Mekwa

"Imagine a time when mobiles aren't chosen because of how they look but because they hold a precious creature. One that is a part of us. One that never ceases to surprise us. One which we can beam to other mobiles so as to gather narrative. A creature that can go places we can't. A creature we call Mekwa."

Mekwa Value Proposition

Mekwa enriches people's lives by empowering them with a simple system to fulfill
their desires/wishes. Imagine you would like to go to Tokyo but could not. You create your Mekwa and tell it to go to Tokyo. Someone in Tokyo will download it to their mobile and add video, text... fulfilling your desire to go to Tokyo.

Social networks make it very easy to connect with friends, what about strangers? What about genuine surprise?

Mekwa enriches people's lives by allowing individuals to send part of themselves i.e. the Mekwa, in a journey of discovery and fulfillment around the world in other people's mobiles [and PC's]. The Mekwa gathers different input in the form of multimedia entries
from the various people that host it [in their mobiles]. With time your Mekwa will have had most of your wishes fulfilled in the form of a long narrative that you will treasure.

A little bit of history

Mekwa is a project I have been working on since 2005. It is the product of a collaboration between a number of very talented people.

It all started after a lot of research on mobility, faceted identity and means to empower users, particularly within mobility: with novel systems to catalyse more meaningful interpersonal behaviour between strangers.

There are many 'social utilities' out there that work for you and your closest social circles. It does not take a lot of effort to put those together, for they mimick existing tangible social behaviour. I poke my friends, I send them messages, I share my experiences (photos, videos of my daily lfe) with them. Myspace took it a little further by allowing users to have a vast number of 'friends', but never in a trully meaningful way because lots of those 'friends' did not translate into real life nor did they, for the most part, bring any value to the user. In the abscence of an alternative, having lots of imaginary friends became perceived as tacit value. :-)

Facebook reacted to the above by providing a more controled and closed architecture, where users felt safer and closer to each other. I am fully aware that that is the easiest way to grow a network in a sustainable manner, to leverage the social connections between existing friends, but ultimately I will want to see my Mekwa beamed to someone's mobile in South Africa or Australia. Someone I don't know but that would still surprise me because his/her Mekwa is elsewhere and has wishes that also need to be fulfilled. This is where I first started to think about digital altruism.

At first Mekwa started by being aimed exclusively at mobility. We would have a site called the Beam Station, where Mekwas would be created and await for users to beam them down to mobiles where the Mekwa's wishes would ultimately be fulfilled.

Mobility, however, presented itself as more of an obstacle than an extension of the service. We developed a Mekwa mobile java app, but the cost of porting it to 200 devices was prohibitive... we then faced the problem of seeding the Mekwa mobile app. Why would users download it? We had to give them a reason. Eureka! I came up with a very funky mobile game. I thought I could desgise the Mekwa mobile application as a game... lot's of learning there as well.

In the end we decided users could fulfill wishes, i.e. create entries in a Mekwa, using desktop computers as well, rather than exclusively with the mobile, on the move.
On the mobile front we decided to keep everything web runtime... no cumbersome java apps to download... then the iPhone hit the market and did not allow web runtime access to the camera/photo album...grunt. We were left with no choice. We had to build an iPhone app and an S60 widget... and a G1 app... uff...

Along the way, Mekwa went from a system that allows users to Beam part of themselves, (i.e. their Mekwa), from mobile to mobile, to an engine for spontaneous celebration, period. Irrespective of technology. The former puts an emphasis on mobility, which is too risky, the latter is perceived as a platform with possible mobile touch points which serve to enrich the core experience -- "ooh, someone has surprised me and fulfilled my Dakota plains wish!"

How those wishes are fulfiled, depends on where the user is. If sitting in from of a desktop computer, then fine. I know that with the mobile, any user experience becomes more real, just like I know how real twitter feels. The mobile is less prone to artificial constructs, people take pictures, videos, and share them in a more spontaneous and truthful way. My Dakota plains wish, if fulfilled by someone driving through a plain in Dakota with their mobile, will feel valuable and unique. If it is fulfilled by someone sitting in front of a desktop computer it may feel less valuable. Blog entries, when compared to Tweeter feeds, seem like very elaborate artifacts.

Although the mobile industry advocates simplicity, it is such a fragmented industry from the user experience point of view in relation to web apps and standards, that it drives me nuts! Soon that will not be the case and Mekwa will do well (fingers crossed), but until then...

Mekwa as an architecture for participation can be used for:

1. Uninterested social networking: I don't care who takes my Mekwa, as long as it brings back interesting stuff and fulfills my desires.

2. Interested social networking: me and my buddies are important, let me beam down a friend's mekwa and surprise him.

3. Localised flirting/dating: you can only get my contact details if you fulfill my wishes.

4. Traveling: I always wanted to go to Australia, can someone there beam down my mekwa and fulfill my wishes?

How is Mekwa monetised?

1. The private sector can come in and offer to fulfil users' wishes as well. This means we can have highly target ads but we can also go beyond and start offering the user the possibility of meaningful gifts.

2. Through Ads (needs critical mass to make any meaningful revenue). Because Mekwa is mobile centered, we see a wonderful opportunity to target mobile users with exclusive mobile content.

3. Through the sale of exclusive Mekwa bodies, created by artists from aroud the world.

4. As a platform for the media industry. Now this is a little harder to explain. Strip away the Mekwa brand and you have a platform. As a platform it can be re-skinned and sold to big media brands who are looking for innovation in dating and UGC systems. Media owners who run dating sites usually run an established model that has been working for a few years now, but dating requires a new approach: an alternative to filling out forms about yourself and paying a subscription to contact others. Mekwa as a platform can offer a very innovative alternative. You fulfill my wishes and I will give you my contact details.

As a platform, Mekwa binds very well with TV and Print.

For TV, one of my original iterations was to call the service TakeMoi (provisional name) and turn it into a show. The web platform would interact with the show's viewers during the week, gathering content that would then be used in the show. Users would momentarily become passive viewers and then revert to their condition of users/content producers again.

Every
 programme 
starts
 with 
a 
girl 
choosing 
from
 the
 many guys, 
who 
over 
the 
course 
of 
a 
week 
have 
fulfilled
 her 
desire/wishes. 
Imagine sh would want potential suiters to sing her a song. You get the picture: 
lots 
of
 fun
 videos, 
pictures...




Next 
we 
follow 
some
 of 
these 
guys
 a
 lille 
closer 
and
 how 
they 
fulfilled
 her
 desires 
over 
the 
course 
of 
the
 week.




The
 girl 
looks
 at 
the
 entries 
she
 has
 gathered
 over 
the
 week
 and
 chooses 
a 
guy.
 She
 now
 has 
to 
fulfill 
his 
desire.

She
 can
 have
 the
 help 
of 
a 
celebrity 
in 
order 
to 
fulfill 
his
 desire.




The 
program
me finishes 
with 
next
 week's
 Girl or Boy
 posting 
her
 desires 
up 
so 
that 
you
 can 
fulfill 
them.
 This 
pushes
 a
 lot 
of
 traffic 
to 
the 
site that is then used to gather content for the show... completing the circle.