Social Media in Africa (1)

Contrary to popular belief, Africa is not completely absent from the Internet. In fact, the continent at large is undergoing a connectivity revolution unlike anything it has ever seen. Mobile phones in particular are propagating at an incredible rate, with penetration ranging from 30% to 100%. The average is 30.4% and there are 280 million subscribers in total, making Africa the fastest growing mobile market in the world.

The point of this series is to highlight African contributions to social media and, in turn, reveal how social media is changing Africa.

Part One of this series looks at social media contributions from Africans, Part Two looks at mobile and connectivity innovations and Part Three looks at how local Governments, NGOs and nonprofits are being affected. If you like this series of articles, I cover these topics daily at the African social media news blog Appfrica.net, as does Erik Hersman at WhiteAfrican.com and Ismail Dhorat at StartupAfrica.com.

Things aren't perfect; the continent still suffers from disproportionate amounts of poverty, the vast majority of people remain without reliable electricity and the spread of AIDS claimed about 1.6 million African lives in 2006. Historically, that's all the world has known about Africa - but the facts are changing and other aspects of the continent deserve attention. For one, Africans are embracing the web and all things associated.

The Web Community in Africa

Technology unconferences and Barcamps have sprung up all over the continent, everywhere from Kenya to Nairobi to Madagascar to Uganda and Senegal. Although terrestrial broadband infrastructure is still a problem, VSat has provided internet connectivity in areas that don't even have electricity. There were a number of protests from the continent when Twitter shut down it's international services.

It's no wonder, then, that a number of companies, investors and entrepreneurs have taken a second look at the continent. Google especially seems to have taken an interest in supporting the burgeoning tech renaissance in Africa. They recently agreed to facilitate Barcamp Africa at their world headquarters at GooglePlex in Mountain View, CA, U.S.A. Beyond that, they've launched a blog to document their operations in sub-Saharan Africa and a complimentary forum.

African Social Media Leaders

The three biggest success stories of independent social media projects taking off in Africa are Afrigator (a South African aggregator of African blogs and news), Zoopy (a YouTube/Flickr like service also out of South Africa) and Ushahidi (an SMS crisis reporting and mapping engine from Kenya). All three have drawn international attention which resulted in a major investment for Zoopy and Afrigator's acquisition (ReadWriteWeb's coverage). Meanwhile Ushahidi has successfully raised several rounds of funding after winning the Net2 Mashup Compeition prize of $25,000.

Afrigator

Afrigator defines itself as "a social media aggregator and directory built especially for African digital citizens who publish and consume content on the web." They made a big splash in the social media space when Marshall Kirkpatrick reviewed their site here on ReadWriteWeb last year. Afrigator adopted the XFN microformat standard very early on allowing their users to use their blog rolls to import friends. Afrigator makes heavy use of a proprietary filter based on an algorithm that uses page rank, incoming links and the site's overall traffic to determine what's "hot". Afrigator was created by Justin Hartman, Stii Pretorius, Mike Stopforth and Mark Forrester.

Zoopy.com

Zoopy is a South African social media tool created by Jason Elk that allows users to upload videos, podcasts, and pictures and share them on the web. Although, it can be used by anyone, it targets the niche local market of South Africa. Zoopy also uses XFN to import friends from the aforementioned Afrigator. Zoopy recently attended the Web 2.0 Expo 2008 in New York where they showcased their platform.

Ushahidi

Ushahidi, which means "testimony" in Swahili, was built in the aftermath of the Kenyan 2008 elections. When violence erupted, Erik Hersman, Ory Okolloh, Daudi Were, Segeni Ng'ethe and Juliana Chebet used their collective talents to create Ushahidi, a web app that maps SMS reports of violence by location. Ushahidi relies heavily upon GoogleMaps, which it uses for mapping reports of incidents. It's built on the Zend framework for PHP and uses a number of different protocols for SMS, GPRS and mapping data.

African Social Application Round-Up

Although these three standout applications are the most well-known home grown social media projects from Africans, there are an increasing number of social media websites coming from the continent. Here's a round-up of several. If something gets overlooked, please add it as a comment along with a description.

I've deliberately only included applications that I know were created by people from Africa. In Part Three I'll list social applications created by foreigners and nonprofit groups.

* Muti.co.za (a Digg-like South African news site)
* Sokwanele.com (an SMS/mapping application similar to Ushahidi)
* Amatomou (a South African news and social media aggregator)
* BlogSpirit (a Ugandan blog aggregator based on the open source Gregarious)
* Mzalendo (portal for tracking the actions of Kenya's Parliament)

John Chow Interview

Interview with one of the worlds Top Earning Bloggers, John Chow. Making Millions from blogging.


