Chapter 802 - "Buying Votes" and Apologising to the Country

Daddy System had left him a loophole early on for keeping the dirty money – or perhaps it had been waiting for Luke to activate the team module.

Money was still very useful in this world.

The soul of a team was a shared belief, and what a team needed as they moved forward was a lot of money.

Compared with the three girls, there were actually other people Luke was more interested in as potential teammates.

Damon and Mindy, Rebecca, and Bloodmint would be the perfect teammates.

Damon and Mindy were in New York and specialized in dealing with drug dealers.

After Luke was transferred to New York, he would definitely work hard to deepen their relationship and try to pull the father and daughter into his team.

On the other hand, there had been no movements on Rebecca’s end. She was clearly still recovering and adjusting her mindset.

Bloodmint also needed to hide from the eyes and ears of the Fraternity.

This woman had a strong sense of justice and a bottom line. She also had the ability to become a top assassin in the Fraternity.

Bloodmint had a close relationship with Rebecca, so it would be much safer and more efficient for them to team up.

However, setting up this small team would depend on if Rebecca was willing to come back.

In addition, the Fraternity had to disappear.

It was only a matter of time.

From the intelligence these two women had, the assassin organization’s nest was in New Jersey, which was only a river away from New York.

Luke had long blacklisted the Fraternity.

Every one of its killers, who willfully slaughtered innocent people, was worth at least 800 experience and credit points. He would never let go of these gift bags.

This might also be an opportunity to become teammates with Rebecca and Bloodmint. It would be completely worth it.

…

The following days were peaceful.

Claire left Los Angeles with the earthquake charity concert as it started its national tour.

With Gold Nugget No. 2 following her, Luke wasn’t worried.

As the charity concert got underway, Luke spent most of his time on the Titanium phone software.

The main framework for the software was already complete, and Little Snail had already filled in the details. Now, all Luke needed to do was some tweaking.

The software support had been upgraded and expanded step by step. The phone company had already established a software development department, and Luke didn’t need to waste time on the follow-up work.

At the moment, there were only two apps on the Titanium phones.

One was a phone butler, which only had one important function at the moment — transfer files to the computer. This was mainly for photos.

The second app was for a social media platform. Luke had only completed the functions for uploading pictures and text posts.

The rest would also be left to the software development department.

As the boss, he couldn’t do all the work and let his subordinates get paid for nothing.

The first people to get the Titanium phones were the celebrities who had participated in the charity concert.

They automatically received a certified account under their stage names on the social media platform, which was bound to their phones.

The first thing that this social media platform did after it opened was to promote the charity concert.

As the charity concert got underway, the hundred or so A- and B-list celebrities from all over America posted photos of the performances from time to time on their Titanium phones.

Not only were there photos of them at the concert venue, there were also photos of them at rehearsals, during the journey and at meals.

This immediately caused a sensation among fans.

Previously, most people had to look for relevant information from the news media if they wanted to see what the celebrities were doing.

This information was “processed” by the media, and nobody knew how much of it was true.

Now, a bunch of celebrities were taking the initiative to post about their work and lifestyles. This was practically a “media earthquake.”

It wasn’t just countless spectators who were enjoying this sudden and bounteous insight into the stars’ private lives; the more quick-witted celebrities also realized the genius behind this.

In the past, if they wanted to increase their popularity, they had to look for traditional media (TV, newspapers, and magazines) and do all sorts of interviews and shows.

Some people didn’t scruple to deliberately create negative press to avoid being forgotten. Being a celebrity sometimes left them with no other choice.

Currently, the amount of promotion these stars were getting still mostly relied on the effects of this charity concert. In the long run, however, uploading pictures and text posts online might become one of the important promotional methods for celebrities.

In the future, they wouldn’t need to rely on traditional media to appear in front of the public. This was equivalent to having a “private program” to promote themselves.

As unofficial promoters of the Titanium phones, these celebrities vaguely knew that Titanium was expecting to sell three to five hundred thousand of its phones this year.

Next year, the number would double.

Based on their recent experience with Titanium phones, they knew that this sort of epoch-making phone would quickly replace most of the current phones.

Young people who were used to the Internet and went with the times would buy this new product immediately and throw away the outdated models that could only be used for phone calls and texting.

Most of the celebrities’ fans were young people; at the very least, they had to start with them.

The smarter celebrities were already testing the fans’ attitudes with image and text posts to see what this new social media platform could do.

During that time, a few celebrities even stirred up negative press.

The reason was simple.

A few celebrities who lacked experience on social media actually did something as outrageous as “buying votes.”

During the charity concert, they would promote their own new work, and the promo material they released seemed to accidentally include pictures of the earthquake charity performance.

At first, the enthusiastic crowd didn’t notice this.

After all, social media was a new thing. Nobody knew what to do, including the celebrities themselves.

But traditional media were good at finding a problem and magnifying it.

They keenly noticed this potential for breaking news, and promptly criticized these celebrities, saying that they were taking advantage of those who had suffered during the California earthquake and that the celebrities should apologize to the entire country.

The celebrities immediately apologized and explained that they had been too busy with the charity show and had been careless.

After several days of lip service, several celebrities announced that they would donate to the California earthquake charity fund to help more victims.

This matter caused a huge stir for around ten days before it finally settled.

Luke didn’t pay too much attention to it, but Jenny called him excitedly and sang his praises.

Because of this incident, the name of the phone company’s social media platform became known to many people who didn’t go online, as well as a large number of netizens who hadn’t paid attention to the news before.

The phone company’s social media platform was called Face 2 Face, or F2F.

Pronounced as “face to face,” the x2x was also in a very trendy online style, and looked pretty good.

That was right, this was a recreation of a certain website in his previous life.