Charl Norman is a web entrepreneur behind local social networks 
Elan Lohmann is part of the Blueworld team and has spent the last week in Palo Alto rubbing shoulders with some of the Silicon Valley’s tech elite - he even managed to squeeze in a visit to Facebook! Read more on his blog and some photos below -
Category Archives: Writing
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.
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.
Top Startups article republished
April 5, 2008 – 5:13 pm
My top startups article was published in Intelligence magazine last year. It was quite popular and has been republished by Leadership magazine in their April edition. Click the graphic below for the scan (avg quality)
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 -
The best stuff I wrote on Bandwidth Blog
December 24, 2007 – 11:05 pm
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)
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!
My Google analytics chart - indicating good growth after Digg effect
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 secondsÂ
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!
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.
Its been a good week
November 30, 2007 – 7:12 pm
I’ve had a good week with attending my first 27 geek dinner which led to me writing the Afrigator Beta launch post on Bandwidth Blog. The post was picked up my bloggers and news publishers across the web and resulted in a healthy chunk of traffic for Bandwidth.
Here is some of the sites I found mentioning Afrigator, myself and Bandwidth blog. Thanks to the Afri guys for building such a hot beta application which made it easy for me to write a good review.
Highest praise for Afrigator by top global tech blog
Afrigator: The Best of African Social Media, in Real Time
International blogs: Afrigator covers Africa
Measuring the African Blogosphere | White African
Now with all the buzz around Afrigator and my blog post doing the rounds on other blogs I made it onto Techmeme which showcases blog posts that other bloggers are talking about and linking to - this resulted in more traffic, huge traffic in fact.
Top Startups Article in Intelligence Magazine
November 13, 2007 – 11:51 pm
An article I wrote a few weeks back on Bandwidthblog about South Africa’s startups to watch was published this past week. I was privileged enough to get the article published in the November issue of Intelligence Mag. The article came out really well and will surely mean some exposure for the startups profiled. Click on the thumb below to see the pages side by side. (1.5mb)
[Intelligence magazine can be picked up at any CNA]
My latest entries
My adsense earnings
Netbuzz news aggregator launches
Interview on Thought Leader
Disclaimer: I have shares in Blueworld and Zoopedup which are mentioned in the articleÂ
New Yeigo out!
October 22, 2007 – 4:13 pm
Just wrote a post about the new version of Yeigo due to be released sometime this week. Support local startups go get Yeigo! Read the article here.
With Yeigo 2.1 you can make WiFi calls to anywhere in the world, it’s like Skype on your phone but uses 90% less bandwidth (which makes it a chunk cheaper) and has a great deal less lag. To make calls to non Yeigo users you need to buy Yeigo credits just like Skype although its cheaper. You can call anyone anywhere in the world all you need is the credits - One of the Yeigo staff members called a friend in Dublin, Ireland for five minutes and cost him a measly $1.30. Now if your used to Telscum’s global call rates thats pretty impressive!
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.
