Afraha, a new social network from kenya
Afraha is a social network that has recently been launched from Kenya. It joins a number of other African startups in this space such as Nigeria’s Naijapals and South Africa’s Blueworld amongst others. The registration on the site is quick and simple and you cant help but be reminded of Facebook while using the site. They have taken a lot of inspiration from Facebook’s user interface. Afraha has been launched with features like status updates, activity streams, photo albums, chat, a personal calender of events, groups and messaging.
The feature list is pretty impressive for a newly launched Social network. There are a few features however that set it apart, You can run personal polls and they also have a map that displays where your friends are. Right now it seems to only point to the location used when signing up, however with a little modification and a mobile client they could start offering mobile social networking that is based around locations.
P.S Thanks to a Nairobian perspective for the tip
Jobtoria, Nairobi’s Job Search Portal
Jobtoria.com is a job search engine designed to help employers attract quality candidates from around Africa. Jobtoria.com was created with the employer in mind with features designed to link up employers and candidates as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Using jobtoria.com, you can apply for jobs online, track your applications and get information about potential employers right from the comfort of your computer. You can also use the privacy feature to reveal only what you want to employers.
What is unique about the service?
Jobtoria’s unique alert system lets you know via sms/email when employers are hiring. With this service, you can get SMS or email alerts of jobs, get an understanding of the companies culture and apply for multiple jobs in minute.
Jobtoria is not meant to replace traditional job search strategies as well as web-based ones but rather to supplement them and using refined web application, users can easily link their system to the site’s for what can only be a win-win situation.
Using both internet and mobile technologies, jobtoria.com provides employers the opportunity to:
- Advertise jobs to thousands of prospective candidates both locally and regionally.
- Track job spending and build your online brand as well.
- Show case your employer brand
- Target candidates globally
- Supplement your own web recruiting efforts
- Notify prospects via email and sms alerts of job openings
How it works
Using jobtoria.com, you can create a mini site to showcase your company (in seconds) attracting potential employees into your company. Make better connections with a prospect as well as determine whether a prospect is a social or cultural fit with your company.
My take on this site
Jobtoria is a great initiative for Kenya, as it would help more employers reach more job candidates.
Revisting Buzzfuse with thoughts of an additional business model
The initial review of buzzfuse was by far the most negative i have done, and i hate to do that since the goal of this site is to actually promote local companies, however i feel what is much more important is being honest about your opinions. Do not get me wrong, i do think it is a great idea as long as there is quality content. Since then the guys from buzzfuse have sent a strong message to their community that they will not accept gaming of the system.
Buzzfuse have also added the ability to share content from just about any site by using a bookmarklet. Moving into the social bookmarking space and competing with Muti and Laaik.it (Review) in South Africa.
Recently i have been thinking about the best way to run a group blog while sharing the revenue equally and equitably between all the contributors based on the quality of their submissions. Google currently has flexible revenue sharing however this is catered specifically for Adsense ads and does not take into account additional value that good content brings to the site. For example, from incoming links, unique visitors, hits and building a community around the site. Another issue with running a group blog using this model of revenue sharing, contributors may start creating content with the purpose of targeting specific ads. We see something similar with blog posts that are created with SEO in mind first, rather then the actual content. The result of that is the post brings no additional value, while lowering the overall quality of the blog. The goal of a group blog should be to reward good contributors in proportion to the quality of their posts.
Buzzfuse though have an algorithm that measures interaction and thereby popularity on each post. If the algorithm is free from gaming, it could be used as a measure to split revenue for group bloggers. For example: Each posts popularity is measured and given a score, all posts for each contributor is then rolled up monthly into a score out 100. Each contributors score out of 100, could then function as as the proportion they recieve from that months revenue. Since buzzfuse already measures content popularity it would not require much developmenet and they could then charge a nominal monthly subscription fee for the service.
Stop being a Wannabepreneur!
