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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!

I always thought the views per video that Zoopy showed on each video were a bit low. Now I know that they were.

How I know is quite simple, Zoopy blogged about it:

As of last night, ‘views’ on Zoopy means the number of times the media item’s page has been viewed on Zoopy, plus the number of times the media item has been viewed when embedded on the home page or on other websites. We hope that the new figure will give Zoopy users a better idea of how many times a video has been watched, or how many times a photo has been viewed.

The above basically means that the numbers will become more representative and holistic including embed views as well as pageviews on the media item page on Zoopy and on the homepage of Zoopy. This is definitely a step in the right direction and a move that couldn’t have come at a better time. I was really beginning to think that Zoopy was slowing down. Now we can all see that things are picking up!

This is fantastic. Thanks to Mike for posting this. Since I am part of the fun in Rex’s first “vodcast” I thought it only appropriate to place this brilliant video on my blog.

Now, Mr Jason Elk, when exactly are you going to own up to this bit of brilliance?

I wonder who’s next on Rex’s menu?

I have quite enjoyed watching Zoopy’s extensive coverage of Helen Zille over the past few months. But today for the first time I found myself questioning their coverage.

Why is it that Zoopy covers Zille so extensively? Why is the coverage not more representative. I am sure that Jason is going to come on here and tell me that they have covered Patricia de Lille too, but that really doesn’t count as extensive.

Just as the SABC is pressed for equal representation I think that an organisation such as Zoopy should be too. If nothing else, they need to be weary of aligning themselves subconciously with a party. It appears to me that this might already have happened…

This comes directly from the Zoopy “about us” section:

Who’s behind it all?

At Zoopy HQ it’s just the three of us, for now: Jason, Gerry and Pat. And a few carefully selected contributors.

Hmmm… carefully selected, sounds intersting, lets find out more.

I emailed Jason from Zoopy to get some comment on the issue and see if this is a definite trend that is to continue or an incidental happening. This is what he had to say:

Thanks for giving Zoopy some blog space – and on such a relevant topic too. It needs to be said that we’ve personally spoken with Ebrahim Rasool, Jacob Zuma, Trevor Manuel and indirectly with Patricia de Lille. None of them have responded in any way. Helen grasped the technology available from the first meeting we had with her and her team. They have a handheld video camera with them and have chosen to upload a range of political and non-political issues, ranging from aerial shots of a dam through to her new electric car and more. She responds in person to users who send mail via Zoopy and those who leave comments on her Zoopy profile.

There are also occasions when we’re out at events that she happens to be shaking hands at, or attending, and in those cases we upload any relevant footage ourselves. So really this is not a case of us showing favouritism toward any party or individual. It’s a case of the individual getting involved themselves, and us facilitating it as much as possible. We’d love to host social media relating to every South African on Zoopy (politicians, lawyers and bloggers included! hehe) and always promote the possibilities when meeting with interesting people.

That said, there are more high profile people going Zoopy very soon. Because of the technology, functionality and community available to them. Not because of who they are or whether or not we believe in their cause.

I think that is fair and valid justification of their stance. I wait with anticipation for the “high profile” people to get involved with Zoopy. Let’s see if this becomes a case of YouTube and CNN joining forces for the next American election.

Recently I have been making use of muti alot. I am not sure what marked my return but I am thoroughly enjoying the site. That was up until today’s abuse (and a fair amount this week) of the service by Zoopy. Within an hour Zoopy had voted themselves on the the muti charts over 5 times (it is against the rules to have more than 5 submissions (to the same hostname) in
an hour).

This really got my goat so I took it upon myself to let Neville know about this. Neville is great and responded fairly quickly to my irritation with feelings of agreement and frustration. He is at a bit of a loss about what to do with potential spammers, spammers and general wrong-doing. He asked me what my opinion was and I was also at a bit of a loss.

My suggestion is to open it up to the people using muti. This is the purpose of this blog post. I want to know what you all think a possible solution to the above-mentioned problem could be. But first let me actually elaborate a bit more from Neville’s perspective:

Remember that muti started out as an experiment
to see if a reddit like site could work in a regional context
such as South Africa. For this type of site to work it needs 3
things:

1) a sustainable # of active member
2) a suatainable # of submissions
3) voter participation

My assesment is that muti has 1) and 2)
but on 3) there are not enough people participating

It is to me a very interesting question as to why
South Africans are not participating in 3)

I think that Neville has stumbled upon an extremely interesting and poignant issue here. Participation. Participation is absolutely crucial to the success of this sort of site as well as just about any web 2.0 endeavour.

One of the solutions brought up is to weight voting according to reliability of user, length of time a user has been registered, reputation, k-index, kudus and/or number of submission to muti. But writing this post I think that a better way to solve the problem is to possibly find a way to incentivise people to get involved and vote the good stories up and the rubbish, boring, old, irritating zoopy spam down (OK enough zoopy bashing, sometimes they post good stuff).

So, what do you think a possible solution is? And how do we prevent the muti elite from taking over the world?