Technology Bigshot

Chapter 34: Eye-popping Data

Translator: Atlas Studios

Editor: Atlas Studios

Pan Ce looked at the size of the update: 5.17 MB. He didn’t hesitate to click on it to check its content.

New features of Real-time Online Translator 2.0.

1. Improve software stability.

2. Fix known bugs.

3. Add a new voice translation feature.

Pan Ce was stunned when he saw the third bullet point. He didn’t wait for the software installation to finish. He immediately opened the computer and launched the software. Sure enough, the PC version of Real-time Online Translator also had an update reminder. Without any hesitation, he updated it on the spot too!

“Please don’t let me down! You can say that I can’t learn English for the rest of my life, and I no longer expect to!” Pan Ce constantly nagged. He was tortured enough by the self-translation feature on YouTube.

The self-translation feature was horrendous.

In apprehensive anticipation, the new version was finally updated. Pan Ce activated a proxy and typed YouTube’s domain name into his browser.

“Right! How does it work?” After opening the website, Pan Ce immediately launched Real-time Online Translator. Its interface was as simple as ever, only displaying personal ID information, the renewal expiration time, renewal fee, and XlouS’s official website without any advertising section. After the new version went live, the top of the UI interface was split in two, with the left side displaying text inter-translation and the right showing a new voice translation option.

Pan Ce moved his mouse to the top right corner and clicked on it. The interface was still very simple. The word ‘Start’ in the middle was eye-catching albeit being in gray, which was why Pan Ce didn’t have any reaction when he clicked on it. After taking a closer look, he realized that he needed to pay extra for this new feature. He didn’t hesitate at all. He clicked on top up and was brought into the top up page. There were four packages to choose from. He clicked on monthly payment to top up—the cost of voice translation was 5 RMB cheaper than text translation, making it 10 RMB a month and totaling 25 RMB a month with the text translation feature. He didn’t have any pressure with his financial ability.

However, he was glad that his account could be shared among different versions of PC and iOS. In other words, as long as he registered and paid for it, he could enjoy the application on all major platforms.

After successfully paying the fee, he returned to the initial interface. The gray ‘Start’ button had turned green and he knew that it was ready to be accessed. He clicked ‘Start’ and the UI immediately minimized and hid in the background. Instead, a translucent rectangular interface like a glass block popped up, which could be moved and stretched. Pan Ce moved it to the bottom middle of the screen and stretched it. There was a column of options at the top edge of the interface, among which the option ‘Please select a text to translate’ was the most eye-catching. He immediately moved his mouse to the location, and was surprised to see more than 100 languages available to be translated. He knew that the sorting was in alphabetical order, so the Chinese language should be at the end. Sure enough, he found the Chinese language at the end, clicked to confirm, and two seconds later, the translucent interface became completely transparent. As long as he moved the mouse to that area of the interface, it would automatically be displayed—very user-friendly.

Pan Ce also saw options to change fonts, font color options, etc., but he wasn’t in the mood to explore anything else. He wanted nothing more than to find out if the translation was reliable. If it was anything like the default translation system that came with the website, he was sure that he would go to the XlouS company website and leave a harsh review.

“That should do it, right?” Pan Ce said to himself. The translucent interface instantly disappeared when he moved the cursor away from it. Then, he opened a variety show on the video site.

“Oh my goodness! It comes with Chinese and English dual subtitles?! This is awesome!” Pan Ce was as surprised as if he had discovered a new continent, “One second translation—yes, yes, yes, there is also a prefixed horizontal bar to distinguish the speakers. How accurate!

“Can it translate music too?” Pan Ce’s eyes suddenly lit up. He immediately entered the name of a song, ‘Immortals’, by Fall Out Boy.

“This is divine! Totally godlike!” He couldn’t help but look up to the sky and say, “I can finally watch whatever I want on YouTube! Nice!”

There were so many people like Pan Ce all over the world. For the video user community, the instant voice translation was simply a must-have.

After the launch of voice translation, speaking overall, they received widespread praise. Many users also left comments on the official forums, pointing out the shortcomings of the voice translation interface, with one user, ‘Nenns’ indicating that when the video expanded or shrunk, the voice subtitle interface still didn’t change, which was a bit inflexible. It would be perfect if it could be smarter, such as being able to automatically capture changes in the video ratio. This comment was quickly answered by an official reply: [Thanks to the valuable suggestion from our community member, Nenns, our technical team has now taken this into consideration. We will soon update and improve it in the next patch to make the voice translation more humane.]

Thanks to its strategic partner, Facebook, the number of users of Real-time Online Translator had surged in the last six months since launch. A week after XlouS launched its voice translation feature, they announced another news on its official website: the number of registered users of Real-time Online Translator has officially exceeded 750 million users, while the number of paid users has also increased to 585 million and would soon exceed 600 million.

When this news was announced, everyone looked at this set of numbers and was incredulous. But that was just the way it was, and this announcement by XlouS was a slap in the face to some of the pessimists.

The savage growth of reaching such a large number in nearly half a year was indescribable. It wasn’t surprising that it reached such numbers, but the most important thing was that the product itself was good enough that there was no competition on the market. Moreover, the number of users who uninstalled after learning and downloading it could basically be ignored. This application was too powerful. As long as one was an internet user, there was always a place to use it. For developed countries in Europe and the U.S, the application was also very affordable, costing around 2 dollars a month. There was almost no financial pressure at all.

It was apparent that the announcement of this set of numbers was eye-catching to many people. XlouS was able to generate astronomical amounts of revenue every month with this product alone, literally faster than a money printing machine. To the frustration of those people, the company rose so fast that they couldn’t get a piece of the pie at the time of its initial growth, and now, it had matured to the point where it became a giant.

If Facebook hadn’t stepped in and spent 12 billion USD on its exclusive license, the company wouldn’t have been able to grow at rocket speed. Even if one were to send Ren Hong more money, he wouldn’t accept because Zuckerberg had already sent enough money to help the company grow comfortably into a giant. This emerging giant was entirely supported by Facebook.

Facebook also grew tremendously with new user growth curving at a pleasing rate, daily active users reaching 1.5 billion, advertising revenue coming in, and stock prices that climbed. The best part was that Facebook’s dominance in the social space had become unchallenged. But some believed that Facebook could still benefit from an expanded interest, could well benefit more from XlouS, and should at least take some share! Even though Facebook profited a lot, how could they just let XlouS get away with all that money?

Many people were completely incomprehensible, but it was precisely because they couldn’t understand that they couldn’t reach the height of Zuckerberg. Those who could understand could only sigh inwardly that time wasn’t on their side. And as the party concerned, Zuckerberg didn’t care about what others thought and had no obligation to explain.

After XlouS released this latest set of numbers, no one dared to question the company’s nearly 600 million paying subscribers and average annual revenue of over 100 billion RMB. Even if Ren Hong built five more buildings for his company, no one would criticize his decision again. Ren Hong had a money-making machine faster than a money-printing machine. That was just how simple and brutal reality was!