Dharmesh Shah from on Startups the guy behind hubspot has an extremely relevant post on taking that leap to become an entrepreneur. I believe there are two kinds of people, those who talk about doing things and watch other people do it and those that actually take action. Wannabeprenuers are those people who always wanted to be entrepreneurs but are afraid to take that first leap. The biggest fear being that of security and and stability in their career. To be an entreprenuer, the main thing you have to get over is your fear, and the only way to get over this is a belief in yourself and knowing that you will be able to make your business a success. The higher your fear for making this leap the more lacking your self belief is. Conquer your self belief and you will conquer the fear of taking that first step.
You have to realise that once you take that leap, you may have to hang in the air for a while and sometimes things may get difficult but you have to persevere and be motivated so you can reach the other rock. Building a business does not mean immediate overnight success, building a business takes many small incremental steps that constantly grows your business and adds value to your customers and users.
Dharmesh offers some tips to wannabeprenuers to help them with making that first step:
1. You’re probably overestimating the risk of leaving that BigCo job. Chances are, that sort of job (or something awfully similar) will be there a year from now if things go miserably.
2. Though nothing compares to doing your own thing, joining a startup team is not bad either. It’s a great way to dip your toes in the water. Often, half the battle is just getting out of your comfort zone and being around startup people.
3. Regardless of what your risk tolerance is, you can likely still find opportunities that are more entrepreneurial than what you’re doing now. There are startups with really high risk, with nothing but a dream and a developer (or two) all the way to startups that have raised several rounds of funding and are on the IPO path. You should be able to find a startup that meets your risk profile.
4. Unless you have some compelling evidence that things are going to get easier later to do something more entrepreneurial, chances are, they’re not (going to get easier). So, if the question is when, not if, then ask yourself “why not sooner, rather than later?”
5. For those that are thinking: ”Yeah, this is all easy for you to say, you’re not walking in my shoes”, I say this: You’re right. If you truly don’t have the situation or circumstances to take the leap, that’s ok. I just implore you to at least think about it and decide for yourself whether your obstacles are real or perceived.
P.S Stay tuned here for a programme to assist your with those small incremental steps you can take to start a business.
P.P.S Picture sourced from tricky at flickr under this Creative Commons license.
Appfrica 2008, Uganda, A tech conference for Africa
APPFRICA is a series of international tech conferences and think-tanks aimed at bringing together researchers, industry leaders, businesses, educators, governmental and non-governmental organizations to discuss novel uses of web technology for innovation and education in the developing world.
Appfrica is a place where leaders in the tech industry from around the globe will use their collective knowledge to tackle the world issues of hunger, sustainable energy sources, HIV/AIDS and more. The first event will be part of a panel at the Technology for Innovation and Education in Developing Countries conference to be held at the Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
As referenced by TEDC, the 2007 World Bank Report entitled “Building Knowledge Economies: Advanced Strategies for Development” states that the four key drivers for successful knowledge economies in the 21st Century are education, information technology infrastructure, research and development focused on innovation, and free market based economies. The goal of Appfrica is to help cultivate minds and encourage entrepreneurship, collaboration and free-market competition with this research in mind.
Some of the topics and discussions may cover:
- How the Web is Creating New Opportunities for the Developing World
- Why Western companies are Interested in the African IT Community
- The Semantic Web and The Opportunities it Will Create for a World Marketplace
- Why Intellectual Property is Africa’s Most Untapped Resource
- Using Indigenous Resources to Benefit Local Economies
- Web Applications and Mashups That Show Real Potential for Social Change
- The End of Language Barriers? Translation Tools for Education and Business
Appfrica 2008
Venue: Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda
Date: 31 July - 2nd August 2008
Cost: $300 for international attendees. Native Africans and African students can apply for a scholarship which will allow them to attend for free, travel costs not withstanding.
For more details, visit the Appfrica wiki or join the mailinglist to get involved.
Kickstart, Young entrepreneurs can get up to 2.6 million in grants
The Kickstart awards is a programme aimed at 18-35 year old entrepreneurs in South Africa. The programme aims to stimulate entrepreneurship in people from previously disadvantaged communities. Winning entreprenuers can get grants of up to R 2.6 million, as well as mentorship and training which last between 6 months to a year.
