(10) Paypal + Updates on Final Project

Today's sharing was by Paypal's Lawrence and Prof Anderson on data security. Lawrence breezed through his work at Paypal and gave us his take on monetizing our ideas. This was the feedback for our group:

1. Paid widgets
2. Tickets for livestream of paid events (work with event organizers)
3. Product placement adverts

(2) is pretty cool. We have not really thought of making specific events private for certain event organisers and make it like having a ticket. This will really be amazing if there's a market for it. Imagine, livestream ticket sales for Taylor Swift concert. It targets on people who are more budgeted (e.g poor students like me) yet wants to have the closest thing to actual live. And the chat widgets will allow these online viewers to interact amongst themselves. I'm pretty sure this is a market that is untapped. It will be profitable for the companies as well because the margins is quite attractive + can sell merchandise online as well, just have to put in effort for live filming so that nothing goes wrong. There will not be seats issue, and people can join anytime they want to, even buying the online livestream ticket 1 min before the show or even when it's ongoing! This can attract many spontaneous and last minute purchases as it maximises the buying time for people.

Final project updates

Hiccups along the way.

(1) Definition of competitors

This got me thinking. How do we actually define who are our competitors? 

I was frustrated with myself when my group actually got stuck at this fundamental question. We got stuck because we were thinking about who else offered the same services as we did. Then things like "But we are completely a new idea, so technically speaking we don't have competitors!" pops up and I'M LIKE "NO". and YET I didn't know how to put myself across clearly in explaining this question then. I went home to think, and this was my verdict in defining competitors-- competitors are the ones who are serving your customers.

I came up with a simple thought process of knowing who's your competitors.

- Who are your target audience?

- How are you going to get them?

- WHERE are you getting them? 

The 3rd question is the most crucial. WHERE. Not geographical wise, but which other services are they using now and you can provide them with more, so they will switch over to us. Then think of your core product/service. For us, our idea's core is events video streaming, and therefore competitors would be Twitch and Youtube and not our widgets like Twitter and chat rooms. 

(2) UX

Lol. We spent like 1.5 hours debating whether to provide layout templates. There's very different perspective of what's easy or difficult for the user. Shall see what's the feedback on Wed consultation.

aww double chin never looked so cute hahahaha