Chapter 365 - 263: Elsa’s Family are All Treasures 3.0

Chapter 365: Chapter 263: Elsa’s Family are All Treasures 3.0

"Argh! I can’t take this! Why does it take so long to open YouTube?!"

In his office, Zog was seething with impotent rage at his brand-new workstation.

"Isn’t it pretty fast?" Furin couldn’t understand what Zog was so dissatisfied about.

In her eyes, this was an incredibly complex piece of Magical Equipment—perhaps the most complex in history. For a single machine to possess so many functions, and for each one to load in under a minute...

It was nothing short of a miracle, a perfect fusion of magic and mechanics.

"It takes this long just to open YouTube, and forever to load each video. Once we add ads, the user experience is going to be abysmal."

The computers of this era were still in a fairly primitive state.

Not only was it slow to load, but it was also incapable of running multiple functions simultaneously.

Due to a lack of integration technology, the computer’s case actually housed a Teleportation Array. Whenever a function was needed, the corresponding Magical Device would be teleported out from a dedicated pocket dimension.

Each of these Magical Devices had a standardized output port, and the signal was received and processed by a "Windows" Rune system housed in the monitor’s bulky rear casing.

This was why opening YouTube was so slow: it first had to teleport in the video Magical Device.

You couldn’t even run an office program to pretend you were working while secretly slacking off and watching videos in a small window.

However, this modular type of computer did have one advantage: you could buy only the functions you needed, which offered a great deal of flexibility.

Aside from the monitor and the "Windows" Rune system, which were essential, the components inside the case’s pocket dimension were entirely up to the user.

In a way, it solved a common pitfall of computers—spending a fortune on a high-end configuration only to never use half the features.

Although the product was currently named "Home Unit," its primary use was as a productivity tool.

For example, producing music videos, creating design schematics, bookkeeping, and running Magic simulations...

The customers who had already placed pre-orders were all merchant guilds, academies, and Mages.

Mages could connect directly to the network via Illusion Mimicry. However, as the underlying Magic models grew more complex, the Magic Power required to run them increased. Many Mages who weren’t powerful enough found the strain too great and had no choice but to purchase the equipment.

There was no shame in it. Intelligent life was meant to use tools.

Zog scrolled through the barren content on the YouTube platform. There weren’t many videos yet, all of them uploaded by his own employees. Zog encouraged his staff to enrich the website’s content, offering rewards to anyone who could make it onto the daily trending list.

This move successfully motivated many of them. For one, the group’s employees had relatively easy access to cameras. For another, the world of video self-publishing was a Blue Sea so vast and empty it couldn’t get any bluer; getting onto the daily trending list was practically a given.

Profit was the best incentive to get people to work.

Moreover, since YouTube was still in its trial phase and had yet to add ads, Zog had to bear the cost of these incentives himself.

Once things were on the right track, content creators would be able to earn enough from ad revenue-sharing to go full-time, or even become financially independent.

Of course, earning that much from making videos would come at a price.

There were going to be a *lot* of ads on YouTube.

Zog planned to learn from its Earth-based original. There wouldn’t just be ads at the beginning of videos; he would also stuff them into the middle of longer ones.

Annoyed by the ads?

Then get a YouTube membership.

Zog, an expert in the art of the subscription model, divided the membership into several tiers.

The low-tier membership only allowed users to skip ads and watch in the highest definition. They also received a few movie tickets each month, which would not roll over if unused.

These tickets were used to watch the Shadows of Evil produced by the Zog Group. Films that had finished their runs on Demon Vision and in Magic Cinemas would be uploaded to the members-only section of YouTube.

A completely ad-free experience with unlimited access to the members-only section, however, required a mid-tier membership.

In addition, mid-tier members would receive a few Live Stream Tickets each month.

That’s right, Zog’s YouTube also had a live-streaming section. The current technology didn’t support user-run streams, of course. There were only official broadcasts, primarily for tournaments, and the Live Stream Tickets could only be used for their corresponding events.

So what if you wanted to watch live streams without any restrictions?

You’d have to sign up for a High Level Membership, of course!

This part wasn’t inspired by the original YouTube; he was taking a page out of the evil penguin’s book.

There were also other odds and ends, like profile picture frames, animated avatars, fancy backgrounds for your personal page, and exclusive emoji packs and flair for the comment section.

This part came neither from the original YouTube nor from the evil penguin.

He learned this part from "Uncle."

Combining the worst of all worlds!

Furthermore, to accommodate the aristocracy’s demand for extreme personalization—a product of the vast local wealth disparity—there was also a Supreme Membership. This tier allowed for custom-designed profile picture frames, and even a custom background for one’s comments when they appeared in the comment section.

Compared to the High Level Membership, it offered no additional practical functions—only cosmetic effects. It was designed specifically for people who had money to burn.

Zog quickly finished browsing the day’s trending list. Most of the content was quite serious, such as recordings of personal Magic experiments, solemn academic discussions, and Magic tutorials.

The tutorial videos were posted by Furin.

The website had a dedicated knowledge section, with the goal of turning it into a place where you could find a tutorial for just about any random thing you wanted to learn.

And Furin, for her part, still hadn’t given up on her dream of being a teacher.

Having learned a hard lesson from posting tutorials that no one could understand, she had since refined her teaching methods and showed some slight improvement.

Just a little.

In Zog’s opinion, you’d have to be a student in good standing at a High-level Mage Academy, at the very least, to understand Furin’s videos.