Social:Mivasocial
Mivasocial[1] is a website and online social networking platform for African communities living in the African continent and in the African Diaspora around the world. It is an American for profit limited liability Corporation and online social media and social networking service run by Happy Way LLC based in Lawrenceville GA. Mivasocial creates a united Africa online, a space that unites all Africans for the development of the African continent. [2] Mivasocial was initially launched in 2011 by Jean-Marc Kouevidjin and Nasser Falana as Star53[3] a social network to help with the development of African people. According to Jean-Marc Kouevidjin Star53 meant that there were 53 African countries of stars that needed to be discovered. After growing to more than 100000 members in 2012, Star53 encountered some technology limitations and issues and needed to be redesigned for the new generation.
Founding and History
The term Miva comes from the Ewe/Mina/Guin language of Togo and means "Come". Mivasocial therefore means "Come socialize". The platform was initially called Togosocial after the transformation from STAR53 at the end of 2012. Jean-Marc Kouevidjin a naturalized U.S. Citizen who is born in Togo wrote the initial PHP code for Togosocial which launched in beta in May 2013 targeting members of the Togolese community as a way to test the new design and capabilities of the new platform.
After 2 years of working out the bugs and assessing the viability of the platform, in July 2015 the platform expanded to all African countries under the name Mivasocial, one social network for Africa while keeping individual social networks for each African country.
A single login provides access to all the networks. According to its founders, Mivasocial currently has a Quarter-million members.
The platform dreams to interconnect the African people to contribute to the development of the continent. The platform claims 250 000 accounts registered in three years. Its promoters hope to mobilize investments in the order of $1 million to $10 million to accelerate the growth of Mivasocial.[4]
According to Jean-Marc Kouevidjin's introductory Poem that reveal his thinking at the time of the inception of the Mivasocial Idea,[5] It is all about the rise of the African Child. Mivasocial aims to be the face of Africa in the world by promoting African values and human potential.
The target Audience and demography
Mivasocial targets the entire world and anyone can be a member. Its membership is free. Any individual or business aiming for the African continent can use the platform as a gateway to every country on the continent. according to the latest membership data released in Jan 2016, the audience is predominantly African people in the Diaspora and the continental Africa according to the latest membership data released in Jan 2016.
After registering to use the site, users will need to identify their target African country network and their primary language of choice. Two(2) languages are currently offered such as French and English. Users can then create a user profile, add other users as "friends", follow members feeds, exchange private messages, post status updates and photos, share videos, write blogs, use various apps and receive notifications on platform activities and also when others update their profiles. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups called PACs, organized by categories such as workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and connect with people throughout Africa or by individual African countries or the Diaspora. Also users can complain or block unpleasant people from interacting with them or from chatting with them in the dedicated Mivasocial Messenger App namely Mivachat. The platform appears to take privacy very seriously with privacy tools available under user profiles that allow users to hide themselves completely from any site interaction. No personal data such as phone number and address is required to use the platform.
Members of the platform can share and target a specific African country or the entire continent.
Technology
Mivasocial is written in PHP and Python and is built on the WordPress Framework although heavily modified at the core for improved speed and relies on several MySQL databases and Apache Cassandra instances. The platform's API is currently private however its founders aims to bring in partners and developers to extend its code-base and offer
Reviews from Jeune Afrique Newspaper of the Mivasocial points to the unique values that these tools represent to Africa, as well as the challenges facing the platform as it goes against giant players on the continent such as Facebook, Twitter, Jumia and many others.[6]
News Timeline
Monday January 23, 2017 Mivasocial launches officially in Côte d'Ivoire[7] as Mivasocial Cote d'Ivoire.
References
- ↑ "Mivasocial | crunchbase". https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mivasocial.
- ↑ "The African Social Network | Africa top social network | Best Social Network in Africa | The Social Network for Africa | MivaSocial". https://www.mivasocial.com.
- ↑ "Star 53 - Africa (@africasocialnet) | Twitter". https://twitter.com/africasocialnet.
- ↑ admin (2016-09-08). "Mivasocial: le réseau social africain" (in fr-FR). SeneLeaks. http://www.seneleaks.com/mivasocial-reseau-social-africain/.
- ↑ "The Rise of the African Child | Afrique Actualités - Africa News - Notes | BNN - Africa News, Blog & Notes". http://bnnafricanews.com/le-blog-africain/notes/2013/05/28/the-rise-of-the-african-child/.
- ↑ "Start-up de la semaine : Mivasocial, un réseau social pensé pour les Africains - JeuneAfrique.com" (in fr-FR). JeuneAfrique.com. 2016-09-08. http://www.jeuneafrique.com/354650/economie/start-up-de-semaine-mivasocial-reseau-social-pense-lafrique/.
- ↑ TIME, Rédaction INFOS (2017-01-23). "Miva Côte d’Ivoire, des opportunités à portée de clic" (in fr-FR). Infos Time. https://www.infostime.com/miva-cote-divoire-opportunites-a-portee-de-clic/.
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