So you simply list the alphabet and type in the corresponding letter to your address bar of your browser and enter the first url that appears for that letter:

a – absa.co.za (Online banking changed my life)
b – bit.ly (Gotta keep URL’s short)
c – chrome.google.com/extensions (Looking in to Chrome extensions for Mac)
d – digg.com (No idea what that’s doing there)
e – explosm.net (The hilarious home of Cyanide and Happiness)
f – facebook.com (Uhu)
g – gmail.com (It’s the hub of my world)
h – http://gmail.com (just brought up the first “http”)
i – isohunt.com (Downloads, lots of ‘em)
j – jakeandamir.com (The best webisode in the world right now)
k – knowyourmeme.com (Know your meme crops up in a meme, shocking)
l – lamebook.com (It’s the lame-center of the Fbook)
m – maxgames.com (Typo on a gaming site I was looking for)
n – nicharalambous.com (Not surprising)
o – onthegrid.mobi (Work)
p – posterous.com (Lifestreaming)
q – qatarairways.com (if you can believe it, I got a “Q”! Was searching for flights to France.)
r – readwriteweb.com (Techhub of my world)
s – sarocks.co.za (Not surprising)
t – twitter.com (Not surprising)
u – ultimate-guitar.com (Guitar tab resource helping me learn my favourites)
v – vintage pin-ups (Search term that I have been obsessing over. Chrome allows you to search in address bar).
w – wap.thegrid.co.za (Work)
x – xe.com (Currency site)
y – youtube.com (Shock, horror)
z – zoopy.com ( – )

So there you have it… my URL ABC’s.

Top notch. Now let’s see yours.

Talya Goldberg raised an interesting point: By following @aplusk over @cnnbrk is it not reinforcing, notion that celebrity news/culture is more nb than what is happening in the world?

I think this is an extremely valuable debate that needs to take place.

Celebrity vs Mainstream Media

I studied Journalism at University. I wanted to be a journalist since I was 10 years old. I let that all go. I feel that world is shifting away from mainstream propaganda to celeb propaganda. Let’s be real here, both are forms of propaganda. Who own what media organisation is becoming a massive blur between government organisations, private organisations in bed with government organisations and one-person-dictatorship run organisations. So who’s to say that mainstream is more productive or beneficial than celebrity-generated news or information?

The Responsible Celebrity

It’s not a habit of mine to follow celebrities. I am one of those information consumers who takes a variety of factors in to account when reading types of media. I try to know who owns what, who’s in bed with who and how often they are meeting up. The same applies to Celebrities. I try to make up my own mind about who is an “honest” celebrity and who’s just in it for the next big break. Social media has created a fair amount of transparency for celebrities who are willing to embrace the technology out there.

Case in point is Mr Ashton Kutcher who has jumped head first in to Twitter and Qik. Kutcher and his wife Demi Moore are streaming their lives live as often as one can handle. Kutcher streams video live from his phone on Qik and is constantly tweeting. I like that, I can relate to that and I am sure that the almost 1 000 000 followers agree with me.

With 1 000 000 followes just imagine if Ashton Kutcher was to endorse a fight against the shocking regime in Zimbabwe, or if he was to condone the killing of innocents in Tibet or anywhere else. He would have 1 000 000 people listening, responding and interacting with him and this information.

This is where it becomes increasingly important for celebrities to become socially responsible people. Many are not and this is where the danger comes in. This is where mainstream media has the upper hand.

Ethics in the mainstream

It is generally accepted that the media is the Fourth Estate. The people who govern the people who govern. But who governs the fourth estate? No one ever did. Wait, that’s a lie. There are groups of media leaders who form editors forums and sit and govern one another.

There are trained journalists who are taken to task for factual accuracy and ethical reliability. This is all accepted. But do I care as a run-of-the-mill citizen consuming this media? No. Generally not. Nowadays it’s so easy for me to get online and read the same story with variations of facts from a variety of media organisations.

