Week 8 post - Starting a community

Introduction to Go Yummy

Finally, the day comes as the weekly activity will end up with a social platform of my own creation. Assuming myself as the community manager with insight into all the major design challenges, I’d like to kick off an online website called Go Yummy for the purpose of gathering the collective intelligence of food lovers and sharing all sorts of information covering broad topics around food basically. Why I choose food is because obviously it matters a lot but the problem is sometimes it can be time-consuming to find out even the answer to a seemingly simple question like, ‘Which’s the cheapest restaurant around QUT Gardens Point campus?’ Most of the existing websites are either too localized or too general to provide what users really want. For the moment the scope(target audience) is aiming for anyone who are enthusiastic in food or cooking. No matter as a housewife cooking at home or a workaholic having no time to cook hopefully they will be happy with it.

What are the stage 1 benefits?

Despite of any social benefit, Go Yummy does offer some stage 1 benefits. For instance, a beginner or a master are both provided with equal rights to build up your own portfolios to store your good ideas or discoveries. To be specific, it can be a creative tutorial of ‘DIY home-made sushi’ or ‘7 steps to bake pavlova’, something like that. Video, audio and other kinds of multi-media elements are all embedded into the post where you can make people better understood and also make yourself proud. Even if you abandon this platform later on for whatever reason, it’s all about memory and sense of achievement when looking back on what you’ve created. To some extent it’s the same as what we’ve done to build up our own assignment portfolios. Even if there’s no one else visiting the posts or leaving the comments it doesn’t mean they’re valueless. Because you’re creating value and what Go Yummy does at an early stage is to facilitate the process and help keep this value.

What are the early adopter benefits?

We’re living in a world where ranking immerses everywhere and Go Yummy is no exception. As one of the tangible benefits, early birds will be awarded a special title to mark their contribution to the ‘primitive’ community and charged free on first year’s membership. What’s more, they should be on the recommendation list of the push notification to make new users known. Convenience, reduced cost and increasing reputation are exactly desireable.

How to increase success expectation?

It’s important to let the rest of the world knows you are holding a successful website or at least on the way even if you are not. It’s just a common practice of promotion. An effective way to accomplish this is to integrate the essences into the top area so as to make it eye-catching. As we know about 90% of users will only pay attention to the top to see whether it can meet their needs or not. So just put the best of the best at the most conspicuous position and it will work. Another way can be leveraging the star effect by inviting celebrities to visit the website and that will help a lot. An example in the real world referred to the official website of Tangalooma after Roger Federer took a day trip there during the Brisbane International this year. Thanks to the worldwide fans alliance keeping an eye on Roger all the time, perhaps millions of them got to know about the resort. As another great idea combing with early adopter benefits, Go Yummy can help them to be the focus such as establishing a personal channel. Perhaps you are the next Charli in Australia, who knows?

References:

Pic_1:http://msue.anr.msu.edu/uploads/images/Greening/Food%20for%20Change%20Summit%20wordle.jpg

Pic_2:http://cdn.prakticideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1503581_611915698845447_1874959136_n.jpg

Pic_3:http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2015/01/07/1227177/068168-e821b1f8-9606-11e4-985a-7acd3b83aa30.jpg

Week 7 post - Activating network effects

INTRODUCTION

Currently it is key to activate network effects as part of modern mass communication. That is what creates the core value to the platform and it’s win-win for both users and developers. To around your interest in this hot topic, I choose Blued in particular to describe the concept in detail. In addition, some famous counterparts like Jackd and Grindr will be discussed to compare with each other to help you form a better understanding.

You may not have known that Blued, as the top one gay social app in China(sorry for introducing a local platform once again) with an increasingly growing user base of over 15 million gays or would-be, has already been the most influential platform in this field. Noticing that mobile users in the next five years will keep growing at a higher speed, this figure is likely to double by 2020. ‘People are more in the closet and less open about it, but thebeautiful thing about smartphone is that it’s a private device.’ said the co-founder of Blued David Chao. It’s interesting that there are plenty of supporters as well as objectors of this app but undoubtedly both of them have made great contribution to activating its network effects.

DIRECT EFFECTS

To start with, direct network effect is easy to understand that the value of a platform increases as long as more users use it. There are dozens of similar dating apps such as Jackd now playing a huge part in approaching like-minded partners or just pure strangers, but only a very few of them have the opportunity to be put on top of the list in app store. The cruel fact reveals that how important it is to take advantage of user growth to foster a solid network. Think of that if you’re a potential user, once you’ve joined in you’ll notice that 8 gays out of 10 around you are using the same app, and that’s how you’ll immediately be dragged into it as they used to be. The online community of Blued is undergoing a positive cycle where more users pour in and more value is generated either intentionally or unintentionally, which in turn leads to more access for new users.

INDIRECT EFFECTS

Unlike platform itself, indirect network effects come from complementary goods or services. A latest example referred to a fashionable Thai TV series funded by Blued named ‘Lady Boy Friends’. The series set a new record of audience rating and made Blued known by a larger range of user group as a result. Here it is assumed that the series itself was extraordinary(literally it was) and I’m not about to go into details. For those who used Blued before they were indulged into the series and in return became more faithful to it than ever. For those who didn’t or were even straight they got to know it due to the success of the series, which added value to Blued likewise. To be more specific, think of the situation where you might be into one of the leading actors and it would be perfect when his Blued account was displayed on the screen(it did happen actually). How could you control yourself not to get in use with it in this case? Like I said before, both compliments and critiques help activate the network effects.

CROSS-NETWORK EFFECTS

Obviously inside the gay community we have several groups depending on who you are and what you are aiming for. In terms of activating cross-network effects, Jackd has set a good example that thanks to embedded Google Map plug-in users can feel free to find someone globally although given the priority that we always are keeping an eye on people nearby. The core feature is that it’s built for cross-platform so that generally when the usage of users who are enthusiastic in sharing selfies increases the value of users who enjoy looking at someone else’s photos nonetheless aren’t willing to show theirs will catch up as well. Basically if two groups have some degree of corelation this cross-network magic can be applied to it.

LOCAL EFFECTS

Like every social app instant messaging forms the basic framework of what we call as local network effects. Your activities as part of your daily life will be influenced if you’re asked to start a chat frequently by different gays. Though most of the users don’t count on a stable relationship, it doesn’t mean they don’t mind. The dream scenario of this effect is that someone ends up with a true love for the rest of his life.

WHAT’S MORE

It’s a shame to say none of the platforms I mentioned above has been accepted universally. Blued dominates domestic market but internationalization is still far away with built-in Baidu Map which only supports users in mainland. Jackd and Grindr both have more in functionality but they can only display nearby users within a short distance centered from your coordinate. However, all of them understand what users need primarily and that’s why the first tab down the interface is always for finding someone instead of a chatting room. What’s worth mentioning is that there’s another tab in Blued where the latest news that gay men care about will be seen. Anyway, I believe the future development still lies in helping a user find his Mr Right. Hopefully that day will come earlier in the era of mobile.

References:
Pic_1: http://www.blued.cn/v4/en-US/img/banner.jpg
Pic_2: http://ww1.sinaimg.cn/large/9c8d3235jw1er3q66tvoej20k00zkdr2.jpg
Pic_3: http://img.wdjimg.com/mms/screenshot/2/88/2563d2e8c8014edb336c61e39f5c3882_320_533.jpeg
Pic_4: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/adh5cXgJ9oZhb66MNvdt2d0kJhuGFv77OMnQ_SKvK84BkofNBqH_3h4IiHyX1eLf36L9=h900