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.