A new innovation unit has launched within 24.com called 20FourLabs. My company Blueworld Communities will be working together with Matt Buckland (lab master) and his team to build audiences and technologies for 24.com.

20FourLabs is a start-up research and development division within 24.com focusing efforts on rapid, agile web development and innovation.

Our aim is to hire people who think big and think fast and to give them the resources with which to create innovative products within the mobile and social media spheres.

We are looking for rockstar php/.net coders to join Labs – if you feel like moving to a high profile division within the biggest media company in Africa – Naspers – or if you know of anyone please get in touch with us.

These are my favourites from the party gallery

Uno de Waal (left) & Sarietha Engelbrecht (Youth Strategy: Media24)

Sessa (left) and Matt Buckland

Elan Lohmann (GM social networks MIH Africa) and Bradley Voges (One of the BWCOM founders)

More pics after the jump

My lady, Jade Allen, and her friends

David Perel (Obox/ From The Couch)

The Bagley and his wife

Niekie Deetlefs (Lead engineer BWCOM) and Annel Malan (Speakerbox editor)

Thank you to everyone who showed up – we had a great time

Generic banners

Blueworld body painted models at the J&B Met

Meanwhile I’m still in the race for the coolest guy on the internet serp contest

Hey Everyone,

From everyone at Blueworld Communities we would like to take this opportunity to wish you a happy XMAS and your business a successful new year.

Blueworld experienced a great 2008 and we look forward to continuing this success in 2009. Some of the highlights we experienced this year included being acquired by Naspers in a landmark SA internet deal, launching the new look Blueworld, using our platform to launch 24.com’s Speakerbox project, launching the new look for Zoopedup, soaring past the one million page views mark and launching Blueworld mobile.

In 2008 the Blueworld community posted 6441 blogs, uploaded 101 033 photos, created 1034 groups, shared 1854 videos and sent 558 939 sms’s from our free sms platform which accumulated to 1.5 terabytes of monthly bandwidth and a storage total of 95 gigs. Blueworld photographers took 187.460 photos covering in excess of 2.600 events.

As I write this Blueworld is ranked 47th on the OPA (SA website rankings) for local visitors and 7th on the OPA time spent on site chart with our sister niche social network, Zoopedup, 2nd on the OPA for time spent on site.

We look forward to continue our growth in the new year and look forward to working with you.

Please be safe if you travel these holidays and look out for the Blueworld photographers!

Visit the staff blog

Charl N and the rest of the team

Co-Founder, Chief Operations Officer
BWCOM pty ltd
charl@bwcom.co.za

Read Blueworld press from 2008 here

Also with the new layout we will introduce a content delivery network (CDN) to serve Blueworld’s media. This will further ensure less load on our front end farm and quicker loading times. Click below for larger versions -

The new homepage which now includes Blueworld Bands

The new user profiles which now includes user activity

Keep an eye out on the Blueworld staff blog for launch details

24.com are now partners with BWCOM. Mybroadband published the scoop – you can catch it here

This is huge for BWCOM and we look forward to collaborating with 24.

Some quotes from the scoop

24.com CEO Russel Hanley says that the acquisition gives the company access to both Blueworld’s established online community and their social networking technology.

Hanley highlighted the fact that Blueworld Communities’ audience is complimentary to the 24.com audience and they will definitely look at synergies in future. The 24.com CEO further pointed out that the Blueworld Communities technology will enable them to target certain niche social media markets in future.

“We are very excited to be a part of the 24.com family and look forward to leveraging their assets to further expand our social network’s market reach.,” said Charl Norman from Blueworld Communities.

“We also have a very strong youth demographic which compliments 24.com’s older user base. We are very proud of the social media platform we have built and look forward to exploring synergies between our technology and existing 24.com brands to further expand our niche social network strategy.”

I can’t say much but watch this space !

Just a quick note to highlight some new functionality we ‘plugged’ into Blueworld today. It’s called Gender Bash and is all about asking the opposite sex a question. The new service has been a huge hit with tons of questions and replies.

genderbash.blueworld.co.za – Have a look, learn something from the opposite sex

Most popular question so far – “How big are your boobs” and “Are pink shirts gay” .. haha

Some of the content boxes on the Gender Bash page – you can see the users have been going crazy for the new service: