Blueworld, South Africa’s social network goes mobile
Blueworld now has a mobile version of the social networking site. The mobile site is lightweight and lets you view and respond to messages. The site also has a feature called ‘MINI’ blogs which is very much like twitter. Additional features included news headlines from sites like News24 and access to events posted on blueworld.
Geek Dinner, 28 May 2008, Cape Town
The eighth in the new series of original Geek Dinners, will be held on Wednesday the 28th of May 2008 in Cape Town. The geek dinner event is a networking event for people who are passionate about technology, entrepreneurs, geeks and bloggers.
Geek Dinner - Cape Town
Venue: Mel’s Village Kitchen, Rondebosch
Date: 28 May 2008
Time: 18:30 for 19:00
Add your name to the list to register
Afrigator, Africa’s Social Media Aggregator Beta 2 Launch
Afrigator, the African social media aggregator has launched beta version 2 of their web site. The home page has been given an overhaul, now with tabs splitting content by Recent, Most Clicked and popular. In addition to this you get a custom tab which lets you customize the home page and view only topics that interest you. The stats and rankings have also changed and is now based on visits, Page views and incoming links.
The website itself feels much more usable and seems to load a whole lot quicker. Get the full list of changes at the afrigator blog.
Startup School 08, Creating a successful startup (Paul Graham)
Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator, speaks at Startup School 08 about how to create a successful startup.
Key Takeaways and Notes
- Make something people want and do not worry too much about the money
- There are parallels between a non profit and a startup, especially at the beginning stages (i.e craiglist)
- Benevolent startups often turn into great companies
- Benevolence increases morale, rallies people around you and it motivates you
- If your startup is small, cheap to run and committed you become hard to kill
- “A good plan violently executed now, is better then a perfect plan next week”
- When making decisions, do what is best for your users
- Be good
Frogfoot Wifi, Everyone can earn money
Frogfoot, are not just happy settling for a cool name and a funky logo, they now offer just about anyone to own a WIFI hotspot and bill customers while at the same time offering agents who refer wifi operators a chance to earn commission. Everyone gets a slice of the pie. Technically, frogfoot is not a startup since they have been in business since 2000 but since this is a unique business model, it warrants coverage.
The hotspot agent refers customers and receives 20% commission on profit for the first year while the operator receives 70% commission. This is a unique proposition and i like the idea and it remains to be seen if it is sustainable for everyone involved. They could also get the Hotspot user in on the sharing with a few tweaks, which should drive usage:
- Free megabytes sponsored by companies for the users, in return customers could complete a quick survey
- A loyalty scheme for high traffic users or tie up with other companies to offer discounts on products and services
Brasil Tech 2008, Technology lessons for South Africa
Brasil Tech 2008 will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa on the 27th and 28th of May. The event will be hosted by the Brazilian trade and investment agency at the Sandton convention centre. I believe there are important lessons that we can learn from brazil as they have faced similar challenges as we have in Africa. The event will cover how Brazil’s technological advances can be adapted to South Africa, successful use of open source in public administration and how brazil overcame the energy crisis in 2001.
It will also feature four workshops and Business to Business (B2B) meetings. For a full programme and to register visit the Brasil Tech website.
South African Social News Round Up - laaikit vs muti
VS 
laaikit the new kid in the social news/bookmarking space by News24 was launched late last year. They have all the typical features you would expect for a social news site such as voting up/down and comments. The categories under which sites can be classified are exactly like the news24 site. So how does it match up to muti?
++Positives
- The default view shows ‘upcoming’ links, this promotes new content
- Submissions are split by different categories, allowing you to narrow down on what you want
- Allow you to see what’s popular for a specific time period
– Negatives
- Registration is cumbersome with 12 required fields which includes things like your home language.
- The site has actually been developed by news24 which runs one of the most visited web sites in South Africa this puts other sites that submit to laaikit at a disadvantage.
- I doubt other media companies would actually link there since this would be directing traffic to their competitor.
muti
Muti was the first social news site catering for South Africa and has been around since 2006. Growth and voting on the site seems to have increased recently as well.
