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UPDATE:

And dip my head for a brief moment to show that I have learned my lesson and wont be jumping on bandwagons any longer (I hope). My closing words: Stii, you got it spot on yet again.

I feel compelled to add my voice (or this blog’s words) the struggle.

Regator.com just opened a beta of their new site. TechCrunch covered it as did ReadWriteWeb and Mashable.

First issue I have with this is that I know that TechCrunch fobbed off the Afrigator guys when they asked for some exposure. Secondly TechCrunch should’ve done their homework and thirdly ReadWriteWeb did cover Afrigator and should be more aware of their content.

Justin and Mike both speak out against this and I think it’s important that we all try and add our voices to this sort of rubbish.

People need to innovate. We all take a little from here, a bit from there but we never duplicate and publicise accordingly. Shocker.

In my honest opinion I think Afrigator has lost some fight since it decided not to rank blogs against one another. We, as bloggers, have egos. We also believe that we are the best and like to pit ourselves against one another.

Afrigator offers a unique opportunity that sites like Amatomu don’t. Continent-wide competition.

Basically I like to know if I am doing well nationally but also on an African basis too. Tell me if I am #20012324 in Africa or if, in fact, I am up there with the best of them.

I wanna know how many SA blogs are in the top 50 in Africa, what the numbers are like comparatively; Africa vs SA.

I also would them to make it useable and accessible. Don’t hide my ranking on a number that appears obscurely somewhere in my profile after ten clicks. Say it loud in my profile area. Tell me on the homepage, or on the ranking page but broadcast who the top ten are, locally, regionally, nationally, on the continent etc, etc.

With the recent announcement of Afrigator’s changes, updates, movements and developments it seems that Amatomu has upped their game and their focus on stats.

Have a look at the new graph from Amatomu stats page:

Last night’s 27 dinner was great fun and others have blogged it already. What I am going to post is the video of Justin’s Afrigator Launch Presentation.

So without further delay here goes:

Let me tell you that by the end of the almost 17 minute presentation my hand was in spasms. So I am pretty relieved that it worked out OK!

Just attended the 27 dinner. Was great to see many people (will blog more about this tomorrow). But was really great to see all the Afriguys together for the first time in one room:

In the picture you see Justin, Stii, Mark and Mike.

I also have a very long video of Justin’s presentation about Afrigator Beta! I will be putting that up tomorrow and I think it will also be featuring on the Afrigator blog at some stage.

Afrigator has just released their beta invites. I was previlaged enough to receive the url from Justin who told me to do what I wanted with it.

What did I do? I signed up and I then blogged about it.

Afrigator have just, as I type, implemented a new feature in to their “stats” type section. Gatorlove, as this feature has so affectionately has been named, shows you who is linking to your posts and how many blogrolls your blog/site features on.

Lets have a look:

In the above image you can see the pinky/red heart showing you where your Gatorlove appears. Then next that you can see love from: blog posts and blogs. As Justin explained to me, Gatorlove from blog posts shows how many links your blog has received in actual blog posts, while Gatorlove from blogs shows you how many blogrolls your blog appears in.

I think that this is a step in the right direction for Afrigator if they are going to compete effectively with the major blog aggregators (which they are fast proving that they can and will do). I am really enjoying their other features so far, the statistics graphs are interesting to look at and are more accurate to the data that I receive from my blog statistics than I have been receiving from others such as Amatomu (which I am not sure is a good thing or a bad thing yet, I mean is Ama right, is Google Analytics right, is Afri right? Who can tell?).

But wait, that’s not all, if you happen to click on the link “Blog Posts (#)” or “Blogs (#)” you will be taken to the actual data associated with the numbers. The link will point out exactly who is linking to what from where. Fantastic. These features have appeared on Amatomu already but I personally like to have a comparison. One set of data is never sufficient to make an adequate conclusion. Thus I am super chuffed with the new feature!

Nonetheless, The Afriguys are working themselves silly to get the site to an optimum for users to truly gain the most from the services offered. I am not sure if any of these guys are still going to be married in the near future. Hmmm…I wonder If I’m ever going to get married?

Amatomu.com, as well as a string of other paths from Amatomu, has officially become the #1 referrer on the SA Rocks blog. Afrigator is extremely close behind and is creepy up to top 5. What is it like for other blogs? Let me know.