Category Archives: Sharing

Tech Leader post is up

June 13, 2008 – 10:18 am

My first Tech Leader post is up - Twitter downtime - Could Google help Twitter scale? - read the full article here.

I had a thought on Twitter a few days ago: Could a Google acquisition of Twitter help the service scale? Or is it not an infrastructure issue but more a platform issue? Twitter has suffered from serious downtime over the last few weeks, trying to keep their service live during peak usage periods. They managed a 97% uptime during the WWDC keynote, which is’good’ by Twitters standards.

twitter

Would a Google acquisition be healthy for Twitter? One can’t help but to think about what has happened to other startups gobbled up by the search giant. Since the acquisition of similar life streaming service Jaiku, the community has suffered from negligence on Google’s behalf, much like the Dodgeball acquisition, an acquisition Google made in 2005 and never really did anything with. Some Jaiku users have even revolted and moved over to Twitter. Google’s strategy to gobble up small startups and then do nothing with them is an interesting one.

By Charl Norman | Also posted in Web 2.0, Writing | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Afrigator beta 2

May 14, 2008 – 9:45 pm

Bandwidth Blog posted breaking news today about the Afrigator beta 2 launch. CEO Justin Hartman was kind enough to give us the scoop. Congrats once again to the entire team - Mark, Stii, Justin and Mike. Read it here

afrigator

By Charl Norman | Also posted in Scoop, Web 2.0 | Comments (0)

Office photos from 24 dot com

February 5, 2008 – 2:13 pm

I just published a post on Bandwidth Blog about 24.com and photos of their offices. They have a really stylish office space -

By Charl Norman | Also posted in Writing | Comments (1)

Bloggerati link love

February 4, 2008 – 10:54 pm

bloggerati
Malan, myself and Jason Bagley
Photo by BizCom

Who knew attending geeky events would be such a link driver. My 27 Dinner review post generated a ton of traffic and links to my blog. Then last week I attended the Blogeratti event hosted by our local web guru’s Matt and Vince. Once again introducing myself (or even just rocking up) has led to a ton of back links and a traffic spike. To round it all off it’s always good measure to write about the event afterwards and link to all the other blogger’s posts. This generates comment ping backs on the blogger’s comments (sort of legit comment spam). If the blog doesn’t have the ‘no follow‘ tag setup it’s a free back link and helps you get noticed by the blogger and his audience (thats a whole different post).

We all know lists are great to get your blog noticed by the masses but try some offline marketing and attend some geeky events especially blogger ones.

It was great to meet up again with some of my blogging buds and put faces to some of my online friends.

Here’s a list of blogs covering the event -

Bloggerati - awesome party and thanks for coming

Just got back from the Bloggerati

The Bloggerati aftermath

The Bloggerati was fantastic. yay for Sa bloggers

From Bloggerati to Bronx

Gathering of the Bloggerati

By Charl Norman | Also posted in Blogging | Comments (8)

The best stuff I wrote on Bandwidth Blog

December 24, 2007 – 11:05 pm

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Here are some of the most popular posts I published on Bandwidth blog since its launch one year ago.

South Africa’s top startups to watch (Was published in print)

Afrigator beta launched (Was picked up by ReadWriteWeb)

24.com launch Laaik.it social media aggregator (Breaking news)

The offices of todays internet companies (Reached the Digg homepage)

Microsoft wants Yahoo - $50 Bil (Bandwidth Blog’s best rumour published of 2007)

By Charl Norman | Also posted in Press, Writing | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Bandwidth Blog continues to rise

December 17, 2007 – 9:08 pm

The referal traffic to Bandwidth Blog after my successfull Digg post (500 Diggs) has continued to rise. All the Digg traffic came and went after a few days but the referal ripple effects are still being felt. Many bloggers have picked up on the post and linked to it. Traffic from other social media aggregators have also been good e.g. Del.icio.us (47 saves), Techmeme and Twitter.

Some blogs that blogged my post over the last two days

Betshopboy.net, Peek Inside Offices of Leading Internet Companies, The offices of today’s leading internet companies, JohnChow, A peak into the offices of web 2.0 companies, Matt Cutts, Internet Companies, Entrepreneurs and Search, Offices of leading internet companies - DesignersTalk,

The Alexa traffic chart for Bandwidth Blog - spikey!

