Lightweight models and cost effective scalability: Wikipedia

“Scalability in Web 2.0 applies to business models as well as technology. ” from the lecture notes. In web 2.0 business model need to use scalable design technique to reduce the cost, improve reuse, and speed less to achieve more. In this week post, I will talk about the Lightweight models and cost effective scalability, which is the last pattern that I will introduce in this semester. In this post, I will use Wikipedia as an example.

Wikipedia was founded in 2001 by Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales as an offshoot of Nupedia, a now-abandoned project to produce a free encyclopedia. Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia provides a huge platform for internet authors to create and edit.

(1) Scale with demand

As an online editable encyclopedia, to match the demand, wikipedia support 270 different kinds of languages, and allows internet authors from world round to create and edit posts. In addition, it attracted millions of visitors per month. Now, It is a trend that internet users usually ask wikipedia instead of reading the books when they doubt about the normal encyclopedia related things.

(3) Outsource whenever practical and possible

When talking about outsource, I think almost internet users like me may remember Wikipedia. It is a truly symbol of outsource. It is said that Wikipedia is a product of millions of authors outsource results. All usefully information is created by kinds of internet authors in different fields.

(4)Design for scale

MediaWiki a software works on Wikipedia is also an open-source program. It may be used on some third-party websites. Also, In November 2008, Wikimedia announced that it would partner with Sun Microsystems to help it build a secure and scalable open Web infrastructure.

 

leveraging long tail

the concept of long tail was first created by Chris Anderson as an economy theory in 2004. Now, the theory could be used on design web 2.0 application. today, i am going to talk about the pattern 7- leveraging long tail. As we know, there are many famous website in the internet world, such as amazon, ebay and flickr. Comapre those website we could find that most of them are well designed to match the pattern of leveraging long tail. in this post, i will introduce Sasa, a website for online selling beauty and health care products.

(1) Build on the driving forces of the Long Tail

firstly, compare to the normal store or shopping mall, Sasa contains products from all of the world. For example, I want to by a beauty product made in Japan,which can not be found it in Brisbane local market, but Sasa has it. That is to say, Sasa has more products than its competitors. Secondly, except products from world round, Sasa also has customers from different countries and different areas. Thanks to the internet, people do not need to go to local stores to buy goods. Sasa exactly catch the chances to promote more and more customers to shopping online.  thirdly, in different from ebay or other online shop to sale different kinds of products, it just sell beauty and health care products. When it found, this is a new area for online selling beauty and health care products. Also, rely on the geographical advantages, the headquarter of Sasa is in Hong Kong. As we know, Hong kong is one of the largest free trade port. Therefore, kinds of beauty and health care products could gather in there. It is no doubt that Sasa correctly marked its markets.

(2) Use algorithmic data management and an architecture of participation to match supply and demand

Once the customer finnish buy one products, Sasa would record the products the customer purchases, then rank and sort the products to find out the most popular products. For example, when you access the Sasa main page, you could clearly find the best sale products, also Sasa would recommend and introduce them to you. For me, as a customer, when i has no clear list about what i want to buy, I really like the website could give me a recommendation. In this point, Sasa does perfect on analysis the data to find out what is demanded by customers.

(3) Leverage customer self-service to cost effectively reach the entire web

As most of success website, Sasa has a comprehensive self-service mechanism. Users could thronging filling in the details to create an account on Sasa for managing, tracking their order and shipping. Also, they could acquire the information from Sasa by emailing. Besides, customer could also leave comments for products.

(4) Leverage the low-cost advantages of being online

no matter what approaches to attract customers, the best way is lower price with high quality. On Sasa, it promise all products are genuine as same as those in local store, but the price of most products always 30% lower than those local store. It is a big discount in beauty markets. Also, the more you buy the cheaper you will achieve, every time you purchases more than 85 US dollars, and they will provide free shipping no matter where you are.

