Giving back

I have always looked with awe at how some people changed the world with their ideas, values and activities with little wealth and power. Names like Martin Luther King, Mahatma Ghandi, Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa readily come to mind. In the younger generation we have people like  Salman Khan of the Khan Academy, who run non-profit ventures aimed at improving lives and adding a lot of value to the world.

Truth is, its pretty easy to drive change when you have money like Bill Gates does with his foundation or in authority like the leaders of the BRIC have done in their respective countries but what happens when you don't have either. What do you do when all you’ve got is your brain, your heart and your will. I’m a strong believer in giving back.

For me it is when you open someone eyes to discover what you already have, giving a lecture to inspire others to greatness, sharing your experience for others to learn from, providing leadership for social change, creating platforms for development and many more.

In our society today, even the very privileged ones find it difficult to contribute to improving the lives of the less privileged or helping them succeed. Companies would rather sponsor entertainment shows than educational initiatives and scholarships. But alas, the internet and its accompanying possibilities have made it easier to affect the lives of so many people without having so much.

The conviction that one can give back without great wealth and power has birthed “The Odunayo Initiative”. The Odunayo Initiative is a non-profit organization with a mission to improve lives using technology. The focus is currently limited to helping young minds develop their potential and maximize their talent to further widen the circle of positive influence. You can learn more here.

I believe that when we take time to think of the good of others, the world will be a better place for all. 

In the digital age; Content Reigns Supreme! - 1

Content holds sway in todays information age. In fact content is the blood of any form of web or mobile based service. Probably the most defining factor for the success of such services.

Never in history has there been so much demand for instant information.  This has led platforms which promise to provide relevant information thrive. Many examples include Information Portals (Games/Apps stores, News, Jobs, Directories, Reviews), Social Networks, Communities, Forums, News Sites etc

Sources of Content

As mentioned  in my earlier post “CLIF  - A guide to product development “, content could be manually uploaded (news site), user generated (twitter), tapped (rss) or crawled/autogenerated (Google search) etc. The key is to figure out how to generate that useful, relevant and probably structured content.  

Content is big business

Internet giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo all started out by trying to help people find information. Google and Yahoo helped people find more relevant information, Facebook helped students find information about each other and Twitter helped people broadcast snippets of information updates.

Day by day these giants seek to expand their content base by building technologies that’ll help people create, access and share various types of content knowing fully well that when they do they’ll keep traffic coming and then monetise that.

What makes content sell

People want their content fast, locally relevant, useful and fresh always. Any content model must meet these user needs or there will be no attachment to such service.

The place of Innovation

You can’t really have innovation regarding content itself. Its out there for you to grab, it could be free or require some fee to acquire but the real innovation lies in the “how” of gathering and presentating information using strategic and technological means to make it more relevant and useful to users.

In part 2 I’ll share more points on monetizing content, making content local and relevant  and some ideas. Cheers

CLIF: A guide to Product Development

I recently had a phone interview with one of the giant internet companies and was asked how I'ld design & implement a web product that provides users some kind of info. I didn't answer as well as I felt I could with my experience creating and implementing software applications to date hence my decision to write this.

The points listed below prove useful for both software developers, product designers and those who do both. They serve well for all kinds of technology products from web sites to mobile apps & more. I'll use one of the hottest products of the last decade to elaborate: Facebook.

CLIF stands for Content, Look & Feel, Implementation & Features.

• Content - It's the blood of your product - probably the most defining factor of your product's success. It is what the user consumes by making use of your product, what they keep coming back for. It could be manually uploaded (news site), user generated (facebook), tapped (rss) or autogenerated (Google search) etc. But you've got to figure out how to generate that useful, relevant and probably structured content. One big reason why Facebook is so successful is because the content is ever fresh and mostly authentic.

• Look & Feel - Its the skin of your product - content is very important but it must be well presented. Your product look & feel describes concepts such as the user experience, graphic & theme design etc. It determines the frequency of visits, interaction & recommendations you'll get from your users. It's very important to keep it simple, easy to understand or use and as fast as possible to access and navigate to the most used areas. Facebook has a cool user experience (thats why it overtook MySpace and co) with a consistent blue theme.

• Implementation - this covers the tools and technology you'll require to develop the product. It also involves the process and timeline to implement the features outlined in the point below and in what comes first and what next. Things to consider include scalability, maintainability and cost of the technology to be used. Its the brain behind your product. Technologies used at Facebook include C/C++,Java, Python,, Linux, MySQL, PHP and more.

• Features: well this is the spine of your product. These are the functions your provide the user with in order to interact with your content. The features you provide depend heavily in the kind of content you serve and how the user consumes that content. Different apps allow users to save, share, comment, review, recommend, search, vote, filter through the content provided. Facebook is ever engaging because of the features that allow people to connect, share and interact with friends such as likes, comments, suggestions, recommendations, tag etc.

There you have it! Keep CLIFfing. :-)