{"id":25993,"date":"2012-11-07T13:08:28","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T11:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=25993"},"modified":"2012-11-07T16:34:57","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T14:34:57","slug":"vodacoms-the-grid-switching-off-in-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/25993\/vodacoms-the-grid-switching-off-in-december\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom’s The Grid switching off in December"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom<\/a>‘s mobile social network, The Grid<\/a>, will be shutting down on 1 December 2012, according to SMSes sent out by the team.<\/p>\n

Vodacom had previously told BusinessTech that it was in the process of discontinuing the service and redeploying the platforms for other projects, where possible, but had not set a final switch-off date.<\/p>\n

According to a user, Vodacom informed users of the planned termination date via SMS: “As of 1\/12\/2012 we’ll be discontinuing the service. Please log on and retrieve any contacts or details that you’d like to save. The Grid team.”<\/p>\n

This was confirmed by other users of The Grid.<\/p>\n

The Grid is a location-based mobile social network that allows users to chat to friends, see where they are on a map and share photos or videos with them. Users are also able to view photos and videos relevant to the area they are in.<\/p>\n

The social network platform started up in 2007 alongside real-time, presence-based Instant Messaging (IM) service, Meep<\/a>, and was fully funded and supported by Vodacom, which provided the infrastructure and resource support.<\/p>\n

The Grid’s closure comes around the same time that one of Vodacom’s other investments in social media, Zoopy<\/a>, missed it’s planned relaunch period.<\/p>\n

Vodacom had no new information surrounding The Grid or Zoopy’s standings or future plans.<\/p>\n

\"Grid<\/a>

The Grid shutdown message<\/p><\/div>\n

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Vodacom planning to sell stake in Zoopy<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Zoopy founders leave company<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SA\u2019s biggest mobile websites [2010]<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom starting to roll out The Grid [2008]<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom’s mobile social network, The Grid, will be shutting down on 1 December 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":21909,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[25,189,917,4090,27],"class_list":["post-25993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-active","tag-mobile-2","tag-social-network","tag-the-grid","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25993"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26001,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25993\/revisions\/26001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}