Vodacom scuppers social play The Grid

Vodacom has announced kill off its social networking play The Grid by 1 December.

The location-based social network, which in 2010 had around two million members in South Africa, Nigeria and Tanzania, was accessible by mobile users around the world.

The Grid, which was formed in 2007 alongside instant messaging service Meep, allowed people to chat to friends, see where they were on a map and share pictures and videos with them.

It also briefly partnered with South African-based terrestrial TV network etv to show the daily mood of the country during the morning weather report.

The mobile network sent out mass SMSes confirming the planned termination date:

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.

Two of the leads on The Grid Vincent Maher and Nic Haralambous went on to form social community builder Motribe in 2010. After a couple of successful apps, Motribe itself was bought out by Mxit — the social network which The Grid had initially been built to compete with.

This is the second big social project that Vodacom has killed this year. Back in July, Memeburn sister site Ventureburn reported that the mobile giant was planning to sell its stake in mobile video product Zoopy. Shortly thereafter Zoopy’s founders announced that they would be leaving the company.