Why AdAd.co.za?
I have recently released a South Africa Mobile Classified Site (called AdAd.co.za) which uses and greatly improves upon the Community Mobile Channels codebase.
Of course it may seem strange that my efforts around creating a new open source mobile community platform should have currently morphed into a closed source mobile advertising site. But having been through the learning journey I have been on this year this now seems like a logical next step.
To start off with - Community Mobile Channels has never had or generated any funding - not any. This in itself makes it a luxury side project. It has also failed in any attempts to gain a group of developers or large user base around it - It may have about 350 downloads on sourceforge but this is not enough. I identified 5 key projects that would now be needed - namely Stabilize, Document, GoodUX, Host & Community Outreach. Of course all of these take time and have costs attached so unless there is an angel waiting to give pots of cash they won’t happen.
So what do you do with a great start to a mobile community platform that doesn’t have support? - well I think you look at how it can be improved, how it can still fill the community needs and how it could pay for itself. This, I hope, has been realised to some extent by the creation of AdAd.co.za
Here’s a few general details about the new site
- Like Community Mobile Channels, AdAd.co.za is totally mobile web based - no computer is required
- Like Community Mobile Channels, AdAd.co.za allows the creation of local community content (in this case classified ads) that is of interest to other local community members.
- AdAd.co.za is a hosted service and no technical admin person is required and there is no need to set anything up
- AdAd.co.za has a more streamlined way of adding mobile web content - it has been made much easier to set up Ads made up of just text and pictures. It is also very easy to edit your content. In the process we have purposely lost audio and video content at the moment
- Most of the AdAd services are completely free - the premium services are aimed at businesses
- The 73 categories in AdAd.co.za have all been assigned pictures and are very similar to a channel in CMC
- We have added a whole host of bugfixes and extra features in AdAd which would never have made it into Community Mobile Channels.
In this change of tact I am attempting to create a socially valuable service that has the ability to be self sustaining - This is now very much akin to my feelings around the social entrepreneur as a local and socially responsible businessperson rather than a charity worker.
The 2 most problematic issues are that the AdAd code is not open source and that we have just focused on South Africa. Unfortunately the open source element is now not feasible although some of the bugfixes and enhancements we have done will filter through to Community Mobile Channels if AdAd.co.za ever makes a profit. With regard to the local nature we would like to find partners to operate modified AdAd.co.za sites in other countries or cities where it could be successful. This would operate on a white label licensing agreement. If you are interested then please contact us.