Perpetual beta: appy couple

no matter the software development method is CMM or Agile, to develop an integrity and functionality software needs times of testing. For developers, no doubt that the Alpha testing is available approach to testing the software, such as to check the system could run well without mistakes, avoiding exceptions. However, look arround the world, all famous softwares are not only has excellent functions but are also user experiences friendly, They design the system wisely match the users custom. compare to the common software, web 2.0 applicattions are more need to hunt more and more users. the success of a web 2.0 application depends on how many users they are able to attract. Therefore, in this week I will talk about the sixth pattern: perpetual beta to introduce the beta testing used for web 2.0 application development. Beta testing normally appeared after the Alpha testing, while in different from the Alpha testing, Beta testing does no longer executed by developers but  be released to a limited audience outside of the programming team and even public to gather the feedbacks for improving this application. In real life, there are many applications open the beta  testing version to public, such as games, and mobile apps. Today, I will introduce appy couple, which is a mobile wedding plan application, developer by Sharmeen Mitha-Sehgal, and now open the beta version to public and rapidly attracted 7000 users waiting for trying this app.

 

in this application, the bride and groom as main users who can choose their wedding theme, booking hotel, and even share and paste their wedding information to their relevent or guests. Also relevents and guests who are unable to join the wedding may watch the live through this app. It helps couples to simplify their wedding processes, such as send their wedding invitation to their guest.

Now the appy couple finished their first time bate testing. In this time, they sent 200 invitation and 150 of users registered in few hours and setup to use this app for planning their wedding. Besides, after 7 weeks testing, the app speared into 50 countries. The test result presented it quickly become popular and has potential develop space in the future. Also, they achieved a larger amount of feed backs from this test. Users could leave thier commons after using this app. In addtion, there must be some appraches that appy couple using in this bate testing , but thare was no information showing how they operated this times of testing.

if anyone were interested in this app please see:http://www.appycouple.com/

 

Software above the level of a single device: commbank app

The invented of smart phone push the development of web applications to jump into another fields. Now, more and more web applications not only can be accessed by the PC, Macs, but also can be accessed by the mobile devices on multiple platforms such as OS, Android and even windows phone. Today, I will show commbank as an example to describe how they create wonderful applications to match requirements of their users.

This picture in above shows main interfaces of the commbank apps, there are three kinds of apps for user to select base on their type of mobile devices. On the top of the main page we can see there is a line of address with yellow background, which shows the nearest ATM and commbank branch in current position. Then, click the yellow arrow, a dynamic map  with marks of ATM and commbank branch will jump out. This app will quickly obtain the GPS data from the mobile device and point out the way to the closest destination.

There is another excellent function of this app is commbank katching. It brings a new future of mobile payment. with the help of it, you can pay anywhere and anyone with the mobile device. For example, you can pay to mobile, just given the recipient’s mobile number and they will send the recipient an SMS to notify them the payment is ready to claimed. Also, you can pay to email through giving the recipient email to commbank. and even pay Facebook friends. This app simplified the daily payment, such as you do not need to login the netbank account through your PC for transfer money to someone else. For example, now I can pay my house rent to my landlord in anywhere, and I do not need to worried about she is not at home on the due day.

depart from the Commbank Katching, the most useful tool is Netbank for mobile, it similar as the one we could use on the commbanks webpage. But, the mobile Netbank makes access to be more flexible and quicker. Due to the small screen of mobile device, if we want to see  words of the webpage clearly, we need to zoom out it. But, now more and more people choose touch screen mobile phone instead of the key board one. If you do not Zoom carefully, you may easily to touch the buttons on the screen. Especially, when you operate on the bank webpage, a wrong touch may lead to lose money. So that, the Mobile NetBank App seams to be significant to reduce such problems.

The rest two tools are Foreign Exchange Toolkit and CommSec and they both provides real-time service. For the first one, you can select the two kinds of currency, and exchange amount to see the real-time exchange. And you can mange your stocks flexibly and check the latest change of the share market.