What I want is to make up my own mind. Just as the celebrities want to do and should be allowed to do so.

Celebstream is the new Mainstream

Recently celebrity has become the new hotness in every way. From their social media campaigns to flashing their under-areas to paparazzi to endorsing NGO’s and social causes.

So why would the same not apply to information resources?

I am in no way saying that the celebstream is going to replace the mainstream. I am saying that the two are now heavily entrenched in society. The maistream is becoming a less and less trusted resource by the masses as citizens are taking ownership of their information and news. Celebrities are simply more popular citizens, leaders and trendsetters so they are setting the standards now. However scary a prospect that is, it’s the truth.

Here’s what I managed to do in under 5 minutes using the site. It’s not a great example, but it’s clearly evident what the site is capable of. Great tool.

The Original:

The Tilt-shift:

Good day,

My name is Maria Norwood;I work with the Total Quest Services,a consulting Firm in London,
UK. We are conducting a standard process investigation involving a client who shares the same
name with you andalso the circumstances surrounding investments made by this client at HSBC
Bank Plc.The HSBC Private Banking client died intestate and nominated no next of kin to
inherit the title over the investments made with HSBC Bank Plc.The essence of this
communication with you is to request that you provide us information on three issues:

1-Are you aware of any relative/relation having the same surname, whose last known contact
address was Madrid, Spain?

2-Are you aware of any investment of considerable value made by such a person at the HSBC
Bank Plc.?

3-Can you establish beyond reasonable doubt your eligibility to assume status of next of kin
to the deceased?

It is pertinent that you inform us ASAP whether or not you are familiar with this personality
that we may put an end to this communication with you and our inquiries surrounding this
personality.You must appreciate that we are constrained from providing you with more detailed
information at this point. PLEASE RESPOND BACK TO MY PRIVATE AND DIRECT EMAIL ADDRESS;
mrs.mariawood@gmail.com as soon as possible to afford us the opportunity to close this
investigation.
Thank you for accommodating our enquiry.

Yours sincerely,

Maria Norwood
Total Quest Services
For: HSBC Private Clients.
This is a confidential message from Total Quest Services

Something smells fishy.

Hi Editor,

You won’t know me – I’m a big reader of 2Oceansvibe and was referred by a link there.

Anyway, I’m going to take a flyer here – just drop a little bait and hope for a bite…

I’m a music producer at the moment, studied at UCT and now living in Johannesburg trying to hit the big time. My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album. In the mean time, though, we decided to record a couple of live videos of him doing some covers of cool and interesting songs. Basically it’s just a way for us to get word out, create as much of a buzz as we can. We’ve had an incredible response to them so far and I thought I would share the videos with you:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TimothyMoloi

Now, I’m sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos. My favorite is the One Republic cover (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4fiPe4U_Ow&feature=channel_page), but feel free to have a browse around and prove me wrong! All the artists on the videos are South African – hope you’re impressed!

I’m not too sure what to say from here, man. I won’t beat around the bush – obviously it would be in my best interest for you to actually cover us on your blog and for that I would be incredibly grateful, but if not, a simple personal reply would be fantastic – another viewpoint to see what we’re doing right!

Look forward to hearing from you!

Let me break down the above email in to sections/reasons why I was taken by it and responded immediately.

References

The email references 2oceansvibe, I know I have a link in Seth’s sidebar and therefore know (or feel) a little bit of legitimacy from the email’s author.

Hope and a wish

The author openly admits that he is taking a chance. He isn’t being too presumptuous and assuming that I will obviously respond and act. There are no orders coming from the email, there are hopes and requests.

Know the blog

James (the author of the email) clearly went and read SA Rocks. He knew that I liked local music, liked to help promote local artists and liked to support an underdog. So he appealed to these attributes with: “My record label has recently signed our first artist, a guy by the name of Timothy Moloi and are busy in studio recording his debut album.”

