I’m supposed to write this entry hours ago, but couldn’t find time to do till now (I’m not working that hard, but I need to catch up with my social life after the facebook assignment :D).
I will talk about Causes, Pet Society (this doesn’t mean I don’t like other teams’ presentations, it’s just I don’t have any question/strong feeling about them).
1. Causes
For the app Causes, I was impress by their design, it looks damn simple, elegant and the most important thing, I feel it’s integrated into facebook’s canvas. I think this is the key to their success. Their design “copy” facebook so good that I thought it was developed by facebook when I first saw it (well, at least the developers were facebook ex-employees). The idea is not new, it must be implemented by someone/some organizations before, but it worked out quite well for Causes, they received more than 7 million USD of donation so far (don’t know if the figure is up-to-date or not).
The team’s suggestion to put top 5 applications seems to contradict with what they said earlier. They said this app helps to distribute the wealth to small organization, because currently 80% of the donation goes to 20% of the organization, which is clearly unfair. So put the top 5 only attracts more people to donate for those top 5. Rich gets richer, poor get poorer. I think the design is ok for now, just keep it that way. When users feel that they’re using an app written by facebook (which Causes is trying to do, I think), they would feel more comfortable to donate (psychology). They just need to come out with some new features for the app, or launch it in more countries (currently it only supports US/Canada). Which feature they need to add in? Frankly I don’t know, haven’t thought about it. If I have a good idea on this, I might consider it for my final project :P.
2. Pet Society
Move on to Pet Society, first thing, it’s a dumb game (no offense). Stupid, time consuming game, and 6 million users are playing it. I’m not surprise by this figure, actually there’re millions of users have so much free time, and they need something to kill time. So Pet Society (or other dumb games) to the rescue. It’s very addicting once you play it for a while. Actually this concept is what we are looking for when we did the 1st assignment. We want our app to be dumb, and easy to play (and have roughly 6 million users haha). Playfish did very well for dumb games, all the games look so cute, and their style is consistent through all the game (surprisingly they are developed by different game studio, all belong to Playfish. I thought all the designs were done by one team). We did include this point in our presentation (Geo Challenge, in case you don’t remember). This helps users jump from 1 game to another one quickly, so they have around 24-30 million users, but I estimate half of them are being counted as least twice (just my guess).
The only bad thing about Playfish games in general is that they’re not real time updated. I know there are million of users and it would be a pain (in term of server load) to do real time game, but that’s what they should do to attract new users and keep the old ones. Not everyone is the competitive kind of people (likes Monica, if you guys watch FRIENDS), so if there’s no interact between users, they get bored after a while. Real time update could be a killer feature for all the games, and make it even more successful. I think the current technology is strong enough to support the updating process (just add in more server, or hire Dr Ben as their networking consultant :P).
You may notice that I only comment on the apps, but not the teams presented. Well, they all did a good job (including my group, of course :P), so there’s redundant to talk about any of the team here :P. Ah btw they’re just good, but not excellent. An excellent presentation would be something like this:
So you get the idea :P.
P/S: Dr Ben, I didn’t mean to be rude to you during our presentation, and I’m sorry if you think I was :-). One more thing, the browser is just a stupid tool to follow whatever you click/submit, therefore a web bot is possible with any website. Facebook is no exception, just that it’s complex and take time to read and understand all the codes :-P.
Dr Ben, I didn’t mean to be rude to you during our presentation, and I’m sorry if you think I was :-).
You were rude meh? I dun recall. :-)
Thanks for putting up the ipod presentation!
I think I learnt alot on how to present when watching it…
You know during presentation I’m always very stressed when people don’t react to what I say.. But Steve Jobs still goes on with confidence even with minimal interaction with the audience.. I think I must learn that.. >_<
And thanks for all your questions during class, you’ve really opened my eyes to the bot-ing world… ^_^
Dr Ben,
I thought I was :D, so it’s okie now.
Weiman,
Steve’s presentations to me is really a piece of arts. I spent hours to watch his presentation :-P. He’s one of the best, I think, it’s like magic haha
There is something about causes that I never understood…as said during the presentation, not everyone can donate to causes…so the only thing ppl are doing by joining some cause is making the app more popular and forming a group that supports the cause….but do they do something more than just donate money or remain as causes app users ?
Seems like a lot of words with little action….Among all the app requests i receive, causes and slayers are the maximum…
“So put the top 5 only attracts more people to donate for those top 5. Rich gets richer, poor get poorer.”
I’m glad u brought up this point! Yes, top 5 is great for other apps, but in this case there shouldn’t be a top 5 list! It’s not very fair to the other causes already struggling to get the attention of the population!
Hmm.. I’d personally say it’s hard to compare steve job’s presentation to ours. No doubt we’re a lot more inexperienced, but one of the reasons why he’s so confident when presenting the iPod is because he’s presenting from first hand knowledge. The iPod is his baby. He should know everything about it cos they would have been working on it continuously for months, and doesn’t need to research for second hand info on it! It’s a personal pride thing haha.. Imagine going up to present your app today. I betcha (if you had been working on it for months non stop!) you’d be super proud to show it off, and would have spent ages thinking about how to present your app in the best way possible to you potential market. Different, isn’t it?
