Social Productivity

So what is Social Productivity? Getting things done yourself, and largely with other people.

Some of the goals you accomplish will be more mundane than lofty, like crossing something off a to-

do list instead of organizing a new community. Social Productivity will borrow design patterns from the

social web and enterprise tools. It’s a combination of Personal Productivity and Collaboration that em-

powers people.

Young professionals often need a helping hand in managing their hectic life. It is no surprise

then that the average time spent on scheduling and productivity apps has increased by 119% from

2013 to 2014 (Kalaf, 2014). In order to keep up with the needs of the consumer, developers have cre-

ated a plethora of calendar applications that focus on organizing user information. However, this mar-

ket saturation means that the ability to efficiently keep track of information is no longer a differentiator

– it is a requirement. Thus the value proposition is in the ability to utilize data to improve the lives of

the end user. The app is built on this premise.

The business model is built around the idea of connecting users to businesses through the

event recommendation algorithm.

App Description

Event Recommendation

Users Analytics Platform

Restaurants, Schools, com-munity organizations, and companies create an event on our event planning and analytics platform.

Data from events are an-alyzed and recommended to the each user based on their individual prefer-ences.

Data is gathered and processed to give businesses a better under-standing of their customer base so they can create events that is specifically catered to their cus-tomers.

This approach emphasizes the virtuous cycle that is inherent in our business model. As we gain

more users, we will have more data on our users which would allow businesses to better understand

their customer base. This would allow businesses to specifically cater to their customers which would

improve their events and draw more businesses to our application. Increasing business use will provide

more events with which would provide a better selection of events which we can recommend to our

users.

Core Features

Our goals is helping users easily schedule events with friends by matching empty slots in the

user’s schedule and easily find the events based on their location and interest.

1. Superior Design geared towards the User’s social life

2. Schedule Matching

3. Easily create events

4. Event Recommendation

5. Business Analytics Platform

Most calendar applications in the market do not focus on the social aspects of the calendar in-

stead they focus on the user interface and natural language processing to make it easier for users to

input data. While these features do separate them from the built-in calendars that comes with the

phone, it is not enough to separate them from others in the market as these features have become in-

dustry standard.

This app builds on these industry standards and brings the calendar into the social realm. Our

platform will allow the user to create groups with other users. Once these groups are created, our algo-

rithm will determine the time slot in which the majority of the members are free. This platform removes

the pain of working through each person’s schedule to plan events. After the free slot is determined,

our recommendation algorithm will provide a list of activities and events around the area. Users can

then decide whether they want to take our recommendation or create an event of their own with the

knowledge that the people in their group will be free during that time slot..

Market Background

The market for mobile applications is currently worth $41 billion and is expected to grow to

$101 billion by 2020 (figure 1). Right now, with

over a billion smartphones sold in 2015 the use

of mobile apps is only going to grow. Further,

with an average smartphone user spending 30

hours a month on more than two dozen applica-

tions shows the integration of mobile applica-

tions in consumer’s daily lives (Clifford, 2014).

There is a growing trend towards using mobile

applications to better communicate, work and

organize to enhance consumer productivity.

As of 2014, North America continues to lead the app economy both in terms of total revenue

generated from sales within the region and output. Therefore, Our target audience is going to be the

US consumers between the ages 22 and 35. This age group represents the tech savvy population that

lead busy lives and are more open to experimenting with new products that can enhance productivity

leading to a better social life. The application will be launched on both the IOS and Android platform

but the efforts for app awareness will be focused on the North American market with potential to ex-

pand reach internationally in the future. In addition, the target audience is not just limited to the 22-35

age group, we anticipate users to schedule family events and integrate with the company calendars to

organize social events more effectively based on everybody’s schedule.

Target Market and Distribution

Competition

As there are already a lot of calendar applications, this is a competitive market but with our dis-

tinctive features, we believe we will be able to stand out in front of our competitors. Since there are a lot

of applications in the market, we have considered only those apps which have a specific differentiator

and are not just simple calendars. Most of these applications are available on both Android and IOS

freely. A select few of these are: Cal, Tempo, TimeTree, UpTo, and Sunrise.

With such intense competition, it is expected that incumbents at-

tempt to differentiate themselves. However, upon closer inspection, all

these differentiators fall into two categories: Improving user interface and

more efficient uses of software to increase personal productivity. As it stands, no market incumbent has

created a social networking experience for their users. The reason for this is that these companies fall

into what we define as First Wave Calendar Apps.

This first wave ended with the acquisition of

Sunrise for $100 Million by Microsoft in 2015. With this

acquisition, the market for calendar applications is now

more mature and any new applications that have the

characteristics above will not be able to succeed. However, with the introduction of Calendars such as

UpTo which allows users to share their schedule, we are seeing the emergence of the second wave of

calendar apps. And it is in this second wave that we currently operates.

Figure 1: Worldwide mobile app revenues in 2015

Market Characteristics

The app market is subject to high competition with over 3.2 million apps available on different app

stores and a very large base of mobile app developers (PRNewswire, 2015). But most of the applications

are focused on the consumer apps with significant opportunities in the business and productivity app

market. We leverages the social network with the organization capability of the calendar to enhance so-

cial productivity making it an attractive market segment to develop. We expect with the growing trend to-

wards business and lifestyle productivity coupled with a large user base of the social networking apps (32

percent) will facilitate smooth user adoption of our app. The mobile app market is also limited in terms of

barriers to entry from other developers. However, we will be able to leverage our first-mover advantage to

develop a strong network of users. The network will help shield us from other imitators as people will be

more likely to stay on our platform once they are used to the app.

Demo