Popten: Our #Trending App Idea
Team Members: Delyar Jazayeri, Andrew Huynh, Karen Ngo
Imagine that you and your friends want to hang out and grab some bubble tea, but you cannot agree on where to go in Calgary. You don’t want to take the time to go through reviews on Yelp or Zomato because they may be biased and time-consuming and some of them don’t even have photos... You just want to see which places are top trending right here and now.
Introducing Popten, a mobile app with a built-in algorithm that pulls the top ten places for the most popular hashtags from Instagram. Our app focuses on hashtag volume, so the places with the most #bubbletea hashtags will show up in our app starting with the most hashtags at the top of the list. People can search for a specific hashtag that they are looking for and get the top ten results.
You’re probably wondering how this is different from the search feature within the Instagram app itself… Well, if you were to search “bubble tea” and go to the tags tab, you would get a bunch of random posts that may be irrelevant to what you’re looking for. Some posts consist of drawings or cartoons, some are selfies of people wearing bubble tea apparel, and some are just random memes. Popten eliminates most of this noise by filtering through Instagram for bubble tea posts that are specifically location tagged to bubble tea shops, such as Chatime or Presotea.
Now, you’re wondering why you can’t just use the places tab when you search up “bubble tea” on Instagram. Well, you could, but the locations don’t show up by order of popularity and not all of the results that pop up would be in your location. You’d likely end up seeing a place that looks delicious only to find out that the restaurant is 2,000 km away in LA. Popten is tailored to the millennial’s need for instant gratification and finding what you want, right then and there.
We originally wanted to filter through various social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. However, we wanted to focus on simplicity and volume. Instagram came out on top because it is one of the most used platforms, and it also emphasizes aesthetics and photos compared to other platforms where text could get in the way. People tend to rant on Twitter, so their hashtags may not be as applicable for our platform compared to Instagram, where people usually make idealistic posts and try to highlight the positive parts of their lives. We are riding the wave where people define their food as “instagrammable” or “instaworthy” and love to post drool-worthy photos and stories of what and where they eat. Popten embraces the modern version of word-of-mouth marketing. The thought process is that if people really like their food and think it is worth sharing, they would do so by posting on Instagram. The same concept applies to events and activities.
Although other platforms like Yelp or Zomato have similar intentions as us, their lists are based on personal reviews and star ratings. Compared to simply tagging a photo on Instagram, fewer people would actually take the time to rate and write review posts. Eventually, the posts get outdated if not enough people submit reviews and ratings. These reviews can also be biased or subjective, and people may not want to take the time to read lengthy articles and rants. Popten is more unbiased and straightforward because we only count which places have the most hashtags and then order these locations accordingly in a top ten list.
How Does It Work?
- Download the app on your phone and connect to your Instagram account (so that the apps can talk to each other)
- Type in a hashtag like #bubbletea #sushi #coffee
- Select your location (you can also enable location settings)
- Hit search and you will see the top 10 places listed based on your search result and according to the popularity and volume of hashtags posted on Instagram. You can click on one of the listed places to redirect to their Instagram page and “favourite” any of the listed places to show up in your personalized list
- View the #Featured list to see the top 10 paid advertisements per month. You can click on any of the listed places to see their top product and “favourite” any of the listed places to show up in your personalized list
Why Should You Use It?
Popten is meant to be a free mobile app for consumers to quickly and easily find the top ten products and services that they are interested in based on their locations. Our intent is to help people make quicker decisions on where to go when they are looking for a specific cuisine. Although our initial focus will be on foods like dessert, sushi, ramen, burgers, coffee, and the like, we plan to expand our platform to include other hashtags related to events, activities, and fashion to promote brands.
For businesses, Popten is another platform to enhance brand awareness and social media presence. Our solution would be great for small businesses and start-ups because it will empower them to align themselves with certain hashtags that are popular. Since paid advertising on Google or Facebook is done through a bidding system, small businesses will most likely get eliminated because they don’t have large budgets to outbid bigger brands. Since Instagram is free and already being used by the masses of millions, businesses just need to ensure that their customers tag their restaurants and apply the desired hashtags to show up in Popten. Our #Featured list is also available for businesses that are willing to pay us to have their brands and top products or services featured in our app (and our prices would be much lower since we are also a new app).