Over all, the Commbank Mobile App combines kinds of techniques to match the rich users experiences, running above the level of single device, such as running multiple platforms, using GPS, real-time techniques.

Pattern 3: Rich User Experience

Back to 30 years ago, how could we image in these years people need to use complex commend line interface to operate the computer? Think about the black screen, almost of us will feel headache. Hence in that time, it requires high level of professional skills on operating computer. Are they user experience friendly? It is obviously not. However, thanks to the appearances of Graphical User Interface (GUI), Children, Old person, professionals, non-professionals, and anyone who has basic human awareness could operate the computer.   By the expand of web world, human was not satisfied to only active on the windows applications, more and more web applications appeared with excellent GUI design. Whether a web 2.0 application has a user experience friendly interface is become a significant standard for judging the quality of it. In this week, the post will focus on the fourth pattern-rich user experiences, and also will introduce sumo paint as an example.

SumoPaint is an online paint tools, and it looks like the Microsoft Paint, which also has tools including pencil pen erasure and so on. However, as web application, Sumopaint provides more interactions between users and itself. When user edit pictures on the Sumopaint, they will find it was designed exactly following user experiences.  To detailed describe how Sumopaint has rich user experiences; This post will explains step by step with screen shots of Sumopaint

picture 1

As the picture 1 shows above, SumoPaint provides several options for user, they can upload image from their computer, add url, and even choose the provided picture by Sumo. The multi-options are more user-friendly, users could use the online pictures without download them from the internet.

picture 2

Another easy operation provides by the Sumo is shown as Picture 2, Sumo offers hot pictures below the app windows, user just need to double-click the picture, then the Sumo will download this picture and open a work bench for this picture.

picture 3

When users finish draw, they can choose save the picture to their computer or store the picture in their Sumo Account. It is a great function, users could browse, download the picture from any device. They will never mind if they did not bring the one device that save the picture.

Picture 4

This is a web 2.0 era, share pictures to facebook friends, I think most of the users would like to do so. Therefore, Sumo provide the link with facebook, when user finish draw, why no share to their friends?

Any one who intrersterd Sumo click the link: Sumopaint

Innovation in Assembly：Google AdSense

In this week, I will move into the third pattern of web 2.0 design- Innovation in assembly. This concept may easily to be understand, which requires designing web 2.0 application with various of tools and combine them together. Therefore, the come of API (Application Programming Interface) is no doubt make the innovation in assembly design to be easily achieved. API is like a bridge to link user and web service.   with it help, users could select and combine web services for their web 2.0 design as their requirement. They are not necessary to know how does it work inside the web service, and only to understand what is used for and how to follow the API.

To demonstrate the strong power of API, in todays post I will show Google AdSense as  example. Firstly, I want to do a simple introduction for the Google AdSense. As we can see, AdSense is combined with two words, Ad and Sense, which means the related advertisement. It is said that this Google application is able to find out the related advertisement that is suitable for adding on a particular website by analyzing the content of this website. It provides an open API for developers who build their own website and are delight to permit Google to post advertisement on them. What’s more, Google will pay them once a month by the access rates.

So, why Google AdSense can keep attracting and remain successful. In my point of view, there are four reasons. Firstly, Google AdSense are well know how to attract the browsers’ eyes. Every advertisement that appears on the website is analyzed by Google. It follow the website content, IP address,  and access rate to mining the potential ad that the visitor may be interested in. Hence, it improve the efficiency of the advertisement, which gives right information to right person. Secondly, Google AdSense reduces the mount of spam. We could have experience that once we open a website, the eyeful of advertisement leads us dizziness, then we will lose interests to read the content of this website. But Google AdSense is able be remove the redundant information, and filter the efficient one. Therefore, the website will clear display the main content and advertisement. Thirdly, Google AdSense provides open API and easy to be acquired.  Any one, who has a own created website could use this API through register an account in Google, also it provides clear develop guide for developers. It easily to be acquired, and conveniently to be used. Lastly, I also think it is most attractive. Anyone who deploy the Google AdSense has opportunity to earn real money!!! The rates policy on Google AdSense can help the owner of website earn money. Every visitor in the website will be recorded as the access rates, and those rates  will be counted by Google, and when the count rise to amount to reach the $100 baseline of Google AdSense, the own will receive the revenue from Google by the end of each month. overall, more the owner created more they will earn.

