Chapter 253: Zhang Yiming: President Chen, You Must Save Me!

"Orange has two syllables, Alexa has three. From the perspective of concise and easy-to-understand usage needs, Orange holds an advantage, but Alexa has a wider audience overseas; let Legal register the trademark first."

Chen Yansen instructed Zhou Chuangxi.

The implication was that he accepted Daniel's suggestion and was willing to name this intelligent voice assistant developed by Sister Chengzi Technology "Alexa" for the overseas market.

Although the copyright holder of "Star Trek" had long registered the trademark for "Alexa," the coverage was limited to film, television, and merchandise; intelligent voice assistant products were not included.

Besides, in Europe and America, "Alexa" is just an ordinary name.

Whoever registers first owns it!

By then, paying a symbolic copyright fee would still allow them to heavily ride the traffic wave of "Star Trek."

Daniel grinned; being recognized by the "Godfather of AI" in his heart made him happier than receiving an employment contract with an annual salary of one million US dollars.

"Boss, should we also use 'Alexa' as the product name for the domestic market?" Zhou Chuangxi pressed.

"Actually, the name doesn't matter much. Adding a custom function to the wake-up command will better fit user habits."

Chen Yansen shrugged, saying indifferently.

Thinking cannot be too rigid; although a unified wake-up word is beneficial for optimizing and training voice recognition algorithms, it also sacrifices a lot of fun and user experience.

For instance, changing the wake-up word to a girlfriend's name, a puppy's name, or Ma Ka Ba Ka, Sun Wukong, Pikachu, the Calabash Brothers, etc., guarantees that upon launch, it will harvest a huge wave of natural traffic.

"Custom? Personalized wake-up words? Why didn't I think of that!"

Zhou Chuangxi's eyes lit up, and he suddenly slapped his thigh.

"We still need to set a product name for the domestic market. Let it be Mo Si, MOSS." Chen Yansen said calmly.

"Mo Si?"

"MOSS? Moss?"

Zhou Chuangxi and Daniel exchanged glances; neither could figure out the meaning of this name, which seemed completely unrelated to an intelligent voice assistant.

"The pronunciation is simple, easy to recognize, with a high wake-up accuracy rate. Moreover, according to the language habits of Chinese people, the term 'Mo Si' is rarely mentioned in daily life, which can effectively reduce the probability of false wake-ups."

Chen Yansen said seriously.

"The Wandering Earth," which would become a huge hit five years later, had not yet been released, and since Mo Si (MOSS) was not a character originally created by Liu Cixin, there was absolutely no need to explain too much.

"Okay, I understand." Zhou Chuangxi nodded and replied.

Mo Si would do; it was far superior to a name like "Yu Xi."

As soon as the three finished the meeting, Daniel eagerly returned to work, wanting to add the custom wake-up word function to Mo Si as soon as possible.

Chen Yansen stood at the elevator entrance, scanning the office area; the entire floor was filled with R&D engineers, totaling over two hundred people.

In just a few short months, Zhou Chuangxi and Daniel had poached a large number of senior engineers in the fields of algorithms, natural language processing, and voice recognition from UIUC, Johns Hopkins, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and laboratories at Microsoft, Google, and other companies.

If handed over to a headhunting company, the efficiency would definitely not be this high.

Yet, Zhou Chuangxi and Daniel, under the guise of chatting and catching up, poached mentors from above and juniors from below, not even sparing classmates or colleagues.

Upon hearing that a tech company on the other side of the ocean had spent a huge sum to build a server cluster possessing 150 quadrillion floating-point operations per second...

... these people almost hesitated not at all before flying to Xu City.

For the small handful of people who couldn't be handled, as long as Chen Yansen spoke with them for ten minutes, he could successfully "persuade" seventy to eighty percent.

Zhou Chuangxi and Daniel unanimously believed that these people were moved by Chen Yansen's sincerity, superior programming skills, and generous treatment.

In reality, Chen Yansen was too lazy to waste mental effort; he simply exerted the wonderful utility of his spiritual power, merging it into his voice. Fewer than two or three out of ten could withstand this move.

