Group 7 : OrientExpress Blog

Europe has a comprehensive scheme with high level of personal data protection. The EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC (EU DPD) was adopted by European Communities in 1995. It is the primary directive that regulates the processing of personal data. All 27 EU Member States which including United Kingdom must implement the Directive into their own law. EU DPD set up a very high standard data protection structure based on the essential factors in the current member states’ legislations so that all its member states can accept this Directive.

For our application, in order to comply with the EU DPD, both the obligations of data controllers and the rights of data subjects must be fulfilled and guaranteed.

Because the application provider is the party who determine the nature and means of personal data processing, hence the application provider will act as the data controller. The obligations should be fulfilled by the data controller are:

• Notify processing to national authority (DPA). Include controller’s name and address, purpose of the processing, description of the data subjects, description of the data, etc.
• Not to process personal data unless legitimate basis. Consent must be unambiguous, freely given and informed.
• Compliance with processing principles.Fairly and lawfully processed, Specified, lawful purposes and not further incompatibly processed.
• Ensure confidentiality and security of personal data. Adopt appropriate technical and organizational measures for security of data.
• Not transfer data to 3rd country unless ‘adequate’ protection.

What’s more, for the reason that the users of this application are natural person who may be identified either directly or indirectly from the data. Therefore, the users are the data subjects, and the rights which granted to the data subjects include:

• To access data.
• To rectify, block, erase or destroy inaccurate data.
• To prevent or limit certain processing.
• To a judicial remedy for any breach of the rights guaranteed by national law.

RankFirst respects user’s privacy and won’t sell your personal data.

What types of information?

1. User’s email address and the password
2. User’s social activities records of mobile phone(Calls, Messages, Videos and Meetings)
3. User’s exact current physical location
4. User’s Social networks information

Where is the information stored?

1. User’s email address and exact current physical location are saved on local device as session information, that is user’s mobile phone
2. User’s first and last names, email address, password and social activities records of mobile phone are stored on RankFirst secure servers
3. User’s social networks information is stored on third party servers such as Facebook or Twitter

How the information is used?

1. When you register with RankFirst, user provides information to register and set up an account, including first and last names, email address, and password. The user’s email address and the password should only be used for the verification of the app login and it will never be disclosed to any third party. This email address is used to provide user the Services, send user Service related notices, including any updates to features of the app and notices required by law.
2. After user registers the RankFirst app, user’s social activities histories of mobile phone will be recorded by the app in order to rank the contacts according to the RankFirst app’s algorithm.
3. The user’s exact current physical location is inherently private and that it should only be used in very limited ways over which user has control. For this reason, RankFirst gives user the right to decide whether his/her current location could be viewed by contacts. This function uses the known position of reference points and satellite signals to determine the location of mobile devices.
4. User’s social networks information could be reorganized by combining with the ranked contacts.

Depends on our project, I found some relevant business models can be taken as examples. Firstly, we can use the cost-per-click model. In other words, it is use advertisements to obtain the profits. Though, the advertisements in website as a popular method are used in all of SNS service or websites. However, it is always the most efficient approach to acquire the revenue. The advertisements can be precision because of all the information can be available in a SNS page. Also, the big user group can attract more companies to post their advertisements on the SNS website. Thus, cost-per-click model is importantly necessary for the future profits of our product.

There is an example for our project use this model. The advertisement can be clicked and get more specific information about the product. In addition, if customers cannot like it, it could be closed by the button. And, the advertisements are randomly shown.

The second model is the subscription model. There is no doubt that our project is free of charge for all the users. However, we can collect some fee from an extended profile except basic profile. Moreover, we can make this kind of fee as a yearly fee. For instance, if users need back-up their ranking results, we can sell this function or service to help them manage their contacts.

Another model we can use is the Asian model, we can sell some virtual goods, for example, your friends have a birthday, and customer can buy some virtual gifts for his friends. Moreover, we can create our special ‘coin’, and customers can use them to buy those virtual goods.

As a result, advertisement is the first choice for us to acquire revenue. As to subscription model, we can use it in the subsequent period. Basically, the subscription model needs a big user group to assure the profits. For Asian model, it also need implement based on the user group. Moreover, if we intend put the Asian model into real business, it would some specific marketing analysis or customer survey.

At the beginning of our team’s decision-making, we found that networks are taking us far away from our real life step by step. When people are talking about the social networks or social websites, the key points are usually convenience, speedily, easy to find old and new friends and so on. However, what is about the downside of current social networks. The current social networks give us a fictitious society, devour our real social life. For example, in our contacts list of Facebook, there must be some people whom we just met once or never met. Sometimes we can chat with these people by social networks, but what will happen if we face them after a long time. Are these people are our real friends? Another problem is that current social networks bring us too much unnecessary information. These unnecessary information always cover up the tracks of close friends. As time passes, close friends become unfamiliar.

As a result of these reason, we want to make the social networks more realistic. Except some familiar social networks such as the Twitter and the Linkedin, the contact of our phone is also an “old style” social network and it is more realistic. At least, there is nearly no one whom we never met. Hence we selected phone contact as our base.

If the contacts in user’s phone are willing to share their GPS location, the user can also know where they are. We think that this function is a key point to make the social life realistic, because that friend a really there on the GPS map.

Our App also provides statistics function. Every communication between the user and contacts can be recorded. After some calculation and processing, our App can tell the user who are your close friends and who you contact frequently. This outcome will also used to distinguish information when you browse you social networks. The information of the people who you contact frequently can be shown with priority.

Our App also provides traditional social network function. It can be treat as an all-in-one client-side of social websites. User can browse the content from their social website and write comment.