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. 

Cool talk.

Such a busy week.
The talk delivered by Microsoft really impressed me a lot.  I was once thinking those cutting edge technology is still very far away from me.  And i still have a long way to go to catch up with Microsoft etc. Realistically speaking , the gap is still there. But it is seemingly not as much as  what i thought.  If we really spend the time and work on cool stuff like kinect programming, well, it is doable. =). But i have no idea how long it will take me the actually know it well instead of merely trying to use the example desperately like what i did. Backbone.js example etc.
  I have to admit that anything cool for geeks only may not be interesting to others. Example? Linux system? Some cool algorithm?  My point here is that if kinect were a huge success, the design and outlook of kinect has contributed 20% or more. And most importantly, the marketing of kinect has done more than 30%. Once people were given a choice of two options: A very good product with normal UI and normal marketing people Or  a normal product with fantastic marketing strategy and cool UI. Well, in the short run, most boss tend to favor the second to the first. It is a world of normal beings, not geeks. So,  marketing strategy is always sort of as significant as technology.

   From my perspective of the current working world, technology remains the core competency of any enterprise. That is what we programmer aimed to be part of for the next fives years or so.  However, production and distribution depend largely on marketing. That is where the business people come into the picture. =) 

Second Week

    ----->So this is the second week of school. I am really amazed at how fast people can pick up new stuff. I used to think that it would take me like a semeter to pick up a new language and get used to it. But obviously that is not the best practise.  It is rather more efficient to watch tutorials and try out codes yourself to learn. The stackoverflow is really a good place to ask questions. People out there is always ready to answer our questions. How excited is that!


    ----->The story on the workers on the field is fantastic. Only after you see the big picture, you shall be more motivated to work hard.  With the wrong mind set, you will be always stuck on what you are doing.  Remeber, we are starting something big. Though it may be not that cool at the start, i still believe anything can go wrong will go wrong. We shall fix them sooner or later.

   ------>Now i understand how the server works, why must we use asynchronous js , how does server handle requests and route them accordingly etc. What i learn in one week >> what i learn during the holidays. 

-------->Facebook developers impressed me a lot. I have never found so much detailed explanations and examples. No wonder facebook is a huge success.  


---------> Tomorrow we got another workshop. The experience and knowledge shared by the seniors is exceedingly helpful. 

     To be continued after tomorrow's workshop--- a great learning experience.
   

Week one--- Starting Point

 Well, Times passes really fast. Week one is almost coming to an end. After the first lecture, i got to say our seniors were really doing a great job. They can survive 5 assignment. Then I can do it! However, what they said really scared me a bit. I am sort of worried about the time management.  Luckily, all other modules do not have projects this sem. This is done on purpose when choosing the modules =D.  The presentation of the module is really cool.  Well, i think this module is unique in the sense that you are free to do what you want to do.
  Frankly,  i have not been equipped with enough knowledge to create a Facebook app alone.  I spent my holidays reading books regarding php , apache js etc. But putting them together is a different story. Now what we will be probably using is node.js & mongo DB. Well, i am attend the workshop on Sat. It is really a good opportunity to get to  know more about php mysql ,git & aws.  I am studying for this module for like 8 hours a day or more. But it will take some time to catch up.
   The talent show is awesome. There are so many talents in the class. And they are really cool!  I am really not goot at acting in front of "public", let alone singing. They are people who can do coding with half eyes open. There are people who can use the photoshop etc to design a model.  This really opens my eye. Luckily they are now my teammates =D.
     I got to say github is coder's version of dropbox.  The best thing about it is its powerful function to do merging and forking.  Hopefully, the upcoming Sat workshop will bring me more information.
     This is not the end of this blog. I will write more after Sat workshop.
     Cheer!!!


So i get to learn some new stuff out there, like how to use aws services. How to transfer file to the server.  This is something i did yesterday. http://ec2-54-251-13-168.ap-southeast-1.compute.amazonaws.com/hi    haha. I am gonna watch some tutorials on node.js and javascript.



To end this entry , to ask why we fight is to ask why the leaves fall, it is nature !

New Milestone

  I am taking CS3216 in the upcoming semester.  I think it would be rather challenging for me. I heard about this module one year ago from my friend who spent hours and hours a day struggling this module. Nevertheless, i feel somewhat excited and a bit scared. It is just some random mixed feeling.

  From the two years' study experience, one important thing i realized is that computer science is not really all about learning new languages :( . I have to  learn how to learn and where to learn. The world is moving forward at an incredibly fast speed. Trying to follow the footprint blindly is not helping too much in realizing our dreams. However before we can lead the way, we got to be well prepared in terms of knowledge and experience. Frankly speaking, i am not well prepared for that.  This may be part of the reason i take up cs3216:Be more Prepared.

  We never know how high we can fly before opening up our wings. I thank those challenges for pushing me to the limit so that i can know whom i can be and whom i want to be.=)  After reading the feedback given by our seniors, i would say cs3216 is quite challenging but i like that.

  Back to that main point of the blog: what i want to learn from cs3216:

>learn how to learn new stuff in a quick and effective manner.

>Turn  ideas in the mind to something "tangible".

>Work together with teammates.

>Most importantly, enjoy the challenges =P

  Hopefully, this will remain as one of the most pleasant journey in my university life!