Starting a community – Fitness SpotR

The social platform

The gym and fitness in Australia is a $1.3 billion dollar industry, with over 2,800 entities across Australia (IBISWorld, 2015). There are more than 11 million Australians who had reported that they engage in physical recreational activity at least once in a 12 month period (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013-14).

This week’s post, I’ll be introducing my new startup online community – FitnessSpotR. The social platform will be utilised blended with gumtree/craigslist and Facebook where everyone can post up an ‘advert’ or write a status about their interest in looking for a fitness partner. The advertisement details will include their gym name + location, their physical recreational activity, experience level, their workout time + schedule, expectations, and a brief details about the advertiser.

The social platform will be free of charge, the revenue model will be generated through advertisement spaces based on the healthy and fitness industry. However, there will be options to purchase paid membership which entails the user with options to hide/show advertisements, highlighted listings, access to a custom application form where they can get users to fill out. There will also be a referral model which gives users the chance to earn 24-48 hour paid membership by meeting a referral quota to be eligible.

The stage one benefits of Fitness SpotR

The benefits of finding a fitness partner/buddy to not only assist you in training, but to keep both parties disciplined, motivated and adds fewer excuses for skipping a workout (Gumper, 2005). FitnessSpotR will assist members to narrowly locate their ideal gym partner based on their preferences and goals so there leaves limited to no conflict of interest down the track.

The startup costs of Fitness SpotR and how they can be reduced

To avoid any hefty startup costs, FitnessSpotR’s initial foundation will be based on the socialengine PHP framework (advanced) which would cost $699 (SocialEngine, 2015). The script would be then customised to the company’s preference through outsourced companies.

An initial $10,000 will be used for Marketing and advertising to collect data on the acquisition cost of a user, which would be spent through Paid Per Click (PPC) and Pay Per Lead (PPL) campaigns. To further reduce startup costs, promotional methods will be conducted exclusively online.

What are the early adopter benefits (intrinsic / extrinsic)

The first 50 Early adopters users will be given 1 month free paid membership to trial the platform out. They will also be given free sample packs from sponsors of FitnessSpotR which will also benefit the advertisers with primary data of consumer product feedback. The early adopters will feel the sense of adapting a new lifestyle trend on their health and social interactions.

How could you increase success expectation?

Fitness SpotR vision is to ‘follow the trend’, do what works in mainstream society so the adaption to the social platform is friendly. There will also be success stories posted across social media of fitness partners/buddies explaining their user experiences with FitnessSpotR. This will further increase the authorisation of FitnessSpotR as the friendfinder of the fitness industry.

Another avenue is teaming up with the world’s leading bodybuilding forum – bodybuilding.com and with local gym franchise such as anytime fitness, snap fitness, Goodlife, FitnessFirst etc, which will benefit all parties by adding value to their members.

References

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2007). Participation in Sport and Physical Recreation, Australia. Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Latestproducts/4177.0Main%20Features12013-14?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=4177.0&issue=2013-14&num=&view=

Gumper, B. (2005, 03). Pair up for better RESULTS. Shape, 24, 110-110,112. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/195306340?accountid=13380

SocialEngine. (2015). Purchase and download SocialEngine PHP. Retrieved from https://www.socialengine.com/buy-social-engine

Whytecross, D. (2015). Gyms and Fitness Centres in Australia. IBISWorld Industry Report R9111. Retrieved from IBISWorld database.

Activating Network Effects – Tinder

This week’s post i’ll be talking about network effects. In a web 2.0 companies’ perspective, the success is within the volume of interactions and the consumers’ values. As Easley & Kleinberg (2010) defined network effects as the adoption of technologies for which interaction or compatibility with others is important. In addition, I’ll be covering four different types of network effects such as:

1. Direct
2. Indirect
3. Cross-network
4. Local network

This week’s topic, I will be using Tinder as an example in discussing the four different types of network effects.

Tinder promotion banner. Extracted from Appvirality, 2015

Tinder is a location-based dating app which display users who are close proximity based on your location. Tinder users create an account via their Facebook which gathers basic information (gender, name, location), which then matches other users who are most likely to be compatible based on information like geographic location, mutual friends, and common interests. Users are then able to “swipe” left or right, which indicates if they’re interested or not, only if there is a mutual interest, users are able to communicate with each other.

Direct Effects

The direct effects entails that the value of a good or service increases as more people use it. There are over 10 million active worldwide users, with 1 million users active in Australia.Tinder’s value and popularity comes from the ability to communicate with people around you. Tinder’s reliance is users signing up to the application to view other registered users and make a connection. If there were limited to no users available this would affect the availability of people to communicate and making it redundant as a dating app.