Biz community reports that “almost 22,700 existing and budding entrepreneurs have already benefited from KickStart and more than 3 200 businesses have been started by KickStart participants.” and “Sixty-four percent of grant winners from 2001 to 2005 are still in business, with 87% of those who received grants in 2004 and 2005 still operating. No fewer than 83% of SAB KickStarters have reported that their businesses are growing, and the turnover of KickStart businesses has increased by an average of 375%. Almost one third supply goods and services to SAB. Many of these enterprises have grown into multi-million rand organisations employing a significant amount of people.”
Entrepreneurs that wish to enter, should complete a form found on the kickstart website and submit it before the 18 June.
Barcamp 08, Kenya, Nairobi
Barcamp is a user generated conference for anyone interested in technology,blogging,coding & web startups, with the content that is often provided by the attendees. It has no set agenda and facilitates knowledge sharing with discussions, presentations and demos. On the 21st of June, Usahdi will be sponsoring Barcamp Nairobi that will be held at Jacaranda Hotel. Some of the topics covered may be:
- Local mapping (Open Streetmap, Green Map, etc.)
- Blogging tools and trends
- Mobile phone apps (Android in Africa, FrontlineSMS and RapidSMS)
- Using Google’s App Engine for building web and mobile services
- I’d love to hear from some of the EPROM guys that worked with Nathan Eagle
- OS curriculum for universities
- Studying users (mobile and web)
- Building into social networks
Though, please note there is no set agenda and anyone is welcome to contribute, the event will feature several talks and workshops and you can choose which to attend based on your interests.
Barcamp Nairobi 2008
Venue: Jacaranda Hotel
Date: 21st June 2008
Time: 10am - 17:00 PM
More details at whiteafrican and to register add your name to the list at the barcamp wiki.
Update: The Venue & Time has been changed to Jacaranda Hotel the time is now 10am to 17:00 pm.
Bongoza, a search engine for Tanzania
Bongoza is Tanzanian search engine that was launched in 2005, completely bootstrapped and funded by founder Ali Damji. Bongoza currently only indexes Tanzanian webpages but there are plans to expand into other markets in East Africa like Kenya, though they have to go up against Google since as Google already has localized version.
Bongoza also features a local directory of services and business which is being populated at the moment, and there are plans to add classified ads with automatic payments via mobile. I compared the results for the search term ‘Business’ on Bongoza to Googles (advanced search) . The first listing for bongoza directed me to a business directory hosted on kabiza.com while Google’s result pointed to the yellow pages directory for Tanzania. There are also plans to also rework the algorithim to ensure better relevancy.
Insights on startups, (David Lawee, Google)
David Lawee, VP of Corporate Development at Google, shares his insight on setting up a company.
Key Takeaways & Notes
Top 3 Lessons
- Be Passionate
- Partnerships are amazing but hard
- Speed is everything
Things to think about for partnerships
- Do you want flip? Grow? IPO?
- Fianancing, How much and from where? (Angels, VC, Equity, Friends)
- People
- Culture
The ability to move quickly is your best competitive advantage
Afrigator, raises the game for other social media aggregators
Afrigator, the social media aggregator for Africa has raised the game when it comes to web 2.0. They have added a feature that allows you to automatically import your blogroll as friends.
I have always rooted for the smaller players in the online space, as i believe thats where all the innovation happens. For huge dinosaur operations like the Yahoo’s, Google and Microsoft’s it takes a while before they respond or any changes are made, innovation becomes difficult due to the size of these companies. Smaller companies can innovate and release new features very quickly. Take Afrigator as an example, during the recent Xenephobia crisis in South Africa they launched the hot topic feature which aggregated all media that was tagged with Xenephobia. The feature also provides stats and a graphical view on the number of posts and presumably it could also be modified in the future to feature any other hot topic.
They have also launched a feature which allows you to import your blogroll and see which of your contacts/friends are already members of Afrigator. You can then choose to add those blogs to MyGator, which is a personalised view of all the blogs you are interested in.
The feature does require some modification of code on your blog but if you are running wordpress you can use the Auto XFN-ify plugin which will automatically make the changes for you. The Afrigator blog has a video tutorial explaining this feature.
* Note: i tested the plug-in on WP version 2.5.1 and i get an error. So you may have to modify the code manually or fix the plug-in
