South African Social Networks
Uno as Social Networks, Web2.0
Jul|19|2007
So we have Facebook, Myspace, Last.FM and whatever else there is out there, but where are we locally? What social networks are there out there? I’ve been a big pundit of piggybacking off other networks (like Facebook) and also made some arguments for launching your own network. This post will try to cover some of the local startups that are trying to carve out their own niceh.
I’ve excluded forums as communities here simply because there are too many to many and most of the time very niche. Also blog directories aren’t included as they are simply directories and don’t have any social value, they don’t serve as a platform. Clicking on the logo will take you to the site.
Networks
MyGenius
Oooh, a nice flashy redesign since I’ve last seen it. MyGenuis is a network designed around entrepreneurs with the goal to connect them up with each other. One of the great features behind the site is that you are sent an email whenever someone visits your site (you can set this on or off).
I’ve weaned myself off the service though, seeing as I’m not much of a freelancer anymore I have little use for the site. And most of my connections come through work or blogging. Still, a good service that would complement your LinkedIn account (Hrmm, I wonder if there are plans for integration, seeing as LinkedIn is opening up their API)
Mygenius doesn’t run any ads that I could immediately see. Their revenue model seems to be subscription based.
Dave also has post on it.
Digspot
Digspot is the brainchild of Nic Haralambous. Digspot works as a sortof Facebook for your digs, so it’s geared towards students who are staying together in a digs (duh). It has all the functionality of a normal social network like groups, profile pages, likes and dislikes etc etc. A nice thing that they’ve done is to get Bru and Boegie to do some of the interface design. At the moment I can’t seem to find any direct revenue model from the site.
Student Village
It seems like the student market is the place to be. Student Village is structured as a Student Portal, the go to place for students on various campuses. They have the social networking element but last time I went through it the interface seemed a bit clunky (and I generally dislike Fit to Window/fluid designs). As far as I’ve picked up they seem to be more of an events and promotions company, and then selling their database of students to corporates for these events and promotions. I’m not sure about this, but it does seem as an obvious move by them. Their team seems structured around GradX, the recruitment portal.
In all Studentvillage has a tremendous amount of ads on it, it’s pretty easy to see where their revenue model comes from. Student Village is also more popular under the northern campuses. At Stellenbosch it was practically unheard of, although they were trying hard to get into the market.
BlueWorld.co.za
Charl Norman is the general manager for Blueworld, and you can follow the design process on his blog. Blueworld is similar to StudentVillage. They are predominately a content portal. They have photographers who go out there and take pics ala Thunda.com, events play an important role in the network and so does chauvinism (I’m gonna get blasted for saying that). They network plays on boy/girl differences quite a lot, something that Student Village does as well, but it’s not as visible on the frontpage as with Blueworld. The site has all the other features normally associated with profile pages and it includes a Bluetube - the video portal.
Blueworld seems to run off sponsorships and advertisements. KFC has had a campaign running on there for quite some time now already.
MK89
MK89 is a new kid on the block, and you might remember I predicted the launch of the site (or something like that). They’ve sinced launched with an off the shelf social networking product as opposed to developing their own platform. The sole goal of the site would be to get in touch with their viewers more. They have the video sharing section where bands can upload videos, the network can push content towards the users etc etc. Interesting that they haven’t done all of this on their own www.mk89.com/co.za domain. This will probably come soon.
LitNet
Litnet is one of the more interesting social networks simply because it is one of the worst UI designs I’ve seen in my life. I’m not sure if they have any type of CMS in the background but I wouldn’t be suprised if there isn’t anything. Still, it has one of the most active and vibrant communities I’ve seen. It has no option for creating user profiles of any sort and it’s difficult to submit content, yet it has new content everyday and the conversation is lively. Most of LitNet focuses around the opinion pieces and writing sections. Litnet uses the advertising model for revenue and I would assume they have some form of book deals with publishers.
