Starting a Community #6

There are so many social platforms out there and there are so many people use multiple platforms to be part of different communities. So if I were a community manager of my new social platform, who would be my community?

QUTGAMERS

"Where studying is second to gaming"

Now you could only understand this if you have been to QUT's S block level 5. But this place is renowned for students using their "free time" to play online games. So the platform's proposed purpose is to bring together a large community of gamers specifically at QUT and to occupy every computer there with something game related. No one wants to be playing a game at university all alone with no one to laugh with because that's not what university is for. QUTGamers will be a social platform which allows users to do a number of things:

• "Help me get into the fishbowl (S515) so I can play while it's empty."
• "Anyone want to play games aka League of Legends? I have no classes today."
• "Does anyone have the copy of the game on USB for me to borrow?"

So what are the stage 1 benefits of this community?

The value of this community is that they are part of this community for the same reason, to play games whilst at uni. The concept of finding other gamers who may play the same game as the user is practically an ice breaker for making new friends at uni. Everyone wants to be a part of something like a club without actually being part of it. So the benefit of this community is so everyone can enjoy game-like activities with new friends and to make each other feel comfortable.

What are the start up costs of your community and how can they be reduced?

There are no start-up costs for this community as there already is a community of gamers based at level 5 S block. So the platform is made for this community and technically the cost is reduced since the community does not need to be created. This is a community based on making friends who play the same games. Major costs would be advertising and luring in students as clubs and other social platforms already exist. However, if one club were to make full use of this social platform, then the numbers would be sufficient enough to lure in other students.

What are the early adopter benefits?

Generally, early adopters receive benefits like discounts or simply the satisfaction of one of the first to the platform. With QUTGamers, the benefit of being an early adopter would be the chance to get to know everyone and to create a social status among the community. A possible benefit that can be offered to early adopters could be a higher status in the community, the ability to monitor posted events or the ability to take action on reported individuals. Again, this would be a social platform with the goal of reaching out to all QUT gaming students.

So how could I increase success expectation?
Simple, the more you use this social platform, the more people you'll get to know and thus make the community a friendlier place. Users will be able to say hi to practically anyone on  that floor instead of the general walking pass and peaking over to see what's going on. Everyone who plays games enjoys the interaction among other gamers and this is enough to create a positive expectations.

That's my basic idea of social platform. It will be a very small community as it is focused for QUT students but a community where everyone will know everyone. If this platform were to evolve, then it could be extended to every university where each uni would have their own group on the platform and anyone can travel to random events.

Thanks for reading and I hope the people at S block level 5 don't disturb you too much!

Activating Network Effects #5

Businesses thrive on Web 2.0 strategies to be successful. This week’s learning will be about 'Network Effects' and the impact they have on a specific business. A network effect can be best defined as a product or service like the internet becoming more valuable as more people use it. An example of this would be every platform which currently exists. Initially, platforms have a very few number of users at the time they are released to the public. Overtime, the positive effect of the platform is recognized and the number of users grow exponentially. These effects can be categorized into four types: direct, indirect, cross-network effects, and local network (social influence). Pinterest will be the main focus of this discussion as the effects are very clear.

Direct

A direct network effect can be defined as something's value increasing as more people use it and thus becoming more useful to the user. We can all imagine that when Pinterest initially started, there were only a few pins on the site to show users what it would look like. According to a writer, a pin was worth 78 cents in sales of 2013 which was a 25% increase from the year before that. Other things included:

• A pin is repinned around 10 times and each pin pulls in two site visits and 6 page views. 
• A pin has a much longer life than a tweet as half of all visits occur a few months after the initial pin.
• Pins are 100 times more viral than a tweet due to how people use it which is ideally for browsing.

From this we can get the general idea of Pinterest's value as more users join. A straight forward direct network effect would be that Pinterest has over 70 million users and is valued more than $3.8 billion. We then ask ourselves this: Why is its value continuing to increase? It's because every Pinterest user is not alike. Some use it as an internet bookmarker, a source of inspiration, to promote their own brands, or simply to connect with others. Therefore, as more users try to create their own unique online status, the more valuable the service becomes.

Indirect

An indirect network effect can be defined as a more valuable product being created from the main service unintentionally and thus making the original service more valuable. Originally, Pinterest was made to allow users to create unique profiles by pinning links, images and things of interest so others could view their board. This eventually expanded out to businesses which would use Pinterest as a way to create a community friendly account to advertise their own products and thus create traffic to their own sites. As a result, Pinterest created a separate offer to businesses and this lead to partnerships and increased value of the service. Also, widgets were created to make it easier for users to pin a post making the service more valuable.

