BUILDING A BOOKS-AS-A-SERVICE PLATFORM

(IN A QUITE PRAGMATIC AND UNEXPECTED WAY FOR US)Justo Hidalgo

@justohidalgo

A "platform" is a system that can be programmed and therefore customized by outside developers and in that way, adapted to countless needs and niches that the platform's original developers could not have possibly contemplated, much less had time to accommodate.

Marc Andreessen

@justohidalgo

APPLICATIONSAPPLICATIONS APPLICATIONSAPPLICATIONS APPLICATIONSAPPLICATIONS

PLATFORMPLATFORM PLATFORMPLATFORM PLATFORMPLATFORM

INFRASTRUCTUREINFRASTRUCTURE INFRASTRUCTUREINFRASTRUCTURE INFRASTRUCTUREINFRASTRUCTURE

IaaS PaaS SaaS

IaaS: Information as a ServicePaaS: Platform as a ServiceSaaS: Software as a Service Service-managed

Developer-managed

Source: https://www.engineyard.com

APPLICATIONSAPPLICATIONS

PLATFORMPLATFORM

INFRASTRUCTUREINFRASTRUCTURE

@justohidalgo

@justohidalgo

Content

TechnologyReading experience

Marketing

Customer access

Branding

@justohidalgo

CLUB FREEMIUM

MOBILE CARRIERS 24SYMBOLS.COM

PAY PER BOOK TO PUBLISHERS PAY PER PAGE TO PUBLISHERS

YOUR LIBRARY HERE

YOUR LIBRARY HERE

YOUR LIBRARY HERE

@justohidalgo

API

API

Multichannel viewMultichannel view

Analy

tics

&

Analy

tics

&

Report

ing

Report

ing

BillingBilling

Subscription Subscription ModelsModels

Content Content Streaming & DRMStreaming & DRM

User User AuthorizationAuthorization

Search & Search & RecommendatiRecommendati

onon

DiscoveryDiscovery

Collaboration Collaboration & Sharing& Sharing

Content and Metadata ManagementContent and Metadata Management

Sandbox

Sandbox

Cloud ReaderCloud Reader

l10n & i18nl10n & i18n

Cloud Instance ManagementCloud Instance Management

Marketing & User Marketing & User EngagementEngagement

User, Edition and Behavioural Data

RESTfu

l/H

TTP/jSO

NR

ESTfu

l/H

TTP/jSO

NHTML5/iOS/AndroidHTML5/iOS/Android

Hadoop/D

ruid

/...

Hadoop/D

ruid

/...

Carriers/Carriers/SaaSy/SaaSy/PaypalPaypal

Freemium/Freemium/Premium/Premium/

BookClub /LibrariesBookClub /Libraries

Content Content Streaming & DRMStreaming & DRM

User User AuthorizationAuthorization

ColbensonColbenson

DiscoveryDiscovery

FB/Twitter/FB/Twitter/G+/PinterestG+/Pinterest

ONIX/Dilve/...ONIX/Dilve/...

Sandbox

Sandbox

Cloud ReaderCloud Reader

l10n & i18nl10n & i18n

GigasGigas

Mailchimp/ZenDesk/...Mailchimp/ZenDesk/...

User, Edition and Behavioural Data

Platform Levels• Level 1: “Access API”

• Platform provided in the form of a web services API

• Level 2: “Plug-in API”

• New functions can be injected, “plugged in” to the core system and its user interface

• Level 3: “Runtime environment”

• Apps run inside the platform itself

@justohidalgo

•The lingua franca for clouds

•Using canonical URLs at different levels

•Stateless calls -> quite efficient and performant

•Ruby has some useful gems for this

•Compatible with OAuth, OAuth2

•Using it already

Resources and

Operations

• Users

• Public information (public comments, highlights, etc.)

• Public bookshelves

• Public books read

• (async) User status change

• Readings

• Book stats (page views, regions, time, ...)

• Content mining functions

• n-grams

• concept extraction

@justohidalgo

Resources and

Operations• Editions

• (Async) Edition updates

• Favorites

• Readings (avg % read, #users per page, ...)

• Bookshelves it belongs to

• Categories it belongs to

• Highlights, public comments, bookmarks

• Content (where determined by geographical/legal constraints)

• Search

• Related books (by content, by user, by bookshelf, by reference, ...)

@justohidalgo

Resources and Operations • Bookshelves

• Per service/user

• List of/Most shared editions

• List of/Most shared publishers, authors, etc.

• List of/Most commented editions, ...

• Recommendations

• (Async) Bookshelf updates

• ...

Resources and Operations • l10n

• Set/get l18n content for service

• Billing

• Per publisher

• Per author

• Per service (carrier-region)

• Per business model

Examples• For service #1 (e.g. 24symbols.com), find the average percentage read by user 2456

of book 3156. Output in jSON

• GET api.24symbols.com/json/service/1/user/2456/edition/3156/pctg_read

• For service #2 (e.g. country X with carrier Y), find the number of users per page of book 3156. Output in jSON

• GET api.24symbols.com/json/service/2/edition/3156/users_per_page

• For service #3, find the number of users of page 4 in book 3156. Output in jSON

• GET api.24symbols.com/json/service/3/edition/3156/page/4/users_per_page

• Find books most read among all services. Output in jSON

• GET api.24symbols.com/json/books_most_read

• Obtain billing info for publisher X on service 4 from April to June 2013

• GET api.24symbols.com/json/service/4/publisher/X/daterange/2013/04_2013/06/get_billing_info

@justohidalgo

Challenges

•Technical

•Reporting/billing

•Legal/rights

•Business

•Competition

Next steps

• First launches in 3-4 countries before EOY

• Partnership with Master’s Degree in Big Data and PaaS/IaaS

• Prototypes and research projects with anonymized data from 24symbols

• Decision

Conclusions

•We’re building the basis of a potential BaaS Platform

•Regardless of whether we actually build it or not

•Does it make sense to do it?

@justohidalgo

Justo Hidalgo: Co-founder, Chief Product Officer

www.24symbols.com

jhidalgo@24symbols.com

@justohidalgo

THANK YOU