Indirect Effects

The indirect network effects is where production of increasingly valuable complementary goods, resulting in added value to the original product or service. Tinder has added value to their core product by displaying their corporate social responsibility as a dating app to show awareness to their human trafficking campaign.

Tinder human trafficking campaign. Extracted from Contently, 2015

The campaign was added where users would swipe through a series of images of a woman who is progressively more bruised after the swipe. A text message is then shown which shows “Your options are left or right. Women forced into prostitution in Ireland have none.”

Cross-network effects

The cross-network effects is when the usage by one group of users can increase the value of a complementary product or service to another distinct group of users. Initially Tinder was used by users for the purpose of scoring a one-night encounter/no strings attached because it finds you potential matches based on their proximity to you. However, due to it’s functionality to find users close to your proximity through geographical location services (GPS) it became more mainstream and accepted as a dating app rather than a one-night stand app.

Local network effects

The local network effects that can be seen in Tinder is the ability to communicate with users who are close to your proximity and only be able to communicate with each other if both users mutually swiped ‘right’ to each other, which is an innovate feature which lets users weed out people who they do not want to communicate with.

References

Easley, D., & Kleinberg, J. (2010). Network Effects. In Networks, crowds, and markets reasoning about a highly connected world. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lightweight Models & Cost Effective Scalability

In this post, I’ll be covering Tim O’Reilly’s final core pattern of web 2.0  – “Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability”. O’Reilly (2005) states that “Scalability in Web 2.0 applies to business models as well as technology. Changes in cost, reusability, process, and strategy mean much more can be done for less”. O’Reilly & Musser (2006) expands on the pattern by emphasising the lightweight and software-development models are ideally suited to support rapid release cycles so they have a readiness for change and creation.

To integrate O’Reilly’s final pattern to the real world, I have chosen Fiverr as an example to demonstrate the practicality and benefits of the Lightweight Models & Cost-Effective Scalability pattern.

Fiverr is an online marketplace where sellers can offer to perform tasks and services to customers worldwide; the tasks and services begins at a cost of $5 per ‘gig’ (Rao, 2012). Fiverr utilises the lightweight model & Cost effective scalability that is very similar to many online marketplaces in the market such as eBay and Gumtree.

For example, Fiverr does not provide any services or tasks, merely they act as the ‘middle-man’ between the buyers and sellers, known as the best practice of ‘outsourcing’ whenever practical and possible. Fiverr’s revenue model is generated through their $1.00 fee off every $5 ‘gig’ transaction. This allows Fiverr to avoid dealing with issues such as storing products or delegating services within their company.

Another example of the business using the concept ‘doing more with less‘ is the use of PayPal as their official transaction payment gateway to maximise cost-effective scalability and mitigates the risk of expensive, unwieldy collaboration tools within the business (Mathiesen et al., 2011).

Fiverr integrates in-house user level, buyer ratings, buyer examples and social media sharing functionalities. This assists Fiverr in driving traffic to the website through sharing, as well as the creating trust through ‘transparency’ via seller’s rating, level and providing examples of work done for their customers.

References

Mathiesen, P., Watson, J., Bandara, W., & Rosemann, M. (2011). Applying Social Technology to Business Process Lifecycle Management, pg 8-13. Retrieved March 27, 2015, from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/43384/

Musser, J. & O’Reilly, T. (2006). Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices. Retrieved March 27, 2015 from http://repo.mynooblife.org/.priv8/Ebook/Web%202.0%20Principles%20and%20Best%20Practices.pdf

O’Reilly, T. (2005, September 30). Lightweight Programming Models. Retrieved March 27, 2015, from http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=4

Rao, L. (2012). Task-Based Marketplace Fiverr Raises $15M From Accel And Bessemer. Retrieved March 27, 2015 at http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/03/task-based-marketplace-fiverr-raises-15m-from-accel-and-bessemer/

[Untitled illustration of Fiverr Logo]. March 27, 2015
from http://www.support.fiverr.com

Perpetual Beta – Tumblr

This week’s post is detailing Tim O’Reilly’s six pattern – Perpetual Beta. O’reilly defines ‘Perpetual beta’ as a service or web application being in it’s beta development stage for a long or indefinite periods of time with new changes being introduced on a monthly, weekly or daily basis while it is open to the public to utilise (O’reilly, 2005).

The benefits of perpetual beta is monitoring and analysing user behaviour through the popularity of the features being used by the consumers, furthering the understanding of which feature is working and what is not to be replaced or kept in the final product/application (O’reilly, 2005).

