Within months of crossing 300 thousand subscribers on YouTube, the team behind The Meaning Of Islam has launched an app on Android and Apple called the Daily Muslim. Founded by a serial internet entrepreneur, the app is tapping into a religious population projected to have 2.2 billion followers by 2030.
According to Ayesha – who asked Collective Audience to withhold revealing her identity – the app was designed using the design thinking methodology to evaluate not only what tools would help Muslims, but which tools would benefit most, how they would be used by different types of users, and how can these tools help Muslims build better habits to increase their daily ‘ibadah’, the details of which are in a case study.
The app includes prayer times, a Qibla compass for finding the direction of the Kaaba, a Quran reader, an extensive library of ‘duas’ collected from Hadith and the Quran, a Fajr alarm, a Zakah calculator, a goals tool, a section for bookmarked content, and a context section to help users understand why acts of worship are important backed by Hadith and the Quran.
The app comes just months after revelations that Muslim Pro shares user data with the U.S. military which sparked outrage and uninstalls for the app. In contrast, for the creators of Daily Muslim, users are the customer and the app is the product, with users prompted to become paid subscribers and support the Islamic venture in a manner that does not necessitate the sale of user data.
With subscribers such as mixed martial arts master Khabib Nurmagomedov, The Meaning of Islam is one of the fastest growing YouTube channels tapping into the fastest growing religion, projected to have 2.2 billion followers by 2030.
With awareness around data, privacy, and cookies at an all-time high, the Daily Muslim app and its subscription based monetisation model comes at a nearly perfect time as the world comes to terms with the lessons of COVID-19 and the realisation of how important community is, as is the role of business is saving people in a crisis.
Babar Khan Javed is an advertising reporter and can be reached on [email protected] with details about media, creative, and digital briefs, future projects, management changes, client wins or losses, and everything in between.