Could you describe what you do and how you earn your living John?

Officially, my title is Founder and CEO of TTZ Media Inc. However, I’m best know as the guy who makes money online by telling people how much money I make online. I earn my living by creating websites that help solve a problem.

You are living the life so many desire, The Internet Lifestyle! Can you tell me what the internet lifestyle means you to and how its changed your life?

Living the dot com lifestyle is like living the dream. The dot com lifestyle is about more than making a lot of money. There are many thing you can do to make a lot of money. The dot com lifestyle is about time freedom and location freedom. Most people who make a lot of money have very little time to enjoy it. In addition to that, they’re tied down to one place.

With the Internet, I have time, money and location freedom. I can be anywhere in the world and as long as I have access to the Net, I can make money. Right now, I am in Shanghai for a month long Asia trip. Just because I went away doesn’t mean paycheck stops. Try doing that with a job. :)

What advice would you give to a new blogger trying to drive traffic to their website? Could you share an example of the effects?

The most effective free way is to guest blog for an A-list blogger. Find the biggest blog in your niche and send them a guest post. If it gets accepted, you’re get some nice targeted traffic as well as bump in your brand because of the power of association.

I understand that you run three large websites, JohnChow, The Tech Zone and TTZ Media. How do you manage to run three really large websites and still have time for family and fun?

With the exception of John Chow dot Com, the other sites pretty much run themselves. TTZ Media is fully automated. The only thing I do is approve new affiliates and set up the mass PayPal payment every month. I have staff to run The TechZone. I spend an average of two hours per day running the John Chow dot Com blog.

The key is to automate and deligate. Too many try to do everthing themselves. If you do that, you’re falling into a trap. You think Bill Gates can run Microsoft all by himself? The sooner you can let go and get others to help you, the better off you’ll be.

When you first started blogging did you model yourself on anyone? How did you learn how to be a “Problogger” and do so well with your first blog?

I got into blogging for fun. I never intended for the blog to make money or to become a problogger. My blog grew because I applied what I learn from running high traffic websites to blogging. The marketing methods used to promote a regualar content site works with a blog as well. John Chow dot Com was my first blog but it wasn’t my first site. Experience counts.

Month after month you have been earning over $30,000 from your personal blog which is crazy! If someone is new to blogging and are looking to make money from blogging, what advice / tips would you offer?

Treat your blog like a real business. Because of the low barrier of entry, most people don’t take their blogging seriously because they don’t have much to lose if they fail. I mean, you can start a blog for zero dollars. However, a blog can make serious money if you take it serioulsy. Ask yourself this questions. If your blog cost $100,000 to start, would you be running it the way you’re running it now?


Don’t be afarid to test new revenue channels and models. Advertising is just one of many ways a blog can earn money. Never put all your eggs in one basket. Try to run as many revenue channels as possible while still preserving the user experience.

Capture ever lead that comes to your blog. If you don’t have a mailing list, get one now. Down the road, your list will not only be a huge source of traffic, but income as well.

Working less and making more money sounds like a good deal to me, have you got any tips for getting more done in less time?

Think passive income. Over the last year, I haven’t raised my ad prices and I haven’t added any new ad spots. Yet the income of the blog keeps going up. This is because a big chunk of the blog’s income comes from affiliate programs that offer passive income. For example, if I refer a new publisher to Market Leverage, the will give me 5% of whatever the publisher makes. Over the years, I’ve referred thousands of publishers to different ad networks that pay me a percentate of revenue. The reason my blog income keeps increasing is because I’m still getting paid for stuff I did years ago.

The really nice thing about going after passive income is it requires no extra time commintment. You do the work once and get paid forever. It’s also not dependent on the blog. If my blog were to go down today, I would lose my advertising income but the passive income will keep coming in.

What advice would you give to people just starting out with an online business?

Just like with making money by blogging, treat your online business like a real business and take it seriously. An online business has so much greater protentail than any normal business but it cost so much less to start. It’s a real some that most people associate high start up cost with seriousness.

If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started, what advice would you give yourself regarding making money online?

Don’t do it all by yourself. You’re just buying yourself another job if you do that.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

If you can make something for a little less than your competition, and sell it for a little more, then you’re doing OK.

Thanks very much for the interview, Have you any plans (personal or business) that you can share with us about your future plans / goals / lifetime goals?

My short term goal is keep growing the business. Mid term, I want to set up a schoolarship to provide post secondary education to deserving students. Long term, I want to set up my own foundation to fund causes that I believe in.