Charl Norman is a web entrepreneur behind local social networks 
I was mentioned on the interwebs a few times over the last month - kudos to the following friends -
Mike Stopforth - Ten (More) Young South African Digital Citizens To Watch
Charl Norman is not just a promising young talent, he’s already proven what he can do. Climbing on the social networking explosion of 2007 and 2008, Charl realised he could use his Web savvy and business instincts to bring niche social networks (like BlueWorld and ZoopedUp) to the South African internet. And he did it so well a big-ass media company paid him lost of money for it - and rightly deserved. Charl has, despite his admirable succes, remained a pleasant, humble and trustworthy dude that I sincerely enjoy meeting up with. The only downside is that I have to have four Red Bulls laced with acid to keep up with the conversation…
Nic Haralambous - Defining 08/09 - analysing the year past and the year ahead
Charl Norman is the co founder and chief operations manager (COO) for Blueworld Communities. BWCOM owns numerous niche social networks based in South Africa.
1. Blueworld Communities being acquired by Naspers - this paved the way for other acquisitions in our local space - Zoopy and Afrigator soon followed with investment from Vodacom and MIH/Naspers. This created investor confidence in our small local market and enabled other startups to more confidently seek investment.
2. The economic crisis will slow down venture capital investments and startups unable to figure out their revenue model will have their funding reviewed or forced to merge with other similar lower tier startups.
Users will own their online identity (e.g. profiles) with tools like Google and Facebook connect. Users will carry this identity along with them around the web forcing online communities like social networks to embrace data portability technology.
Social media will also become more mainstream as tools like Twitter will be adopted by the general public and not just geeks. Good companies will have concrete social media strategies as part of their overall marketing strategy.
More press here
Photos from my trip to Silicon Valley for the MIH Tech conference.
I appeared on channel MK TV's new hip hop and car show WOELAG. They interviewed me on our automotive social network Zoopedup.
I have been nominated for ICT Young Entrepreneur of Africa 2008. Now to even be nominated is a great honour for me seeing as last years winner of the award is internationally renowned Vinny Lingham.
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