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I have refrained from blogging about this for the past few weeks. Partly because I had a lot to do at M&G Online before I left and partly because there is still a lot that I had to find out about Zoopy.

I managed to get much done with M&G and have the utmost confidence that they are on a path to absolutely fantastic things under new leadership. A new GM has taken on Matt’s role, Jason Norwood-Young has taken on Vince’s role and I can almost certainly say that M&G is heading down one helluva great path and we are all in for some interesting times.

Moving on to Zoopy.

I have taken up the position of Gauteng GM for Zoopy. The decision to move to Zoopy was a tough one because it meant that I was leaving a company and brand like Mail & Guardian Online. But Zoopy presented me with some very enticing ideas, goals and movements for the next 12 months or so. The plans are innovative, interesting and like nothing being done in the online market in SA at this point in time. I couldn’t say no to a chance like this.

Basically I am going to be setting up Zoopy in JHB for now. That means staff, offices, equipment and most importantly relationships with anyone who thinks they can offer something of value to our vision.

That’s all I’m going to say for now as it has been a long day and I have yet to step in to my first meeting here in Cape Town. Bring them on.

For those of you attending the 27 Dinner in CT this week, I’ll see you there and look forward to meeting many of you for the first time in real life, really!

Yes, it’s true. Well, it must be true because people have been receiving this message from “Facebook Founder: Mark Zuckerber” - isn’t there a “g” on the end of his name?

Anyways, here’s the message that’s been floating around and around. I haven’t personally received it but a friend sent it to me in an email after contacting me on Facebook in a frantic spin talking about the internet running out of space.

Attention all Facebook members.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you’re active please send
to 15 other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.

Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerber

Well, I am trying to be as “inactive as possible” so that I can test this little theory and maybe be saved from Facebook. Please Mr Zuckerber, delete me.

Lately my chat client has become somewhat of a business, social, friend, acquaintance network.

I’ve been contacted by friends, business associates, potential colleagues, colleagues, family, bloggers, writers, journalists and marketing people via my Instant Message.

This is made all the simpler when I’m using my Macbook Pro as I use Adium which pulls in most of my IM accounts in to one simple to use application.

I am not stating that Facebook is dead, MySpace is a goner or that Blueworld is history. What I am stating is that I am in control of my IM and I like it.

I like that I am not obligated to talk to people, and there are a lot of people, on my IM client. I can set my status to “Buggeroffleavemealoneorillthrowsomethingatyou” and people laugh. I also love the integration between my twitter client, Twhirl and my IM client.

What integration? None technologically. But person to person IM and twitter work fantastically together. I post something on twitter, vague, true, false, rumour or opinion and within minutes I have 5 people on instant message asking me about it. I then choose whether or not to engage, how long the conversations last and that’s that.

I know that traditional social networks allow for this scope of choice; whether one is available or not. But for some reason it just seems different when it’s more personal, more instant and over messaging only.

I don’t want to see how many friends this person has, how many pictures they’ve been tagged in what zombie ate them or what groups they have joined. I want to know they are either available, away or unavailable. Select the person to talk to, discuss, get in and get out.

IM allows me to do this on my terms and think I like that.

Bored. That is what us bloggers must be. Why? Because we seem to be so preoccupied recently (a phenomenon that has coincided with some interesting arrivals of late) with who is who and doing what and how often in our wondrously massive local blogging community.

Those who are mentioned “seem to not care” but care enough to blog about themselves being blogged about. I have been mentioned a fair amount and I am now partaking in my own condemnation (oh the irony). I am blogging about blogs by bloggers on blogging and bloggers and who’s the bestest of the best and whose daddy is bigger than whose mommy and who has the nicest fanciest shmanciest housiest home or rather, blog, and who is more influential than who and how often they influence those that influence others.

Can I just chime in here and say that I actually think it’s a load of rubbish. In spite of my participation in Mandy’s “Top Ten bloggers” post over at MoneyWeb I honestly think it’s irrelevant. Mandy asked on twitter yesterday: “Who has more influece?” and listed three bloggers for others to compare. Link. Bait. It’s link baiting. Not journalism. It’s irrelevant in my opinion (and only in my opinion). What does matter is that its time we refocus our energy on relevant content for the every day reader. Not the bloggers who blog about blogging.

Has content become so drab and non existent that we have turned to each other, looked one another in the blog and decided that we are the only content relevant enough to blog about? Are you kidding me?