Cross-Network Effects

A cross-network effect can be defined as a group of users increasing the value of a service so other users may benefit. In Pinterest's case, different users add links and pins to their own profile and advertise other unique users. This action can also be done vice versa. Users can benefit from one another as it is a sharing community and will therefore increase traffic to individual profiles. User data could also be seen as value to other users as it will help to better understand the current trends or what could be the next best thing.

Local Network (Social Influence)

The social influence effect can be defined as when a user uses a service and benefits more if the people they are acquainted with also use that same service. In Pinterest's case, a user may end up making online friends as a result of their profile and pins. Upon creating an account on many social tools, the user is asked if they would like to invite/tell others in their friends list if they would like to join. It will also show those who may have already signed up making a sense of belonging for the user. Pinterest allows users to have followers and this creates a sense of community for those they may or may not know. 

Overall, these four effects create value for Pinterest by qualitative and quantitative means. Users are the heart of any network effect and the network effects are the heart of any Web 2.0 platform.

Bit of a unique read, but thanks for reading! So tell me, what's craziest network effect you've seen arise from a social platform?

Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability #4

According to O’Reilly, the business saying of “get big fast” has now become “small is the new big”. As all these blogs suggest, ‘lightweight models and cost-effective scalability’ is another essential concept of Web 2.0 business models. Thus said, for a company to do more with less, changes in cost, reusability, process and strategy would need to be applied. Adopting scalable, cost-effective business models whilst delivering products to the market faster and cheaper would create benefits which include:

• Faster time to market
• Faster return on investment
• Reduced risk of project and product failure
• Greater adaptability

Pinterest is one of the many businesses which will be shown to "do more with less". So from my other blog, I've mentioned that Pinterest is a content sharing services where users are able to link sources of news, images, videos and anything of interest on their board. It was launched in 2010 and currently has 300+ employees looking after more then 48.7 million users! To be who they are today, these practices include:

1) Scale with demand

In 2012, Pingdom.com did an analysis of how many employees to users were there across the main social tools at the time. 

From this image above, it showed that Pinterest was beating other social tools and was regarded as being the most efficient company in social media at the time. As Pinterest grew, it was necessary for them to come up with more features to keep their users interested. As a result, they released a function called secrete boards which only allowed the user and invited users to view. Initially they only allowed up to three secret boards per user but due to popular demand, they allowed users to have an unlimited amount. What this shows is that Pinterest is the true definition of "do more with less".

2) Sydnicate business models

This practice is about building on top of components from others. This practically means having part of your site seen on other sites whilst allowing others to to place ads on your own. In Pinterest's case, this meant creating their own plug-in so users could easily share any pages they came upon with a click of the button.

Another way of seeing this is that Pinterest does not place random ads on their site, but allow businesses to create an account with them and be part of the community. The whole point of Pinterest is to show what you are interested in or advertise other links or posts. The same goes for businesses, Pinterest allows partnerships and provides business accounts with different functions. Since Pinterest is so widely used, users can generate revenue by adding only a few links to Pinterest's site.

5) Scale your pricing and revenue models & Pricing and revenue align with the core attributes and patterns of Web 2.0

Pinterest is a free service and is easy to adopt and apply using a few plug-ins and links. Since Pinterest is a software-as-a-service, it provides constant updates and allows for user feedback. So since Pinterest is a free service and is easy to use, businesses and users have no reason to not use it. This is beneficial to Pinterest as it will increase their user base and therefore create revenue in other aspects.

Some users may be deterred from using Pinterest since it may not produce traffic to their personal sites. For example, when people Google a certain object, the first result may be of the object on Pinterest's website. Once users see the item on Pinterest, that may be the end of the search for the user.

6) Market virally

Pinterest, just like Facebook, Google Plus, has a widget which may be found on some site for users to quickly access the sites Pinterest account or to save the post on their own Pinterest account.

In comparison to Linkedin when it comes to providing the best practices, Pinterest does not deter their users with upgrades which require payment. Everything is free to use with Pinterest which is why they have such a huge large user base. However, what Linkedin has that Pinterest doesn't, is the ability to connect with users on a personal level. It is better to create traffic to ones personal sites and profiles then to create traffic ones Pinterest account where the user may not benefit from the traffic.

There are more practices that Pinterest apply which make it such a highly used service. But what we can take away from this is that Pinterest is a lightweight model and it is very cost-effective since majority of the service is free for users.

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think makes Pinterest such a valued service in the comments below.

Perpetual Beta #3

Do you remember what Facebook used to look like? Did you know it's been 11 years since it first came out? It originally looked like this...

But as time went on, Facebook grew and constantly made changes as more people recognized it as a social tool and an ongoing service. These constant updates and new features created an engaging experience for the users even though some of these changes were for testing purposes. This is otherwise known as 'perpetual beta'. To create ongoing updates as the incomplete service continues to develop.

