It’s a very well thought out product – you can thumbs-up answers, follow commentators and sections, view rankings and a whole bunch of other nice user features.

A question you might ask is “Why? Isn’t there something like metafilter or Ask.Yahoo?” Well, yes there is. But there’s also relevancy in being local (how do you like this one), as well as fostering the community that has been built up by 24 (we have one of the largest blogging audiences/platforms in South Africa).

Slowly but surely we’re builing up a good suite of social products – Laaik.it, Answer.it, Play as well as a number of communities in our other sections like Entertainment, Wheels and Health. We’re going to be doing some even more useful and exciting things in the short space coming up

Other people mentioning Answer.it:

Pre-release Vincent Maher.
Stii.
Matthew Buckland.

Taken the whole shebang lately with Wasa, you’d think that this would be a great tool to showcase your stats in some ranked way – very similar to the OPA.

For those of you that don’t know…

Charl Norman runs Bandwidth Blog and Blueworld.

I can understand the linking to your own sites on blogs you run, I mean, we all do that but Charl, why on earth would you bookmark your own post, about one of your own sites. Are you scared you’re going to forget?

Or are you doing the shameless self promotion gambit

I’m renting it out on a daily basis as a holiday apartment, or if you find yourself in Cape Town for business then it should also be available.

The place is fully furnished and has all the amenities that you’d want, it’s also ridiculously close to the beach and promenade, as well as some cool shops in Sea Point. (Just around the corner from Eric’s eSquared Fashion).

For full rental details you can visit this site.

Like I said, I am renting out it, and if you use the special geek password (geekpassword) then you’ll be entitled to a nice little discount! Also, I have an affiliate scheme in place, make sure that people you refer use your name and I’ll swing a weekend your way!

And here are some pics! If you click through to my Flickr set then you will get to the before and after pics. Take a look and see what the difference is!

After:

More:

Before:

During:

While it’s not an entirely bold step (it’s not that big a deal to launch a social news site), it is actually quite a large innovation in the South African market for some lesser than obvious reasons.

There are quite a few players in this space already. Internationally there is Digg and Reddit, to name some of the bigger players, and then locally there is Muti. Yes there are a whole bunch of other ones, but Muti is certainly the market player in this space.

Charl asks the question: Will it be a Muti killer? and concludes that it won’t be. I don’t expect it to either, but for different reasons. I’ve written about Muti a few times and I’ve also predicted way back in January that a 24.com product will offer strong competition to sites like Muti (I specifically wrote about Blik).

I’ve also written about niche contents before. If we had a large enough target market we would probably see a Rugby Digg as well, and a Cricket Digg etc etc. But we don’t so we still have larger scale generic networks.

So why do I think this product is innovative?

Simply because 24.com is a market leader. 60% of South African internet traffic goes through 24.com. You can’t argue with that. So it’s not technically innovative, or even visually innovative, but that really doesn’t matter.

24.com also has one of the largest blogging communities in South Africa, but the technology behind it is crap, old and clunky. But do you think the community cares? No they don’t! They’ve gotten alot of people blogging who wouldn’t have had exposure to it in another way. We have to understand that most people inside our little frenzied community are early adopters.

24.com will be able to bring social news to the broader SA audience, something that Muti struggled to do. If you take a look at Muti’s top submitters this month, I’m struggling to argue with myself that there is a broad smattering of users… It’s the same guys. Opening this up to a broader audience will get more people to use social news – which is a good thing!

On another note, I’ve written way back that I think SA is producing some crappy clones. I’m not really changing that opinion yet. (the data on that article is old, but I still stick with mah guns).

Some features that you can look forward to:
IM (obviously – but that would eat into their SMS market?)
Friending (duh)
Aggregation (between your other networks)

From another press release:

“A powerful mobile social network funded by mobile advertising could be established by combining the power of social networking and mobiles. We are also considering mobile TV and video insertions, a Vodacom radio station, as well as voice, text, content and mobile Internet searching funded by advertising,” Kumalo said.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Vodacom obviously wants to get into the share that Mxit has managed to carve out for themselves. However, Mxit has a huge user base already, and as it has proven itself, it’s not about the technology but about the community. Vodacom would have a long way to go before they can get that kind of community going. Mxit however doesn’t have the social networking aspect built into it, it’s something that they’ve been struggling with for a while.

Seeding options for Vodacom would obviously be to bundle the application together with all the new phones that they sell. While Java apps have proved to be not such a huge barrier to entry (with Mxit), it’s still something that requires a lot of technology investment (you have to develop a different program for every device). Still, having to not have people download the app will lower that barrier even more. Web interfaces are still even better (from a flexibility perspective) but they offer poor user experiences (and their feature set is limited).

