong himself, and Luo Sheng himself also entered the development sequence.

At the same time, the company is also hiring various engineers at high salaries.

For the next half month, Xu Yong was in charge of the development of MusicSpace, and Luo Sheng was in charge of the development of Bluestar Video, but he would not be immersed in the development work in the technical department all the time. The main purpose was to The more function of building the framework is to cultivate the development ability of engineers.

The difference between Bluestar Video and Kufeng Video is first of all technically different. Kufeng Video is not an online player and does not use streaming media technology.

The so-called streaming media technology is a network transmission technology that compresses the complete image and sound data and saves it on the website server. Users can obtain information while downloading, so there is no need to download the entire compressed file and then watch it.

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"As early as the end of the last century, IT giants including Microsoft and Apple saw the potential contained in streaming media technology and developed their own products one after another. The IETF, in conjunction with many streaming media technology companies, began to formulate related Technical specifications, I hope that the products of many manufacturers can be compatible with each other and jointly expand the market."

At this moment, Luo Sheng and the members of the development team started to exchange technology while sitting together in the lounge. For the members of the development team, Luo Sheng is definitely the technical god in their minds, not only can they expand their horizons, but also learn the key To a lot of new things, it can definitely kill the computer professor of the university.

"In April 1998, the multimedia group of the IETF released the first standardized streaming media communication protocol RTSP1.0, which marked that the development of streaming media technology has entered a standardized track. In addition to Microsoft and Adobe, other manufacturers such as Apple, PacketVideo, etc., all support RTSP1.0 protocol in their products."

Speaking of which, Luo Sheng raised his legs and said calmly: "However, our Bluestar video does not use the services of any streaming media technology companies on the market, because their technology is too poor, we develop new ones by ourselves. , which is not for sale, but only for our own products."

Lu Siming said: "Boss, do you mean that our streaming media technology does not support RTSP1.0 protocol?"

Luo Sheng nodded: "What I want to build is my own ecosystem, Bluestar Technology's 'Family Bucket', it's not because of arrogance and lack of money that I choose not to go with the RTSP1.0 protocol, but because the framers of this standard are fundamentally The rapid growth of internet broadband and the proliferation of proxy servers due to the shortage of IPv4 addresses were not well predicted."

"In addition, there are certain defects in transmission reliability and ease of use. I firmly believe that the next few years will be the years of network video explosion. I don't need RTSP1.0 protocol, other people want to do streaming video The service provider companies won't be too interested, but I'm looking farther ahead than they are."

The development team of Bluestar Video is currently developing a streaming media technology called "LvHTTP", which uses an instant messaging protocol embedded in video.

The development of Internet technology has a great feature that "winner takes all". In the application layer protocol, HTTP has the potential of winner-take-all. This is not Luo Sheng's technology. Its founder is Tim Bay, the father of the World Wide Web. Nas Lee's masterpiece.

The HTTP protocol was originally designed as a web browsing application with a B/S architecture. It is characterized by simplicity and ease of use. Now the industry believes that the protocol is not suitable for use in applications such as streaming media that require high real-time performance, and it will cause problems in the communication process. The additional load is heavier.

But Luo Sheng's Lv obviously overturned this,

At present, Lv has been developed. In most cases, Lv applications use HTTP as the bearer for internal testing, which can ensure that they can be used directly in most networks without complex configuration and debugging.

This is not to blame for other people, after all, Luo Sheng's vision has surpassed this era for decades.

The current broadband speed is generally around 1M, but Luo knows that IP network broadband will increase rapidly in the future, and it is a matter of recent years. If the current broadband speed is compared to a water pipe with a diameter of 10 cm, then in a few years The diameter of the water pipe will expand by one meter or even ten meters. Under this trend, the additional communication load caused by HTTP is no longer important. On the contrary, it will show more and more obvious advantages in terms of ease of use. became the de facto standard.

Naturally, the RTSP1.0 protocol will not be selected.

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In the following days, Luo Sheng led the team to continue to develop, create a unique online technology LD recombination compression algorithm for Bluestar Video, and apply for a patent.

LD technology can ensure that users can watch 720P high-definition video smoothly in the broadband speed within 1M. At this time in early 2004, it is definitely the world's leading streaming media playback technology.

Taking China as an example, the main group of Internet users now use 512K~1M broadband. Under the limited broadband resources, being able to watch high-definition video online smoothly is what users expect, and it is also the core competitiveness of Bluestar Video.

Luo Sheng attaches great importance to the problem of whether the online video playback card is stuck, because this is also a problem that users care about. In a word, it is user experience.

Obviously, for the fluency of online video playback, it is necessary to clarify a concept of bit rate, that is, the larger the bit rate Kbps, the larger the video file. If the bit rate is too large, the broadband speed cannot keep up, and the video will freeze. , and even stuck as a dog.

The highlight of the recombination compression algorithm of LD technology is that the image quality is the best in the industry when the bit rate is the same, and the bit rate is the lowest in the industry when the image quality is the same.

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At the end of February, Luo Sheng was busy developing here, and the North American side was launched as scheduled. The website itself positioned itself as a social news site.

The Reddit that was born in Luo Sheng's hands has at least had a great change from the Reddit of the previous life, that is, its simple pages, rough graphics, large texts, etc. have been changed, and the web pages are beautiful and smooth.

The reason why the Reddit of the previous life was slag was also due to the cost. After all, the bandwidth cost will increase accordingly. Fortunately, Bluestar Technology is not bad, although it has not earned a penny yet.

This is not VC money.

At the beginning of Reddit’s launch, product manager Russell Simmons asked for an international version of BlueSpace to help Reddit drain traffic, but was rejected by his immediate boss, George Charles.

Because Luo Sheng explained to George, and even warned him, if he dared to play a small advertisement on the international version of the BlueSpace website without his permission, he would be fired, even if it was a small advertisement.

George is very happy with his current job. He completed his performance last year, and his salary was raised to US$1.08 million as he wished. He also received an option rights issue from Bluestar Technology, which was exercised at the valuation price after the B round of financing. The myth of the B round of financing It made him realize that in the near future, Bluestar Technology's IPO listing can also become a billionaire.

Up to now, the users of the international version of BlueSpace in North America have reached the 20 million mark. Basically, universities in the United States have been successfully captured. George Charles has successfully replicated the expansion model in North America with reference to the expansion model of China.

Now starting to expand to users outside the university, BlueSpace's expansion rate in North America can be said to be unmatched.

Facts have proved that the Chinese side has been proven that this model can succeed, and the North American side can also succeed, and vice versa.

There is even an illusion that BlueSpace seems to be more suitable for Europe and the United States and has more potential.

With 20 million users, this is a very large amount of traffic, but it cannot be drained, which makes Russell Simmons very depressed.

However, Bluestar Technology is currently very famous at home and abroad, and its launch has attracted much attention from the Internet circles at home and abroad, as well as VCs who invest in Bluestar Technology.

At first glance, the industry and VCs were stunned.

As the founder of real-name social networking and the most slippery Internet company, the anonymous mechanism of the newly launched product forms a sharp contrast with its core business.

Are they all playing snakeskin?

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