Gauravonomics Blog

Welcome to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my combined feed in a feed reader or by e-mail and you'll never miss a single post. Thanks for visiting!

Apart from Google’s Project 10^100, I’m also submitting MobiChange at the Knight News Challenge. Here is the full text of my submission to the Knight News Challenge Garage. As you can see, some of the ideas here are based on your feedback on my Project 10^100 submission. As before, I’ll request you to take out ten minutes and share your thoughts on how I can improve my submission,

Describe your project:

MobiChange is a social entrepreneurship venture that will leverage mobile social networking for mobilizing social change.

Even as the ubiquitous use of mobile phones bridges the digital divide between the developed and developed countries, another digital divide — digital divide 2.0 — is opening up between the haves and have-nots. Digital divide 2.0 is not about access to communications devices; it’s about the ability to leverage the power of group-forming social communications technologies to collaborate with others, self-organize into grassroots communities and create crowd-sourced content that is relevant for these communities.

MobiChange will enable disadvantaged communities to benefit from the power of group-forming social networks by bringing these technologies to the $50 mobile phone that can only be used to make voice calls and send text messages.

MobiChange will be an open-source mobile social networking platform, accessible by voice and SMS, designed to support local communities and help mobilize social change. The social network will exist in the cloud, like other social networks, but it will be designed to be accessed almost exclusively by mobile phones via intuitive multi-lingual voice and text message based menus developed for lowest common denominator user. It will be built on an open source code base (like the Laconica micro-blogging platform and the Drupal SMS Framework) to support customization by developers and non-profits to create local cause-based communities. These local communities themselves will be connected with each other to enable knowledge sharing. The open source MobiChange API itself will link into other grassroots micro-change projects (like Kiva) to create new ways to connect communities and create change opportunities.

How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?

Even as the ubiquitous use of mobile phones bridges the digital divide between the developed and developed countries, another digital divide — digital divide 2.0 — is opening up between the haves and have-nots. Digital divide 2.0 is not about access to communications devices; it’s about the ability to leverage the power of group-forming social communications technologies to collaborate with others, self-organize into grassroots communities and create crowd-sourced content that is relevant for these communities. MobiChange will enable disadvantaged communities to leverage the power of group-forming social networks by bringing these technologies to the $50 mobile phone that can only be used to make voice calls and send text messages.

When I think of how MobiChange will be used, I imagine a twenty-something carpenter or plumber or shop assistant or courier boy in Mumbai who has spent two weeks worth of his salary to buy a $50 mobile phone. He can read the English alphabet but doesn’t know how to write or speak a full sentence in English. He has seen a computer but doesn’t know how to use it. I imagine him trying out MobiChange because one of his friends who works with the local non-profit has told him how useful it is. It isn’t easy at first, and I see him struggling with the simple and supposedly intuitive multi-lingual SMS based menu. After a week or two, I see him learning how to use it and doing some of the things we take for granted on social networks — meeting new people with common interests, finding new ways to entertain himself, benefiting from new opportunities for learning and earning, even sharing his own knowledge and skills with others.

How is your idea innovative? (New or different from what already exists.)

In the recent past, SMS Gupshup has built a subscriber base of 7 million in India for their group SMS service, Twitter has demonstrated that a vibrant social network can be simplified enough to be used almost exclusively on mobile pones, Laconica has built an open source federated micro-blogging platform, and Drupal has built an open source SMS integration for its content management platform.

Twitter and SMSGupShup, as great as they are, offer really limited social networking functionalities. For instance, Twitter doesn’t allow groups, it doesn’t offer multi-lingual SMS support and it isn’t voice-accessible. Moreover, it isn’t open source and a vibrant API ecosystem isn’t the same as a vibrant open source developer ecosystem. SMSGupShup doesn’t even offer many-to-many messaging. Open source platforms like Laconica and the Drupal SMS Framework are closer to what the MobiChange code base will look like, but even they haven’t been designed for the lowest common denominator user.

MobiChange should build on these initiatives to develop its open-source mobile social networking platform. However, it is critical that the development of the platform is based on extensive ethnographic research conducted amongst mobile phone users and NGOs in developing Asia and Africa. This will ensure not only that the user interface is intuitive for the sometimes semi-literate users but also that the functionality addresses real non-trivial problems in their everyday lives.

What experience do you or your organization have to successfully develop this project?

Gaurav Mishra brings to MobiChange a rare set of skills — a combination of deep academic and practical understanding of social media on one hand and extensive senior management experience in the Indian consumer market on the other hand.

Gaurav is the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University. Gaurav’s research is focused on how social media is used differently by individuals and institutions in BRIC countries as compared to their first world counterparts. Gaurav will also teach a graduate course on the use of social media in business, government and development at Georgetown University in Spring 2009.

Gaurav is serving at Georgetown University on leave from his role as the National Brand Head for Indica at Tata Motors, which is a part of the Tata Group, India’s largest business conglomerate.

Gaurav writes regularly on social media at Gauravonomics Blog and is frequently quoted in media as an authority on the emerging social media scene in India. Gaurav has also contributed chapters to two books on social media.

Gaurav has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management Bangalore.

Thank you in advance for your feedback.