Traditional noticeboards have been working successfully for centuries. That is how local communities connect and stay informed. Now with connectivity rising, cost of bandwidth decreasing, and the huge mobile uptake in Africa, we have taken the traditional noticeboard and made it virtual.
Mimiboard.com is a tool for communities, radio stations, newspapers, bloggers, restaurant owners, farmers, community leaders, and so many more to engage, communicate, and trade with each other.
Anyone can create a Mimiboard. You decide where you want to peg it in the ground, give it a name (Nairobi Traffic, Mombasa Fish Market, Lusaka Crime reports, etc.), assign categories to it, and start getting your community to stick notes to their local noticeboard. The cool thing is that notes can be added via USSD (This is Africa), SMS (text), WAP, J2ME, Android, Twitter, and the web.
Once your community starts adding notes, you can do great things with your new board. Add it to your mobile site, websites, blog, or Facebook page. You can even print it out to have your own community newspaper or hit display and show it in real time on a screen.
There are three types of notes:
- Announcements: These are the texts, tweets, or short shout-outs like traffic reports.
- News: This is real citizen journalism in action, and you can also add your local events.
- Ads: These are super-local ads placed by the community on the board -- things for sale, services, etc.
We also enable the Mimiboard creator to earn some cash. We have our own virtual currency called Mimibucks. You can earn real money by getting your community to place ads on the board.
We connect global communities, enable trade, and encourage social development -- all by using a concept that has been with us forever.
