Why aren’t all ‘objects’ interfaces to other ‘objects’?
Or, how to make your own Apple share price…
Trefis.com provides an analytical share price forecasting application. Their unique interface model, resembling a mind map, provides a user with a ‘glimpse’ into how a share price is constructed based on a company’s Divisional structure (revenue centers).
The application makes it easy to understand each company’s modus operandi, and even easier to edit the forecasts of each core revenue center that has been used to make up the share price to create your own version of the share price truth.
Semantic interface: objects interface to objects
For the everyday share investor, this interface opens up the semantic data used to build the share price, and subsequently makes the application a compelling way to learn more about the company’s Divisions (Products/Services) by clicking on each ‘object’.
So yes, just like in any hyperlinked world objects link to objects, but each object in this model is semantically linked so that the top level price ($243) is related to every branch and its sub-branches; therefore the interface is a semantic representation of a set of objects.
'Apple' Pricing Interface
Granularity of semantic data
Drilling down into a Division, for example “Macintosh”, provides the next level of granularity – i.e. what makes up the revenue behind the Macintosh Division. At this level the application opens a new window to manipulate each Product/Service within the Division to modify the forecasted revenue and create your own share price.
The semantic data behind each Division.
Model Your Own Predictions
You may believe that the “Desktops” market will be in decline over the next few years, but “Software and Service” will continue to climb because you think Apple will get smart in the Cloud App Market by buying a string of companies like Aviary.com for their online tools.
By manipulating the trend line (as seen below) you can instantly view how the change in revenue would adjust the current Market Price to create Justin’s Price of $246.
Modify Revenue Model
Next Step
The next step would be to provide a feature to give the user the ability to add a Product or Service in a Division, and then I can be Jobs for a Day.
For example: I add a new Product called iView (aka. Tablet) as a new Division, and my expectations are that Apple will sell 2m iViews in Year 1 at a price point of $899; the Trefis system does the rest!
My thinking: there needs to be more innovations and business models developed using the concept of assisting customers to visualize a semantic set of objects.
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