Strengths
Passive check in – I will use a system that reacts to the user, prompting what are regular “check ins” on current apps but are the starting of a memory event in mine, the user then reacts and an event is created. The user accepting or rejecting these events enables an ability for the app to learn patterns from the user, when, where and who events are made with. If you are working late at university with friends it may prompt you to tweet about your work and add a memory, tagging as projects/work/university or if you’re out for dinner it may prompt you to take a picture or video and make a dinning out memory. Memories are specific or enclosed into certain categories they are just tagged to make it easier to search for later, this often helps when no text or reference is added.
Privacy – A lot of social networks are data farms but that’s not what this is about. Privacy should be good and easy for users to understand and thats why i’ll split it into three easy options. First are links shared to social networks, this allows anyone who can access this link the ability to view its content but that’s it, you cant see anything else even if they have posted to social networks before, you would need to dig out that link again to view previous content. The other options are either to share your events to all of your friends in app or the default and encouraged option is for only the people involved to be able to view events.
Cross platform including desktop/webapp – Trying to one up on the competition and create a place to view all of your saved memories/events on bigger screens. Creating desktop/webapp allows for different functionality that mobiles cant provide. People always have there mobiles with them so its a perfect tool to aid documentation but such small screens don’t offer much when sharing these memories. You want to view pictures and video at there full detail and seamlessly read about events with ease, I hope to provide this with web and desktop apps.
Different to current apps – Some app’s are good for checking in(Facebook, Foursquare), other for posting or sharing photos( Instagram, Facebook) and there are apps out there to remind you to do all these things but nothing that really does it all at once, looks pretty and has an awesome web/desktop app to go along with it. Memolane is an Web-App that works with some of the strengths i am looking for but it is just an aggregation of data, i want to produce a single stop shop for people to use.
Better ways of viewing than current solutions – Almost all current apps in the same vein work on a timeline basis and are always showing the latest event but older memories get buried. I’m looking to implement a system that encourages tagging and including more text with pictures/video to help for finding them later. Navigating to a friends page will show you all of the memories you have together, your most common at the top. Splitting events into categories allows you to group events together and see more rather than always scrolling from the most recent events.
Weaknesses
Geo-Location - People may not like the idea the app needs to know your location often to work.
Learning Period – Takes time for the app to learn about the user and work to its maximum potential. To know when, who and where before prompt then rather than all the time, this may take some time and the user will have to reject some prompts maybe even a few time before it will be more accurate. This is a hard feature to work on so will take some ironing out, this process may be sped up with an adjustment to setting by the user whenever they add a new friend.
Pushy - Using push notifications can be tricky business, there is a fine line between perfectly timed notifications and getting too many too often. Opportunities Integration – There is always opportunities for new apps to be taken up quickly and become highly integrated into current social networks or web app’s.
Getting featured – Getting some free attention can be a massive boost to any new app, so being featured on the App store/Mac App store/ Google Play marketplace would be amazing for my product.
Reviews - Reviews from tech guru’s can make a massive difference so putting in the work prior to release and spreading details far and wide to popular reviewers and tech guru’s online can help create hype and boost popularity.
Threats
Similar Apps – The biggest threat to my app is Other apps that can provide similar services that are either already established or may be in production or even come out after and gain a large following. Current threats would be – Path, Instagram, Flock and Memolane I’ll exam these in my assessment of three competitors although i know none of them provide a complete solution and not with the same functionally i would produce.
Change in technology - Any changes to both common place tech in mobile devices or laws allowing their use could be a disaster for my app. I rely on the ability of phones to use location based services.