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My friend Justin got screwed over by SAA recently. It wasn’t pretty and he ended up losing a fair amount of money with thanks to the lovely SAA.

This is the result of Justin’s anguish. SAASucks.com - the real SAA.

Here’s a snippet from Justin’s blog:

So while SAA Sucks is now live it’s up to you guys to help me spread the word. Write a blog post about it, send the link to your Facebook friends, post it on Twitter, Google bomb SAA with a link to SAA Sucks, frankly I don’t care - just spread the word.

Finally, If there are any designers out there who’d like to do a proper theme for this site let me know - it could do with something decent!

So if you’ve had a bad experience with SAA then head over to SAASucks.com and get posting, ranting and expressing yourself!

I have just read an article over at Wired Magazine that blogging is oh so 2004 and we all need to jump ship if we aren’t part of a professional blogging network that dominates Google search results.

What Wired says in the article is that bloggers are being taken out of the equation by professionals who blog and put out 30 or so posts a day. They are being taken out of the equation by online magazines that were once, maybe, blogs and are now business ventures. Bloggers are being taken out of the Google rankings by professional media organisations such as NYT, Time, LA Times and others with similar stature. Bloggers are becoming invisible according to Wired Magazine.

Wired goes on to explain that bloggers of the personal, one man band nature, are becoming tired of comment trolls, masses of spam, irrelevant audiences and other frustrations. The solution? Move to Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and similar services. I wonder if these services paid Wired Magazine to write this article. Basically I should stop being a self-publisher and move completely to a service that someone else will make money off of? I don’t agree at all. I think a merger, hybrid or cross pollination is in order. Not abandoning of the ship at all.

I quickly used twitter to feel out some opinions on the topic. (I completely recognise that I am invariably endorsing wired magazine’s opinion by using Twitter to get my information for this blog post!)

My tweat:

nicharry is blogging dead? Is twitter taking over? Should we all jump ship?!?!

Some of the responses:

markmedia @nicharry no yes no
woganmay @nicharry If everyone jumps ship, who will we be leaving to captain that ship?
obox @nicharry I don’t think so. There is still space for both, with lifestreams entering the world you can have all the cakes on one page.
fromtheold @nicharry Blogging will last long after twitter
Jonin60seconds @nicharry Slow down there profit of doom!
RichMulholland @nicharry No we should simply re-prioritize our weighting on both.

It’s incredible actually, how many people felt they could respond to something I had said so quickly and easily. This definitely beats responses on blogs hands down.

I firmly agree with RichMulholland’s comments that we should not be throwing in the towel for either service. We should simply re-evaluate our goals and re-prioritize our focus on the services that are available to us.

Blogging isn’t dead, blogging is just becoming a force that we need to seriously consider as a profession. Just as reporting back in the day was done by a random one or two people within a town or village and is now down by conglomerates. Things change, let’s change with them not fight against the change.

I did enjoy the closing line of the Wired article though: “@WiredReader: Kill yr blog. 2004 over. Google won’t find you. Too much cruft from HuffPo, NYT. Commenters are tards. C u on Facebook?”

Having met Erik just once a while back at one of the first 27 dinners I jumped at the chance to catch up with him this time round in SA. For those of you who know nothing of Erik he is the founder of WhiteAfrican, Afrigadget and Ushahidi among many other things I am sure.

The first meeting was the “tweetup” held at Garsen’s Capellos in Sandton. There I caught up with Erik and this is what he had to say:

Then I attended the MobileActive08 conference and had a chance to talk with Erik again. We chatted about Kelele, the first African Bloggers Conference being held in Nairobi next year. The MobileActive08 conference was surprisingly very well organised, massive and educational. The reason I say I was surprised is because I really knew nothing of the conference before I attended. I handed out many, many, many business cards, connected with great people and learned alot.

Erik, as always, is jetting of to Pop!Tech very soon so he’s on the move but at least I managed to tie him down for a few minutes.

Recently there have been waves of anger, lashing out, disdain and open disrepute online amongst a very, very small percentage of Internet users in SA.

The main focus of this disdain has revolved around the concept of elitism. One blogger today wrote that there are less than 200 active social media users in SA. Huh?

Anyways, that’s not my point. I want to ask the question: “Does elitism actually stifle growth and development?”

My immediate answer is no and I think it’s one that I am going to stick to forever. Why? Simple. It’s because the “elitism” that “everyone” is talking about is simply providing a driving force for so many to push themselves harder, faster, futher and aid in their growth and development.

I don’t know about anyone else but when someone excluded me, told me I couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t, I did, evertime. And not only did I do what they told me I couldn’t or shouldn’t but I made sure that I creamed them at it. I made a point of standing up and having people notice me.

Now if something as silly as a perceived elitism is going to get under your skin, knock you down and make you go home and give up then maybe you should just become an employee at someone else’s company. There’s nothing wrong with that. Not everyone can be evangelists, leaders, gurus, geniuses, experts and the like… or can they?

One of the joys of online that I have recently discovered (the last year or so) is online comic strips. I absolutely love comic strips. I also have a very offbeat sense of humour and this combination has really proven to be a very good one online.

If you are wondering what the hell I am on about here is a list of the comics that I read everyday:

Truck Bearing Kibble

Amazing Super Powers

Cyanide and Happiness

John and John (Not safe for people who don’t like sexual and twisted off the wall humour)

Babylon Sticks

Dilbert

Buttersafe

Geek and Poke

Jeremy Nell

Now tell me, what are you reading online? Have I missed some pearlers?