Amigo Central - Case Study

Amigo Central – Application Development Case Study

Client

Amigo Central is an online initiative of a multinational company excelling in the business of web design and development. Operating on a global arena, the company started Amigo Central with the objective of facilitating an online platform for friends/strangers/like-minded people to stay connected and establish casual/business relationships across continents.

Challenge

The client approached Dot Com Infoway for the design and development of AmigoCentral.com, a social networking site that facilitates an online platform for users to stay connected with friends.

Key challenges posed by the client:

The site should be designed along the lines of popular social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut and LinkedIn and still be unique and different from them.
The site should be built with AJAX features that allow easy updates without the need for reloading or refreshing the page.
The site should sport a young, neat look and feel with 100% width.
Chatting with friends, creating groups, sharing albums etc. should be some of the prominent features.
The site should be spam-proof and should protect users’ privacy by having a well-built user privacy protection system.

Solution

Dot Com Infoway framed a two-phased strategy to meet the client’s requirements.

Phase I:

Phase I mainly comprised of analysis and planning. The web development team of the company took stock of the resources available and analyzed on the technology that can be deployed to create AmigoCentral.com

Few initiatives taken by the web development team in Phase I:

Competitor Analysis: Analyzed, measured and documented features of competitor sites – Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn and a few others.
Framed a list of features to be built in AmigoCentral.com.
Discussed and decided on technology and platform for the site.
Chartered a step-by-step development process from start to work-product delivery.

Phase II:

If Phase I was about planning, Phase II was about execution of the plan. Phase II saw the implementation and actual development of the site.

The web development team worked per schedule and created the site using the following means and below features:

Deployed Social Engine V3.11 (a social networking script) for building the site.
Used SMARTY Template engine with PHP 5 OOPS.
Designed and integrated popular community website features:
- Authenticated User Registration and Email Verification.
- Add/invite friends feature with email alerts.
- Scrap/Message friends feature with email alerts using AJAX .
- Provision to invite friends from other communities like Facebook, Orkut etc.
- Efficient and hassle-free chat feature using AJAX.
- Facility to create groups, join/invite people to group/groups/community.
- Built-in discussion board in every group that allows members to discuss topics.
- Provision to add/share albums to profile with tagging options.
- Photo commenting feature and slideshow-view for every album created.
- Latest Feeds updates feature to list latest happenings in the community.
- Well-defined privacy options which allows user to personalize every aspect of site.

Result

Dot Com Infoway’s strategic, well-executed two-phased approach paid off when the work-product was launched. AmigoCentral.com, with smart marketing, became an instant hit in the social media circle with many users signing up and inviting their friends to sign up. The client, pleased with the work-product, appreciated the efforts of our web developers to a great extent.

AmigoCentral.com now stands as a social networking site that is on par with popular community sites like Facebook and Orkut. Its clean, white background and easy navigability has attracted active participation from users.