Umuntu Media’s Mimiboard is switching business models and going back to its first love away from the social media widget and location-based noticeboard it has been for sometime.
Umuntu Media CEO Johan Nel in an exclusive interview with TechMoran said, “Mimiboard is being used as a great brand advertising option where brands create a Mimiboard. Pull in all their social media channels and curated trends around the brand and then give big traffic websites the embed code as a replacement for their banner ads.”
The new Mimiboard will however be so different.
“So instead of a banner ad in the 300 x 600, a brand now serves a Mimiboard as content marketing. Umuntu is also now in the process of building new products to go back to our original focus of local content in Africa. We have partnered with a very large development company and you can expect to see new products in the next 3 – 6 months.”
Nel told TechMoran that the firm has always had the vision to solve the local content gap in Africa. With Mimiboard immediate commercial opportunities made them focus on the tech / revenue side and Mimiboard morphed into a great brand advertising tool.
However, the firm needs to keep that momentum, but more importantly go back to its roots and build what it set out to do. Figure out how it uses tech and people to bring local content to Africa on a Pan African scale.
Though the new version is still in the labs. But lessons from 4 years, great tech and keeping the end user in mind, the firm says it will have its new version in beta by June. Nel adds that there was nothing frustrating at all about the Mimiboard to date and he really likes the product and what it does but it just didn’t fix the problem that the company set out to fix.
Note, the new version of Mimiboard won’t be called Mimiboard as it will be a new brand and new product like the Flipboard for Africa combined with something like Nextdoor.com. Nel adds that Umuntu media will then licence the Mimiboard tech and only focus on the new end user product.