Updates:
SA REunited
Vrinne
(Thanks Tristan)
BizJam
Media (Music, video, photos)
Other
Mxit
Technorati Tags: social network, south africa, mygenius, student village, mk89, blueworld, digspot
That’s it for now! I’ll be covering the following networks in a follow
up post. If you want to be kept up to date you can use the subscription
options at the top of the page to be notified of new posts.
This was
a short, overview review, in the next couple of weeks I’ll try post a
more indepth view of all the networks. If you know of any other
networks please say so in the comments.
32 Responses
charl
19|Jul|2007Thanks for the mention bud, comparing us to Student Village is an insult. They have nothing on our functionality or layout.
Most of the above sites mentioned also use scripts bought from the net. (Twac, myvideo, digspot We have custom built our entire video, blogging and profile functionality which should be noted.
Finally we are not a content portal at all - all our content is user generated. We recently put up the new index which highlites this.
Users post blogs, videos and images.. which can be submitted through your profile backend or even MMS’d to the site from your cell.
Again thanks for the mention UNO YOUR ROCK!
Uno
19|Jul|2007Haha Charl, I know your design is much better.
Well done on the site though, I’ll give it a good review at some stage.
And what about my rock?
charl
19|Jul|2007Hey bud, I added you on GTalk.. drop me a line when you can
Sorry thats meant to say “UNO YOU ROCK!” doh! (;
Social Networking Bulletin - » South African Social Networks
19|Jul|2007[…] Originally posted here: Uno […]
Tristan
19|Jul|2007Hey Uno, I enjoyed reading this post (and a few others while I was here). It’s great to see such an array of South African social networks. The only one I can think of to compliment your list is http://www.vrinne.com.
Nic
19|Jul|2007Uno,
Great reviews, all of them. Great sites too (bar one or two). Charl, love your site, you dudes are doing great things for shizzle, your design is great!
One thing Uno, digspot has some great extra feature being implemented as we speak!
We will soon be doing a massive overhaul and relaunch (launch)in the next few weeks so keep a lookout. And we are super stoked that there is choice and variety out there as apposed to a few years back when all students had was studentvillage (hmmmm).
Sites like blueworld, digspot and the others are great and much needed and will make great success!!
Again, thanks for a great post and the exposure, I agree with Charl, YOU ROCK!
gtc
19|Jul|2007When we last corresponded, you mentioned that you were busy doing a review of the social networks in SA. Glad to see you finally got around to it.
As for the MK89 network, its very much in Beta status. We’re working on a lot of ideas surrounding this platform at the moment. You’ll also see a number of other ‘channel’ and ’show’ related networks rolling out in the next few weeks - the ‘GO’ network was launched this week on http://www.mnet.co.za/profiles/go.
Again, thanks for the review Uno - looking forward to your ‘in-depth” follow up
African Blog Links of Interest | White African
20|Jul|2007[…] Uno de Waal gives a good summary of the social network applications popping up all over South Africa. […]
Justin Hartman
20|Jul|2007@charl: before you go making statements about other sites which you know nothing about I would recommend getting some information from the competitors.
Specifically Twac does not fall into an off the shelf product. I’ve spent the last 6 months of my life reworking this entire site and we (Stii and I) have spent a lot of time, resources, money and effort in creating our own customised portal.
I just think it’s irresponsible to make assumptions when you simply don’t have the facts.
Uno
20|Jul|2007Thanks for the feedback everyone.
Tristan: Thanks, I’ll add Vrinne to the list! Dunno how it slipped my mind.
Nic: Looking forward to the new site then! I’ll keep an eye out for it
Gtc: Yup finally it’s coming! I’m still not entirely happy with this review, it’s a bit short. But when you’re doing so many sites it does take time.
Justin: I haven’t taken a proper look at Twac yet, I will though as soon as I get round to the video section.
