Creating a New Social Platform | BizWay

To create my own social platform, there are some fundamentals that every community manager should consider before starting up the platform. To create a successful social platform, managing staff are required to:

• Know the purpose of the platform
• It is very important to specify that what kind of community (group of people or interest) and/or what does your community need
• Select the type of platform
• It is necessary to select a platform that a trend meets the community you are looking for.
• Something interesting that entices large community in short time
• Design the platform
• It is important to know community's tendencies. In most successful platforms, people focus on:
• Ease of use
• As a company, advantages of using the platform
• As a community, what is the benefit and purpose of using it

Creating an interactive platform can built Two Way Business Communication. What I meant by Two Way Business Communication is that the two sides (Company and Customer) can obtain tangible and /or intangible benefits. Needless to say, today's most businesses have been integrating their physical activities into online platform to improve the method of the progress.

As a community manager, I will be implementing my own experience to launch a new social platform that may help the two way business communication. However, one of the hardest steps is starting up level. Therefore, designing a platform is an important concept as it may be crucial challenge to change the content later.

The community platform I would like to create is called BizWay.

The BizWay means the new invite only business communication platform. According to the lecture - 08 slides, there are five social design challenge areas related to start which are:

• Carving out a niche
• Competing for a niche
• Getting to critical mass
• Attracting early members







• Early adopter benefits

 However, the two main focus areas in this platform are on:

• Getting to critical mass
• Created services allow users to invite friends and acquaintances to join the BizWay
• Pay for invitation (referral). For instance, increasing data storage limits
• Attracting early members
•  Adding interesting games will entice new users to invite non-registered people to join and subscribe

BizWay allows its users to upload and share videos, musics, photos and even articles for educational, non educational and business purposes. Users can exchange and share activities internally. What internally means is that non-registered users cannot see any uploaded videos, musics and photos. To activate these options and make them available to and accessible by friends and acquaintances, new customer must use a referral's ID (username) and complete the registration steps carefully. By doing so, members will make profits by the stage 1 benefits which are:

• Internal benefits
• The company side. In the early start, we expect that the company can entice more people very quickly if users acknowledge that they will get a free data storage per any invited new user. You may ask how BizWay can make money and keep in touch with its users. There will be two options of registrations to attract users and businesses:

• Individuals (free of use of social media). Users are able to upload videos, music, photos and blogging articles and exchange them with other users
• Businesses (paid version): As this platform is still under the test, we will estimate and set up a reasonable fees for the business sites in accordance to the type of business. The business option is a full option platform which includes price list, more data space, discount options to their business, visible business contact details and free product advertisement
• External benefits
• The user side.  By joining through referrals, users get 2 GB of storage for free. If the early members desire to increase their storage space, they can get additional 100 MB by inviting a new user. The additional space can be expired within 3 months if the user cannot invite another user. According to the BizWay's policy,  users can increase the storage space up to 32 GB otherwise they have to pay. The reason of this is for BizWay's business and financial safety. Therefore, the advantages of using our platform are:

• Members can transfer part of their data storage space to any other member
• Business owners can advertise their products and make them visible to customers

The big idea of implementing these functions will enable us to increase success expectation by:

• Encouraging people to use BizWay's platform
• Attracting companies to advertise their businesses through our platform

In conclusion, BizWay is an invite-only platform that registered members can get 2 GB for free and 100 MB by inviting a new user to join. Because the platform does not accept direct registration, social media activities are available only for its users.

Leaving a comment is important to improve our platform, what do we have to change or edit please?

Activating Network Effects | Tango

Nowadays, most of the companies have been converting their businesses from physical to online environment. The reason of this is to:

• Enlarge the business as much as possible rather than dealing with internal community (in store) 
•  Not rely on location and trading hours 
•  Integrate the business into the world wide community network
• Increase user interface values and company side

To illustrate this more, there are four reliable types of network effects which make your business running effectively. The four elements are:

•  Direct 
•  Indirect 
•  Cross-network 
•  Local (social influence)

In this blog, I will explain those factors through a company called Tango.

Tango is a community mobile messaging, voice and video call, finding new friends, photo sharing, sharing music, playing game and animated surprise services. Currently, Tango owns more than 250 million registered members around the world.

