Mimiboard, South Africa’s digital equivalent of a community noticeboard, has sparked an interest in the African Web space with top sites including Capitalfm.co.ke already integrating its services one month after launching.
The interest-based social network is set to propagate online content to various platforms functions just like an analogue notice board; it enables users to create, peg and categorise notes on the board. A community on hyper-local level can also communicate, transact and add notes to the board.
This means users can deploy a notice board that will be available through various platforms including mobile and apps. Presently, communication to the board can happen via platforms including SMS, Web, Android or J2ME.
Mimiboard, which incorporates user-friendly interfaces to access access and sharing of locally relevant information from a mobile phone, is focusing on improving trade and communication on a hyper-local level, according to Umuntu Media, the creator.
The South African company, focused on using continent’s technology to build world-class platforms that deliver relevant local content, says it developed Mimiboard to face problems publishers face including creation of engaging and relevant content set to add value in people’s lives.
“Publishers all over the world have the same challenges: Keeping users engaged, playing in the social media area, revenue and maintaining a community,” said Johan Nel Umuntu Media founder and CEO.
To spread technology to publishers across Africa, the service developer created a “publish” function in Mimiboard, to avert the challenges. This allows publishers to create Mimiboards tailored to their readers’ interest including restaurants, classifieds, news and daily traffic tips.
Nel explains this is because publishers know what their readers wish to talk about.
To use the service, publishers save the Mimiboards as a stack using a unique name before hitting the export button to embed the notes. The device wizard would then take the user through several steps to ensure the notes are fully embedded on the publisher’s site.
The online tool was unveiled at the Mobile Web East Africa conference in Nairobi, Kenya, February this year and is currently in closed beta. Umuntu Media expects to make the service available in East and West Africa in the coming weeks although it is set for integration into the entireUmuntu Media iportals.
Umuntu Media has also started of websites that use the Mimiboards such as,iRwanda and iUganda. Kenyan website CapitalFM has started using the Mimiboard following a partnership with Umuntu. CapitalFM website boasts of 3.7 million monthly visitors and 180,000 Facebook fans.
