Currently content creators are sitting with a bit of a dillemma – the internet is not a place that necessarily likes paying for content, or at least thats the opinion of users. Any business case looking into news media will confirm this – people do not want to not want to pay for something that they can get free. Just ask Rupert Murdoch who recently decided to start asking people subscription charges to access the Times website. Early indicators show that its not neccesarily a big success. But this not because people do not want to pay for content, they hate the fragmented paywall system.

Solutions like iTunes for multimedia proves that people are willing to pay for content, provided its easy to do, and universal in terms of scope. And this is where Cred comes in, created by South Africans Saul Kropman, Jason Kramer and Toby Kurien. Instead of having to register at every content site (for example like The Times), users will use the Cred micropayment system to purchase credits to buy access to the relevant article. Cred is not only applicable to text based content like news, but multimedia sources as well.

At present, one Cred is worth one South African Rand, and publishers can charge up to a maximum of 20 Creds. At present  different denominations are available, starting from around R50 up to R150. In future users will be able to define their own amount. At present the system uses your credit card to pay for these, but Paypal support is coming in future.

For more info, here is the official press release:
As the developed world moves towards spending more online than on traditional media such as television and print, you’d assume that monetization of the Internet would come from advertising. With advertising revenue come massive expenses as journalists, technology and marketing come into play.  Internationally, media mogul Rupert Murdoch runs around calling everyone on the Internet a kleptomaniac for stealing his content and is aiming to lock down his online portals and go so far as to remove them from Google.

The fact remains that even with a full advertising complement, revenue simply cannot outweigh costs.

This is essentially where Cred comes in, we allow content providers to monetize their websites by charging users for content with individual micropayments or subscriptions. We at Cred love content; we personally create and consume content on a constant basis and it was this passion for excellent quality that led to the idea for Cred. With online text, audio and video being free there is little ascribed value and if there’s no value, what pressure is there for excellent content to be produced? Cred aims to preserve quality content by putting a value; we believe that the cream of content will then rise to the top.

Currently in the final stages of testing, we’re accepting sign ups from content providers looking to prove their content is worth charging for. Initially we’re available for the WordPress platform and eventually will expand to other platforms such as Drupal, Joomla as well as provide documentation that will allow developers to hook into their own niche content management systems.

The revenue model affords content providers 80% of all revenue without having to worry about fraud, payment gateways and are linked to a ubiquitous payment system thus allowing for easier access to your content by users with a Cred account. Cred scales perfectly for larger organisations as they can white label the Cred offering if desired.

Whether a small, niche publisher, band, photographer, author or massive media conglomerate anyone can start charging for their content with Cred.

Go to www.yourcred.com to sign up and follow us on twitter: @yourcred

If you’re a South African blogger, then chances are you’re familiar with the ups and downs that blog aggregator Amatomu has experienced over the past couple of years.

Once the darling of the SA blogging community, Amatomu began to show signs of strain after its original creators, Matthew Buckland and Vincent Maher, left the company that owned the site (Mail & Guardian Online). The repeated downtime eventually got so bad that many top bloggers in the country reluctantly removed the code from their blogs, as it was presumed to be causing errors and slowing down page-load times.

Registered Amatomu users this week received an email explaining that the site has now been taken over by Creative Spark Interactive. What makes this particularly good news is that Creative Spark is Matthew Buckland’s new project – so in a sense, Amatomu is going back home.

The Creative Spark team says, “We are passionate about amatomu.com and believe it has a bright future. We are aware of the stability issues the site has experienced, and we have made significant changes to improve uptime. We do monitor the site daily and respond to all technical complaints and issues. We will also be working on the core architecture of the site during the course of the year to increase stability.”

They’ve also called for any PHP developers interested in playing a role (either part-time or full-time) to make contact with them.

Let’s hope that this is the beginning of a new chapter in Amatomu’s story – a happier one this time.

Simply providing a place for African internet users to get on to the web is no longer good enough for South African based blogging platform Bundublog.com.

We’re a firm believer that African internet users still want to have their own little piece on the web, but we realised that Bundublog had to up its focus on becoming a destination website rather than just a freebie tool for bloggers.

With that in mind, the site has undergone a basic upgrade of its layout and its landing page now incorporates interviews with leading African tech experts as well as some lighter spirited social interviews.
The site can now also accommodate Bundublog aggregated podcasts, event listings and a section which will focus on giving South African entertainers – including comedians and music artists – the opportunity to show off their talent to the community.

On the marketing front, Bundublog has expanded its geo-targeting to include Zambia, Kenya, Nigeria and Egypt as it seeks to become a truly African platform.

Another shift in focus is working out ways to help bloggers monetise their offering. For many blogging is a labour of love with few financial rewards unless you are a small business using it as part of your marketing arsenal.

With that in mind we have collaborated with local pay-per-click network AD:Dynamo and will shortly be announcing a partnership with a local mobile advertising company which could potentially provide bloggers with some annuity income from their blogs.

There is a perception out there that blogging is “old school” in the face of various new social media channels – this is something we completely disagree with. The global recession has forced businesses of all shapes and sizes to re-look at how they market their products and target online communities.

A vibrant blogging community, not only provides a channel for entrepreneurs to gain exposure, but also offers some brilliant marketing opportunities for merchants.