Mo Si was about to launch, and the products carrying Mo Si should also be unveiled soon.

However, Sister Chengzi Technology's Autumn new arrivals still needed to wait a while, as the market potential of Sister Chengzi C2 and Sister Chengzi D1 had not yet been exhausted.

If products launched too frequently, it would instead cause unnecessary losses.

Returning to the office.

Chen Yansen dialed Lin Qingbai's phone number.

"Boss, do you mean combining speakers and intelligent voice assistants to create a smart speaker applying natural language processing, cloud computing, and IoT technology?"

Lin Qingbai was slightly stunned and subconsciously confirmed.

"What are the issues at the system level and in hardware?" Chen Yansen countered.

"It can be made, but the BOM cost per unit might exceed 600 yuan. Even if all domestic components are used as substitutes, it would still be around 400-plus. From a commercialization perspective, the selling price must be set at least above 800 yuan." Lin Qingbai reminded tactfully.

The implication was that the sales volume of this smart speaker would not be very high.

"No need to worry about profitability issues; the core market for the Mo Si smart speaker is not domestic."

Chen Yansen replied with a smile.

Before making the call, he had already formed a plan in his mind, preparing to treat the overseas market as the main battlefield for marketing and promotion.

It must be known that in 2012, there wasn't even a single AI voice recognition chip available; only a substitute solution using a general-purpose processor plus a DSP chip plus voice recognition technology could be used, so material costs naturally remained high.

However, high cost does not mean low sales volume or a narrow audience.

Two years later, Echo smart speakers launched by Amazon, priced as high as 199 US dollars, still sold 3 million units in a year.

The earlier the launch timing of the Mo Si smart speaker, the greater the shock it would bring to the world.

Perhaps ten or more years later, no one would consider an intelligent voice assistant anything novel.

But launching it now is like directly giving a smartphone to someone who has used feature phones their whole life.

Chen Yansen estimated a market prospect of at least 1 billion US dollars annually; this was no small amount.

High cost? Then set the selling price high!

Lin Qingbai hummed, then proceeded to understand Chen Yansen's design requirements in depth to facilitate his formulation of the product plan.

An hour later, Chen Yansen finally hung up the phone.

What's the point of just selling cheap goods?

He had already figured it out: by then, he would bring on Paramount Pictures, the copyright holder of "Star Trek," sell the smart speakers as movie merchandise, and all of them would make easy money together.

Even the product name for the overseas market was ready-made: Alexa Smart Speaker.

This dreamlike sensation of a movie coming to life is hard to refuse.

3 PM, the grand conference room at Shangcheng headquarters.

CEO Huang Zheng presided over the meeting; all department directors were present.

Chen Yansen sat on the side, listening. Since Huang Zheng took office, his work had become much easier; all Shangcheng-related affairs had been dumped on Old Huang.

"After May, Shangcheng will undergo its first UI style overhaul. The overall direction remains unchanged; the main focus is the icon area on the homepage, which will permanently display the Kuaipao and Kuaidi Dache entry points. Additionally, the Product Department has two new features launching: Group Buy for Multiple People and Shangcheng Orchard. Zhuang Rui will introduce the specific product plans to everyone."

Huang Zheng spoke with ease and confidence.

Those who can start from nothing and build a company to a scale of tens of trillions are never simple characters.

At thirty-two, Huang Zheng had already begun to show his mettle on the grand stage of Shangcheng.

During the 418 E-commerce Festival battle, Huang Zheng played an indispensable role in making Shangcheng the ultimate winner.

The event started early and ended late; large subsidies and red packets were distributed; a joint effort with WeChat left e-commerce veterans like JD, Suning, and Gome flustered and scrambling. All of this was Huang Zheng's masterpiece.

Including the sale of Suning stock and provoking Zhang Jindong and Liu Qiangdong's anger, he was the one pulling the strings behind the scenes.

After this series of maneuvers, Shangcheng's mid-to-high-level management understood one truth: This guy Huang Zheng is truly wickedly corrupt, with a thick skin and a black heart.