 

Tango's Direct Network Effects

At Tango, users can make a direct video and voice call to any individual of its users after being friends. The advantage of this option is that the contact numbers are invisible, what this means is they can share and exchange business ideas in need. By activating this element, the User 2 User and / or Business 2 Business connectivity does not have to deal through the third party's contact service.

Indirect Network Effects

After being able to communicate, registered members can use the indirect service to advertise their opinion with others. Tango's three different advertising functions provided to customers are:

• Chat List Ad
• User's ads appear in the chat list, the most highly marketed location in the app

• News Feed Ad
• Member's ads appear in friends' updates which is a significant opportunity to announce anything related to your business

• Profile Ad
• A single ads can be released and changed from time to time in relation to the products and business progress

Cross-Network

For content providers and social apps, Tango offers a very high level of fundamental reach and branding impressions for their business partners. Therefor, the advantage of partnership has been rising in usage and joining new members. In very short time, Tango could attract more than 250 million people to register/use the app.

Local (social influence)

Although I am not confident in saying that Tango does or does not leverage Local Network Effects, according to their Development Partners, may be able to leverage the Local Network Effect. The platform is visible and accessible when consumers need it. Most users are influenced by the decision of at least one of their favorite and distribution channels such as Entertainment, News, Music and Funny & Cute, Sport. For instance, users can tag their interesting channel such as songs they listen to via Spotify and share it with other consumers simply.

In conclusion, I think Tango has been obtaining benefits from implementing Web 2.0 platform. The four types of network effects improved and assisted Tango to increase its users, business partners/developers and functions that provided to consumers so far. Do you think so?

Thanks for taking time to read and please leave a comment.

Dropbox and its Lightweight Models and Cost Effective Scalability

This is the last of Tim O’Reilly’s Design Patterns and Business Models. This pattern focuses on Lightweight Models and Cost Effective Scalability. The capability of this pattern is not enough by itself to keep the business continuing without combining the capabilities of other companies to change the demands and platform. The three concepts that are recommended under this category are:

• Support Lightweight Programing Models 

• Allows for loosely coupled systems

• Syndication

• Not coordination. Services such as RSS and REST-based web services as the End-to-end principle.

• Design for “hackability” and Remixability

• The browser’s “View Source” enabled users to copy a web page

There are uncountable websites that implement the business models explained by O’Reilly. The great real life scenario to demonstrate here today is Dropbox. Simply, upload your documents in the Dropbox and get to it from your Desktops, smartphones and tablets. As a cloud service, allows its users to edit uploaded docs, automatically add photos, and even show off videos from anywhere anytime.

In relation with the scale with demand concept, Dropbox users have been increasing constantly. In 2007 as the year was founded, the company launched its business with just over one hundred employees. In the third quarter 2009, more than 2 million users registered and over 45 Million in 2011, while this number has been increased to 100 million users in 2012 and l75 million users in 2013. This quick and tangible increase in number of users with small group of employees can be seen clearly.  The era of scale with demand provides the availability of doing more with less to the company such as:

• Short time to market

• Fast Return on Investment

• Reduce in risk

• Great adaption

Outsource whenever practical and possible is another best practice, after a user registers, any editable uploaded document can be updated. The user can access the account anytime and anywhere from any device. The capability of this is to make the requested file sharing or source available for group collaboration as an outsource in demand.

Pricing and Revenue Scale Models: The three different pricing lists are:

• Dropbox for business
• Au $17 / user / month offers as much storage as the user need, unlimited file recovery, file sharing controls and priority support.

• Dropbox Pro 
•  Au $10.99 / month offers 1 TB of space, additional sharing controls and remote wipe

• Dropbox Basic (Free) 
•  Au $ 0 (free) offers only 2 GB of space, safe, reliable backup, access from anywhere and simple file sharing. However, this limited space can be upgraded by:
• Completing the “Get Started” tour – 250MB
• Linking the account to Facebook account - 125MB 
•  Joining to Twitter account  provides 125MB
• Following Dropbox on Twitter account – 125MB
• Leaving a comment why you love Dropbox – 125MB 
•  Downloading Mailbox for iOS or Android and linking it with your Google – 1GB 
•  Inviting friends can – Up to 16 GB

In conclusion, Dropbox is one of the best cloud storage services. Their free version has been enticing millions of user in very short time. This is what Doing More with Less does.

