Appendix "Book Exchange"

Books I still read paper. Useful, interesting, boring, smart, stupid, in any case, it becomes clear only after reading them. Some books are constantly re-read, others are good, only the first time, there are those who want to burn. Anyway, the bookshelves in the apartment are not rubber, and over time you begin to think about where to put your read books, which, by the way, can be very necessary and interesting to someone.

VKontakte application consists of three parts:

Bookshelf (I column) - a list of books that the user is willing to exchange or give away for free.
Waiting list (II column) - a list of books that the user wants to read. Here is the interesting function of "coincidence". When a user from your city adds a book that is on your waiting list, you receive an alert. The name of the book can not be written, indicating only the name and surname of the author, in which case you will be notified of all the books that appeared by this writer.
News (III column) - a list of books of your city and a book of friends.

Programming

One friend designed the interface, the other drew the logo. I began to program. Having a great experience in creating websites, I came across Action Script for the first time. The iframe of the application was fundamentally rejected - it was interestingly Flash technology with all its pluses and minuses. I cursed her a couple of times, but in general I didn’t regret my choice. Work on the project was carried out mainly at the weekend, after the main work in the office and it took me 6 long months.
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The main difficulty was sending a modified image to the server. After several days of viewing examples and reading various forums, I came across the function of modifying and sending an image. And here I was waiting for the first difficulty. The fact is that if you reduce the image using the transformation matrix, with a reduction ratio of <0.5 (that is, a reduction of more than 2 times), then in all browsers except IE, the image becomes grainy. And this is despite the fact that anti-aliasing is enabled, and the quality of the flash drive is set to maximum. Interestingly, when you start a movie from a flash drive, as well as when you start a flash drive from under IE, the reduction occurs correctly for any factor. The solution was a phased image reduction.

Tips:
1) Subscribe to all possible errors. And when deleting elements from the scene, everything else needs to reset the variable that refers to it and unsubscribe from all listeners.
2) Do the process of obtaining important data in the form of a chain, that is, until you have received one portion - do not start receiving the second, etc., otherwise users will try to use some function without even realizing that the application is not operational.
3) Make a preloader at the very beginning of your project!

Monetization

We wanted to make the book more accessible, with all the ensuing consequences. Objectives are certainly noble, but we also did not forget about monetization. The idea was simple and fashionable - “Pay what you want” for the book you received. Of course, this function is not mandatory, there is no minimum amount either, at least 1 vote. In this case, the developers receive 50% of the votes transferred through their application, and the amount reaches the addressee in full, there is no commission. But, while we were making the application, VKontakte, in its merciless war against spam and viruses, sterilized it to such an extent that it killed everything, even the useful microbes of its body. He forbade the transfer of votes to other users through the application. I had to forget about monetization for a while, however, they should soon open an API for gifts.

A formal expression of gratitude is still there. You can say thanks by clicking on the same button in the application. After that, someone you have thanked increases the rating, and your number of received books increases.

User rating = number of books returned / number of books received

This is perhaps the only more or less playing moment that is so necessary in applications and which we were able to squeeze out of the act of exchanging books. Soon there will be ratings and general statistics, which should be a little fun users.

Promotion

Here VKontakte also tried. Now, in order to see which applications are installed with your friends, you will need 3 clicks, earlier for this, clicks were not required at all - all applications were displayed on the main page. Applications installed not friends can not see at all.

In the news, the applications also ceased to be displayed, that is, news like “Dmitry Medvedev added the Book Exchange application” are gone. In this regard, it is believed that it is more profitable to promote the application group , and not the application itself. The only thing left for us is the opportunity to invite friends and post messages to them or to ourselves on the wall. This we took advantage of.

By adding a book to the shelf (giving it away) or to a waiting list, we added the ability to publish it on your wall so that friends quickly find out that you are ready to give, exchange or receive this or that book. The name of the book, author, description and its cover is published on the wall. Each such publication brings us about 20 new users. There was a case when this function was used by the so-called opinion leader — the publisher, the owner of the bookstore and the organizer of the book fair — this brought us about 150 new people.

The initial promotion was carried out by sending letters to administrators of various "book" groups (mostly fan clubs of writers) with a request to add an application to them in the group in the "Applications" section. Some kindly agreed and even published the relevant news. These methods gained the first thousand people in 1 week.

But one thing - the person installed the application, quite another - the person added the book and made an effort. We have this indicator is quite high, every fourth person who installed the application gives at least 1 book.

For 1.5 months of the existence of the Vkontakte application, it was installed by about 2500 people. At the moment, a little more than 850 books are being distributed, more than 600 books are being searched. Such indicators have been achieved, including thanks to the friendship with similar resources Bookriver.ru , Bookcrossing.ru and with the application “I read” , generously agreeing to push our project on your resources absolutely free of charge, for the idea. For which many thanks to them!

Appendix "Book Exchange" (VK)

Only recently completed work on an application for Facebook, so it is so far without books.