How many Twitter users are there in South Africa? Fuseware just made available their latest SA Twitter report, which has some very interesting facts:

• Number of Active* SA Twitter users: 55000
• Monthly tweets from SA: 1.5 million
• Twitter web penetration: 4.5% of SA sites reference Twitter
• Twitter SA site popularity: 7th most visited website in SA
• Average Twitter followers for SA: 115
• Average friends for SA: 122
• Average total tweets per user for SA: 346
• Percent of protected accounts: 0.38%
• Percent of geo-location enabled accounts: 12.96%
• Percent of Twitter verified accounts: 0.014%
• People hardly use Twitter.com directly for posting tweets, with only 26% logging into the site to post updates.
• The most popular Twitter client is TweetDeck, with 10% of all SA tweeters using it.
• People hardly use Twitter.com directly for posting tweets, with only 26% logging into the site to post updates.The most popular Twitter client is TweetDeck, with 10% of all SA tweeters using it.
• SA mostly tweets at night, between 7 and 8 pm. Many also tweet first thing in the morning, and over lunch.
• Cape Town and Johannesburg are the most busy tweeters.

This is a pretty great report by the guys at Fuseware, with lots more info – so go download it here.

Obox Design, a premium theme studio based in Hout Bay, Cape Town, has joined up with popular micro-blogging service Posterous to supply their users with a selection of themes. The Obox themes will be included in the official Posterous theme directory, and will all be free. Three themes are already available, with two more in the pipeline.

Themes now available
My.List, a visual theme suited to designers or photographers:

Mad Men, formerly known as Smoke & Tumble:

Post Press, formerly known as Micro.Press:

The two themes currently in development are Minimal (simple design with a clear focus on the content), and Wired Inspired (includes some subtle grunge elements). Read more about the partnership on the Obox blog.

It was long back when Google denied Yahoo’s financing in its pre-revenue stages, but taking the risk paid off and Google is, what it is today.

Twitter, today, faces the same dilemma with suitors building up the pressure with every passing day, but investors are aware of this situation (although they do not discuss it openly). The big decision, however, needs to be taken and is if the company should turn the revenue on or ignore the takeover bids and take a risk just like Google.

Given the fact that Twitter has a high potential for the future, taking such a decision is a hard thing to do in the jittery world of the Internet. But reporting no revenue is also a problem, because experts cannot exactly estimate — which means that Twitter could say “bye bye” to any takeovers. Big public houses need a valuation spreadsheet to go ahead with the acquisitions. However, once the revenue is on, the valuation of a company like Twitter can also go down since a long-term growth rate is also furnished and that can never be relied upon — no matter who made the evaluation.

Twitter is at a stage where it has to make a brave decision and this decision could be the turning point for the brand in all senses.

What would you do, if you’d own Twitter?

Instead of getting themselves someone who’s experience enogh to build scalable infrastructures, Twitter has been struggling to please the user with more and more new features. Hence why newly-hired Dick Costolo, the cofounder/CEO of RSS service Feedburner, is going to take over as the Chief Operating Office (COO) from Santosh Jayaram — the current head of operations.

Costolo — who has been an early Twitter investor — left Google back in July and there were reports that he was starting a new company, Twitter, however, managed to rope him just in time.

Although we know the answer to the “what’s going to happen with Feedburner now?” question (as many call it Google’s worst investment so far), what we’re more interested in is if Costelo’s experience is enough to actually help Twitter reach the next level.

What do you guys think?

[via TechCrunch]

Just before Twitter went down again yesterday, many Twitter users noticed a fleeting click tracker in the address bar of the browser before it redirected them to the final site — which might be the cause of downtime as too many people clicked on the redirects. Redirects that look like that http://twitter.com/link_click_count…

When it came back again, the fleeting click tracker was gone so maybe this was just a preview test of what Twitter intends to do in the future.

Apparently Twitter looks determined to track all the links a user clicks on the site, but this is not something utterly new as they already do it in an unorganized way. Currently a user gets redirected twice, first by the shortened URL and then by Twitter itself. Maybe Twitter wants to know where it is sending the most amount of traffic, who is sending the most traffic and which are the most popular tweets.

The entire data can be useful for Twitter’s planned analytics service intended for business customers.

[via TechCrunch] Original image by theelusivefish

There’s a new Twitter application out there. We’re talking about the South African folks behind Twitsume — a free online résumé/CV product for the Twitter community.

Twitsume allows all the Twitter account holders to connect and create an online resume. The users have all the discretion to make their Twitsume public or leave it private courtesy of the user enabled settings. There’s also the option to hide a few aspects if you want to keep parts of your resume, private. Other than creating a resume, you can also see which of your friends or followers don’t have a Twitsume account yet, and you get to invite them.

Key features of Twitsume

• Build your online profile by sharing your resumé with your Twitter network
• View other people’s résumés within your Twitter network
• Capture your résumé in a professional format and export email-able and printable versions

The Twitsume.com interface has been built on PersonL  — the company’s recruitment management software suite. Though the Twitsume just took two months to take form, the PersonL has been 2 years in the making.

Looks promising. We have our eyes on you guys!

Not many know what retweeting (RT) on Twitter is — but you probably do. However, for those who don’t, retweeting is getting more attention towards a particular tweet by copy pasting it as your own and crediting the original author with an @ mention and finally indicating that it is a retweet. And this is how Twitter wants to facilitate the open exchange of information to have a global impact whilst also having an efficient dissemination of information across the entire Twitter ecosystem. That very inspiration will see this feature being officially added to Twitter.com.

Phase one of project retweet is to show the developer community how it will work from an API perspective as well as a user perspective.

The final details for project retweet are still getting ready and as of now, Twitter has managed to reach the first phase which caters to the developers. Hence why applications related to the same are being sought.

Consequently, the first official launch of retweeting will be for a selective set of users and once the assessments are made here, a full retweeting tool will become public for all.

So that leaves me to only two questions. Will Twitter beat Google in popularity, and … will you retweet this?