">
TechMoran
  • About Us
  • Deals
  • Jobs
  • Motoring
    • Money
  • Pitch Your Startup
  • Submit Your Post
  • Freelance Gigs
  • Travel
  • Men’s Corner
  • Dating
Saturday, January 16, 2021
  • Startups
  • Reviews
  • Insider
    • Obituaries
  • Business
  • Women
  • Blockchain
  • Columnists
  • Hacks & Facts
    • How To
  • Editions
    • US Edition
    • India Edition
    • MENA Edition
    • Asia Edition
    • Europe Edition
    • International Edition
No Result
View All Result
TechMoran
">
Home Startups

Kenya’s Ushahidi Launches Group Messaging Service Ping

Sam Wakoba by Sam Wakoba
6 years ago
in Startups
12 min read
0

pingForget Ello, now available in 15 languages and working with a variety of global SMS providers like Nexmo, Twilio, Clickatell, among others, Ushahidi’s Ping.io has today launched in private alpha to open doors to businesses, municipalities, and organizations to create a tool that meets their real needs.

Ping will help users quickly find out whether their families, friends, and teams are safe anywhere in the world and on nay device. Ushahidi says Ping has modules that work with a dozen carriers around the world and allows one to send messages via email or SMS and on nay device. The service is now availabel in English, French, Spanish, Russian and more coming up. The service allows users to create and store contacts with multiple numbers and email addresses for each for multiple points of contact and users can also add their contacts to a group so they can ping multiple people with the push of a button.

Like Ushahidi, Ping is built for emergencies but as a messaging service it can be deployed anytime anyway. It’s aimed at serving small groups, families, and companies that need to quickly check in with each other. Ping is simple to use and can be used on the most basic phones and anywhere in the world.

Juliana Rotich, Ushahidi’s Executive Director wrote, “Ping is our contribution, a hosted service that doesn’t require a certain device or a certain platform to send or receive messages. Set it up and, whether emergency hits or you just want to check in with your friends, family, or colleagues, type a short message and hit send. Your ping will go out to everyone at once and the service will update their status as they respond. Nothing to install or confirm. Simple, effective, immediate.”

READ  PayGo Solar firm PoaPower receives $217,000 to pilot its zero deposit solar systems in Kenya

Ushahidi has hit a jackpot. Giants like Yahoo are looking for the next killer thingto bank their reserves on after Alibaba and the trend is hugely heading in the mobile messaging industry after Whatsapp was acquired for $19 billion (read $22b) and every other firm is trying its hand at the sector even when services like KakaoTalk, Kik, Line, Secret, Snapchat, Tango, Viber, or Whisper are still penetrating markets.

According to a report by Forrester, a research and data firm, “Messaging apps have the potential either to become digital platforms or to significantly enhance the power of current platforms because they so clearly deliver the three things that determine digital platform power: frequent interactions, emotional connection, and convenience.”

The report cites WeChat a the best example and urges marketers to experiment and to anticipate the next steps as the apps are the new face of social in a mobile context. The report adds that “mobile allows users to seamlessly merge social offline experiences with online communications; offer more instantaneous and emotional forms of social communications; and provide users new ways to manage identities.

Ping, like other messaging apps can be used to benefit marketers to reach their global audience, engage with customers on their mobeil phones and Ping can later add services such as sponsored games, location-based services, commerce, payments among others.

To use Ping is huge but Rotich says it’s a service responding to a need.

Related posts

Adam Molai’s JUA Kickstarter Fund Doubles to $2M to Kickstart African Entrepreneurship

January 15, 2021
0

Nigeria’s TeamApt pivots to serve consumers, eyes expansion into West & North Africa

January 14, 2021
0

Cellulant Group CEO Ken Njoroge to step down in June

January 14, 2021
0
work from home kenya

OZÉ Raises $700k To Digitize African MSMEs & Offer Them Affordable Capital

January 14, 2021
0

“We love building software (and now hardware) this way: responding to a need, a community,” she writes. ” Our products have been better for it, ourselves unable to see the whole path before us by trusting that by building communities before audiences, platforms/foundations before features.”

READ  Cellulant Receives Africa Business Continuity Institute's Award for its Resilience

We will love to see how Ping picks up.

