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.

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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?

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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!

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