It seems that Digg is aggressively going after StumbleUpon and other similar sites as it now feels that a toolbar is essential to help make it more popular and win over people that are not yet addicted to the Digging phenomenon.

Nevertheless with pros and cons, a beta tester uncovered an early version of the toolbar that lets you Digg or Bury the page you are on, shows how many votes it got and allows you to share the page using Facebook, Twitter or via email. But the feature that Digg seems to have highlighted is the ‘Random’ button that takes you to a page depending on your previous Diggs and activity on the site (probably using the recommendation engine).

Digg fans and other users will obviously love the convenience of this as it takes away from the whole arduous process present right now and puts it in the StumbleUpon mode. With a shortened URL that looks like http://digg.com/xxxxxx (six-character code), the toolbar is not an add-on to the browser, but a large i-frame around the page you are viewing. Just click on the cross and it vanishes.

Cool and easy to use, the final version seems to be far from getting live.

Michael O’Leary has already been named among the worst corporate leaders of 2006 and if you want learn a quick lesson on ‘what not to do as a company head and how not to deal with PR issues’, then the latest controversy coming from Ryanair Airlines is a fine example to look at.

Image courtesy of clav

It all started when Jason Roe of Dublin, Ireland wrote a blog post saying that while trying to change the timings of his flight, a bug on Ryanair’s website seemed to allow him to book airline tickets for £0.00. What would a “sane” company do? Attend the issue and either thank the guy for bringing that up or ignore it completely. Yet, the company staff went on with a tirade of angry, violent comments on his blog calling the guy an idiot for pointing out the glitch.They even “laughed” at him for using WordPress …

“We very well know about these anomalies (sic) and unless it is not critical we are not going to sacrifice time to this. If you would be a serious programmer you would know these things and would not post any of this on the web.”

And the saga goes on.

Instead of apologizing for their rude and uncivilized behavior, the company’s top heads decided to issue a statement that really pissed a few of us … “Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel”.

If this was Ryanair trying to show up online blogging and hoping for mainstream media support, then the strategy backfired big time. Seems like the utterly poor handling of PR has hurt Ryanair dearly for now.

So are you going to fly low cost on Ryanair from now on? That’s what I thought …

Online marketing is setting the trend for a new wave in communications. In South Africa, there is a growing interest which is not only motivated by a global recession but also a drive toward more measurable advertising. An additional stimulus was the industry’s observation of the success of the Obama election campaign.

Addressing the lack of qualified people to lead this revolution, the AAA School of Advertising and Google South Africa have joined forces to offer the first fully comprehensive training course on AdWords. AdWords is an online advertising platform designed to help businesses of all sizes use the web to find new customers by delivering relevant ads when users search for specific products and services. The training programme is one of two courses that the AAA is launching under the auspices of its new Digital Marketing Academy. Digital Marketing Strategy is the second option and forms part of a practical overview of the field of digital and online marketing, and its application within the marketing and communications industry.

The academy is the brainchild of Walter Pike, head of marketing at the AAA School of Advertising. “Many marketers in South Africa incorrectly view digital, online and mobile advertising as an add-on medium since it is perceived that access to the internet is relatively small. This is not so, with around five-million PC-based internet users, joined by many millions of mobile phone users with browser capability access to the internet being the norm. Interestingly enough, during 2008, for the first time the ad spend on digital was greater than the spend on television, in the UK” says Pike.

The academy is run from the AAA campus in Johannesburg, and both courses start on the week commencing 13 April. Pike adds that both courses are directed at marketing and advertising students and communication industry professionals in Gauteng. “South Africa is on the brink of an explosion in the use of online media. The question is do we have the skills base? The AAA Digital Marketing Academy seeks to address this. The AdWords training is similar to that offered by the Google Advertising Profession (GAP) qualification, as well as in-depth analysis into best practice in online marketing on the Google platform,” said Pike.

