Gushit Application on African News Innovation Challenge
African News Innovation Challenge (ANIC) is Africa’s first major contest designed to promote the development of digital media products and innovations and it has put $1m Up for grabs in Africa. Gushit applied for the contest and their idea was approved by ANIC. As part of contest requirements; contestants are have to encourage audience engagement with their idea.
Gushit will be thankful to all Tanzanians and Africans who will engage with their idea through sharing, liking, commenting, reblogging, discussions, feedback, reviews, support, questions and critiques by visiting our application at ANIC or by using the comment section of this blog post. Gushit will be more thankful to all those who will help "spread the word to others" and encourage them to engage with Gushit's idea on the comments section of this blog post or at this link.
Gushit “yakiTz kwa waTz” - Tanzania’s crowdsourced news aggregator
1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]
Strengthening of existing audience powered participatory platform for spotting, aggregation, dissemination, engagement, sharing, curating and thrusting Tanzanian newsworthy online contents.
2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project different? [30 words]
Collections Concept: Engageable user titled collections of newsworthy contents having similar user envisaged relations.
Audience powered, mobile accessible, replicable elsewhere and implements revenue streams to content creators and consumers.
3. Describe the real world challenge that you are trying to solve for African media [50 words]
Improving audience engagement by creating active participatory audience through sharing, liking, commenting, thrusting and incentives.
Improving news distribution through web and mobile media newsworthy content thrusting and distribution.
Revenue streams to content creators through copublicity partnerships, sponsored and promoted bookmarks, tags, trends, profiles and collections.
Monetizing students through digital microjobs.
4. How and why will your solution work? [100 words]
HOW?
Numerous journalistic contents concerning Tanzania are published on publicly accessible websites, blogs, pages, groups, social networks or elsewhere online daily.
When users spot interesting contents, they bookmark their links on www.gushit.com.
Contents receiving higher engagement like sharing, liking, commenting, bookmarking are automatically thrusted to frontpage giving them BUZZ.
WHY?
CakePHP built Gushit simplifies spotting and distributing of newsworthy contents while monetizing content owners, engaging users, offering social incentives and tangible rewards.
Collections, trends, Mobile site, android, iphone and blackberry apps and APIs enhance user experience while implementing hassle free fresh, quality, relevant, interesting and useful Tanzanian contents engagement.
5. Who is working on it? [100 words]
JTL, ICT and media company.
Saidi Mdee, BCL director pursuing ESAMI EMBA and UDSM Bsc Computer Engineering and IT holder, heads project.
Geofrey Francis, MIST Computer Science Diploma holder, heads technical operations with six supporting staffs pursuing MIST Computer Science Diploma.
Witney Patrick, MIJO Journalism Advanced Certificate holder, heads Journalism, PR and Marketing oprerations with five supporting staffs pursuing MIJO Journalism Advanced Certificate.
Professor Idd Mkilaha, TAEC director, advises technical and general issues. Mbaraka Islam, Raia Mwema director, advices Journalism matters. Ramadhani Mdee, BCL director, is business advisor. Andrew Bernard, TBL Finance Manager and ESAMI EMBA holder, is financial advisor.
6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words]
Profiles, login, bookmarking, tagging, liking, thrusting algorithm, commenting, following, social networks sharing, ranking, points and badges system, display advertising, site and member searching, bookmarks filtering and sorting, external and social logins with facebook, twitter and openID are working.
Administration system with multiple administrators and user roles and all system user interfaces are working properly.
Project is live on www.gushit.com eventhough refinement for extra features such as collections, trends, sponsored and promoted bookmarks, mobile site and apps, keyword bidding, spam filtering, APIs and user experience enhacement is needed.
Marketing and advertising have been done on Google, Facebook and several Tanzanian blogs.
7. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words]
Sponsored and Promoted bookmarks, profiles, tags, collections and trends by entities.
Partnerships with news outlets for news and entities to offer tangible rewards to users in return for copublicity and engagement.
Funding and Donations from well-wishersOnline.
Trust Certificates and Rank Badges.
Banner Advertising and Keyword Bidding by entities.
Requested amount from ANIC: $80,000
Expected amount of time required to complete project: 15 months or less
Total Project Cost: $187500
Name: Saidi Ramadhani Mdee
Twitter: saidmdee
Organization: Jigambe Technologie Limited (JTL)
Country: Tanzania