Justin Hartman
20|Jul|2007@Uno: Don’t go to twac now please. This is an interim interface and design as we’re about to launch Beta3 in the next two weeks. We should have the new site up very early in August and I’ll mail you once it goes live.
I think you’ll be more impressed with the new interface we’ve come up with.
Uno
20|Jul|2007hehe, ok Justin I’ll keep a hold on it.
charl
20|Jul|2007@Justin, my appologies.
I was under the impression that your software was from http://www.clipsharedemo.com/
As its identical to their software (and myvideo.co.za) in functionality and module layout.
I was merely trying to point out that we have built our platform from scratch with the video sharing tools like ffmpeg.
If you bought the source code and tweaked it then my point still stands
charl
20|Jul|2007@Nic, looking forward to the Digspot update.. keep me posted. Same goes for Twac
I want to review local startups on Bandwidth blog
Justin Hartman
20|Jul|2007@charl: Ok well firstly we never bought the clipshare software although the modeling is almost identical.
What you’re not really taking into consideration is the history of this project. When I came on board a third-party company was doing all the development and it wasn’t going all that well. I stepped in and managed the process with them and an entirely custom built application was created. This was Beta1.
Then we moved the development inhouse and basically rebuilt the entire system. We have used a lot of resources out there and modeled the functionality off of some of the video sharing scripts but we’ve been paying Stii to do this hard work for us. We then launched this inhouse version about a month ago and this is what’s currently there. This was Beta2.
Beta3 sees a whole interface shift and a much more simplistic approach. This has all been done largely by myself and Stii has supported the backend. We’re almost done and as mentioned should be launched in the first week or two of August.
In total, since October, more than R400,000 has been spent on resources to get the website to this point. It just isn’t as simple as we bought this and therefore we have a product. A lot of work has had to be done to get there - as with your site.
Johann Schwella
20|Jul|2007Justin, R400 000 sounds like a lot of money for the product you have at the moment. I have to wonder how you plan to recuperate that investment as I can’t seem to figure out how you are making money out of it?
I am slightly worried for your part…
Justin Hartman
20|Jul|2007Johann, the problem at the moment is that people perceive Twac as just another Video Sharing website. Yes we have the exact same functionality as any other video sharing site but this is simply the platform. I can’t go into any specifics about what the business plan and revenue models entail but in time people will start to realise exactly what Twac is about and how it will generate and recover the investment spent on the “platform”.
Justin Hartman
20|Jul|2007And to add to this the revenue is based on various online and offline factors which have been in development since October of last year. Twac will have numerous channels of which the website is only one aspect. The long term plan will essentially differentiate Twac from video sharing to a unique content offering that no one has really begun to think about.
Johann Schwella
20|Jul|2007Hi Justin,
That definitely sounds very interesting.
Can I make a guess to what it will be? From what I found out just quickly through google and a few other sites, is that through JA! productions (which I again guess is either your parent/holding company or affiliate) you are planning to record and promote events happening in South Africa (such as the Proudly SA comedy sketches) that normal television stations, such as SABC/etv and/or the DSTV channels, don’t cover and air these on Twac?
This is nothing more then a total shot in the dark but looking into your company was quite interesting.
cold/luke warm/warm?
Justin Hartman
20|Jul|2007LOL Johann, kudos for your attempts and for even bothering to take the time to try find out! I am impressed.
Your guess is not bad but not quite right unfortunately. Ja! Productions, the company, and Twac, the brand, is associated with both Professional content (i.e. our Twac Couches) as well as user generated content which is primarily focussed on schools at this stage.
We have the best writers, actors and award-winning producers creating the professional content and this certainly will be expanded into other professional content in the future and there you are 100% correct. At the moment the professional content is being distributed via Vodaphone Live as well as the website with many new additional “series” to come shortly.
For user generated content we have exclusive contracts with various schools in Gauteng and the Western Cape and we go in and train the kids on how to create UGC. We provide free training covering direction, producing, acting and we also provide all the tools (Apple Macs, video camera’s, etc.) for them to go out and capture the world.
