Do the majority of people working in “mobiles for development” work in mobile, or development? It may seem like an odd question, but how people approach “m4d” may have more of an impact on success or failure than we think.
The world of social mobile isn’t short of anecdotes. “Put the user first”, “Consider the technology only at the very end”, “Don’t re-invent the wheel” and “Build with scale in mind” are just a few. Ignore these and failure won’t be far around the corner, we’re told. But maybe we’re missing something here. Sure, there’s a growing number of ‘best’ practices, but one thing we rarely seem to question are the very credentials of the project origin itself.