Marion Gamel, Head of Marketing for Africa and Middle East at Google says, “This course is the first of its kind to be offered by a South African education institution. The aim is to prepare students for their future careers and help marketing and advertising professionals’ up-date their know-how, and equip them with skills that are valued by local and international employers”.

Running over a period of approximately three-months, the programmes are based around evening classes that take place once or twice a week. Training will be provided by experienced AdWords practioners, who are GAP certified and have copious experience using Google AdWords.

Each module will be accompanied by practical workshops and local case studies. Successful students who pass the GAP test will graduate with a suitable qualification that is becoming increasingly valuable in the market-place as South Africa starts to embrace online and search engine marketing.

For further information click here

 The continent’s top blog platform has officially joined the wider African blogosphere, otherwise known as the Afrosphere. Having integrated 24.com’s blogging engine with Afrigator – Africa’s leading social media aggregator and directory of online content published and consumed by Africans – 24.com bloggers can now join this uniquely African community with a single click.

The new feature gives users the opportunity to not only gauge the popularity of their blog within the different 24.com brands (Wheels24, Women24, Sport24, news24 etc.) and the 24.com environment, but also in South Africa as well as the rest of Africa. According to the largest survey of South African bloggers conducted last year, almost 40 percent of local bloggers use the 24.com blog platform.

“Adding the country’s largest blogging community to Afrigator, effectively puts 24.com bloggers out into the wider world and lets them discover fellow bloggers, make new friends and generally contribute toward the African zeitgeist,” say Justin Hartman, MD and co-founder of Afrigator. “Providing bloggers with statistics that were previously unavailable to them, the integration also gives individual users the chance to see how their blog resonates within the 24.com network of websites, as well as with audiences outside of South Africa.”

“By opening the window to the World Wide Web a little wider we are giving 24.com bloggers a new way to engage with other African and South African bloggers and nudging them into the mainstream of this vibrant new medium,” says Alistair Fairweather, Social Media Manager at 24.com. “The blogosphere is all about open democracy, personal expression, discovery and debate. At 24.com we’ve come to recognise that a commitment to openness will help us to serve our users better and improve our Web 2.0 capabilities.”

According to “Speak Up!” – a 2008 census of the South African blogosphere conducted by 24.com – approximately 60 percent of bloggers publish online to express themselves or have fun; with more than half of bloggers making one to five posts weekly. While the bulk of bloggers’ inspiration comes from personal experiences (48 percent), the other top sources include local and international media sites and media releases (24 percent), and local and international blogs (14 percent). Currently, only about five percent of bloggers in South Africa claim to have a monthly audience of more than 10 000.

Screen shot – 24 Blogs on Afrigator

We previously wrote about Afrigator here, here, here, here and here.

24.com will expand their mobile strategy in the next few weeks when they launch an iPhone application for all their 24 portals which include Wheels24, Sport24, News24, Fin24 & Entertainment24. The News24 iPhone application will enable all iPhone users to gain access to Africa’s #1 online destination and have breaking news at their finger tips.

Phase 1 of the application, which focuses on efficient content distribution, will have some additional functionality. This is by way of a restaurant search mechanism based on Google maps. With the new release of Google Maps on PC (which is due on the iPhone), finding directions to your desired restaurant will be seamless. The idea is to in Phase 2 integrate Food 24 databases and add content to the function.

Users will be able to send 24 news tips and pictures in Phase 1 already, adding to the MyNews experience.

The application will be available for free from the iTunes store

Kudos to Sessa (24.com mobile strategist) and Matt (GM of mobile) for the screen shots -

More after the jump

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If you have been using Snap’s Snap Shots on your site or have been browsing sites that use them, by now you already understand the comfort of having the facility both as a web page designer, host and user. It is this exact comfort and download link-free web page technology that DocStoc intends to extend to all your documents using their brand new DocShots feature.

The tool allows you to convert any document on a website into a link that provides an instant online document preview. This obviously saves downloading time for users and helps the web hosts in making their sites look a lot more attractive too. The best part though, is that it’s easy to use and is a free service for your Word, PowerPoint, PDF, and Excel files.

