5/5 (4)

(Team 05: Qian Liao, Weiting Lin, Lijing Yu, Jianxin Cui)

Nowadays, LinkedIn serves as a multisided platform that connects job seekers, employers, and professionals. It offers services such as networking, job searching, and recruiting. The core value of LinkedIn’s services is based on the massive amounts of storage of user’s data. The platform generates diversified revenue streams from premium services subscriptions, job listing fees, and advertisements. However, to sustain its competitive advantages within the operated industry, LinkedIn must innovate by leveraging its user’s data and further enhancing users’ experience within the platform. Hence, our project group has developed a business idea integrated with GenAI – an AI interview simulator -specifically for job seekers who want to practice interviews based on various job requirements from job listings on LinkedIn. 

We proposed the AI interview simulator that utilizes GenAI technologies to provide job seekers with personalized AI mock interview practices. By tapping the “InterviewMaster” button in different job listings on LinkedIn, job seekers will be offered tailored mock interview practices based on different job requirements. For job seekers, this enhances their interview preparation process, while for recruiters, they will have access to better-prepared candidates who can be more qualified for specific jobs. This extended feature integrated with GenAI will strengthen LinkedIn’s value propositions and drive more users to engage with LinkedIn. 

Prototyping illustration:

The GenAI-powered LinkedIn Interview Master provides pragmatic services throughout the process, from application to interview simulation, tailored to specific job descriptions, including:

• Resume Enhancement: The LinkedIn Interview Master will read through uploaded resumes and provide revision suggestions to build stronger and more relevant resumes that better match the positions being applied for.
• Insights Gathering: The LinkedIn Interview Master will collect relevant industry, company, and position information and insights based on job descriptions and users’ personal requirements to provide critical interview knowledge and deepen users’ understanding of the industry, laying the groundwork for better interview performance.
• Interview Simulation: Real-time voice mock interviews are provided to simulate real-life interview scenarios by asking questions and interacting with users. During this process, the user’s verbal performance will be recorded (by choice) and analyzed by GenAI to generate detailed feedback for improvement.

Users can choose to start with any of the services based on personal needs. With the help of the LinkedIn Interview Master, users are expected to develop higher quality application materials, achieve faster and better preparation, and have a higher interview success rate

Impact evaluation:

With the deployment of LinkedIn Interview Master, LinkedIn is expected to increase its value to individual users with a better experience, and consequently increase its value to business users with a larger user base and higher individual engagement.

To overcome potential privacy, market success, and cost challenges, LinkedIn will need to increase data policy transparency, leverage long-term resources, and utilize the advantages of its business partners to mitigate user concerns, optimize GenAI results, and reduce cost pressures.

5/5 (1)

Anyone who has experience of using Adobe Photoshop would never forget the complexity of its functionalities and the time-consuming process of finding certain options you want in the extensive function bars. What I am going to introduce in this post, Canva, is a powerful online designing platform and mobile application that integrates GenAI to serve as an efficient and high-quality design tool.

More importantly, Canva has achieved continuous success by adopting a freemium business model with varied paid tiers, integrating GenAI, constantly updating features and releasing new products. Having been profitable for the past six years,  Canva’s recurring revenue made significant growth in 2023 to a stunning 1.7 billion dollars and hit a valuation of 25.5 billion dollars.

A freemium business model attracting enormous user base

Canva adopts a freemium business model where all registered users are provided with impressively useful features to help them create a variety of visual content such as posters, social media post covers and presentation slides, while subscribed users are given access to advanced editing and design features, including tools powered by GenAI.

All registered users can easily create their own designs by applying provided templates or by searching for elements through simple keywords and adding them to their work, which has made designing much easier compared to conventional design tools such as Photoshop, and therefore made designing accessible not only to professional designers, but also to a large number of non-professional users who want to make a difference in their daily lives.

Thanks to the usability and convenience of its free functions, Canva has accumulated a large number of users, reaching 150 million by the end of 2023.

In addition to the powerful self-help design tool, Canva has also integrated Generative AI to offer advanced functions in its subscription plans, which include Canva Pro at $119.99 per year for individual users and Canva for Teams at $135 per year per employee for teams of up to 50 employees.

