Today we interview one of South Africa’s most respected social network gurus.

He owns & runs multiple social networks and recently one of those sites got acquired by one of the biggest companies in the world.

His name is Charl Norman, and today he is on the Couch.

Name: Charl Norman

Age: 23

An entrepreneur and Web Native, Charl Norman is just out of twenty and has already done his first deal, having sold a stake in his start up BlueWorld to Nasper’s 24.com. A web entrepreneur behind some of the top local social networks in South Africa, Charl also owns a network of successful blogs, writes for tech and auto publications, lectures at UCT Grad School and does the occasional public speaking event. Does he ever sleep and how does he manage to get all this done? MONEYWEBlife gives you the inside scoop to his life.

My working day:

I normally get into the office just before eight in the morning. I have a habit of rather working till late instead of coming in really early. I work a lot more productively at night with no distractions and no cell phones ringing every few minutes. I typically start my day by opening Google Reader to catch up on my feeds, open Twhirl (for Twitter) to see any new developments in our local community (Muti is also good for this) and log onto my GMail account to start the battle against my over flowing inbox. The rest of my day is typically – in between meetings at 24.com, writing blogs and monitoring the various projects BWCOM are involved in. My day to day responsibilities at BWCOM include project management, search and social media marketing, product development and dealing with staff issues.

My gadgets:

My best gadget at the moment is my 16GB iPhone, which I imported from the states. Each day I discover new functionality, tricks and applications to use with my iPhone which enhances my experience of it. The iPhone definitely lives up to all the hype – I have a 16gb media player in my pocket at all times which I use to watch the latest series or sitcoms during flights and I can blog and tweet on the go through WIFI in a decent sized browser window. I don’t have to visit a toned down version of any web app by having to go to their mobi site.