What Facebook does is make their users feel like they are the first to be a part of their newest features. One of the things they do is that they do not ask you to update anything upon any of their changes. This may feel like a small component but it makes the users feel as if it’s the real deal for the site. Upon adding new features, Facebook also provides instructions and tips to better understand the changes. On top of that, Facebook is able to monitor who and how many people uses these features. This allows developers to better understand how impactful a feature is.

They also do not make drastic changes they don’t want to overwhelm their users. So they slowly brought out features like Facebook messenger and video. From this, they were able to monitor the feedback or conversations on the given feature. All they need to do is track keywords in conversations and get a general idea of what people may think about it. Sure this may be breaking some privacy laws, but Facebook can gain much needed information to better understand their own product.

On a programming side, Facebook uses PHP to boost compiling performance, Linux since it is open source and to boost network throughput, MySQL logic storage on web servers and many more. The more tools that can be used with Facebook, the faster updates and new developments can be released for feedback. This is really appealing since Facebook is so heavily used, it opens up and allows a number of different languages to be applied.

When you compare Facebook to a site like Myspace, they both continued to grow and continually introduced new features to keep up with their user base. However, Myspace failed to listen to their users and according to certain posts, politics and new management 

ruined Myspace's reputation. Facebook soon became the norm of social tools. 

Thanks for reading my post! Let me know what feature you really liked about Facebook which they later removed or visa versa.

Rich User Experiences #2

The internet once began with websites with simple designs which included an image, a bunch of buttons with hyperlinks and possibly an animated image. But as time went on, the internet grew and the users grew bored of these plain sites. For this reason, the internet transformed in a way which gave sites the 'Wow!' factor to impress their users in hope that they will be loyal to the brand. They do this by adding unique transitions, simple effects or by making the site more interactive. 

A site which offers a rich user experience would be...

The reason why Dropbox provides a rich user experience is because it follows the correct practices and these include: (These headings can be found here)

1)  Combine the best of desktop & online experiences. 

Dropbox allows users connect to their cloud storage through any device. Users are able to install Dropbox onto their main computers and any file that is moved to that folder automatically gets synced up to the cloud. Even when the user is offline, they are able to transfer files to that folder and as soon as they reconnect to the internet, the files will be uploaded. The same goes for mobile devices. As soon as a picture is taken, it is automatically uploaded to Dropbox where all devices are able to view the image as soon as it is completed.

2)  Usability and simplicity first.

Dropbox has a very simple colour scheme, blue and white. Everything on their website is very clear and is just a drag-and-drop process when it comes to storing files. For users, this means it is easy to use and are not overwhelmed of the use of cloud storage.

3)  Match the technology usage to the requirements.

Dropbox consists of a number of cloud-based services. They use a number of programs including: Python and the toolkits wxWidgets and Cocoa, Go and CoffeeScript for the browser.

4)  Search over structure.

Many websites now use Dropbox as a means to upload files to their own site. Since over 300 million people use Dropbox, it only makes sense that other sites incorporate Dropbox's API for uploading.

5)  Preserve content addressability.

Everything is stored on the cloud. If files were accidentally removed, users are still able to backtrack and restore their Dropbox to a previous format where the files still exist. So files are never truly lost. For users, this removes the worry of accidental file deletion since there is always support available to help backtrack and return files.

6)  Deep, adaptive personalization

Considering this is a cloud service, files uploaded to Dropbox are all dependent on the user so there wouldn't be any type of recommendations. However, as an incentive, Dropbox does give users a certain amount of space depending on what actions were taken. Recently, I was given a bonus 2 gigs of data for using their email service. On top of that, I asked my friend to use the same Dropbox account as I and she lives in America. Altogether, Dropbox gave me a total 54.8 gigs for 2 years instead of me having to pay money for extra space.

When comparing Dropbox to a similar site for example Google Drive, the experience may differ depending on the user. Google Drive has a better browser and interface and it looks much more empowering than Dropbox's basic look. Not saying that Dropbox's browser looks terrible, it’s just a difference that some users may notice. However, Google Drive does not have a feature to automatically upload photos or files directly from the phone directly in their service. This may not seem like much but you could lose/break your phone at any point and all those important photos you've been taking will be lost forever. Dropbox does have this feature and this is most likely the clearest comparison between the two competitors.

Dropbox and cloud servicing is continually expanding in different ways as more users realize its necessity.  A way Dropbox could improve itself is creating an offline Dropbox where users are able to constantly upload their files to the cloud without the use of internet. But that's something totally different... Realistically, I think they should add a bit more to their browser's interface. Just to add little bit more fun.

So who do you think is better: Dropbox or Google Drive and why?

Thank you!