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My Google analytics chart - indicating good growth after Digg effect

google chart

By Charl Norman | Also posted in Web 2.0, Writing | Comments (6)

Good reading

December 14, 2007 – 3:04 pm

Some stuff that caught my eye in my reader..

The age of micro celebrity by Clive thompson

Om Malik: The new social network: Wordpress

WWD: Top 10 books for web workers

TechCrunch Bebo Embraces Facebook Apps With Its “Open Applications Platform”

Jason Calacanis: Mahalo: Adding the social graph to search

Pro Blogger: Discover Hundreds of Post Ideas for Your Blog with Mind Mapping

Shifting Careers: 5 Time management tricks

By Charl Norman | Comments (1)

Office photos

December 10, 2007 – 8:24 pm

Update 2 - BandwidthBlog suffered at the hands of Digg and was down for 2 hours. I finally got it back up around 3am. Exciting hitting the front page - the digg count flies - 55, 59, 67, 87, 110, 150 .. in a matter of seconds 

UPDATE - My article made it to the front page of Digg - it smashed my server to pieces - trying to get it back up now - 01:55am. Did all the prepping I could, just not enough. Lesson learnt!

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I just published a post on Bandwidth Blog about office photos from hot internet companies. The post was my shot at creating a link bait list to submit to delicious, digg and muti. Please Digg the post here if you think it’s worthy.

By Charl Norman | Also posted in Web 2.0, Writing | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

Hot links

November 28, 2007 – 11:56 pm

Some stuff I’ve been reading

Meet the PayPal mafia

Afrigator: The Best of African Social Media, in Real Time

It’s The (Other) Algorithm, Stupid! Understanding DiggRank

Google’s sneak attack? Adsense for Facebook

Kevin Rose: Mobile Web Is The Next Big Thing

Go West LinkedIn CEO: We’d only sell for “a helluva lot”

If you like some of these links check out my Delicious profile and add me to your network

By Charl Norman | Tagged | Comments (0)

My daily reads

November 19, 2007 – 9:25 pm

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I have a ‘daily reads’ folder in my Google rss reader which I can’t wait to go through each morning when I wake. These are blogs and sites that have compelling news and insight each day that I can’t live without.

This post will also be a great way for you to discover some new sources of tasty info for your daily consumption.

Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins

I dabble in affiliate marketing with local affiliate company Traffic Synergy (no affiliate link). Shawn provides some serious ’super affiliate’ insight on how to maximize your campaigns and build quality landing pages that convert into leads.

Business Week

The definitive in tech source, I subscribe to the “Top Stories” feed of Business week which cuts through the clutter and leaves me with what I should be reading from a technology business perspective.

Del.icio.us popular

Truly one of my favourites, a great way to discover popular blog posts in the last 24 hours. Check out my delicious bookmarks and add me into your network.

Digg Technology

Digg has tried to go mainstream news by adding numerous content categories but the only real area, besides politics, that has good quality content is the tech area.

Inside Adsense

A healthy revenue stream for me is my Google Adsense earnings. I have Google serving adsense ads on all my blogs and need to stay in touch with the latest contextual advertising trends.

Mike Stopforth

I’ve had the privilege of meeting Mike on a few occasions - what a guy - he always inspires me and leaves me wanting to work for a week straight after a meeting. His blog serves up great insight on a variety of topics.

Muti

I have the muti rss in my reader but I often find myself logging onto the site itself to get the latest in worthy South African news. Muti is a great way to stay in touch with the local internet and its snotty bloggers.

Original Signal

Like muti, Original Signal is a human filtered content site but only features Web 2.0, gaming, business and entertainment news.

Problogger

Owning a mini blog network I need to adopt the latest blogging strategies to keep revenue flowing, no one comes close to ProBlogger for expert advice on how to get the most out of your blogs.

Read More »

By Charl Norman | Comments (7)

ICT Young Entrepreneur of Africa

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 renown Vinny Lingham.
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