rolex
SSupported by cloud hosting provider DigitalOcean – Try DigitalOcean now and receive a $200 when you create a new account!

Will OMNIBUS’s Innovative Profit Model Be A Game Changer?

Listen to this article

A POCO is a new startup developing an SNS ‘OMNIBUS’. OMNIBUS’s innovative patent pending profit model lies in the online stamps. OMNIBUS is planning to collaborate with well-known artists and create special edition of stamps. Below is our interview with Minha Kim, Founder of A POCO:

MinhaKim

Q: What is your startup story?

A: Before I established A POCO in May 2015, I had spent my ten years as a journalism professor at a university in Korea. My expertise at that time was mainly about social network and news. I remember the year 2010 was a kind of turning point of my life as I firstly coined the digital concept “social content” and proposed the convergence between broadcast media and SNS to produce participatory content. Although many believe social scientists are not close to the field of IT and software programming, it is my opinion that humanities-oriented scholars are able to draw a big picture of the digital life while it is true that they are not equipped with practical programming skills. I know a lot of people around me wonder why I have quitted such a prestigious job as a professor, but I never had a regret about my decision to transform my career to become an IT leader because I do have a vision for the future to be driven by human’s creative knowledge and free will in the face of AI and robot-dominant society. That is humanistic IT that A POCO is endeavoring to embody.

Q: What were the main challenges you faced in developing the company?

A: A major hurdle is the fact that there can hardly be found a fair play rule in our society. Since there are already established IT companies, it is difficult to win them over a market share unless they try to fairly compete with small companies such as startups. It is something like the story about David and Goliath in Bible. If I lost the game as a result of having competitors conforming to fair play rules, I will completely go along with the results with no regret. However, I wouldn’t be that happy to meet the established companies that do not hesitate to commit even illegal actions to highly build the barrier to entry.

apoco-idea

Q: What is OMNIBUS and how does it work?

A: Well, there are several features of OMNIBUS that differentiate it from other SNSs. First of all, OMNIBUS is culture-mediated space-based SNS. Whereas most SNSs let individuals or groups of individuals compose social pages, a social page is composed for each of cultural spaces ranging from a variety of arts to sports in the case of OMNIBUS. This means that the number of social pages will be equal to the number of spaces in which cultural events are occurring. Those social pages are something like playgrounds for users so that they can have fun by communicating with one another, being mediated by cultural events. So far, SNS developers have lost their insight into how important a space could be in terms of social networking. It is because they regarded the Internet as a replacement of something like a phone that made long-distance connection possible. However, refreshing and energetic social relationship has always been made in a space that individuals share. People are not satisfied with long-distance calls but want to enjoy the feeling arisen by the space they share.

Secondly, what is notable about OMNIBUS is its design concept that “life is like a movie and we are the protagonists.” I came up with this concept while making an effort to think about how we as SNS developers can help general users to experience self-enhancement while connecting themselves with people via SNSs. Aligned with this design concept, OMNIBUS will present postings of users to look like a film, and we have used many movie-related icons such as slater, headset, microphone, award trophy, and spotlight.

omnibus_stamp

Q: You’ve recently submitted patent application for business model using online postage stamp; tell us something more?

A: An outstanding feature of OMNIBUS is concerned with online postage stamp, which has never been made use of in an SNS so far. The idea of online stamp popped up in my mind when I was thinking about an icon to give rise to analogue sentiment in seemingly too digitized world. Think about what kind of role a postage stamp played in the offline world in the past. It was a kind of proof of communication and we were likely to collect all the stamps we used. Being hinted by this old trend, I thought it would be amazing to use online stamp as an icon in OMNIBUS. Furthermore, I devised a profit model by using this online stamp in the way that users receive stamps when they get points in return for their de facto contribution to viral marketing of cultural events. They can then exchange with a free ticket to view cultural events when they have collected enough numbers of online stamps to meet the price. We will also sell our flagship stamps as well as extraordinary versions of stamps by collaborating with well-known artists to decorate the stamps with a variety of beautiful images.

a-poco

Q: What are your plans for next six months?

A: I do have a next item to work on after launching OMNIBUS in spring 2016 and make sure everything with it works well. That is about developing text-art commerce platform application. I try to regard news as a text art similar to books, and will attempt to convert it to paid content. What is key to the success of this business is to develop a brand new media so as to minimize possible resistance of consumers who have been tamed with free access to news via portal websites. Starting from the text art, I am planning to expand the commerce app to deal with all kinds of cultural contents. I have already named the app; STOA. In the ancient Greece, STOA was something like a public shelter to exchange news and opinion, a gallery to display artistic works, and a market to sell commodities. Wouldn’t it be great to observe STOA to be reborn in the digitized world?

Activate Social Media:
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin
,
Mercedes-Benz-EQS