South Africa’s internet ruckus.

Something sparked up over at stii’s blog, something regarding Web2.0 in South Africa. Stii was blogging about internet startups such as blik & muti, all South African of course. It came down to the fact that there are too many internet startups (whether the owner perceives it as one or not)

“Stefano blik
is not intended to be a startup. It was only done for fun, and to
enable me and a few friends to easily find interesting Afrikaans
writing on the web.

I think muti has the effect of encouraging more and better writing in local and African blogs, so maybe blik can achieve the same for Afrikaans.

If the site gets a small but loyal following, I will have achieved all my goals.

Please also take a look at this:“

,and that given South Africa’s tiny online market share, the creation of numerous sites (Especially numerous sites that are 98% alike) is not promoting industry growth. The only way to effectively grow, is to collaborate (or stand together if you wish), and by collaborate I do not specifically mean merging. I merely mean collaborate, working together, helping each other grow and succeed.

This is essential in an emerging market and it is even more essential not to jump the gun. Many South African iWizards (geeks) seem to think that innovation is key, which it very well is, but, it is not the only key. It does not help being innovative to the extent that your market cannot understand your innovation. Before innovation can successfully be implemented the market you are targeting needs to be educated up to the standard level, which equal current online trends. Now, I am not saying that cloning is key, absolutely not. I think that MyVideo is an excellent clone of YouTube, but it is (in my opinion) a waste of energy. YouTube offers a much better service and I am not planning on downgrading any form of convenience I presently incur to promote local startups which aim, in the long run, to give me only the same level of convenience. I understand the localisation of this project, but is it essential that South Africa needs it’s own video sharing network, when the resources on YouTube are already phenomenal? I think not.

However, with regards to Muti which is a clone of Digg, my opinion differs. This is purely because Muti is an online news aggregator and South Africans are indeed interested in local news. Muti is of course, in dire need of adding some value to their service in order to lure the South African Diggers to Muti.co.za.
Content, also one of the key factors in driving traffic. Most of the articles on Muti are posted by South African bloggers, and most of the content has some sort of IT feel to it. Why would people that are not at all interested in IT use Muti? (Believe it or not, there are people that do not live in front of their screens)

Now blik comes along and pushes an afrikaans version of Muti (Which is FAR from formidable) and is probably going to be snatching up the small amount of Afrikaners on Muti from the already tiny amount of Muti readers. See why collaboration is pivotal?

It crumbles down to South Africa’s industry being in an infancy period. Infants need nurturing and caring to grow, peers stand together to achieve this, why can’t South African startups do the same? South Africa has not yet conquered Web2.0, we are still Web2.0 beta.

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