I reiterate that I grasp the fact that I am doing the same thing right now that I am condemning, do not point it out in the comments, I get it, I know that I am doing it but occasionally it is unavoidable.

What I am getting at is that people like to stir the pot, we like to back rub, we like to have our backs rubbed, we all do and we all know it, we just can’t help ourselves. It’s the old adage that people like to see themselves on TV, look at America’s Funniest Home Videos. That show has never gone away and it’s because there are regular people focusing on people like themselves. That doesn’t make it good content though. It just makes it long-lasting.

Maybe it’s time I shift my focus to writing for readers, not bloggers. Writing for people and writing about things that people like to read. In my opinion readers don’t like to read about bloggers blogging about blogs and other bloggers egos and ranks and pages and pageranks and technorati and lists and links… see I’m bored already.

Last night I attended an absolutely hilarious opening. No it wasn’t a joke, but there were lots of jokes present.

It was the launch of a new mobile “service” called Comedy Twist Mobile.

You can visit the website at comedytwist.co.za. And with that we have a problem number 1.

The website isn’t live and the launch was held last night to the media. That’s bad. Even though the official launch is 1 September 2008, surely if you hold a press conference, comedy event and big fancy “Howzit” type party, you make your website live, even for a second to preview. We got nothing.
There was a glimmer of potential when the host of the evening plugged in his cellphone and visit the WAP site, which we were never given the URL for. Oh well, no preview.

I’m jumping ahead a bit. Let’s go back a step.

What is Comed Twist

The basic idea behind Comedy Twist (CT) is comedic content supplied to you on your cellphone wherever you are. To quote from the flyer I received:

“It’s a new digital content platform, offering high quality video and audio material for an extensive variety of South Africa’s talented comics - all for mobile phones.”

Phew, that’s fairly intense. They are doing a lot. Or are they?

From what I can see CT is trying to duplicate the success of sms subscription services that already exist with one exception, they offer video and audio and ringtones all about comedy. It’s a relatively good twist I think (maybe that’s where the name came from “twist”). The country needs comedy, I love comedy and I want to try this service.

Enter issue number 2.

Premium Content

This is a very strange choice. I suppose that many social media, content producing, user generated content websites have struggled in the past with monetizing good ideas. But Comedy Twist think they have a solution. Make people pay for content.

In my opinion this could be the downfall of the entire concept. The prices for what seems to be “On-Demand” content:

Video - R10

30-50 second live joke

Audio - R5

30-70 second live joke

Ringtones - R15

15-30 second looped funny ringtone

Video Discount Basket - R5

15-30 second live jokes

This brings up my next question: What does “Live Joke” mean? Anyways, that’s besides the point.

You do have another option, you can subscribe to the service which has a “revolutionary” one-click-opt-out. Nice selling point, but not new. You can SMS “comedy” to 38370 and a video will be sent to your phone every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Three videos.

Target Market

This seems to be a good idea, decide who you are targeting. Comedy Twist is targeting LSM 7-10. My immediate reaction is that’s where the money is, they will pay for the content. But then my research tells me that LSM 7-10 have cellphones, they have cellphones that are able to receive video but they a) are not interested in SMSing a number to subscribe to a service that is going to bug them every other day of the week, comedy or not and b) LSM 7-10 have trouble visiting WAP sites on the their phones and by that I mean that many don’t actually know how. This is not an insurmountable problem, but it will take a fair amount of marketing, above and below the line and a lot of education.

That is not to say that LSM 7-10 wont be successful if targeted correctly and with money behind the project (I can’t say how much money is behind the project) so who can tell how it will go.

It just leads me to wonder about the approach. I know alot of kids (in their teens) who spend hours and hours playing games with others on their mobiles, blowing cash to interact, chatting on Mxit and using other free and subscription services. Why? Because they know how and they know that LSM 7-10 Mommy and Daddy will pay for their usage. Simple. To get to the money, go through the children. It’s worked well so far.

Almost a potentially great mobile social network

I don’t want to go on about this but Comedy Twist had the potential to be a cracking social network on the mobile platform. People love to laugh, people love jokes and love comedy. Even more so, people love to laugh at themselves, their friends and other people making fun of other people. This could have been used VERY effectively to create a social network around laughter, jokes, pranks and anything else in the genre.

It will survive

Why? Because some of the funniest people in South Africa are on board for the ride. Trevor Noah to just name one that I saw at the event. The man must be the funniest guy I’ve had the pleasure of seeing live. The comedians will save this ship from a certain premium-content go-slow.