Afrigator Blog

Hey guys, my name is Mamello “Mum-z” Mokoena and I am the new member of the Afrigator team. I’m originally from Jo’burg, and am looking forward to good times in The Mother City. On my first day with the Afrigator team I was so nervous that I was sweating like Steve Hofmeyer at a paternity test at the prospect of having to learn how to use a MacBook, but now that I have settled in a bit and gotten to know the ‘dudes’, I’m feeling very comfortable and quite excited.

This is actually my first blog post ever, so I hope that you guys will go a little easy on me. I’m a virgin. Don’t expect to be wowed by my fantastic writing abilities or my editorial charm. This is just an introduction to the man behind the name. For those of you who are more astute, you would have noticed that my nickname is Mum-z. Mum-z is the stage name that I used when I perform stand-up comedy. I have been doing stand-up comedy for about two years now and have performed all around the country. I’m looking forward to doing a lot of gigs down in Cape Town, so keep your ears to the ground and you may just get a taste of my comedic skills.

Before you start thinking that Afrigator hired me to be their own personal in-house comedian – who just sits in the offices cracking jokes on command – I will actually be handling all of the sales enquiries for Afrigator and I’m looking forward to it. (Actually, I’m looking forward to the commission – I’m from Jo’burg, it’s how we roll). I am officially the youngest member of the team, weighing in at a youthful 23 years of age, but don’t let my age fool, you – I’m a tough cookie.

So far, the Capetonian weather has been treating me well, but having studied at UCT in the past, I am very well aware of the impending volatile winter ahead. I have many local clubs to visit, beautiful women to see and great people to meet… so I’ll chat you guys again later. Stay safe and keep it real.

Yesterday morning I was interviewed for the Unzipped Podcast on Fin24.com. In the interview with Simon Dingle we covered topics that included:

• What Afrigator is
• Blogging trends across Africa
• Afrigator revenue streams, Adgator & Google Adsense
• Integration with the 24.com Blogging platform
• Membership to the Online Publishers Association (OPA)

To listen to the podcast (only 6 minutes 30 seconds long) you can click on the image below or alternatively click here to be taken to the podcast page.

It looks like things are picking up for us here at the Afrigator office

Last week I got to work only to find that a camera crew from FinWeek had taken over the office and was set and ready to shoot us. Well, you know what I mean.

The article has been written and published and this morning we got hold of an early edition of the FinWeek mag, which has a feature on Afrigator. Apparently the editors decided that Stii and I weren’t aesthetically pleasing enough and used a (cool) pic of Justin for the article. You can read the article online here or rush out and get your copy of FinWeek to see Justin in all his geeky glory. I’ll add some more pics to our photostream as soon as I get hold of them, but there are a couple that you can view now, so go on – take a peek.

Thanks for the support FinWeek, you rock.

The Gator Mob

(we made this up last week – waddayathink?)

P.S – If yu haven’t already submitted your entry for your free t-shirt, check it out here.

We’ve been holding off on the big news but we can finally confirm today that MIH Print Africa (Pty) Ltd, a subsidiary of Naspers Limited, has secured a majority stake in Afrigator Internet (Pty) Ltd.

We could not have chosen a better partner in MIH Print Africa as their strategy for Africa aligns perfectly with ours and is an important development for the social media space across our continent – validating the importance of blogging and social media in Africa.

Our Vision

When we started Afrigator in April 2007 we had no idea that we would be where we are today and our sole mandate at the time was to try and create a compelling and useful product that bloggers would enjoy using.

Since then our strategy hasn’t changed but we have evolved to not only serve bloggers but anyone who is interested in social media developments across Africa.

Afrigator is about social media and our users and this vision will not change moving forward. As a privately funded operation we had limited resources at our disposal and this deal gives us plenty of room to turn Afrigator into a mature and useful product.

What this means for our users

Fundamentally this deal is hugely beneficial to all our users as we can all finally focus on Afrigator full-time. We have also employed Lester Hein as our Product Manager who will join the team at the beginning of October and we plan to expand our development team in the near future.

All of this means that not only will the vision remain in tact but we’ll also be more efficient and focused on our users as the team grows and expands.

There are big plans for the development of the website itself and we plan to launch some innovative products along the way.

If you have any questions or would like further information please get in touch with us – we’d love to hear your thoughts!

Read more on this topic here or download the official press release here.

A while back we registered Afrigator on Vator.tv’s Demand Media Challenge. For those of you who don’t know what the Demand Media Challenge is all about here’s a quick synopsis of the competition.

Demand Media, which has raised $320 million, is on a quest to find the top next-generation new media companies and has partnered with Vator.tv to find great companies to complement its ever-growing library of cool sites.

The winner gets to fly down to meet with the mergers and acquisitions team at investment company Demand Media, as well meet Demand’s CEO Richard Rosenblatt. Coupled with also gettting blog exposure with profiles on VentureBeat, Mashable and Andy Plesser’s Beet.TV

Yesterday we received some coverage on VentureBeat in relation to the competition and as they point our we’re currently sitting in #7 spot but we’d like to climb a little higher!

If you like our service and feel it’s worth a vote in the competition then simply go to the competition homepage, register, scroll down and cast your vote for Afrigator’s pitch.