I’ve heard rumors about Mxit bundling in with an operator or handset before (I believe this specific one was Nokia). This is going to be interesting, also because Mxit has also recently expanded to open up quite a few new datacentres in the EU. Could this mean expansion into the European market? Probably yes. If Mxit bundles with a handset they could possibly cement growth as well. Also, if you buy a Nokia on a Vodacom contract… What will that mean?

Yet still, at the end of the day it’s about the community. Vodacom would have the advertising budget and partnerships to be able to pull a lot of strings. No doubt they are going to use that horrible rat of theirs to promote the service. Maybe Mo will become the Tom for “The Grid”. The recent Youth Brands Survey from Sunday Times shows that he’s quite popular amongst the Youth, pity most adults hate the bastard. If they can get the kids to transfer over then they would have some clout.

Also, most of the press releases that I’ve been reading have all said something about “we’ll support it through ads”. That’s a bit of a topsided approach… Saying something like that, when you don’t even have a product, belies the thinking behind it. For them it’s a commercial product first and foremost. Nothing wrong with that, I just prefer it a bit more if the user is thought of first. I hate design by comittee.

Technorati Tags: social network, south africa, vodacom, the grid, mxit, instant message,

Build social networks around South African contentMost media captains are tightly focused on their business, meaning that they understandably don’t pay much attention to seemingly obscure stuff outside their silo — for example, the rampaging online social networking among online youth.

But some remember that a once-unknown IT business called Google came from nowhere to feast on their erstwhile monopoly of audience time and advertising tribute.

I agree with Guy that the way to play now is around content, and getting your content to spread as far as possible. We sit with media companies that have ridiculous amounts of locally relevant content – something that major international players won’t be able to duplicate.

Take a look at MTV’s network for an idea how some of the larger media players.

Technorati Tags: South africa, social network, guy berger

The network looks good (clean design) and looks like the functionality could be quite high. You can network with other friends, upload videos around an issue and discuss. Your profile is also quite rich, showing which issues and organisations you support.

Think has quite a strong focus on profiles and you being in the spotlight – something integral to social networks. This is probably where Youngblood5 made their second mistake (the first one was to desig in flash).

YB5 Doesn’t have any kind of networking abilities – only the option to view according to space (which could have worked nicely with a Google Maps mashup). Profile creation is central to any identity in a social network and without it you don’t really have anything to build a community off of.

Well, lessons learned I suppose.

Technorati Tags: youngblood5, mtv 5fm, social network

More after the jump.

You’ve come up with a lot of flack recently, specifically related around comments for spamming on Muti. Can you tell us what happened in this case?
I was self submitting articles of good quality about achieving results on the web. All the articles are on the website at http//www.trafficdepartment.co.za. They vary from Writing good Content to News about Googles penalizing of web directories. At the same time a client Wade Balsdon was posting blogs on similar subjects and on his religious beliefs. Someone jumped to the conclusion that Wade and I were a single entity and declared that I was spamming the board. In fact with there being no guidelines for any new visitors to MUTI neither Wade nor I was aware of the fact that we were breaking some taboo.

A few individuals that were colluding on the inside decided to mark every post as spam rather than advising us of the unwritten rules of the MUTI jungle. I wrote an article crying foul and the MUTI gang decided to attack. It started with an article by Nic Haralambous and spread to a few others.

Why do you think people said that you were spamming muti?
Personally I think some misguided people see anyone self submitting any article, despite the merits of said article as a spammer. Other misguided people will place “articles” consisting of nothing but sales pitches claiming that its not spam. In the middle of all this you have people writing legitimate articles in order to promote businesses, ideas and opinions. If said people self submit, they are graded with that group that are ipso facto spammers. The group on MUTI seem to have a hidden agenda as well. I have not managed to find the core reason for the attacks and slanderous accusations made by a group who are contacted via a network.

In a few of you video’s you mention the difference between spamming and marketing, What do you think is the difference between spam and worthwile mass marketing and how was this misinterpreted according to you?
Spam is the action of putting sales material in front of the reader whether it is wanted or not. Marketing is the action of writing good quality articles about various subjects. I posted articles about looking after your tyres on behalf of a client site. No sales pitch at all and these were marked spam.

What other sites do you use?
I am assuming you mean social networking. I am a member of many different sites and just this morning joined SABlogger at http://www.sablogger.co.za. Its an awesome alternative to MUTI. But I am on facebook, reddit, diggit, stumble, fark and many more.

Your admin section on your site was exposed pretty quickly, how did this happen and what have you done to remedy the situation?
This was an omission on my part. I forgot to password protect the directory after switching it off during the testing phase. When testing I find having to input the password everytime I log in to be a little tiresome. I screwed up but solved the issue by password protecting the directory as soon as I realised what was going on. My site was not hacked, a sneak came in through a door I forgot to close and sprayed graffiti on the walls. I removed the graffiti by deleting the entries from the very secure database.

