Launching on 29^th November, it is purely built on the basis of primarily networking with those people who hold meaning in your lives; those people in your phone book; your Whatsapp contacts. It is not an I.M like WeChat or Whatsapp but a platform which is much broader than that.

Designed by Zimula Rogers Kagombe, Mike Wagaba and Mark Lubega, the app allows a user to stay in contact, up to the second, up to the event, and practically have a front seat in the daily lives of the people you need and love and frequently connect with.

Like any other social networking platform, it has the basics of networking and connecting like messaging feature, photo gallery and sharing feature, status updating amongst the rest. It also brings in a couple of new features like ‘vibes’, ‘vibzcons’, ‘nudge’, ‘places’ and ‘follow’ to mention a few.

A vibe is elementary what exactly a user is doing or feeling at a specific moment in time for example a #work vibe when a person is at work, #sleep vibe when a person is in bed, #excited vibe when a person is excited about something, #inTransit vibe when a person is in transit from place to place among other elemental definitions which have all been selected to represent the basic activities and moods a person can go through in a day.

To accompany all the vibes, defined or undefined, are ‘vibcons’ which are essentially graphic representations of these specific vibes, acting very much as emoticons. The vibcons aspect within vibz creates an avenue for the design of an intuitive and interactive while easy to use and exciting layout of the app where the main page/tab of the app is basically a tiled layout of these vibcons of the friends of a specific user, each representing exactly what each of the friends is up to at a specific moment with a quick and easy glance by the user.

Another very interesting feature of this app is the ‘nudge’ button which has also been developed to create a rich platform optimized for sharing by driving more interaction across the app. This nudge button is basically a poke but with a drive unlike the traditional poke on Facebook which has no specific drive or reason except for simple basic interaction. Other highly relevant features include the follow vibe button where a user can follow a specific vibe of a friend as with his incentive of getting instance alerts on each update pertaining to that vibe. The founders believe life is not a summary and so the app also gives you more than just 140 characters to describe your moments and update your status.

The team has faced its biggest hurdle in the process of making Vibz go viral. This has been really hard for them as they are not getting quality press media coverage and apart from that, lack of adequate funds has also slowed down various Vibz operations.

However, this hasn’t abated their motivation and the Vibz team is all set to launch the app with great expectations. “Never give up on something you believe in even when it seems stupid to keep going because no one ever really knows when they are going to catch their big break.” is the team’s advice to all those who wish to embark on the unique journey of entrepreneurship, one which is often filled with uncertainties and doubts but in the end of the day gives you the satisfaction of going against the herd and doing something on your own!

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