Play on my field

Multimedia and new media content are integral to my world, it’s how I make my living and how I interact with people. So it’s a good thing James didn’t tell me that he hated the internet and would never release any of Timothy’s music online for the world to swipe. In fact, he did the opposite. He sent me links to a YouTube video of Timothy vocalising the hell out of a song I knew “Apologize” by One Republic. He had dropped the bait in my lake and I was not only staring at it, listening to it but chewing on it as hard as I could.

Play to my Ego

The crème de la crème, my ego. James played the game perfectly by stating the following: “Now, I’m sure that you must have MANY people pawning their wares to you, but as a blogger (and in particuler, a South African one), you undoubtedly act as one of the tastemakers of our generation and I figured it would be worth a shot to see if you would like any of the videos.”

How could any self-indulgent blogger possibly say no to a line like that? James got my, hook, link and sinker.

End the pitch

Do not linger, do not be verbose, do not become pedestrian and cliched. Write what you want to write, get it out, close it down and end the email. Do not linger. I hate it when I have to sift through ten paragraphs of shit to get to the point of the pitch. Say what you want and leave me alone.

And here I sit blogging about James and Timothy and will be meeting with them very soon to see how I can help them in any capacity I can think of.

James, well played. And to anyone who is trying to pitch to bloggers that might be reading this, take note: A good pitch will be responded to immediately and will have the bloggers commitment from the word Go.

Being the sort of blogger that I am I was extremely excited to try out what Adgator was offering in the form of an alternative to Google Adsense. Before I continue let me just stipulate that I am going to try and be as open and forthcoming with my stats, numbers, figures and cash for the purpose of this blog post. I am not earning enough money from my blogs to warrant me being secretive. The point of this post is to help people understand Adgator and have a bit of faith in the service. I will be talking through my experiences with Adgator on SA Rocks.

So when the site launched I immediately contacted Justin and managed to have SA Rocks accredited for Adgator ads. I chose to make use of the 300 x 250 ad space but more on that further down.

Potential

Initially I decided I wanted to know how much I stood to earn and luckily on the Adgator site there is a calculator that will calculate how much money you could earn according to your monthly pageviews.

This is what I still see:

Basically when I enter the number of pageviews SA Rocks did, according to Afrigator’s analytics, from last month (16776) I am told that I should be earning over R2000 from Adgator adverts. Unfortunately this is not the case.

Using February as an example according to Adgator the stats were:

16587 advert impressions
R319.06 earned

That is a fairly large discrepancy (R1692.86). However, let us go back and check through the Adgator estimator. If you look very closely underneath the blue bar above there is this:

* Projected earnings are calculated on a 50% revenue share and are quoted in South African Rand. In calculating this figure it is assumed that Adgator serves advertising for your entire inventory and that inventory has been filled by a client. All figures are estimates only and are subject to the rate agreed upon with each advertising client.

The theory

Now there is the tricky part. For me to earn the projected amount I would need to fill out my inventory with Adgator adverts, I would need a great rate to be agreed upon with advertisers, I would need there to be enough campaigns for the inventory on the site to be filled every day and night for the entire month. Then only will all of my page impressions become advert impressions and generate me the revenue that I am projected to be earning.

The other major unsaid fact is that South African traffic is what is being bought the most by the advertisers on Adgator. This means that if you have 90% of your blog traffic coming from abroad you are in for poor times. With SA Rocks I’ve been lucky.

So a quick display of these stats in regard to the Adgater estimator shows us:

SA Rocks South African traffic according to Google: 12485 local page impressions
Projected Adgator earnings: R1498

Unfortunately this theory is still not as sound as one might hope, but as I have already said there are many variables that come in to play.

Too many variables

Let’s be honest, that is a lot of variables to earn a rand. But it is improving and will continue to do so as Justin and his small team of three grow and gather momentum. Advertisers will come to the party and begin to book out inventory months in advance.