Data Is The Next "Intel Inside" #A1

The story goes that between 1981 and the mid 2000s, Intel, a company that develops computing devices, began a campaign to separate themselves from other competitors. They started a campaign due to the fact their hardware was unrecognized because everyone assumed what was inside the computer was created by the devices brand. To differentiate themselves, they branded all of their devices stating that it would be better than the competitors and paid companies to advertise this message.

However, hardware is not the most important thing today. Instead, it is the data that is stored or received from these devices or services which are seen as valuable assets to organisations as it helps better understand their user base. The reason being is that these databases hold information about the user and common trends which can tell an organisation if they are growing in a positive or negative way. Not all organisations will have the data available, like Facebook does due to their user base which is why it holds such value.

So a good example of a social tool with a well recognized user base is none other than...

Pinterest is a website focused on users making a profile and showing their interesting in certain activities or sites by bookmarking other sites or other pinterests as individual images. The reason why Pinterest has such a wide user base is that it allows its users to make a post and then brings together other users with similar interests. The data found inside Pinterest is enhanced by the use of comments, likes, and by how many people have the same post/image pinned on their profile. Majority of posts will have the users description of the post linking it to the website the post was found. This database is further enhanced by the search bar and the tags that connect to each post. By typing in key words, a post can be easily found by typing specific tags.

The site also melds with other social tools making it a one click connection. On top of that, the site allows you to create secret posts that only you can manage and see while no other user can view creating a secure environment for their interests. What this means for Pinterest is that they are able to see what kind of data is seen by a user and therefore can make recommended posts which the user may be interested in. Another fact about Pinterest's terms and services is that once something is uploaded to Pinterest, it may continue to stay up there even though your account is closed and it can be copied and pinned on other user accounts.

A bad thing which has emerged from the use of Pinterest is that it may possibly alter a user’s online identity. According to a post, a user was trying to advertise their own site using their Pinterest profile; however, it removed the traffic going to their own website as users did not progress to the link included. Although this is not technically Pinterest's fault, it has a negative impact on those who do try to make a name for themselves in the online world.

If we were to compare Pinterest to a similar site for example 'Dribbble', the difference would be their user base. Dribbble limits the number of people who can actually post. Thus, it prevents anyone from creating an account and posting posts they find in comparison to Pinterest. This means that less people would use Dribbble as they limit what their users can do where Pinterest does not.

So we can see that Pinterest accumulates data which may be considered a valuable asset to them and possibly other organisations for research. From the image above, there is value in all sorts of data gathered from the social tool including which countries use the tool the most or to track upcoming trends.

Misuse of Social Technology - Week 9 Activty

Organisations are always trying to make the most of social technologies these days and generally hey get the job done right. But if there are good things, there also bad things that can come from these tools. So which organisation 'misused' social technology?

Amy's Baking Company Bakery Boutique & Bistro is an upscale full service Retail Patisserie as well as a full service European Bistro & Bar.

Restaurant owners Samy and Amy Bouzaglo were featured on an episode of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. They were soon dumped by Ramsey after being too difficult to work with. After airing, they received negative feedback through social media which appeared to had struck a nerve in the couple. They replied by using Facebook as a means to defend themselves against all the hateful comments. However, many of us understand that there are certain ways to deal with negative comments. The Bouzaglo's ended up pouring more oil on the fire as the comments kept piling on top of each other. It got to the point where the pair were uploading posts full of foul language and threats whilst trying to defend each other. Here is a link to their Facebook page.

From this,

To this,

Receiving bad feedback from a well known chef on national television is already bad for business. But to be provoked by hateful comments and to search and reply to these post with just as negative language only makes things worse. The couple then tried to defend themselves again by saying that they were hacked which only fueled readers to argue their point even further. The outburst on Facebook resulted in the downfall of the Bouzaglo's reputation and thus reduce the number of customers they would have. Reputation and ratings are the most important things to a restaurant. Having bad reputation on sites that are there to get your business brand out in the public and poor rating is the last thing any restaurant owner wants.

It is hard to say how much they actually lost but receiving a negative review would have only led  a decrease in customers. This could mean increased expenses via employee wages, produce and lane as they would not be hitting weekly or monthly targets. 

Restaurant owners like this can avoid misusing social technology by simply not using social technology as a means to vent out. The posts can also be removed from the main page to avoid further commenting and communication between the owners and users. Professionalism should always be shown. Education is another way to avoid misuse of social technology as it provides awareness and experience for different situations [1].

So has there ever been time where you regretted using social technology? Thanks for reading. Don't forget to head to my profile if you have any questions.

[1] Dundas Lawyers, "Legal risks of social networking for business". [Online]. Available: http://www.dundaslawyers.com.au/legal-risks-of-social-networking-for-business/. [Accessed: September 9, 2014]