 

Data is the next ‘Intel Inside’: Citibank turns to social media

“Data is the next Intel inside”- Tim O’reilly offered his second idea of the Web 2.0 design pattern and Web 2.0 applications come into a data-drive era.  It is well known that Google provides free services to users. Once those users use the services of Google with a purpose, then Google can gather data for what topics are most interested by users.  In similar way, Youtube provides the video library for users to search videos in particular category, and Amazon lists their products catalogue. All this companies used strategies to track the important data to obtain revenues.

Referring the success from those big IT companies, Citibank changed their credit card sales strategy from sending email to their existed customers to turn to the social media approach. Like Amazon and ebay, they list all types of their credit card. Customers can browser the cards through listing cards by features, such as view credit card those are most popular, has lowest interests, has no anural fees, and are students or business cards. For each type of card, they list details of this card, and if customers are interested, they could apply directly online. In addition, the web application offers the a function that customers can select up to 5 types of credit card to compare them, than to make a decision which one is most suitable. The change of credit cards sales strategy in Citibank helps them to promote their credit cards. Customers can search the card by their needs, and also the Citibank could track the customer’s interests by the data gathered from the access rates, trade records and feedbacks from customers. They successfully follow the data-drive procedure to create their web application, you will find how easy to pick your credit cards on the internet. In other way, in my experience, I never read advertisements from email, but real like to access the website to looking for what I am interested in. Therefore, I think Citibank chosen a wise way to promote their products.

If  who is interested in it please access:https://creditcards.citi.com/credit-cards/view-all-credit-cards/?m=f&ref=c1

Climate CoLab: Harnessing Collective Intelligence

In different from Web 1.0, Web 2.0 provides users with a platform for interact and communicate with each other through social media tools, such as Wikis, blogs, social networks, and video sharing. By the birth of Web 2.0, we jumped into a new era of information exchanging. While, Roma was not built in one day, until the year of 2003, the Web 2.0 technique was widely accepted  by users on the O’Reilly’s conference. In order to design success Web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media, proposed eight core patterns of Web 2.0, and these ideas are still used as core technique for design Web 2.0 in now. This post will describe one of those eight core patterns, which is Harnessing Collective Intelligence, and give one example that uses the pattern to create approach to address climate change issues.

From the lecture notes “ The key to competitive advantage in Internet applications is the extent to which users add their own data to what you provide. Therefore, harness collective intelligence by creating an architecture of participation that involves your users both implicitly and explicitly in adding value to your application.” To design a success Web 2.0 approach, initially, the structure design need to follow the harness collective intelligence to encourage users to participate this application. Climate CoLab, a web platform designed follow the pattern of harnessing collective intelligence to drive the climate change issues.

It was known that the climate change is most press and important  issue in global and     there are number of techniques base on the Internet was used for solve this press problems. However, these interactions have been incoherent and dispersed, contributions vary widely in quality. In order to deal the problem, the Climate CoLab was created as a web-mediated discussion and decision making forum. It allows all people in the world who can work with others to create the proposal for what to do about climate change. Once sign up as a member in Climate CoLab, you can create your proposal, explore and support your favorite proposal through vote function, participate in a debates on global and regions issue, see community news, join community discussion and find other members. It provide a excellent platform for addressing the climate change issues. For further understand please go to http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/community  and you will find more details about this website and understand how does it work.

Social Media Strategies

In last week, I talked about wiki strategies on IGC, in this week I will focus on how social media works on IGC. In this post, social media could work on tree process during the 34^th IGC, and three social media strategies could be introduced to assistant the congress.

