Q&A with Yahki the social storytelling platform (2 OF 2)

yahki logo

yahki logo

 This article is the continuation of our interview with Yahki published last month. 

General 

Can you give us any statics on the number of users?

Yahki has average of 2500 daily page views.

Why do think people will use Yahki?

As I said earlier, Stories are what makes us Human, The Story is the thing. Yahki is a very easy to use storytelling social network that enables it’s users to make awesome stories to inform, persuade, motivate, entertain.

To elaborate, this tool allows you to build a narrative around a theme, story, event, or issue. Your building blocks are online articles, curated from all social networks. If it’s on the web, it can be in your story. Plus, you weave in your own touch and magic to add context.

Once you’ve published your story on Yahki, you can easily share it  with your friends on almost all popular social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+).  More over  if you used and items in the story from other social networks – say twitter – the story is shared as well with the author of the tweet informing him that his opinion was used in a story by you.  and thus opens a new channel for knowing and connecting to new friends. A Great conversation starter and a unique channel to discover and connect with new people based on true interests.

Yahki stories are fun and fascinating. The combination of photos, links, and social media conversation can be serious or light-hearted and as rich and diverse as you make it.

Storytelling is about Sharing and Engaging, and Yahki is great if you want to do that.

What is your favorite feature on the website?

If you sign up, you have two main pages of your own.  “My Stories” where  you manage all your created stories and “My Media” that’s where you mange your different social accounts to bring your own content from them into Yahki.

“My Media”  is really cool and is what I love using all the time in Yahki.  In “My Media” the user has the ability to link to his different social accounts  – currently Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Youtube (and we are always adding more networks) –  and be able to look at all his social media contributions and favorites from one place.  Not only that, he also has a classification tool (similar to Tagging) we call “Labels” that enables him to assign Labels to different content across his different accounts.  This gives the user a genuine view of his various posts on his different accounts in one place, gathered and classified at his will and further simplifies his story making.

(I took the liberty of taking a video capture of the “My Media” feature on Yahki and uploading it on our youtube page. Because you really have to see it in action to appreciate it!)


What do you plan to achieve with Yahki?

We hope Yahki to be the main social service for MENA users to inspire and promote their culture

Marketing:

How are you getting the word out? Have you carried out any marketing campaigns?

We leverage social media and word of mouth for the vast majority of our marketing, using platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Youtube because they are widely used by the customers in our demographic market. This strategy is key to lower customer acquisition costs and achieve a quicker break-even point.

We did not carry out any Marketing campaigns.

What should start-ups from the region focus on when marketing their products/services?

Inbound marketing and content creation.

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs in the MENA region?

There are two common mistakes entrepreneurs fall into:

The first one is the belief that an Entrepreneur is a Natual Risk Seekers / Taker and so they rush into a venture. This is a falacy. Any Business Venture includes risk, but taking risk is not what characterizes Entrepreneurs.

True Entrepreneurs are not gamblers, they are Visionaries. They see what other do not.  They follow their hearts to make dreams realities and to add true value to their users.  They Innovate and deliver.  When it come  to risk, they calculate it and do their best to minimize it.

The second mistake, which is very much derived from the first, is assuming that when innovating the hardest part is coming up with a good  idea.  That’s actually the easy part. No matter how much work you have done, no matter how careful your analysis, the only thing you can be sure of is that your first idea is wrong in some meaningful way.

Ask any successful entrepreneur, they will tell you the gap between the first idea and the right idea can be very wide.

Best innovators design and execute smart strategic experiments to address their biggest risks, which brings us back to the first mistake.

So my advice would be very simple, follow your vision, your dream and your heart.  Iterate on your idea and simplify it as much as you can.  Simplify it to the extent that it can’t be simpler.  When done, execute carefully and in experimental chunks to validate your hypothesis and minimize your risk and exposure.  And finally never be afraid – no matter what phase you are at – to go back to the drawing board.

Finally, here’s another video I took at Arabnet with the guys from Yahki showcasing their new live editing feature they were working on at the time. To be quite honest the platform is very interesting but until you use it (or see it in action) you don’t realize what you can do with it, that’s why I took out my phone and starting filming right away as they were showing it to me.

I’d like to thank the Yahki team for their time in answering our questions and wish them the best of luck. If you would like to stay informed on more news from startups in the MENA region signup to receive our newsletter.

Let us know your comments

comments

Having worked with top digital agencies and companies in the MENA region for the past number of years I'm now looking now to venture on my own with small side projects in online, SaaS products. Things I like include: gaming, sports, technology, social media, start ups, funny things and reading about new bright ideas.