Web 2.0 platform in perpetual beta

Tumblr is a microblogging platform allows its users to post/share photos, texts, links, music, and videos which is among many of web 2.0 service/applications that utilises the perpetual beta strategy.

Release Early and Release Often

An example of Tumblr’s release early and release often, is the utilisation of  introducing new user experience features and updates on bug-fixed issues routinely on their staff’s tumblr page which is publicly available to all tumblr users and website visitors.

Engage users as co-developers and real-time testers

In sync of O’reilly’s statement to treat users as the company’s co-developers, Tumblr provides developers access to their API and also a forum where future updates, bugs, and features are discussed with users to ensure the company is listening to what their users want and need to increase user experience (O’reilly, 2005).

Instrument your product

Tumblr is able to monitor their product through various channels such as user utilisation of features, interest through ‘reblog’ and ‘likes’ on official feature update posts, and user-generated content.

Incrementally create new products

Tumblr are consistently releasing features, updates, fixed issues since its first official launch in 2007 (Wallstrip, 2007). Notable examples is the aesthetics of the website layout, the ident commenting and user content activity.

Use dynamic tools and languages

Initially, the application was built on PHP but over the years has included many programming languages and frameworks such as PHP, Ruby, Scala, Func, Memcache, Gearman, Kafka, Kestrel, Finagle etc (Hoff, 2012).

Users are also allowed to customise their own tumblr theme through the use of HTML and CSS.

References

Hoff, T. (2012, February 13).Tumblr Architecture – 15 Billion Page Views A Month And Harder To Scale Than Twitter. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from http://highscalability.com/blog/2012/2/13/tumblr-architecture-15-billion-page-views-a-month-and-harder.html

O’Reilly, T. (2005, September 30). Data is the Next Intel Inside. Retrieved March 22, 2015, from http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=4

[Untitled illustration of Yahoo and Tumblr takeover cover-image]. March 22, 2015
from http://www.webpronews.com/168000-angry-tumblr-users-sign-petition-to-thwart-yahoo-deal-2013-05

[Untitled illustration of Tumblr Logo]. March 22, 2015
from http://fontsinuse.com/uses/5323/tumblr-logo-2007-2013

[Untitled illustration of Tumblr Staff Posts about an update]. March 22, 2015
from http://staff.tumblr.com/post/55803017450/double-dashboard-update-first-the-new-activity

Wallstrip. (2008, May 27). David Karp and Tumblr [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHU1pSHAisE

Rich User Experience – Udemy

Rich User Experience

At the earlier stages of the internet, the sole purpose of a website was to provide information to visitors which acted as a sales brochure, help manual, and other forms (Governor et al, 2009). Arguably, static websites served as a foot ground for businesses to initiate a customer’s interest and further enhance user experience through offering contextual valuable information via face-to-face interaction.

With the uprise of web 2.0, desktop-bound applications such as Flash, JavaScript and other desktop native applications have integrated and remain popular within web applications such as HTML5. The power of these desktop application provide Web Developers & Designers the ability to improve and integrate rich user experience.

Udemy

Udemy serves as a platform for instructors to build online courses based on preference of their choosing. The integration of rich user experience is seen through Udemy features such as creating courses through powerpoint presentations, PDFs, audio, zip files, uploading video, and hosting live classes (Udemy, n.d).

Combine the best of desktop & online experiences

Udemy allow users to view online/offline courses through desktop, smartphone ‘web-app’, or native device application. The application was built on PHP with a custom MVC framework, jQuery, aJax, and JavaScript which are compatible with all platforms stated above (Stackoverflow, 2012).

Usability and simplicity first

The application’s layout for its course overview is similar to the pinterest ‘grid’ mansory layout which makes browsing for courses simple and easy.

Deep, adaptive personalization

Students can view a course’s structure and teachings through an overview page to determine if they want to enrol into the course or not. All courses allow students to re-watch a section or skip through content.

Search over structure

Udemy provides a search function to find all types of courses the user is interested in. The search feature is very similar to google’s search engine where description and title is matched within the user’s search term. Furthermore, Udemy provides a search filter where users can narrow down their course preference from the price range to the course difficulty.

Preserve content addressability

Once a user purchases into a course, they can re-access the course whenever they want. Aslong they are logged into the account where they purchased the course. It has been apparent that users can access the course online or offline.

References

Governor, J., Nickull, D., & Hinchcliffe, D. (2009). Specific Patterns of Web 2.0. In Web 2.0 architectures (pp. 158-164).

