Growing forward
26 Nov 2009 
6 Comments
The Zoopy community has developed into a buzzing space filled with users who enjoy uploading, sharing and discovering videos, photos and audio. There is a constant flow of content coming in, going up and being delivered across our website, mobi site and java app, and we want to let you know about a couple of things that will be coming to Zoopy soon.
The first is an overhauled Zoopy website that will go even further to make content shine. We’ve worked through every step and revised the various interfaces to make sure that you can find what you need in the places you expect to find them, and that you can easily move between user-generated content and the content we produce for our Zoopy TV shows. We’ve added all kinds of improvements and extra features along the way too, all with the aim of making your Zoopy experience easier and more enjoyable. Watch this space in the next month or so for the big reveal.
The second development is something that will affect some of our South African users but is a consequence of our growth that we’re unable to avoid (if you’re outside of South Africa, this won’t affect you at all). Until now, we’ve hosted our site and media on South African servers, with an international CDN serving content to our international visitors. Given the vast and increasing amounts of bandwidth we’re using on a daily basis, it doesn’t make sense for us to continue absorbing the exhorbitant cost of local hosting in South Africa when international pricing is exponentially more affordable. We’re currently working through various changes to our infrastructure and the new site will launch on international servers. This will only affect you if you exceed your bandwidth cap and are stuck with local-only access, or if you purchase local-only bandwidth for local-only browsing. But Zoopy will continue to be as accessible as any international websites you may visit. We will continue to monitor the local bandwidth options as pricing and speeds hopefully catch up to international norms, and look forward to one day being able to again host in our home country.
As always, we’d appreciate hearing back from you, and can’t wait for you to see the brand new site.
Very excited for the reveal and really upset that I won’t be able to upload videos when my cap is finished.
We’re like kids before Christmas too
And about uploading after your cap is finished, don’t forget that you can still upload by email on your pc, or via sms/wap site/java app on your phone!
you’re all fabulous.
XOXOXOX
why is the site so SLOOOOOOW, horrendous
I do understand the issue with cost of local hosting, but I do badly miss the phenomenal speeds I became accustomed to on Zoopy.
We’re with you, Henk. Ultimately though Zoopy will be on an equal footing with all the other international sites we all visit on a daily basis. The good news is that Telkom is already testing 8mb lines with some customers and speeds can only go up, with prices hopefully coming down. As soon as that happens, the speed difference between local and international will be fractionally noticeable. And as soon as hosting pricing in SA reduces to a level where it makes financial sense for popular sites to come back home, we’ll be one of the first to do so.