Afrigator Blog

Happily I can today report that Afrigator is officially two years old. Amazingly we’ve managed to come a really long way in two years time and if I look back over the last year I’m blown away by the success of this humble startup.

I’m guessing that most of you aren’t aware of how Afrigator started so I figured it might be a great opportunity to point you to our 1st birthday post where we highlight how the company started as well as what we managed to achieve in our first year of operation. You can read the full post over here.

As this is a time of reflection I’ve decided to show you a quick screenshot of what Afrigator looked like two years ago and then I’d like to compare some of the key growth stats from a year ago.

Alpha version 0.1 (3 April 2007)

Below is a screenshot of the very first version of Afrigator. In our first version we only aggregated blogs and allowed people to view blogs by country as well as ranking of each blog in our Top Sites section. This site formed the basic existence of Afrigator and it’s from this version that Afrigator evolved.

Afrigator – A Year On

While our first year was packed with new feature releases this second year saw far fewer. This is largely due to the fact that we spent most of our time on improving stability as well as optimising the site for speed and usability. We realised through our efforts in year one that relevance is the key and we’ve now localised Afrigator in very unique ways.

Some of the key new features in year two have been the addition of Photos, Twitter, Hot Topics and content displayed by country. The localised content has been a key strategy for us and if you’re in Nigeria you only see content and rankings by people from Nigeria. This move has seen massive growth in countries such as Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria.

Growth Stats

This time last year Afrigator had 2,270 blogs registered. Of that 1,399 blogs were from South Africa and 871 blogs were from the rest of Africa.

A year later and we have 8,065 blogs registered on Afrigator. A total of 4,761 are from South Africa and 3,304 blogs are from the rest of Africa.

This means that new blog registrations grew on average by 60.83% of which SA blogs grew by 58.39% and African blogs grew by 64.20%. All in all I have to say that I think this is pretty good growth considering the limitations we had during the year.

Blog posts generated in our first year totaled 193,720. South Africa accounted for 104,600 while Africa made up the rest 89,120. In our second year we aggregated 513,690 blog posts of which South Africa made up 266,444 and Africa made up 247,246.

Statistically blog posts grew by 62.29% and in South Africa it grew by 60.74%. In Africa the growth rate was highest at 63.95%.

Milestones During 2008/09

Our biggest milestone this year was the partial acquisition of Afrigator by MIH Print Africa. We spent 10 months finalising the deal and in September we made the announcement of the transaction. This acquisition has finally given us the resources to drive Afrigator in a new direction and we’re extremely position about the future growth of the company.

Year two also saw the launch of Adgator, Africa’s first blog ad network. We had the idea for Adgator for almost as long as the company existed but it took us some 19 months to figure out the right model before we could launch it. Adgator is without doubt one of the most exciting products to hit South African shores and while we’ve had some teething problems we really expect Adgator to grow from strength to strength.

In February we also announced the integration with Africa’s largest blogging platform, namely 24.com Blogs. This was an unprecedented move not only for Afrigator but also 24.com as it allowed their users to be exposed to a unique audience outside of the 24.com platform. For us this integration means that we are slowly but surely becoming an authoritative figure within the social media space in Africa and we’ve seen massive uptake by 24.com users.

As with our first year we received some very important and influential accolades during the year. The biggest of these was the recognition received by Read/WriteWeb where we were named one of the Top 10 International Products for 2008.

Very soon after we also received a special mention in the Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008 by Read/WriteWeb and both these accolades appeared in the New York Times Technology section as well.

Where to from here?

Unlike last year we have a very clear objective and understanding of where we need to take Afrigator in the coming year. Our biggest mandate now is to drive growth in Africa and we’re very focused on delivering products and services that make sense in African markets.

This year we also have plans to expand the Adgator model into Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya and while we’ve currently been piloting Adgator in South Africa we’re hoping to learn from our mistakes, improve the technology and deliver a seamless product in these other regions.

We also have ambitious plans of innovation both on the mobile and Internet front. There are a few key projects lined up that we hope will help drive Afrigator to a new level. With the resources, technology and funding in place we can’t see how Afrigator can fail in the coming year.

A word of thanks!

Finally I have to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you. While we’ve certainly managed to achieve a lot this year it would have all been meaningless had you not felt as passionate about Afrigator as we do. I think that the launch of Adgator really highlighted this fact and we thank you for your everlasting support in our product.

To be honest, I can’t wait to do our third birthday report back and I hope that you’re with us to celebrate in a years time. In the meantime, have a drink for us tonight wherever you may be in the world!!!

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• Afrigator Turns One Today (18)
• Getting blog traffic from GatorPeeps (Tuesday Tips #4) (7)
• Cool new changes to Afrigator home page (1)
• Word of mouth still rocks (0)
• Afrigator Launches Gatorpeeps (12)