Target Audience & Incubation Strategy

From WikiDeal, the Wikipedia of e-commerce Β· Socio-Technical Innovation by ThΓ©o Bondolfi

WikiDeal follows a two-phase adoption strategy. The first phase targets motivated contributors with academic and practical experience in collaborative economics. The second phase opens to the general public through easy-to-use apps and marketplace pilots.

Contents

Phase 1 β€” Incubation Audience

The incubation public is composed of people with a strong motivation to contribute and who benefit from co-financing support in one or more of the five platform pillars:

# Pillar Description
1 Market & Funding Includes fundraising and market deployment
2 Technology App development, MediaWiki infrastructure, APIs
3 Legal Contract drafting, endorsements, governance protocols
4 Core / Governance Steering committee, open calls, decision processes
5 Community & Outreach User group incubation, ambassador networks

Target Profiles for Phase 1

Phase 2 β€” General Public (via Apps)

Once pilot marketplaces are running, WikiDeal opens to the general public through consumer apps. This phase does not require prior knowledge of cooperative economics.

The transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 happens through pilot experiments in legally and practically simple domains.

Community Migration

Phase 2 is not only about new users discovering WikiDeal through apps. It also includes existing platforms and communities migrating to WikiDeal. Two types of migrations:

  1. Migration by conviction β€” Platforms that believe in the WikiDeal model and want to join proactively.
  2. Migration by necessity β€” Platforms that are struggling, losing users, or becoming financially unsustainable. WikiDeal gives them a second life.

In both cases, the migrating platform transforms itself into a User Group within the WikiDeal ecosystem, retaining its community identity while gaining access to WikiDeal's infrastructure, governance tools, and financial mechanisms.

Pilot Domains β€” The Bridge Between Phases

Two pilot domains serve as bridges between the incubation phase and full public adoption:

  1. Babysitting β€” Simple legally and practically. Low barrier to entry. Demonstrates the full contract lifecycle in a familiar setting.
  2. Street Fundraising β€” Has a double utility: it validates the platform and raises funds for WikiDeal itself. Fundraisers become early ambassadors.

Dogfooding β€” WikiDeal Funds WikiDeal

WikiDeal applies a deliberate dogfooding principle: it uses its own tools to finance itself first β€” before proposing them to others. This is not just a philosophical stance; it is a practical commitment to credibility.

Concrete Example: Street Fundraising

Street fundraising contracts are used first to raise funds for WikiDeal itself, employing volunteer dialogueurs (street fundraisers). This serves simultaneously as:

  1. A real pilot test of the platform's contract and payment mechanics
  2. An actual fundraising campaign for WikiDeal

The fundraisers are not just test users β€” they become early ambassadors who understand the platform from the inside.

Beyond Street Fundraising

The same logic applies across WikiDeal's financial toolkit:

This approach builds trust in the most direct way possible: the team uses what it builds. When WikiDeal proposes a tool to a new community, it can say β€” truthfully β€” "we have used this ourselves."

See also