Houma

The project

Morocco's classifieds market runs on a single cumbersome incumbent. Houma is a website and an app, both in testflight, adapting what works on the best classifieds marketplaces elsewhere to Morocco, in order to take a share of that market.

What it took

Next.js and Postgres. Four locales through next-intl. Phone verification by SMS through Twilio, working with Moroccan +212 numbers. An indexable detail page for every listing. Rate limiting and report/flag from day one.

Then an Expo app that shares a typed contract with the web app through a package common to both in the same workspace. One data model on both sides: what the web app knows about the shape of a listing, the mobile app knows too, and the compiler checks it.

The Challenge

Trust. A classifieds site with no verification is a scam board inside a week. So phone verification, moderation and abuse limits shipped with the first listing, not after the first incident.

That decision is expensive at the start, because every added step is a user who might give up, and it cannot be made retroactively. A classifieds site that has lost its users' trust does not win it back by adding a report button six months later.

Where it stands

Testflight done. Ready to launch in several cities.