Unfortunately that is just not the case right now and I couldn’t justify keeping the Adgator code on SA Rocks. So about a month or so ago, I took Adgator off SA Rocks. It wasn’t earning me money, some of the stats were completely out of whack (in my head) and I just wasn’t feeling justified in removing my Google Ads from the site. So I put them back.

But let us be completely honest here, unless you are generating serious traffic (at the very least over 40 000 page impressions) then you are not earning in the thousands on a CPM (cost per thousand) basis, you are earning hundreds. But if you get it up to R500 that covers your DSTV for the month and that satisfies me for the moment.

Since taking down my 300 x 250 Adgator ad code in the SA Rocks sidebar I have met with Justin Hartman, MD of Afrigator, and had a long chat with him about the revenue potential, issues surrounding the lack of earning, the way the systems works and it’s all quite intriguing.

On the up

With December, January and February being relative unstable, confusing and disconcerting from the perspective of the blogger, March is definitely beginning to look up.

I have already carried through an average of R22 per day in earnings. If this carries on for the whole month I’m looking at earning R660 in March. That’s not bad. In fact that is almost enough for me to consider moving all of my inventory over to Adgator and have 4 ad slots generating that revenue which could take me up to approximately R2500 per month just from Adgator adverts.

The payment problems

The payment problem is not only hypothetical. It’s practical. We are finishing the first week of March today and I have yet to receive a payment from Adgator. I am aware of tax issues that they had recently as Lester explains:

TAX
When we tried to run the Adgator payouts, the good people at SARS had a few questions for us. The issue was raised about whether or not we should be charging you PAYE tax since you’re earning money on Adgator. We were able to make them see that you are in fact selling us goods (your inventory) at a price (the CPM), and so there is no PAYE applicable. This was a lot harder than the two sentences above make it sound, which is where the first payment delay came in.

INVOICES
Now that we’ve settled the tax issue, SARS has requested that we get an invoice from you for the inventory you sell us. Quite frankly, this would be an administrative nightmare for both you and me, which is why we’re working on a very clever invoicing system that will let you do everything with one or two clicks. Here at the Gator Pen we’re all about simple, efficient systems.

Now with regards to invoicing on Adgator this was a major problem that has taken some serious innovative thinking on Justin’s behalf to get it right. What Justin has now done is create invoicing software for all Adgator members. This solutions has provided multiple solutions to multiple problems. One of the main problems for me was that I couldn’t choose when I received payment in terms of the amount. The minimum balance is R150 but what about my choice? Well with the new invoicing system I can choose when to send Adgator my invoices. The system will tally all of your earnings month on month and add it in to a new invoice every month. So if you delay sending through an invoice from January through April it will add all the revenue you’ve earned over that period and put it in to May’s invoice which you can then choose to submit. This is a fantastic solutions that brings us close to the Google model of holding off payments until you are happy.

Overall

On the whole I have had quite a tumultuous time with Adgator. It’s a love hate relationship that unfortunately must exist between bloggers and the people paying bloggers. I have the same relationship with Google too. I’m not satisfied that the best route forward for SA Rocks is Adgator and Google banners all over the show. I think content must be king and ads detract from the overall feel of a good, content based blog.

The hard truth is that for the majority of bloggers in SA the personal audience is too small is relatively limited and only a handful of bloggers will earn enough money to do this fulltime. The advertisers are desperate to get to us as bloggers but previously couldn’t. If you are involved in blogging only for the money best you cease and desist for the time being. If you want ads on your blogs to pay for your DSTV subscription then my advice is to have a good balance between Adgator and Google Adsense to allow you to maximise your opportunities.

I am told that right now advertisers are clambering to get on to blogs (could you send them my way?). I firmly believe that if we give it time Adgator is going to be the place to be for local bloggers to earn money. I hear whispers of people earning R450 a day from one advert.

