The Power to Work Together for Good or It's Already Been Done?

Subtitle: Is this Twitter for the Devloping World the Right Approach?

Ushahidi is a very interesting tool that was build to promote text based sharing of personal accounts of current events going on in Africa. The goal is to promote safety and transparency in real time event reporting. This is obviously important in places where the media, local and federal governments may not always have the resources or the will to report what actually happens. So give the power to the people. Great idea, right?

Its hard to fuss with that approach. The interesting thing is that their strategy seems to be build it and they will come. But others have done the same thing. So is there a business model there or merely a social enterprise model - to do good for goods sake. I'm not sure. Since I work for a non-profit that aims to work in the public interest with respect to federal acquisition and systems engineering, I can appreciate the social good approach. But everyone has to make money. Even Craigslist makes money (as they assist in driving most newspapers out of business).

So is Ushahidi a Twitter targeted at the 3rd World or merely one of the many overlay type apps on a Twitter like platform? You decide, but either way, I think its worth watching to see where they'll go. So far, they've been very collaborative in their approach to development and deployment as noted in this article. But can it scale to really reach the people it needs to have impact? This type of service can only benefit from Metcalf's law. Without scale, it suffers from the axiom, "If a tree falls in the woods..."

So with the ubiquity of mobiles in the developing world, here is how a firm plans to partner to help the locals.

The Power of Platforms over Products

Currently I’m at the ICTD conference in Doha, Qatar. I’m here with Ken Banks to do a joint demonstration on how Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS have both profited from partnering where it makes sense. Really, it’s about the power of open platforms and how separate ones can strengthen each other when they work together.

Brenda of FreedomFone, Erik of Ushahidi and Ken of FrontlineSMS

One of the discussion points that has kept coming up in conversations here is how powerful

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