Canva Pro subscribers are provided with access to advanced editing and design features and are able to complete the entire design process with GenAI-powered tools, including generating text and suggestions based on keywords or prompts with Magic Write, creating images based on written text, removing photo and video backgrounds with a single click, and more. Subscribers also have unlimited access to over 100 million photos, templates, graphics and videos in the media library.

To attract more subscriptions, limited credits of AI tools are also available to all users for a free trial, which has definitely contributed to Canva’s 16 million paying subscribers.

A creative community: a better solution for GenAI improvement

Canva has developed a creative community where graphic designers can share their designs with Canva subscribers and earn 35% of the revenue when their content is purchased on Canva, making Canva not only a platform but also a marketplace for visual content with an endless supply of high quality content.

With this community, Canva has developed a better solution to copyright issues with generative AI training materials by setting aside a sum of $200 million in payments for content creators whose designs are used in AI training. In this way, Canva has created a win-win mechanism where content creators and GenAI can coexist and benefit from each other.

If you are intrigued or have a visual design need, just give it a try without hesitation!

References:

Letter, C. (n.d.). Canva— riding the AI wave to $1.7B annual recurring revenue. The Capital Letter. https://www.capitalletter.com/p/canva-riding-ai-wave-17b-annual-recurring-revenue

No ratings yet.

Breaking news came on 2^nd August, 2024 that Character.AI co-founder and CEO Noam Shazeer was returning to Google after leaving the company in 2021 to found the chatbot start-up, along with another co-founder and some members of the research team. Meanwhile, Google was signing a non-exclusive agreement with Character.AI to use its large language model (LLM) technology, where Character.AI would receive more funding as part of the deal. This news has once again raised doubts in the market about the profitability of Character.AI.

Founded in 2021, Character.AI is a start-up focused on the development of conversational AI technology, specifically intelligent virtual characters and chatbots, and aims to create natural and fluid dialogue of virtual characters with advanced natural language processing (NLP) technology and deep learning algorithms. The company has launched a platform, also called Character.AI, which allows users to have conversations with a variety of virtual characters that can be personalized based on the user’s preferences and cover a wide range of application scenarios.

Character.AI has accumulated a huge user base since its release in 2022. According to the company, even before the app’s launch in May 2023, the site was receiving over 200 million visits per month, and it’s worth noting that users spend an average of 29 minutes per visit with the chatbots.

However, given the impressive level of user engagement and stickiness, Character.AI’s revenue has still struggled to cover its considerable expenses. On the cost side, Character.AI had to spend a lot of money on pre-training and post-training models to power the experiences that made Character.AI special, and the ongoing high cost generated by data centers. As of 2023, Character.AI has raised $150 million from investors. On the revenue side, subscription conversion rates are significantly low due to a high proportion of teenage users, over 50%. According to the subscription plan, users can pay EUR 9.99 per month and receive faster responses from the bots, and based on the subscriptions sold, Character.AI expects to generate revenues of $16.7 million in 2024, which means a heavy loss this year.

This is probably why Character.AI has been so desperate for investment and ended up ‘selling’ its core figures and technology. And we can gather some insights from the story of Character.AI as follows:

• The lower the cost, the better. “Over the past two years, however, the landscape has shifted; many more pre-trained models are now available. Given these changes, we see an advantage in making greater use of third-party LLMs alongside our own. This allows us to devote even more resources to post-training and creating new product experiences for our growing user base.” Character AI said in its blog. Had Character AI used third-party technology, the cost would have been much lower and easier to cover.
• Build a good user profile beforehand. Figure out your target customers beforehand and try to cater for those with higher ability and willingness to pay.
• Enrich revenue sources. A single revenue source often means high risk, whereas multiple revenue sources create a portfolio that diversifies and reduces risk. With diversified revenues from advertising and commissions, the collapse of subscription fees alone won’t lead to a disruptive catastrophe.

References:

1. Team, C. L. (2024, August 2). Our next phase of growth. Character.AI Blog. https://blog.character.ai/our-next-phase-of-growth/
2. Cai, K. (2024, August 2). Google hires top talent from startup Character.AI, signs licensing deal. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/google-hires-characterai-cofounders-licenses-its-models-information-reports-2024-08-02/
3. Heath, A. (2024, August 3). Google hires Character.AI CEO Noam Shazeer and his AI researchers. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/2/24212348/google-hires-character-ai-noam-shazeer