I like to support Adgator because I can see the potential. As soon as Afrigator grows and there are more staff members selling Adgator to advertisers then bloggers will benefit greatly. But for now, keep the rands and cents ticking over while the market matures and we await our millions!

My Tumblr, nicharry, has revived my ability to post content online without too much thought, reactively and instinctively in a short space of time.

I am besotted with Tumblr.

Let me explain what the service is, in my opinion, for me. It’s a lifestream sort of a blogging platform. A stream of consciousness I think sums it up relatively well.

Tumblr has legs in the market right now for one simple reason. It’s simple to use. I have a “Share on tumblr” widget added to my browser. I click it and automatically a popup appears and allows me to share video, audio, photo, links, quotes and other types of media. The little widget handles the linkback to the source and posts to your Tumblr immediately.

I’ve also installed the Tumblr desktop app for Mac OSX which allows me to tumbl from my desktop. Simple, easy and effective.

Furthermore the type of content that I’ve come across on Tumblr is incredible. It’s alternative, different, cutting edge, pushes all the boundaries and seems to not abide by the regular rules and regulations of producing content. It’s a place where anyone and everyone can find a home.

It subscribes to a very similar model to that of Twitter. You can follow people’s Tumbles and they, in turn, follow yours. You can see everyone who you follow in your Dashboard and follow their content as it is published.

The person who got me on to Tumblr is Wes over at BlackNotes. If you have some time, head over there and read Wes’s Tumblr, you’ll be occupied for hours.

But for the moment head over to Tumblr, register, choose a theme and tumbl-on.

What the DA is trying to do is actually COMPETE IN THE 2009 ELECTIONS. I am extremely curious to figure out how the DA’s social media campaign fits in to the bigger picture of their general election campaign.

I’m not convinced that social media is going to make much of a difference in the numbers that the DA is looking for as the official opposition for the 2009 elections. I think that it’s essential that they are in the space of social networks, mobile activity and engaging with an online community. But let us get real here for a second, when we say “engaging with an online community”, who do you think we are talking about? Is it 500 000 South Africans with broadband access? I don’t think so. My 20 or so friends who aren’t particularly active online have never seen or engaged with DA online. So what’s the point? When we talk about engaging with social media we are probably, effectively talking about 20 000 or so people at an absolute push. I stand to be corrected here, these numbers are thumbsucked so please correct me if you know the figures.

Why should we be criticising the DA, analysing their every move and be excruciatingly anal about the things they do and the way they do it online? It’s actually ridiculous.

I asked Helen Zille a question online a few days back on twitter. I was wondering what her stance is on Cope integrating politics and religion. I didn’t receive a reply. But let’s be honest Helen Zille is competing in one of the most important elections since our democracy came in to existence, what the hell difference does it make if she answers my question? I want her to do the best job she can do in POLITICS not in social media to be perfectly frank.

And don’t try and pull the Obama card here. We are not the USA, we cannot claim to be and we should try to be. This would lead us in to all sorts of confusion and trouble. We are, majority of the SA population, without Internet and in need of some very distinct things, one of which is not social media let me tell you. The important things right now, in the build-up to election day 2009 (22 April) is to keep the focus of this election on the people, the rights, the voting, elections, masses and not on social media unfortunately.

Many people have covered, blogged and written about the DA and what they are doing online. It’s quite interesting to me that there isn’t much hype, noise or talk around the other political parties. Yet the DA is getting it in the neck. It’s like we, the online community, are berating one of the few political parties who bothered to actually make an effort. Why are we not giving the other parties hell as openly as the DA? Why does it matter? Surely our countries democracy is more important than proper use of Facebook, social tools and multimedia?

I am interested to know how much money has been put in to the DA’s social media campaign and what sort of return of investment they have and will receive? I wonder if in our country that money could not be better used somewhere else? Marketing the DA differently to a wider audience? Because let me tell you, if we all praise and hail the DA as the online guru’s in politics but they get trumped in the election then I will feel betrayed by social media and so will they.