While I can’t say how - I will say that the user generated content and professional content will merge into one and this will be delivered via multiple traditional and new media channels.
Hope this helped
Uno
20|Jul|2007Wow, 20 comments. I must say I’m quite flattered that this conversation happened on my blog! Especially with all the cool development news!
charl
20|Jul|2007Uno you can thank me for that! (;
@ Justin - Thanks for informing, I was under the wrong impression. Again my apologies
Look forward to the interface change, as some homepage elements such as
“Featured Clubs”, “Recently Viewed” (Next and Back functionality) and “Last 5 Users Online” with the little icons are all visual characteristics of Clipshare and surely doesnt justify 400k spent.
Johann Schwella
20|Jul|2007Uno, dis wat gebeur as jy elke “hip” social platform “link bait”…
;D
Justin Hartman
20|Jul|2007Charl, apologies accepted
JohnWebb
21|Jul|2007Justin Hartman how have you spent 400k on your Twac platform? With that type of money you can build a Facebook. I agree with Johann thats not possible.
Your site looks identical to Clip Share and My Video - What has the 400k been spent on as the functionality present is nothing new
If you didn’t buy/download the script why did you mimic the clip share functionality? I don’t care what social network is more popular as its not my market but saying you spent 400k on that site is ridiculous. Even if you are still to upload the visual changes the current functionality on Twac you can buy from clipshare at 80$
Reality check for all the SA video sharing sites, you guys look identical. Have a look at something like Veoh.com and get inspiration. Instead of cloning youtube
Justin Hartman
21|Jul|2007It’s getting tiresome that people simply can’t read the thread properly. 400k has been spent on three major versions of the site. The bulk of this was spent on the 1st version with the 3rd party web development company with a deal that was struck before I got involved.
It sickens me how web dev companies abuse their power with people who have no idea but that discussion is for another topic on another time.
Frankly I couldn’t be bothered whether or not you and Charl think this looks like Clipshare and I’m not going to try and defend that anymore either because clearly it’s a waste of my energy.
Justin Hartman
21|Jul|2007PS: JohnWebb - Facebook’s first round of funding was $250,000 with a second round of $12,5 million. Compare that to the $58,000 we’ve spent on Twac and I think you’ll get some perspective.
Amatomu: Perpetuating Hegemony at Uno de Waal
23|Jul|2007[…] web2.0… Links for Today my del.icio.usStuff I’m reading « South African Social Networks […]
SIG-III Blog » Blog Archive » The African blogoshpere – more extensive than you might think
16|Aug|2007[…] Africa seems to have a ton of social networking services – see Uno de Waal’s blog post listing some of them. Yet aside from South Africa, I only know of one other African-born social […]
South Africa’s web startups to watch at Bandwidth Blog - Web 2.0 and Startup news
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Jaco Niemand
15|Nov|2007“… comparing us to Student Village is an insult. They have nothing on our functionality or layout…”
Its funny how one’s ignorance can lead you to saying things you’ll regret later. Especially if you’ve had to bite your tongue later - and hard.
We’re not into saying bad things about people, we don’t care for that stuff
Uno, thanks for the listing. Thankfully things change with time and I’d love to see an up-to-date review of your list above - added the new networks that have popped up of course.
I think its evident that we were the first on the scene (the pre-blueword-existance fluid layout) and that we will definitely stay… come comments like the above, buy-out offering desperates, whatever comes our way.
Even though OpenSocial is a very controversial topic currently, I wonder what our platform - OpenSocial enabled, with a GPL label attached to the whole thing - would mean to these people that felt so insulted?
http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&type_of_search=soft&words=the+village
Mike
28|Mar|2008Hey Uno,
Man, if I could pester you for a favour please? If you could please append my name out of the article from DigSpot? OK to leave in Bru & Boegie though.
Thanks a stack
m
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