Lantz M (http://www.zoopy.com/afromedia) is the latest Zoopy member to win a gorgeous aluminium 13″ MacBook in our monthly Invite & Win giveaway.

February invite entries close at midnight tomorrow, so sign in to your Zoopy profile, click the ‘Invite’ tab and start inviting your friends right now for your chance to win in our next draw.

After first investing in Zoopy in June 2008, Vodacom Ventures has recently increased their stake in Zoopy from 40% to 75%.

What this means for Zoopy’s future is loads of bigger, better and brighter opportunities. We’ll have more resources, more access, more reach and ultimately more ways to continue growing Zoopy in the smartest, most engaging ways possible.

As South Africa’s leading cellular network, Vodacom’s further interest in our business is recognition of the value in what Zoopy is doing, as well as the significance of social media and converging technologies.

For those users who’ve written to ask about what this news means on a practical level, the same Zoopy team still runs Zoopy. We’re not moving offices (in fact we’re expanding) and we’re not being absorbed. It’s business as usual, but with the exciting extra ability of being able to improve what Zoopy has to offer, with all of the Vodacom benefits built-in.

Onwards and upwards!

Following up on our launch of a new video player, we’ve launched a new audio player.  The new player is more compact and flexible, and will be easier to embed on your blog or website.

Among the new features are:

1. A new, slimmed-down design
2. The player now contracts and expands when stopped or playing respectively.
3. Like our new video player, the colour of the trackbars can be controlled by adding ‘pcolor=red’, ‘pcolor=green’ or ‘pcolor=blue’ as an embed parameter
4. When embedding, you can now control whether or not the audio clip starts playing automatically by adding ‘autoStart=1′ as an embed parameter

Please note that if you have the old audio player embedded on your website, you will need to update your embed code.

Happy listening!

The Zoopy video player received a facelift today.  Apart from sporting a new, slicker look, the player introduces several improvements to make your browsing experience easier and more enjoyable.  There are also new features to give you more flexibility when embedding the player on your own blog or website.

1. The control bar now blinds down out of sight when you move your mouse off the player.
2. You can now embed the player with blue, green or red trackbars.  To do this, simply add ‘pcolor=blue‘, ‘pcolor=green‘ or ‘pcolor=red‘ to flashvars in the video’s embed code.  As always, you can get video embed code on all video viewing pages on Zoopy.
3. When embedding a video, you can choose whether or not the video should start automatically, without the user pressing Play.  To start the video automatically, add ‘autoStart=1‘ to flashvars in the video’s embed code.
4. The video player can now be embedded at much smaller sizes (we’d recommend 200px wide as the minimum).  To change the size, edit the video’s embed code and replace width and height with the desired values.
5. Replaying videos is now much easier.  There is a replay button in the control bar during play and on the related videos screen when a video finishes.

As always, your feedback is welcome and appreciated.  You can send all feedback using our contact form at http://www.zoopy.com/contact-us, or by using the bug report forms at the bottom of all pages on http://www.zoopy.com.

Telkom’s do Gaming site (an online resource for dedicated gamers) recently highlighted Zoopy TV’s coverage of the Organised Chaos LAN event in Cape Town.

From their article:

“Zoopy, a social media video sharing community site, sent their Out and About video crew to the Organised Chaos Lan last weekend and interviewed the gamers.

Below check out all the crazy hairstyles and interesting philosophies and plenty of gamers’ quirkiness, which should bring a chuckle or two.”

In case you missed the event, here’s a glimpse of what went down at the Bellville Velodrome:

Jeremy Maggs put Zoopy in the spotlight on his weekly advertising and marketing TV show on eTV called Maggs on Media. He interviewed Nic Haralambous, our Gauteng GM (http://www.zoopy.com/meet-the-team), and delved into the business and strategy behind Zoopy.