Thanks for taking time to read and please leave a comment.

IMVU and its Perpetual Beta

Before we start talking about Perpetual Beta and its reflections to the business, the questions come up to my mind are: how can we make the web functions better? What does the market need? And even you may have some similar questions too. The answer in general is probably listening to the world-wide users and obtaining feedback can make the difference. Today's online businesses are completely different from yesterday's ones. What this means is in the twenty first century, users become more important than organisations in some stages if not all.

What is Perpetual Beta?

The idea of Perpetual Beta is to keep the entire and /or part of the software and the system editable, customisable and improvable by developers when a new feature releases that might not be completely verified. Many operational systems find Perpetual Beta is the fastest method of open source of development. According to Time O'Reilly's statement, "Users must be treated as co-developers, in a reflection of open source development practices. The open source dictum, ‘release early and release often’, in fact has morphed into an even more radical position, ‘the perpetual beta’, in which the product is developed in the open, with new features slipstreamed in on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis." So I will be talking about a company called IMVU.



IMVU the entertainment company

 

IMVU is world's largest 3D chat and dress up community. It is an online social entertainment, and its online conversation rooms enable users to meet, play games with friends and interact that looks like how people act in the real life scenario. One of their greatest features is 3D chat rooms. This feature permits users to design their own rooms with furniture, decorations and have their desirable music playing. By releasing discussion, comments, idea and even feedback, IMVU monitors users’ activities and develops the website accordingly.

- IMVU Engages users as co-developers

                                         

IMVU system allows its customers to develop and test their personalised URL panel and pages. Also they can use dynamic tools and programming language to customise, edit and create their own catalog, product page and even background.

In 2013, IMVU released Android smartphone version called IMVU 2 G. The App offered the chance to users to enjoy the following features:

- Allows the user to receive and respond to messages.
- Accepts chat invites and text chat in the chat rooms.

- Accept and send friend requests.

- Enables users to update their profile and upload photos to their IMVU albums.
- Users can see their friends list and stay connected with them.
- Users keep in update with the latest IMVU blog posts.
- Notifies users when it's friend's birthday.

Last but not least, IMVU releases new versions by relying on user interface, and updates its product page constantly. Feedback section is also another opportunity to monitor the user experience to improve applications when required. Thus, I think software has become an open source to serve customers perpetually. What do you think?

Thanks for taking time to read and please leave a comment.

BestBuy's APIs: Rich User Experience

The new generation of Rich User Experience is that the rich internet application are multifunctional activities which provide online services to online business users. The online services can be between two electronic gadgets by using World Wide Web (WWW). The aim of this is to enable clients to retrieve particular information that has been designed by the third party of the websites such as Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). APIs allow software and/or hardware to be enabled to communicate over the internet securely.

Nowadays, most of the online companies if not all collaborate with each other or partners to complete clients’ demands for flexible arrangements. By exposing a set of APIs, companies can improve their business expeditiously. One of those amazing online marketplaces who supported by APIs and connected to other brands is Best Buy.

Best Buy is the largest consumer electronics retailer in the world. More than 7 in 10 of United States nation live within 15 minutes of a Best Buy store, and customers visit the websites and stores more than 1.5 billion times each year.

Some of APIs applications that Best Buy involves in:

   - Buying option APIs

   - Products APIs

   - Reviews APIs

   - Stores APIs

   - Categories APIs

   - Recommendations APIs

   - Smart Lists APIs

   - Commerce APIs (Invite only)

Desktop & online experiences Conbination

According to O'Reilly's concepts, APIs providers are entering a period of user interface improvement, which means that the web developers are able to build web applications as rich as local PC-based applications.

   

Usability and Simplicity

Best Buy provides some interesting innovations in its developer page, for instance, the content is accessible from anywhere regardless your location, country and time. Also, user interfaces have been created online with APIs which create a higher level of usability. This is quite similar to Google Doc App which enables more than one user to access and edit from the other end interface if they share the key.

So, the most important question just come in my mind is what is the next generation of technology that can take API’s place in the future? Who knows!

Thank you for taking to red this. Please leave a comment.