The Yoza Project

Steve Vosloo, Project Leader

The mobile revolution

www.yoza.mobi

Yoza Cellphone Stories

• A growing library of titles (26 at present)

• Some stories are serialised (a chapter a day) and every chapter of every story has a comment prompt or vote prompt

• Stories found in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa

• Stories are free but costs for mobile data (about 50 paisa / chapter)

• On MXit all comments are moderated before going live

• Available in South Africa and Kenya

“It's great ... for me it really hard to pick up a book to start readin but i don mind readin on my phone”dotty1

What our users commented

Yoza stats

• Complete reads of m-novels: >121,000

• No. of comments: >34,000

• No. of votes: >44,000

• No. of MXit subscribers to Yoza: >61,000

(Period: September 2009 to January 2011)

“Aha” moment:

Mobile phones are a viable distribution platform for longer form content and for enabling user participation

“A gud st0ri alth0ugh vewi sh0rt id lyk 2 c m0re 0n mxit bk0z it enc0uragez readin!”Lesleigh(F)

“If friar's plan wrks, then romeo wil b able 2 cum nd take juliet wit hm 2 liv hapily 2geda at mantua bt if it fails, sumbdy's gna b dead. Lol!”Elsie

Africa is “book poor” but “mobile phone rich”

www.yoza.mobi

m4lit.wordpress.com

Southern African mLab

• Regional mobile applications laboratories

• Incubation of innovative mobile content and apps development

• Skills development and business support for mobile apps entrepreneurs

• Locally relevant solutions