Who is our Target Audience?
Our target audience consists of millennials who are enthusiastic about technology and use social media accounts on the regular to keep up with trends and find out what things are popular in their surrounding areas. These days, millennials are faced with so many choices that it can be hard to make decisions on what to do or where to go, especially when they are in groups. Popten can make these decision making processes quicker by integrating with an app that is already extremely popular.
What Was Our Creation Process?
Branding and Naming
Firstly, we did not use any tools to come up with the name of our app, we just did a traditional brainstorming session until we came up with something that we all agreed on. We thought that “popten” was catchy and represented the intention and features of our app, which were to show the ten most popular items in their respective categories.
We created our logo using Photopea, which is a free online version with similar functionalities to Photoshop. First, we chose a bubbly sans-serif font because we wanted it to be more modern and casual. As for the theme colours, we thought of a nice looking gradient and then played around with different colours until we found something that we felt was “popten”. Our theme colours for the app consist of a gradient that fades from Pink: F5bcf8 to Blue: 81cfef. Our favicon or mobile app logo consists of the hashtag symbol in the same font, Fredoka One, and gradient colours.
Mobile App Prototype
The creation of the application was quite simple. First, we referred to our professor, Mohammed Keyhani’s, list of Entrepreneur Tools to find prototyping platforms for mobile applications without having to code. Through our prospecting, we came across a platform called Marvel, which gave us the necessary elements to create a prototype for Popten. Our team signed up for an account on the platform because they offer a free trial that granted access to one user and project at any one time. Marvel offered various templates for mobile applications, but our team decided to start out with a blank canvas to envision things the way we wanted to. We enjoyed using Marvel because of its ultimate flexibility to create a wide arrange of applications with various functions without making it too hard to understand or use.
On the creation page, you can add additional application pages and arrange them in a specific order to your liking. You also have the option of duplicating slides if you need multiple pages of a specific design. By hovering your mouse over one of the slides, you can click “edit image” and it will take you to the creation page of where you can adjust, modify and add certain functions into your mobile application.
On the left-hand menu, you can select an array of options, such as adding a text bar, images, and buttons to your template. On the right-hand side, this is where specific and technical details are displayed so you can curate your application to the likes of your needs. You can modify the size of a certain button, adjust font size and change the colour of elements in your mobile app easily without needing to code or program anything.
Our landing page is quite typical to any other app, with the logo in the center and the prompt for logging in to Instagram. Once users have connected their Instagram accounts, they will see a search bar for them to type in a hashtag of interest and a location selector. Users can simply type in “bubbletea” and then see our list of top ten places in that specific category. The results will be updated regularly and consistently change based on the volume of hashtags processed from Instagram.
The app is meant to integrate with Instagram so that users can click on any of the top ten items and be redirected to the Instagram pages and photos. The featured list can be accessed by the star button at the top right of the app while the favourites list can be accessed by the heart button at the top left of the app.
What Are Our Next Steps?
So far, we have only worked on the front-end of our app and how people would see and use Popten. When it comes to building the algorithm in filtering the hashtags and locations from Instagram, we would need to do some further research and also upgrade our plan on Marvel to convert the prototype into code via the Handoff feature. Based on our initial research, we don’t believe that there are any costs to connecting our app to the Instagram API.
To cover the upfront costs, we could enter Pitch Competitions and seek out angel investors and advisors to fund our concept. We could also crowdsource through sites like Kickstarter and survey people for feedback on our app and what would make it more attractive and easier to use.
For our small business clients that choose to be featured on Popten, we would recommend that they use the following Zapier plugins to complement their Popten experience and learn more about which hashtags are more effective:
*Please note that Popten is an app concept for our ENTI 559 Creation Project*