But that being said, yes. He’s a great presenter. He’s still not the best, but he’s really good, and someone we can really learn from! :D
Hui Hui,
He’s still not the best, but he’s really good, and someone we can really learn from!
So perhaps tell us more: who in your mind is the best? :-P
Dun say me hor! You won’t get brownie points. :-)
> dhiviya
I don’t understand how facebook calculates the number of active users, maybe you just need to visit once in a while to be counted.
Among all the app requests i receive, causes and slayers are the maximum…
Interesting, I never receive any Causes invitation before..
> huihui
Hmm I think Steve’s presentations are far beyond what we have. Not only he has the firsthand info, but he has an exceptional good present skill. If you don’t believe me, go to youtube and search for Steve’s presentations, and compare with the newest one of Apple’s Senior VPs. Nvm I did it for you:
Steve’s presentation in 2008:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yOKGKsdY-VI (follow all the parts if you want to continue, there’re 9 parts).
Phil Schiler’s presentation in 2008:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oPtv4iuB29k
They talk about similar topics, and I found Phil sucks (compare to Steve).
Jason, you’re really bewitched by Steve Jobs and Apple… hahaa…
Btw, just to clarify the “Top 5″ thing in my group’s improvement. I meant to say that there can be many sorting criteria for the “Top 5″. It can be most number of users; least number of money etc.
Interestingly, there’s a Web 2.0 website called MakeFive now that works on the Top 5 concept.
So, anyway, this will result in the lesser known causes to be amplified, instead of the current interface.
Lastly, adding in this simple feature still stick well with the “simple and clean” theme of Causes. =)
Btw, i admire Steve Jobs for his coolness in his explanation. But that’s because he’s selling Ipod.
I would really want to see how Steve, one of the greatest salesman ever, sell Vista.
If he can achieve similar effect, then I’ll KNEEL DOWN before him, hahaa..
>KM: You think he would approve a product like Vista? He’s damn selective!!! 1 more thing is that he really knows his baby, every single one (iPod, iPhone, Macbook, OS X,…). I bet he spends more efforts to learn about the products themselves more than his counterpart @ Microsoft.
Hi, thanks for introducing such a good presenter to us.
Got somethings to ask you abt bots:
“a web bot is possible with any website.”
What is the best way to prevent ppl from bot-ting?
Is there a one simple way?
Hi Abel,
CAPTCHA is the way to go. It’s annoyed for users though.
dhiviya
they cant do anything more than just being active users or donate money…
thats the whole point of using the causes app in the 1st place.
By suggesting the top 5 causes, I think we’re stealing idea somehow. It’s good, but perhaps it’s not yet adjusted to fit the context.
Usually we see the ‘top/current/ongoing/watching N things’ idea from entertainment sites (like Youtube), buy/sell sites (Amazon), or forums (hot posts).
If we implement ‘top donated causes’, as you said it’s not fair here, because a cause is not a product or a show, whichever good should be recommended.
I think we can change it to show something a little oposite like: causes that need more donation, or the causes relating to what the current user previously donated on.
About Steve Jobs’s presentation, in my opinion, it’s quite different in the following aspects:
- content, he had the firsthand information (as Hui Hui said)
- audience, almost all of the audience are fans of Mac and they would strongly support the presentation
(in our case, we even doubt of what others say)
- presenter, he’s the *CEO* of Apple, less or more, the audience would believe the presentation is good,
(like in literature, almost every words a popular poet said is a piece of art, although it’s not totally new)
Let’s imagine if you were in his situation..
Btw, though I’m neutral (not a Macboy) but I still spend hours to watch these superb speeches.
The presentation is really good, and not so similar to ours.
>Khoa,
I think we can change it to show something a little oposite like: causes that need more donation, or the causes relating to what the current user previously donated on.
Ya, there are many ways to implement it, but from my view, donation is volunteer, so why don’t you let people pick the organization. Any impression on a particular organization is unfair :P.
About Steve, I’m not trying to say that we must present that way, I just did a quick comparison so you guys know my standard :-). All the thing you said about Steve is right, except for the last one
- presenter, he’s the *CEO* of Apple, less or more, the audience would believe the presentation is good
Search for Steve Ballmer’s presentations, see how they are. Not all CEOs perform the same :-P.
Ya, there are many ways to implement it, but from my view, donation is volunteer, so why don’t you let people pick the organization. Any impression on a particular organization is unfair :P
You’re right. So maybe it would be ‘Random causes’, if we implement it.
Search for Steve Ballmer’s presentations, see how they are. Not all CEOs perform the same :-P.
Yeah, I know what u mean. My point is that CEOs’ words must, more or less, be more convincing than normal people’s, including we student.