The backbone of modern communications and data infrastructure
Headquarters: Night City
Regional Offices: Most North American Cities
Chief Officer: UR (Pronounced You Are)
Employees: 115,000
Background
Ziggurat seemingly appeared from nowhere in 2030 in Night City with a plan to transform the old fiber-optic Data Term network into a new system and restore cheap and reliable communication across the whole of the metroplex. With a grant from Night Corp and buy-in from the fractious City Council, the brand-new CitiNet was up and operational within months. Ziggurat further increased usability by overlaying the CitiNet with the first Data Pool, an open protocol for displaying and sharing data that anyone could use.
Ziggurat quickly spread out from Night City to other metroplexes in North America, repeating the process. By 2040, most cities in the New United States, the Pacifica Confed, Canada, and the Free States had CitiNets and Data Pools courtesy of the company. Ziggurat also helped restore communication between metropolitan regions by providing simple and inexpensive city-to-city communication via hourly data-packet burst transfers along a cobbled together patchwork of reclaimed phone lines, free-space optics, and even Nomad couriers. This long-distance communication only works via text, voice, and video messages. Direct audio and visual contact still requires a contract with the more expensive WorldSat Comm Network.
Almost immediately after the Night City Data Pool went online, Ziggurat published the first set of apps to make use of it. This allowed them to not only collect fees from the government for setting up and maintaining CitiNets and Data Pools but monetized their use by collecting and selling data, selling advertising space, and supplying users with in-app upgrades.
Among Ziggurat's most popular app offerings are the Ask Alex Anything pseudo-AI data crawler, the BabelChat chat app, the ZPost electronic mail service, and the Ziggurat Editing Suite for text, audio, video, and app creation. While there are minor competitors, most content on North American Data Pools is created using Ziggurat Apps and consumed via the Garden, the company's one-stop platform for sharing content.
Any Garden user can, at no cost, set up their own Garden Patch, a space on the Data Pool made specifically for sharing their text, audio, virtual, and braindance creations. Patches can be customized using a limited variety of free overlays or more functional—and thus more expensive—templates. Once setup is completed, users can populate their Patch with text, still imagery, audio and video, virtual, and braindance creations that other users can consume and comment on. Ziggurat runs targeted advertisements before, after, and during Garden content, cutting the creators in for ten percent of revenues.
Most modern PopMedia stars in the Time of the Red get their start on the Garden and most performers and companies, no matter how big, maintain their own Patch in order to reach the broadest possible audience with their entertainment, commercials, and products.
In 2043, Ziggurat opened offices in London and Melbourne with the intent of penetrating the European and Australian markets but has met stiff—and often armed—resistance from local competitors.
Face: UR
The founder and visionary behind Ziggurat, UR (pronounced You Are), represents the can do, by the bootstrap spirit of the modern Corp Executive. Little is known about them from before they burst onto the scene in 2030 with an ambitious plan to rebuild communications in the Time of the Red. Extremely charismatic, UR's ambition and enthusiasm united a normally heavily divided Night City Council long enough to build one of the first CitiNets and Data Pools in the world.
UR regularly publishes their thoughts and ideas in the form of video journals on their Garden Patch and constantly seeks to redefine themself. Over the last two and a half decades, they've chased several fad diets and promoted a broad selection of life philosophies. UR has also explored multiple spiritualities, including a brief but controversial stint spent as a member of a small but intense religion that worships a long-dead Rockerboy, known as the Church of Elvis.
One thing that has remained consistent no matter what trend UR chases is their enthusiasm for bodysculpting. Since 2030, UR has undergone at least three transformations, from a typical tech to a young-Elvis-inspired look, to their current elegant appearance. Most recently, they began adding elements of Exotic sculpting. Rather than undergo complete overhauls, UR changes appearance gradually, tweaking eye color here or lip shape there until they arrive at a fully different form. It has become something of a game for UR's fans to compare the Executive's current appearance in their latest video journal to their last one to discover what the latest tweak is.
Rumors about UR abound but few can be confirmed. Despite regularly recording and releasing video journals, they rarely give away much about their private lives to the public. Those who make a habit of watching UR's video journals have noticed one possible bit of personal information: UR regularly mentions the infamous Rache Bartmoss in a way that indicates the founder of Ziggurat either has, or believes they have, a personal connection to the renegade Netrunner. However, given the volume of misinformation surrounding Bartmoss, this clue provides little insight into UR's life before the Time of the Red.
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