++ Positives
- Registration is simple and only takes only a few seconds.
- Manual Submission is quick and easy as well.
- Lets anyone edit the tags on submissions, allowing irrelevant tags to be removed and new ones added.
- You can follow muti via twitter which lets you see all new submissions in real time. You can receive the updates anywhere such as IM, the Twitter web site and even SMS if it’s really that important.
- Mobile Version launched
– Negatives
- Susceptible to spam with registration & submission
- Without categories browsing through the information is difficult, you only have tags & search to work with
The Verdict
muti is still the king of the hill, unfortunately the cumbersome registration is a deal breaker for laaikit. Add that to the fact that the site is owned by News24 and branded as such it will discourage other media companies from using it.
muti also has a unique feature called ‘hooks’ which allows anyone to interface with the site, however it is not clear how a registered user could access this service. We see other sites like Mixx launching API’s as well while muti’s hooks were released way back in 2006. The possibilities are endless with hooks, you could set it up to be alerted via email/twitter/sms anytime a particular keyword is used. This feature alone sets it apart from the 100’s of sites out there and i have yet to see any other site that offers this.
* Since laakit is still in beta, i will revisit the topic if the site that is launched is significantly different from the beta version.
Startup School 08, Start a business (David Heinemeier Hansson)
In a talk called the secret to making money online David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework and Partner at 37Signals gives insight into creating a profitable startup company.
Key Takeaways and Notes
- The secret to making money online is pretty simple, you charge a price.
- Entrepreneurs all want to be the next youtube or facebook, but the chances of that happening are slim
- They have a better chance if they actually start a business and concentrate on paying customers.
- There are several ways you can charge a price (Monthly, Pay per event such as per email/fax)
- Concentrate on other business, the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME), as he calls them the fortune 5,000,000.
- Getting consumers to pay for services online is difficult therefore startups should concentrate on other businesses.
- Focus on solving problems that you yourself face as a business, most likely other companies out there are facing similar problems.
YCombinator Startup School 2008
Startup school, a yearly conference sponsored by Y combinator and Bases (Standford) aims to share knowledge and train young entrepreneurs by hosting talks by experienced people. Y combinator also offers entrepreneurs early stage seed funding. The most famous of these projects that have spun out of Ycombinator are scribd & reddit.
This year the conference featured talks from
- Jeff Bozos (Amazon)
- Marc Andreesson ( Founder, Ning, Opsware, Netscape; Creator of Mosaic)
- Sam Altman (Founder, Loopt)
- Michael Arrington (Editor, TechCrunch)
- Paul Buchheit (Founder, FriendFeed; Creator of GMail)
- Paul Graham (Partner, Y Combinator; Founder, Viaweb)
- David Heinemeier Hansson (Creator of Rails; Partner, 37Signals)
- David Lawee (VP of Corporate Development, Google; Founder, Xfire)
- Jack Sheridan (Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati)
- Greg McAdoo (Partner, Sequoia Capital)
- Peter Norvig (Director of Research, Google)
Starting today StartUp Africa will feature each of the talks from this conference including the key takeaways and points. The YCombinator concept is a brilliant idea to stimulate entrepreneurship amongst youth and i believe we need something similar in Africa. Mfonobong Nsehe makes a valid point at American chronicle, there is not enough funding for African youth and we may never see a Google, Microsoft, Yahoo or Facebook coming from here. Stay tuned for something more.
Calling entrepreneurs, geeks, innovators, marketers 27 Dinner May
27 is a get together, held on the 27th day of each month for geeks, innovators, marketers, entrepreneurs, writers, media practitioners, speakers and anybody who is keen, to share ideas, news and opinions over food and drink. The concept originating in South Africa alternates monthly between Johannesburg and Cape Town, more recently in Pretoria, Durban and Port Elizabeth. 27 is open to anyone who wants to attend or contribute.
May 27 Dinner - Johannesburg
Venue: Primi Melrose Arch
Date: 27 May
Time: 18h30 for 19h00
To register add your name to the list