The blog Ideate (in this post) likens you to the Star Wars Kid and Gary Brolsma, the Numa Numa guy. What do you think of this? Which one do you find yourself more inclined to be likened to?
I found that humorous and not at all offensive. Even I have a sense of humour. I think we have an individual there with a great sense of humour. He disagrees with my viewpoint and that I can live with. If everyone had the same theories and beliefs this would be a world of copycats and boredom. I thanked him for the exposure as I dont believe that he actually harmed my brand. He disagreed with it but in an inoffensive way. Well, I speak better than the star wars kid, sing worse than Gary Brolsma but am not much better looking than either. But I would say more like Brolsma because the chap has chutzpa. He did not lie down and cry when people laughed at him. I like people that are able to laugh at themselves because lets face it they are much more fun to be around.

What do you think of the local webdevelopment scene? Copy cat clones or locally relevant?
The web development scene is very diverse. I find it strange that people want to try and fit it in a box. There is a wide gamut of different styles and attitudes. There are designers who don’t have a clue about even the basics, someone taught them to use dreamweaver or Front Page and they design sites with no concept of what the business world needs. There are very good developers that code magnificently but don’t understand business. I am sure there is a place and a market for every type. I just chose to move away from bespoke sites for clients to a one size fits all approach for small business. I am not competing for the branding market and as such should not be seen as a threat for designers in that market. Sadly in todays world anything that is peceived as a threat is attacked. Are there copy cats? Yes. Are there sites that are locally relevant? Yes. Mostly though there are designers that churn out ill conceived products for uninformed clients who later become adamant that this website stuff does not work in their market.

Can you tell us a bit more about your different web properties? You have Traffic Department, Mad Genius… what else is there and how do they differ from each other?
First of all MadGenius.co.za is not mine, Wade who owns it also markets my product along with a number of others. I have http://trafficdepartment.co.za which markets the budget website that is the reason for this article. I have http://www.guymclaren.co.za which is my central site advertising bespoke design and photography. I have http://www.lowveldnet.co.za which is a tourism portal for the lowveld. I have http://www.guaranteedsouthafrican.co.za which is an alternative to proudly South African. The project is not yet complete but offers benefits to early signups in the form of an automatic upgrade to Gold membership at no cost. I have a number of projects in the planning phase.

How do they differ from one another? Well they all focus on different products, different strategies and more.

If only it was that simple. The blogging platform is only a part of my product. My product has a very simple interface allowing people with no knowledge of the web a method of getting online. It includes a 5 page “traditional website”area, a Blog, full contact area and more. This package is not designed as a competitor to wordpress, blogger et al, but as a competitor to the sandard static 1 – 5 page website that has no real tangible or even intangible benefit to the client. My clients can speak to me on the phone, by skype and by email for support. They get immediate backup and help with minor issues. They get training and ongoing personal support. They are automatically included in a network. The pretty lady that gets them into the club is my support and package.

How did you get into the whole blogging shebang?
Uno I have been on the web since the early days. I was a MIRC fiend, I have been a member of newsgroups, forums and more since 1996. Blogging flowed from there. We wanted to start our own community and tried to find a platform last year sometime. Every platform we tried had something that prevented us from doing it the way we wanted. Some were too complex for some of our group, some didn’t allow very specific features that we wanted. As I am a coder not a programmer I dont do widgets and API’s. It was a simple solution to use the CMS I already had and make some changes to it. The facts are that sometimes simplicity is the best route to follow.

Follow the rest of the story about Guy Mclaren:
http://www.youtube.com/user/guymclaren
http://www.thecolony.co.uk/2007/09/i-think-i-may-have-struck-chord.html
http://www.ideate.co.za/2007/09/06/guy-mclaren-star-wars-kid-or-gary-brolsma/
http://wiredgecko.net/2007/09/guy-mclaren-fights-back/
http://nicharalambous.com/2007/09/04/social-networks-aka-dating-sites-and-crap-websites/
Guy Mclaren on Amatomu.com

Technorati Tags: guy mclaren, traffic department, muti, spam

Updates: I’ve closed the comments (you can still pingback)

I’ve also updated the links – It was a quick original post, but all the links are there now.

It’s a CMS, just like Wordpress but the design of everything is just really really cool. It doesn’t have the option to extend into infinity (like some of the other open source CMS’s do) but it doesn’t need to, the sites they are targeting are all midgard, low level content sites. It just looks really cool.

I haven’t had the opportunity to play around with it enough, but I’ve signed up for my 1 month free trial.

The dev company are Cape Town based and is called thisarmy. Gettit? thisarmy built the tank. hehehe.

All the cool shit is always under the radar…

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