Using DocShots is also pretty simple and easy. All you need to do is sign up for the feature and after copying and pasting the html code, you can get an instant hovering preview link on the desired document. You can even specify the size of the preview window and that of the pop-up window.

While SmartLook has been offering a similar facility for long, the new DocShots are far faster and easier to use, making them an instant hit already

Pretty sleek isn’t it?Anyone been using them?

If it’s not broken, don’t fix it! That’s why many webmasters choose not to update for the latest release of WordPress, but when it comes to WordPress 2.7.1 you should consider it as the new version has received some pretty good reviews from all around and has been hailed as one of the best bug-free version among all the ones dished out thus far.

More like a maintenance release than a security release, the new 2.7.1 update fixes 68 tickets and one of the pleasant aspects is that if you’re already running wp 2.7 it will only take like 10 seconds and a push of a button (via the Tools → Upgrade menu) to have it up and running on your blogs. Or you can download it.

For WordPress fans, the biggest positive out of the new version is the highly improved Plugins Directory Search which now uses Sphinx to power all the search requests. It works far better than any of the plug-in directory searches from previous versions and the few lingering bugs in this new tool will be fixed in the next release according to the guys working on it.

The initial 2.7 version has been so good – considering how much things evolved since wp 2.3 or wp 2.5, that there has been little that needed change, but with the 2.7.1 update working so well, WordPress has decided to put away the 2.8 version for a while and bring it out when it is fully ready. Wise decision indeed!

Google has offices in South Africa headed up by Staford Masie, Stephen Newton (both resigned – no new country head announced yet?). Their goal is to expand the search giant’s advertising reach in emerging markets like in SA. Their office is a colourful combination of iconic Google items such as bean bags and lava lamps. Not quite the Google campus everyone dreams of working at in Silicon Valley but it’s a start.

Props to Graeme for sending through the photos. View our office photos archive here

There are adventurous minds that feel great companies and lasting dynasties are built in turbulent times, and SynthaSite wants to prove they’re among those.

As pioneers of the Web 2.0 movement and on our list of SA startups to watch, they have just roped in a whooping $20 million as funding from Luxembourg-based Reinet Fund S.C.A. in a Series B funding bid. While normally that is no big news, it gains extra significance in times when the economy is moving slow and investments are dwindling.

The story behind the funding of Reinet, managed by the Rupert family of South Africa, is  a surprise in itself as it was not too long ago that the company themselves filed for bankruptcy. But that was averted by funds induced into the Reinet Fund S.C.A by the Lehman Brothers and it now seems that SynthaSite has reaped benefits from the deal.

Involved in helping anyone interested in designing, improving and maintaining their own web space, SynthaSite has recently introduced a number of new features including an enhanced user interface, 60,000+ widgets, domain registration, shopping cart features and a blogging platform.

The new capital that has come its way apart from the $5 million made earlier will help further take the developing company based in both San Francisco and Cape Town a long way forward. We’ll have our eyes on you guys!!!

How in the world is Twitter ever going to make money out of what’s on offer right now? Well those thinking like this seem to be an outnumbered minority compared to the vast majority which is showing faith in the popular micro-blogging tool.

Image courtesy of yatenkaiouh

Twitter has managed to raise (once again) more venture capital funding – $35 million from Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. This adds significantly to the $15 million and the $5.2 million that they previously got. The new funding round puts values Twitter at around $250 million and as the minds behind the blogging phenomenon chalk out their plan to generate revenue, the additional ‘green’ in the bank gives them some sweet extra time to start generating revenue.

On their blog Twitter has already assured users, investors and others who are interested, that they still possess good chunks of cash from their previous deals, which only makes the company stronger and more vibrant (who wouldn’t want cash when you can see economies being slammed down to the ground?).

Twitter has been assuring everyone (since long) that a business model is indeed being crafted and while that still is being fine tuned under the wraps, it sure seems that there is plenty of time for it to be put in place.