Busy week

It has been a long time since i blogged last time. I felt this is the most fulfilled semester in my university life. Oh, it is recess week now. Thank GOD? No. Not really!  After attending the great pitch party on Friday.  I had a 2 hour written page exam on Sat morning. =) It is over anyway. I am doing the mobile project with my fellow group members in SOC now. I am enjoying it honestly speaking. We never know how high we can fly before we spread our wings.

 About the pitch party:
It is a fantastic event. The best part of the evening is the FOOD! LOL. I am just kidding. The really brilliant stuff  were those ideas which i might never think of. Almost overwhelmed by the ideas. Ben's questions impressed me a lot. I thought the speaker is well prepared in the sense that he almost have all the data needed to handle the FAQ. However, there is still a long way to go before he could start to build the app and considering monetizing it. Most of us are stuck in the place where we can increase our user base for our app. It may become a completely different story after commercializing the product. We may leave aside the idea of commercializing the  app right now. The idea i liked most is the one given by the geog teacher. He just make me quite moved by his passion and love for the teaching course.  The app might not be fantastic. But it indeed help those underprivileged students. It made me think of the game system adopted in cs2010 : data structure and algo II. The idea of Carpool sounds good. But i am still doubting its feasibility. Even with the app, people out there may not use it. It is not a technical issue.  More importantly , outside Singapore,
safety is the biggest problem. Driver may feel unsafe to give strangers a ride. That is the reality.  The idea of the dashboard to control the light system is the most familiar to me. My father's company spent 40thousand to do the R&D on it last year. It turned out to be unpopular. Why is it so? 95% of the products sold are the normal switches in the switch market. Businessman do not dare to take the risk to be the first one massing producing the "advanced" switch which are more expensive. It takes time for the world to get used to new ideas and products.


About the Project:
Still busy coding =D. I just learnt how to code a floating bar which disappear on scrolling down and appear when scrolling up just now. It feels great. Loving it. Continuing....

Pinterest

 The three years' old “social scrap booking” community stormed the web  in 2011, reaching headline-grabbing double-digit-million monthly visitors faster than any other website before it. The growth rate is just fascinating, although  the rate is smaller as compared to Google but who cares. This is the best part of the presentation.  Well, just kidding. Let's begin by addressing the key points of the presentation.

key features of Pinterest

Pinterest is bout viewing ,organizing and sharing image. And it is about share the things you love.  As we can see, google+'s growth rate is the largest followed by Pinterest, facebook and Twitter.  And it is ranked 5th in the social network. As we can see, the trend is heading to the direction of social interaction and sharing. Why does the sharing of photos can become an app. Facebook also have this functionality.  Well, when you want to look for or share a photo. You wont go to facebook to do that as it is a network for socializing. It is a wrong place to look for something.  Pinterest find the necessity to build this app. Thus, it is a huge success. 

Something bad about Pinterest 

Although it does have a simple clean UI and good design, nothing comes perfect, so does Pinterest.  It does not have a visible search bar and the ranking algorithm is not familiar to normal users.  Due to the lack of search bar and view history, user cannot possibly check what have been browsed or bookmarked. And what's more,  pictures are not zoom-able. Well,  this really sucks. It is not technically impossible to add this feature to Pinterest. but why this feature is not added remains questionable.  

B2C Business Model

The business model adopted by pinterest is business to comsumers. B2B marketers can use this to their advantage and incorporate Pinterest as a way to draw traffic to brand-building content that drives interest and engages both customers and prospects. For example, the app can be free to users who need the basic function. Premium edition to those users who need more advanced function like customizing   the theme and skin style.  And Enterprise  for business companies who are doing E-commerce business.  B2B, B2C and C2C can all be adopted to expand the market and earn a greater market share. 

I just registered for the pinterest app. Well, honestly speaking, i do not really like the way it registers a new user. But i hate to verify with my email. If possible, i always avoid it.  As mentioned in the presentation, 90% are female users. I am not one of them in the remaining 10%.   I like to view funny pictures.  Since there is no search bar, i quite it honestly speaking. it is not because it is not user friendly. It just failed to catch my interest. As a personally habit, I still use facebook and other social network app to browse the pictures shared by my friends. At least i know who post these pictures, and i can comment to it or say something funny.  Thus. Pinterest is not for me.  Girls may love it.

What is next? The business model. I believe the pinterest adopt this B2C business model for a reason. It is the most basic business model and with that we may choose to expand it to B2B or C2C. However , i have reasons to believe this simple business model is the best for Pinterest. As it is address a unique area of social networking, it attracts users by its unique well-established feature- photo-sharing. It is simple and it is good.  They do not really have to take the risk to adopt other business model. It may not be worth it. Else, one day, it may lose its core competency as it may become another version of facebook or apple store. it should continue this business model and improve other aspects such as registration process ,lack of search bar
etc. 
To conclude, It is simple and it is good.