StackOverflow (2012, September 6). What programming language Udemy is built? Retrieved March 14, 2015 from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12220472/what-programming-language-udemy-is-built

Udemy (n.d.) About Us. Retrieved March 14, 2015 from https://about.udemy.com/

[Untitled illustration of a blackboard with the Udemy Logo]. Retrieved March 14, 2015
from http://www.appszoom.com/magazine/5-groundbreaking-apps-for-learning-how-to-code-android_5483

[Untitled illustration of udemy on various platform devices]. Retrieved March 14, 2015
from http://www.udemy.com

[Untitled illustration of a grid layout of udemy courses]. Retrieved March 14, 2015
from http://www.udemy.com

[Untitled illustration of a detailed table of content for a udemy course]. Retrieved March 14, 2015
from http://www.udemy.com

Data is the next ‘Intel Inside’

Hey INB347 classmates! As part of team B, this week’s discussion is about data is the next ‘Intel Inside’. 

Every day, we are creating, obtaining and sharing data through the web without even noticing. As a digital marketer, data is, undoubtedly one of the most important resources we have in our everyday lives. Tim O’reilly, who popularized the term ‘web 2.0’, emphasized that data is the core competency of any significant web application to date.

WarriorForum is a internet marketing online forum (discussion board/bulletin board) that allows users to post content relating to marketing, which consists of strategies, ideas, suggestions, reviews, opinions and feedback. Data is the utmost important resource for WarriorForum, as 99% of all data comes from user-generated information. Without the generated information the forum would not be as successful as it is today.

While it is not hard to recreate WarriorForum’s source of data, as most of the data is user-generated which is freely available for the public and there is no way to completely stop competitors from copying data. The WarriorForum unique selling proposition is providing the users an option to sell online products and also having the option to add buyer’s emails to the seller’s mailing list.

The WarriorForum had enhanced its core data by solely being known as the online forum synonymous for Internet Marketing. With membership boasting around 912,000 with 11,000 average active users (members + visitors). The abundance of knowledge within the forum has created many entrepreneurs, online marketers, work-at-homes, and successful business owners.

Users are in control with their content and have the option to edit, update or delete. User details are also editable via forum profile.

The WarriorForum has “All rights reserved” and “Copyright Laws” in place. Which also restricts the use of the ‘aesthetics’ of the forum.

The primary data objective is gathering marketers who are either buyers or sellers to ‘connect’ together and in the process, the company has the potential to earn a commission for each ‘product listing/fees’ through sellers. Users can also gather data by offering a ‘free’ market report which consist of either marketing strategy, info, or ideas in exchange for the user’s data (which is usually their name and email).

The Forum also has an opt in list which collects user’s information for the purpose of sending out newsletters about upcoming ‘WSO’ (Warrior Special Offer) which is similar to the ‘dealoftheday.com’ concept where products are heavily discounted for a limited time offer for the purpose of mass-purchase/mass-exposure.

The WarriorForum is treated as a ‘AS IS’ forum where the company do not ‘own’ user-generated content nor guarantee the information provided by users are accurate but should be taken as merely opinions.

Conclusion
WarriorForum was established in 1997 and is considered to be one of the largest online internet marketing forum. The forum solely relies on user generated data to remain popular within online marketing community. Additional proprietary features such as it’s own in-house marketplace makes the online marketing forum a go-to for many marketers.

References

Frost, S. (2012, October 16). What is the best Internet marketing Forum? Retrieved March 7, 2015, from http://www.internet-marketing-training-for-newbies.info/what-is-the-best-internet-marketing-forum.html/

O’Reilly, T. (2005, September 30). Data is the Next Intel Inside. Retrieved March 7, 2015, from http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html?page=3

[Untitled illustration of a woman holding an iPhone 6 next to a macbook Air]. Retrieved January 05, 2015
from www.unsplash.com/

[Untitled illustration of Warrior Forum Logo]. Retrieved January 05, 2015
from www.warriorforum.com/

[Untitled illustration of Warrior Forum Statistics]. Retrieved January 05, 2015
from www.warriorforum.com/

[Untitled illustration of Warrior Forum Forum Post]. Retrieved January 05, 2015
from www.warriorforum.com/

WarriorForum.com (2013, January 05). TERMS OF USE AGREEMENT. Retrieved March 7, 2015, from http://www.warriorforum.com/tos.html

Introduction

Hey Everyone!

I created this blog for the purpose of INB347 Web 2.0 Application.

A little about myself, my name Is Jimmy and I am in my final semester at QUT, I am undertaking a Bachelor of Business (Marketing). I am a Online Marketer and Web Designer/Developer.

Looking forward to meeting you all!