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One of the projects that I have been putting a lot of time into lately, is something called vuzu. Let me explain.

The project revolves around (and relies upon) the concept of convergence. It has been conceptualized and developed as a cross-platform entertainment experience that brings together the mobile, web and television platforms. It is aimed at an African youth audience (18-24 is the target age) and hopes to provide an experience that is unique and hugely successful.

So what is Vuzu? Well, truth be known, its not clear at this stage what the word “vuzu” actually means. Its one of those terms that will hopefully gain meaning through interaction and association with the service. It was also an African sounding, four-letter domain name that was available for registration. Kinda like “twitter”, “flickr”, “joost”, “taptu”...you get the picture.

The web experience takes place on www.vuzu.tv, the mobile on m.vuzu.tv, and the television on Channel 123 on DStv. The idea is that users should be able to experience Vuzu on the platform of their choice – but the real power of the experiment is the integration between the three.
From a web perspective, Vuzu sits on top of a video and social platform. The video platform serves up content that has aired on the channel, as well as web exclusive content. If you saw it on the channel, you should be able to see it on the website and mobile site (I say should, as this is largely dependant on the rights negotiated for every piece of content). The social platform is where things get interesting for me. Yes, we have included all the usual social networking activities (Profiles, Uploads, Friends, Commenting and Rating), but the exciting part about this project is that all activity across the network is dropped into an activity stream, and this activity stream is in turn made available to the website, as well as the TV platform. So what you have, is a situation in which a linear TV channel can now “tap into” a live activity stream, and push these events and activities out to an audience that a). is not experiencing the web/mobile platform, but hopefully gets intrigued about it and starts to participate, and b). an audience that is participating, and is actually watching the channel for their 5 minutes of fame as they get featured. The net effect is that the audience loop essentially gets closed – users participate wherever they are most comfortable, and that participation touches multiple platforms.

I can’t think of another example of this kind of convergence, and for me, that’s the exciting part. Sure, there are services that allow you to upload your pics and video and have these showcased on various TV shows – and other examples of audience influencing content within shows – but an ongoing social network experience spanning web, mobile and TV? If you know of one, please let me know.

I've included a couple of the website page mockups below. The site has 3 clearly defined call to actions:

• MEET: Sign up, get a profile, meet other users, make friends
• SHARE: Upload your pics/video, share your comments and thoughs, rate other users and content
• PLAY: A video archive filled with content from the Channel, as well as web-exclusive video

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.