It seems that we will have more copy cats than real innovations. I really don’t know if we need an African Pinterest with even the international one not gaining much attention locally. That notwithstanding, South Africa based Umuntu Media is being reported as planning to launch Mimiboard which is just African Pinterest.
Nigerian blogger, Loy reports Umuntu Media’s CEO, Johan Nel, as sayin;
“We went into crazy R&D mode, we found some of the smartest engineers in the world to work for 7 months, coded for over 5000 hours to bring Mimiboard to live. This is going to be a game changer in the African market.”
The Mimiboard app will be demoed at the Mobile Web East Africa event starting on Wednesday 22nd February in Nairobi. We will have to wait and see but through experience, I won’t give this much of attention. We need really innovative ideas and not copy paste.
For Mimiboard to succeed, I just hope that it will have very unique features. Having same features as Pinterests will be just like parking a Toyota Allion next to a BMW 320i and then trying to sell the Allion at the same price as the sexy 320i.
What I guess is that Mimiboard will focus on Kenya as a launch platform but will try to launch in other parts of Africa later.