Facebook Seminar
The Facebook seminar was an eye opener for me. Regardless whether is our group’s preparation before the seminar or hearing all other group present during the seminar. It brings me closer to sth that is Business.
Both my cousins took/is taking Business in university, and me being the odd one out is taking Computer Science. I have never taken Business module or really planned to take one. This is because am not the outgoing kind or eloquent person, so Business was never the choice for me. That’s why I am actually quite ignorant in regards to Business.
From the whole process of Facebook seminar, I learnt that business needs a lot of partnerships and supporters. It is impossible to be an island. Regardless of how unoriginal, how ugly or how meaningless your product is, it will sell if you know how to use the right way to get to the audience and make them addicted.
What is the element to attract so many audiences? Some say a product will sell if you are the first to come out with the product. From the Facebook seminar, we see that it is not true. Not as though the follower made the product better that made their product sell, there are many reasons behind it.
First is to find the right platform to get people to advertise for you. These people may not be the willing ones; they may just victims who advertise for you unknowingly. Second is to attract people emotionally, exploit their curiosity, ego and sympathy. But I believe the session is not to teach us to be evil; rather then make us see the market world’s reality.
Flixster Presentation Review
What a topic to assign me to. When Orry the presenter said, “Who don’t watch movies? Everyone does.” (I don’t rmb the exact words, but just the meaning) I would like to answer to this question, I don’t.
To be exact, I don’t go cinema and watch the latest movies that are shown. I watch from television and maybe internet. And I prefer dramas than movies. Not that I like long shows, dili deli shows will scare me off too. And I don’t watch a lot of English shows. Don’t make me watch one without any subtitles, cos I may not be able to understand cos of their heavy accent…
Flixster is an app I will never add, if not for Facebook seminar. I think the main reason is that it is pertaining to movies in America. So it is not very relevant in Singapore’s context. Even though I have 76 friends who added this application, I don’t see many active users; in fact I only see 3 ppl who reviewed/rated the movies and 2 of them are my classmates from CS3216, i mean recently... The quizzes seem quite popular, but I am not sure when they have taken it. The quizzes reminded me of Likeness.
Well, what attacts people to Flixster, particular to those who watch western movies is the truth that there are many ppl who watch movies. And like the presentation has mentioned, it is a really a one-stop shop for who, what, when, where. Who as in which friends want to watch which shows, as a result, u can find friends who have the same interest as you and watch the movie together. What as in synopsis, ratings etc. One thing not mentioned in the presentation is there are movie trailers! I personally like that. When as in when is the movie showing and where as in where it is showing. And it has a nice user friendly interface. However like many of the apps there are advertisements. One of the advertisements I see is Mafia Wars, I think that is one place Mafia wars gets its users, explaining its unreasonable high user rate. One thing in particular (see print screen below), is Mafia Wars accurate advertise themselves as Mob Wars, but when I click it, it leads me to Mafia Wars!
And like what is mentioned in the presentation, this app is independent of Facebook, so even Facebook collapse it is not affected. This is good cos it doesn’t need to relay on Facebook to survive. But I doubt Facebook will ever collapse in the near future.
Probably we can bring this over to the Chinese market. I try to search online for Flixster in Chinese edition but couldn’t find… If Flixster can partner with the cinemas and ppl can actually order tickets from there would even better.
Well, aren't you glad you didn't come to Business? I'm here and it sucks big time. I know many of people transferring out of Business. I don't think as many try to get out of SoC ;)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if I open my own company (or when I do ;), I'd like it to be an island, or perhaps an entire continent (ok, I know Australia is both). A huge island with ties to other islands/ lands.
The Biz world is rather dark lor... But I think I would have to learn a bit of Biz related stuff when I go out to the industry. Probably CS3216 is the best place to learn about it, right before I graduate.
ReplyDeleteHaha. I knew of someone who escaped from SoC to go Biz. Looks like he is doing quite well there.
Why the choice of location, an island? Singapore is an island too mah. Enlighten me, businesswoman...
