DiveAdvisor: A Social Platform for the Scuba Diver in you

When I began Scuba Diving I was instantly hooked.

Despite being extremely active in the past with a variety of sports, I realized that this was something totally different to my previous hobbies like skate boarding, kickboxing or the myriad of sports I was involved with.

It was more than simply something to do, it was a way to enter a new reality with different physics, visuals and emotions.

Being weightless, surrounded by amazingly looking animals was like a psychedelic trip.

After my first couple of dives I felt like I was like Alice who came back from wonderland and wanted to tell everyone about what she saw. Sadly, I didn’t find anywhere to do so.

 

The Mission

And so it began, I spotted a gap in what existed and what should exist. As a big fan of the tech world, the startup community of the world and a big believer in the true potential of the internet I began analyzing other projects and planning on how they can apply to the scuba diving community & industry.

Thus DiveAdvisor was born.

After careful planning and fusing of different features, we have established a core product which are close to finishing.

The ultimate goal was to provide a modern communication tool that would contextualize all the ‘data’ floating around the industry and turn it into meaningful ‘information’ delivered through a usable UX.

That mission is still far from complete, but the first steps have been taken and the ball is rolling.

 

The Product

To keep things simple, I will identify the 3 main components of the project, as going into more depth would probably bore you.

Here is a little video done by one of our users which is really cool.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-uVzE45Mx9E

  1. Social Directory

So what is a social directory?

Well, the idea is that there are lots of entities, e.g: Dive Sites – i.e places where people dive. Users can create dive sites, update them, add useful information to them like site advice and a site map. Moreover, users can tag photos & dive logs to dive sites which then act as aggregates of information around them.

directory829x516 (1)

Same applies to business listings of dive shops or centres, the owners of which can either claim existing listings or create new ones, ofcourse with moderation from our side.

Similarly there are other databases that get populated like a directory of Marine Animals or Scuba Diving Certifications.

  1. User Generated Content

Much like tumblr or wordpress, a user can upload photographs, write articles, dive logs or reviews which can be tagged to dive sites and dive businesses.

The meta tags of all the content is tuned specifically to work for Scuba related content.

All content also gets turned into a blog view, exactly like on tumblr, for example t.diveadvisor.com

 

  1. Social Layer

Much like tumblr, users can ‘follow’ other users, dive shops, dive sites and even countries. By following them, any content that is published or tagged to the followed entity will appear in their ‘dive stream’ – something like the internal feed of tumblr.

This layer is intended to be the glue that puts everything together.

 

mydiveshop731x516

 

The Traction

At the moment, we are slowly starting to pick up on every KPI. Our traffic is over 20k unique visits a month, we are at nearly 10,000 registered users and get about the same amount of traffic through our mobile apps.

Our social media channels are picking up and we are getting a lot of positive feedback from the community.

We are happy to be featured on startupdope.com and I can personally be reached on info{at}diveadvisor.com for any suggestions or opinions on our little venture.

 

Author Bio

Timur is an entrepreneur with Russian roots, a Universal mindset and a base in Dubai. He loves Scuba Diving, planning out new ventures and growing existing ones. He manages a small team of battle tested digital assassins that he personally leads into battle daily.

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