"Alright, Mr. Huang. I'll first introduce the design concept of Shangcheng Orchard. Considering that some bottom-tier merchants have paid promotion needs and new user traffic is about to hit rock bottom, the Product, Operations, and Advertising departments must shift their focus from user acquisition to user retention..."

Zhuang Rui nodded, took over Huang Zheng's topic, and continued to add.

Currently, Shangcheng's cumulative user total has reached 300 million, but the accompanying problem is that the cost of acquiring new users is getting higher and higher, and the difficulty is increasing as well.

With fewer than 600 million netizens nationwide, and excluding those uninterested in online shopping, Shangcheng's traffic ceiling in 2012 would be at most 500 million.

Therefore, the importance of retention far outweighs that of acquisition.

After listening for a while, Chen Yansen took out his phone and started browsing the news.

Ganji. com and Wowo Tuan reached a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly operate group buying business; Wowo Mall moved into Ganji. com, becoming one of its channels.

These two platforms, one lacking traffic and the other lacking monetization methods, adopted a deeply bound cooperation format to survive; it was indeed a good method.

"IT Era Weekly" released "Revealing Tao Xiaoer's Extravagant Life After Work," exposing the dark side of e-commerce to the public eye.

At Taobao headquarters, luxury cars were like clouds; nearby commercial KTVs were packed every night; merchants, in order to get on promotions, treated Tao Xiaoer like their own father.

In the comments section, people constantly shared their experiences, describing Tao Xiaoer's arrogant behavior and secretly demanding bidding ranking fees from them.

Mama Ali hurriedly responded, announcing that starting today, a self-inspection campaign would be launched to improve the inspection system.

Chen Yansen smiled faintly. Unless the authority for auditing and resource allocation is handed over to artificial intelligence, such situations cannot be cut off.

Does Shangcheng have no one making money illegally?

Definitely!

The third news item was a report on Lingxi Browser; launched two months ago, its cumulative users had broken through 1 million.

Compared with Toutiao, it was ten times lower.

"Over at Penguin, I imagine preparations are nearly complete."

Chen Yansen squinted his eyes and muttered softly.

Zhang Yiming's sharpness is too intense; he needs to be polished before he can be used smoothly.

At the same time.

The Beijing Copyright Association headquarters received a joint complaint from six companies including Penguin, Sohu, NetEase, and Sina, reporting that Lingxi Browser had scraped their news works without permission.

Since the complainants were of a special nature and had great influence, the Copyright Association immediately decided to file a case and launch an investigation.

When Zhang Yiming scraped the data, he made no attempt to conceal it; the product homepage displayed news content from major portals, making the intent to infringe very obvious.

Although Byte was now a network technology company with a million users, compared to big companies like Penguin and NetEase, it was no different from an ant trying to shake a tree.

The Copyright Association immediately notified the Internet Information Association and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Association, and gave the Inspection Office a heads-up, requesting the enterprise's person in charge to come in for questioning.

At 7:15 PM that evening, Zhang Yiming, at Byte headquarters, received a call from the Inspection Office.

"Penguin, NetEase, and other companies are complaining that Byte infringed their copyrights? Should I go to the Inspection Office now?"

Zhang Yiming's face panicked, and he asked anxiously.

He had originally thought that by the time companies like Penguin and NetEase noticed Byte, he would have already completed his primitive accumulation.

By then, at worst, he could just delete the infringing content, actively rectify the situation, and pay a fine to resolve it.

But he didn't expect that only two months after the product launched, Lingxi would be targeted by Penguin.

Things have become troublesome!

Thinking of this, he first hurriedly agreed, and then called Chen Yansen.

He knew clearly in his heart that Senlian Capital had a good relationship with Penguin; if Chen Yansen was willing to step in, this big matter could be turned into a small one, and a small matter could be made to disappear.

"Mr. Chen, Penguin has joined hands with NetEase, Sina, Sohu, and other companies to file a complaint with the Copyright Association headquarters accusing Byte of infringement. Can you help mediate this?"

As soon as the call connected, Zhang Yiming got straight to the point.

(End of this chapter)