I was talking to one of my seniors the other day, and he said that in the past, SoC was really a dumping ground for people who couldn't get into Business, Science, etc. I found that surprising. When I told him that most of the people I've met in my first year (i.e.: now) have been good, passionate programmers, he told me that I haven't been around enough. Says it's improving, though, so I'm not sure.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think?
Inevitably, different faculties have different admission requirements. Then those with lower requirements would be said as dumping grounds.
ReplyDeleteSoC a dumping ground or not aside, the truth is that surviving in SoC is not easy, the staff and students have to work very hard. SoC courses are known to project heavy. This kind of devil-style training is likely to aimed to ensure that students graduate as useful ppl.
haha... this is so interesting. There are so many people around me who seem to think that SoC is a torturing hell and tried very hard to switch away from SoC but just couldn't. Mainly because their CAP is too low to switch course, but it's not their fault as not many people can think like a programmer....
ReplyDeleteI think SoC is full of brilliant people, far better than any one in any of the aforementioned facs. It's just not very popular since everything moves so quickly in this field you keep having to keep up (and as Prof Ben says, it isn't possible). That intimidates people because they can't rise up to that challenge. You guys in SoC have to :P And that's pretty admirable.
ReplyDeleteI switched TO SoC from science..
ReplyDeleteI hated maths.
Orry
@Orry: SoC got Maths too, esp Computer Science...
ReplyDeleteArts would be a better choice if u want to avoid Maths.
@All: SoC is indeed a dumping ground when I came in but it was my first eh.. 2nd choice in NUS. (My first choice was computer engineering and I was rejected because of my lousy cmi A level grades)
ReplyDeleteI see a lot of people struggle in CS1101 and CS1102 and I personally seen people dropout from the course because they couldn't understand and do not have the passion for it. And @Shannon, you don't see SoC people transfer out because CS1101 and CS1102 killed the CAP of those students already.. And ironically, you need to have good CAP to transfer course. Well I mean, if you have a good CAP, you should be more 'passionate' about the course right? If you do not, this means you can't cope right? This also applies to the hall admission criteria too.. People who stay too far wasted a lot of time on traveling and maybe got drained out and didn't do well for their papers. So they would need to stay on campus right? But they can't.. WEIRD!
Anyway, I'm in IS and I'm taking business and IT related modules. Personally I still prefer IT modules to business modules because in school, it's very hard to simulate the actual business scenario and more often than not, you are doing a very scaled down project which doesn't add value at all. (Maybe this is why shannon thinks biz is not good) For IT modules, although it's also scaled down, but everything you do and code can be kept as part of your library and next time it can be useful for your job. But I think you should really go take some business module to expose yourself. But oops you are in year 4 and there's no more chance..
Anyway it's really possible to learn business stuff in SoC, go IS or EC major. Personally I prefer CS stuff but IS seems to be more relevant to the outside world.. (IMO.. dun flame me)
Oh and oops.. About your take on Flixster.. Hmm.. no comments.. :P
- Hong Jun
interesting discussion here :D
ReplyDeleteNever choose computing as an alternative: either the first choice or dun choose it. if it is not your personal interest, better keep away from it otherwise you will die. we can suffer well because we have the motivations based on interest and really enjoy the suffering of programming hahaha :D
@Hong Jun:
"Personally I prefer CS stuff but IS seems to be more relevant to the outside world.. (IMO.. dun flame me) "
arrrhhhh~~~~~~~ /*shake hands*/
but after taking 4 IS mods this sem, I realize the business stuff taught by SOC lecturers is totally different from what I learned in biz mods. and honestly I don't really like the former :(
the knowledge we are taught is very general. in order to get it specific you then need to do a case study as the term project. I'm not sure how much I can really learn from that.
@Xialin: Haha.. Well actually I also prefer CS stuff, but I don't know why I clicked on IS when I chose my stream. Anyway, low level IS modules seems useless, actually a lot of IS modules are useless. The only IS modules that I find useful are those which requires you to liaises with outside companies to do your project. You will learn a lot there.
ReplyDeleteBut the reason why I'm in CS3216 is because I still love programming and I want to study something I like before leaving NUS.. Ha..
- Hong Jun