Social media works on three processes

Social media could be used for internal management and external promotion during the congress periods in 2012. In addition, as the prediction of the IGC, they hope that the social media could help them to attract young scientist and students to participant. Therefore, social media could work for three processes in IGC, including assistant IGC management group for daily tasks, promote IGC to public and encourage young scientists and students to participant this event. For internal management, wiki is a good selection. As I mentioned in last week, wiki has extraordinary modification functionality, which could help the manage group to post and modify documentations and enhance the collaboration during IGC staffs. What’s more, there are many sessions during the congress period and each session would present orally, so that the speakers could use wiki to share his or her plan among internal group before the presentation. For external promotion, official website, facebook and twitter could be used. The official website provides a board to public to introduce the main propose of IGC, notice the brief content and the holding time for each exhibition. Facebook and twitter will work for public discusses and leave comments about the congress, and those suggestion will be collected for prepare next congress. To encourage the participations among young delegates and students for scientific reaching, wiki, blog, facbook and twitter could be implemented. Wiki may be used for sharing and enhancing collaborations. Blogs could provide opportunities for young delegates and students to give their own opinions in the geography area. They could also choose facebook and twitter as their communication tools, because, both of those two social media tools are flexible and easy to work on multiple platforms such as smart phones, laptops and Ipads.

Three social media strategies

1. establish marketing goals: the main purposes in this case is to encourage delegates to participant the 34^th IGC, so that implementation of social media tools mush obey the main goal of this congress.
2. find out suitable social media tools: social media tools need to be selected to make sure that they could assistant the 34^th IGC and each tool should suite for the current situation. For example, as I mentioned before, facebook is used for communicating between public and IGC. Wiki mainly regard as internal communicating tools.
3. creating events: events that sounded the IGC topic should be held through the social media tools.
4. trigger conversations: social media tools should provide assistances for communication among IGC group,  delegates and publics.

WIKI strategies

In last week’s post, I talked about how micro blogs useful is on holding IGC. In this week, another social media tool-Wiki, would be introduced to assistant the IGC daily works. In this post, wiki would be used for assistant on three processes of the IGC in achieving or tackling relevant issues. A successful wiki strategy that implemented on another organization would act as a useful example and source for using Wiki in IGC. Finally, three wiki strategies for IGC could employ to achieve some of their objectives.

 

what is wiki?

A wiki is a website that allows that the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a MYSIWYG text editor.(wikipedia)

Wiki used in IGC processes

By analyzing the case, Wiki could be used before, during and after the IGC. Before the beginning date of IGC, there will be workshops and associated events before and after the congress. As a result, a good and fast way to share opinions and assistant further discussion and researching is to implement wiki. Due to the attribute of wiki, it allows internal edit, so that latest information would be updated immediately. In addition, wiki could not only before and after the congress, but also could be used in the duration. As the description of 34th IGC, there will be 40 concurrent sessions being held, so that during this period, wiki could used as a tool of broadcasting the information about each sessions and receiving feed backs from delegates.

Wiki used on other organization

An example is The Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership uses a wiki to organize it’s conference. They used wiki to store all information about the upcoming conference, including the confirmed and potential speakers. The Wiki also provided a discussion board so that planner could post and reply message from others. In addition, wiki provided the opportunities for stuffs those who missed the conferences. Through accessing the post about the content of the meeting, they could still understand the content of the conference. What’s more, stuffs would review the content and access it at anytime and anywhere.

Three wiki strategies used in IGC

1. Keep track users: using wiki In IGC, the feedbacks come from each delegate would be the test sources for studying. Keeping tracking the response from users find out what they are interested in.

2. Manage Change: wikis are good notification tools that allow users to keep up with changes and modifications made to wiki documents of interest to them. In IGC, delegates could using wiki to changes the post content. Also, email and RSS could also cooperate with wikis for supporting collaboration.

3. Making wiki highly searchable and easy to discover information: when implement wikis in IGC, topics could be divided into parts to convenient for searching.