Walter wrote that the DA’s response has him puzzled well my response is simple, in South African politics I would be more concerned if the DA was spending more time answering the social media folk than concentrating on their political campaign. We, as social media people, need to get over ourselves and look at all of this in context.

I want democracy, I want a viable opposition and I want leaders who can engage without being sidetracked from what is important. I also want politics and religion to be separate but that’s another story that shall be told at another time.

In 2007 I wrote a blog post about Vinny Lingham abondoning South Africa in a tough time, taking his money and running. I was shot down, defended and received 40 comments in total on that post which turned in to a very up-and-down debate.

I was immature, I didn’t understand the market I was in and I jumped to some unfair conclusions about Vinny and Synthasite. I stand corrected and gladly so.

Vinny needed to move to where he moved for relatively obvious reasons. Yet he maintained offices in Cape Town and fed those offices through with some of the brightest talent he could find. He did not abandon SA but did what he needed to do to make his business work. And work it did.

I received this in my inbox this morning:

Dear Nic,

Today, I’m proud to announce that Reinet Fund has just invested $20 million into SynthaSite, securing our future and enabling us to continue to build our business model and product offering. This is a massive vote of confidence in SynthaSite, and we owe it to each and every one of you. Our future is bright and, with your support, we will continue to make a difference in the world!

When we began building SynthaSite, we sought to create a company whose product would change the lives of millions of people by giving them a voice online. We wanted to provide the opportunity for anyone anywhere to build a website that would achieve their unique goals, from starting a small business to showcasing their achievements.

In 2007, we raised $5 million in venture capital and moved our headquarters to San Francisco, keeping a good portion of our technical team in Cape Town, South Africa. Since then, SynthaSite has grown from just a handful of people to more than 40 individuals in both offices, supporting over one million users. Our support forum is one of the most active on GetSatisfaction’s network, and our recent “Best of SynthaSite” contest attracted more than 1,000 entrants. This level of success could only be achieved thanks to the dedication of both our user community and our staff.

I’m unbelievably excited about the future of SynthaSite and look forward to building on our success in helping you and many others reach their potential online. These past 15 months have just been the beginning…

Thank you for all your support.

Vinny Lingham
Founder and CEO

To Vinny and his team I cannot congratulate you enough. You deserve the success (and the money) and I hope sincerely that the investment you’ve received in this downturn proves well worth it in the long run.

There are many posts that discuss transparency online in a personal sense. Don’t lie, cheat, steal, defraud or do anything that might dent your reputation online. But I am referring more to the concept of honesty when selling online to the less knowledgeable.

This has become an absolutely imperative part of selling and talking about online with people. Many companies and agencies are interested and intrigued by online at the moment because it is the direction in which the world is moving. But there are dangers.

The main danger that I have come across is the overselling of the potential of online right now. Many companies almost have their finger on the pulse of things. But this means that they know of Facebook, Youtube and other sites that they can use in a social arena to promote their products. Yet many of them think that the viral nature of the social web world wide applies directly to South Africa. It doesn’t. Viral in SA probably means, if you’re lucky, a few thousand views of a video and a couple of blog posts. In the Western world viral translates to a few million views of a video and a few hundred thousand links to or embeds of a video. Those are the cold hard facts and expectations should be readjusted accordingly.

Unfortunately the “people in the know” often oversell the potential of social media in South Africa to get the hype up and the profit margins higher. This is bad. This sort of selling is doing detrimental damage to the truth and success of the market in SA. This sort of selling makes it very difficult to create a consistent and successful stream of clients, revenue and business in the online industry. People are being burned and are staying away from spending money online because of misleading sales and delivery pitches. Return of investment (ROI) is being oversold and underdeliverd. Again, this is bad.

Honesty is key. Clients need to know the truth and still want to go forward with a campaign and experiment, play in the space and engage with one or two hundred people in stead of hoping to gain one or two million. It wont happen so don’t sell it that way.