According to a report by The Guardian, “Messaging is enticing for a few reasons. For one, it’s a medium used by people all over the world. For another, it’s quieter; messages deliver a stream of photos, video or simple text direct from loved ones, without the added noise of everyone else on the internet. Messages provide for the fastest way for people to connect or find each other in a crowd. And messages allow people to buy stuff – lots and lots of stuff – in an almost criminally seamless manner.”

We think Ping will grow to fulfill the above dreams. It’s not so new. Worked on Ping began immidiately after the horrible WestGate attacks in Kenya September last year. The firm said Ping was basically a binary, multichannel check-in tool for groups and the first version allowed users to:

  • You create a list of your people (family, organization), and each person also adds another contact who is close to them (spouse, roommate, boy/girlfriend, etc).

  • When a disaster happens, you send out a message for everyone to check-in. The admin sends out a 120 character message that always has “are you ok?” appended to the end.

  • This goes out via text message and email (more channels can be added later).

  • The message goes out three times, once every 5 minutes. If there is a response, then that person is considered okay. If no response, then 3 messages get sent to their other contact.

  • We file each response into one of 3 areas: responded (verified), not responded, not okay.

  • Every message that comes back from someone in that group is saved into a big bucket of text, that the admin can add notes to if needed.

Though Ping’s functionality is solid, a Wired report claims messaging apps are the fastest-growing category in the App Store and are fast graduating from Yo-like free messaging apps to sophisticated value-added platform which rich sets of functionality. So might Ping.

Readers 1,866

Share

  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Tags: iHubUshahidi
Sam Wakoba

Sam Wakoba

Taking you on tour through Africa's tech ecosystem, one startup at a time! [email protected]

Related Posts

Entrepreneurship

Adam Molai’s JUA Kickstarter Fund Doubles to $2M to Kickstart African Entrepreneurship

January 15, 2021
0
Startups

Nigeria’s TeamApt pivots to serve consumers, eyes expansion into West & North Africa

January 14, 2021
0
Business

Cellulant Group CEO Ken Njoroge to step down in June

January 14, 2021
0
work from home kenya
Startups

OZÉ Raises $700k To Digitize African MSMEs & Offer Them Affordable Capital

January 14, 2021
0
Startups

France’s OTT platform Molotov expands into 7 African countries

January 14, 2021
0
Startups

Gro Intelligence Raises $85 Million in Series B Funding

January 13, 2021
0
alternative energy building clouds energy
Startups

West Africa’s Daystar Power raises $38 million to accelerate its regional expansion

January 13, 2021
0
Startups

UK & Egypt’s Docspert Health Raises Six-Figure Seed to expand its Telemedicine Platform

January 13, 2021
0

https://bit.ly/2VOxuoBhttps://bit.ly/2VOxuoBhttps://bit.ly/2VOxuoB
ADVERTISEMENT

Join our Mailing List

Loading

Recent Posts

Baidu establishes an Intelligent electric vehicle arm to bring autonomous cars on a road near you

January 15, 2021

Adam Molai’s JUA Kickstarter Fund Doubles to $2M to Kickstart African Entrepreneurship

January 15, 2021

History of Binance: The Success and Failure of One of the Most Popular Cryptocurrency Exchange

January 15, 2021

How we can all contribute to the Green revolution 

January 15, 2021

How to fuliza by Safaricom guide

January 15, 2021
">
">

Follow Us

">

There are many sites out there focused on blowing off some steam, from funny entertainment to thrilling experiences like playing online, in some cases online gaming could grant you the chance to win extra money. We came across rocketpot.io while browsing for a good btc casino online and it left us a very good impression with their wide variety of games and crypto offering.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy

© 2019 Moran Media Group - All rights reserved TechMoran.

No Result
View All Result
  • Startups
  • Reviews
  • Insider
    • Obituaries
  • Business
  • Women
  • Blockchain
  • Columnists
  • Hacks & Facts
    • How To
  • Editions
    • US Edition
    • India Edition
    • MENA Edition
    • Asia Edition
    • Europe Edition
    • International Edition

© 2019 Moran Media Group - All rights reserved TechMoran.

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.
%d bloggers like this: