Who knew that an unexpected and unfortunate incident involving a South African politician and a piece of broken furniture would turn into a viralphenomenonaroundtheglobe?
The video on Zoopy has already soared past 19,000 views (and counting, of course) and goes to prove the engagement potential of multimedia in South Africa in general, and the reach of the Zoopy community in particular.
If you haven’t watched, and laughed, and watched again, here it is:
Bronwyn Raitt from newsclip.co.za has published two whitepapers that shed light on the technologies, mechanics and impacts of vlogging and vodcasting. Klaus Bauer, one of our content producers, and I have been quoted in each of the articles.
Zoopy users already have two ways to upload and view media via their mobile phones, with another two launching soon.
There is no doubt that mobile access to the internet is a necessity in Africa, where a handset is really a 3-way connection tool: a camera, a computer and modem all in one. The question then becomes, what does a connected user on our continent DO with their online access?
We’ll be joining the MobileActive08 conference this week (running 13-15 October 2008 in Johannesburg) to explore the many mobile experiences from around Africa.
From their site:
MobileActive08 is the largest event to date focused on mobile technology for social development. This global gathering brings together people like you - practitioners, researchers, technologists and donors experienced and interested in the use and application of mobile technology for social impact.
At MobileActive08 you will explore how mobile phones are effectively used to advance civil society work, assess the current state of knowledge in the use of mobile technology to advance social development, and investigate trends, needs and investment opportunities.
If you’re going to be there, please say hi and have a chat about all things mobile and social with Nic Haralambous, our Gauteng GM.
Zoopy is proud to announce the winners of the Zoopy 100Gb Bandwidth competition, which was run on the MyBroadband.co.za forums over the last fortnight. Participants had to upload as many items as possible to Zoopy and then post their profile URLs to the competition thread. In total, the members that particpated uploaded 5809 media items.
Here are the final totals:
macman (1579 uploads) - wins 70Gb of bandwidth from WebAfrica
confu3ed (1521 uploads) - wins 20Gb of bandwidth from WebAfrica
Matrixweb (1389 uploads) - wins 10Gb of bandwidth from WebAfrica
In an article titled Social Media in Africa, ReadWriteWeb puts to bed the myth that “Africa is absent from the internet” and highlights some of the new media action on the continent, including startup development, online communities and conferences.
The article lists “three of the biggest success stories” as Afrigator, Ushahidi and Zoopy, noting that all three have been successful in drawing international attention.
CNBC Africa is Africa’s first 24 hour business and financial TV channel, broadcasting domestically on DStv channel 410. They were at the iPhone launch as well and asked if they could use some of the Zoopy footage as part of their insert on the event. Of course we were happy to oblige, and here’s the final result:
