Dave Wehner, the guy that was behind the recent AOL buys Bebo deal for $850 million, is the Managing Director of Allen & Co. Why would this be of any interest to you? Because the guy is rumored to be out pitching a LinkedIn venture capital round for nothing less than a whole big billion. Yes, $1 billion.

So far the Mountain View, California based company has raised $27.5 million over three rounds but if this turns out to be real, Allen & Co may be working on the most expensive private venture deal that we’ve heard of, lately.

Though rumors late last year said NewsCorpmay have been in talks with LinkedIn around an acquisition, no official papers were issued.

Honestly I don’t get it why a company like LinkedIn that have said publicly they will reach $100 million in revenue in 2008 would need funding so I suppose right now it’s nothing more than a rumor. Let’s see if we can find out more info in the days that will come.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Do you have questions that need answers? A new online community, Answerit has been created by the guys from 24.com for both ’smarty pants’ and ‘enquiring minds’.

According to a study, U.S. people traffic to Question & Answers websites increased 889 percent in the last two years and the main reason is that when you ask something there’s a real person behind the answers you get. It puts more weight on it and makes you feel like the guy with the solution is an expert, or something.

The most visited sites are Wiki.Answers.com and Yahoo!Answers.

“One of the core principles of the World Wide Web is that we live in a shared world where shared knowledge is valuable. Answerit is an online tool for South Africans to interact and share knowledge that is particularly relevant to their local experience” said Elan Lohmann, GM of Social Networking on 24.com.

Using Answerit is pretty easy. You need a 24.com account and you ask your question and from what I see the service is similar to Yahoo!Answers allowing you to vote for the best answer.

Another thing I like is the leaderboard. This is where you can see the Leaders, Gurus or those that got the most thumbs up. You can also add them to a watchlist if you think they are the experts you could learn from.

So if you want to know who was first, the chicken or the egg, go ahead and ask your smart questions on Answerit.

Popularity: 15% [?]

MyBroadband has broke the news on Media24’s digital unit, 24.com, acquiring a stake in Blueworld Communities - the social media technology company behind social networks like Zoopedup and Blueworld.

Quotes from the MyBroadband article

24.com has acquired a controlling stake in Blueworld Communities – a local social networking group.

24.com recently acquired a controlling stake in Blueworld Communities, a social media company founded by Bradley Voges, Brendt Brooks and Charl Norman which focuses on building and maintaining web technologies such as social networks.

Blueworld Communities owns and runs the websites Blueworld, Zoopedup and Gaypeers and generally targets a younger audience through its social media platforms.

24.com CEO Russel Hanley says that the acquisition gives the company access to both Blueworld’s established online community and their social networking technology.

Hanley highlighted the fact that Blueworld Communities’ audience is complimentary to the 24.com audience and they will definitely look at synergies in future. The 24.com CEO further pointed out that the Blueworld Communities technology will enable them to target certain niche social media markets in future.

“We are very excited to be a part of the 24.com family and look forward to leveraging their assets to further expand our social network’s market reach.,” said Charl Norman from Blueworld Communities.

“We also have a very strong youth demographic which compliments 24.com’s older user base. We are very proud of the social media platform we have built and look forward to exploring synergies between our technology and existing 24.com brands to further expand our niche social network strategy.”

Media24 is the dominant player in the South African online market with well established brands like News24, 24.com, Health24, Wheels24 and Fin24. This latest acquisition will further improve their strength among younger Internet users, a market which Naspers have already started targeting with its shareholding in MXit.

Read the article here

[Disclaimer: Charl Norman is the owner of Bandwidth Blog and also a founder in BWCOM] 

Popularity: 22% [?]

The GRID is a a South African location-based social networking service for cellphones. Cow Times guys have developed a free Facebook application that you can access via WAP (wap.thegrid.co.za) on our mobile phone, that allows you to see where your friends are on the map, allows you to organize events and get directions if you’re lost. It was built in partnership with Vodacom.

The application was built in partnership with Vodacom and stands on three big pillars: blips/virtual notes, the navigator and GRID events. Here are a few details about each one.

First of all, the blips and the virtual notes. If you find something interesting in your area you can add some text, images or a video for others to see and be directed there. It also comes packed with a navigator to give you the shortest route from one place to another, and GRID events where Facebook users can setup events and send invites to other.

“The functionality that we’ve introduced to Facebook with this application is not only very handy but a lot of fun too. With its location-based technology, The GRID application highlights what is happening in your area on a social level, by displaying information being shared between friends and other users specific to that location.”

Popularity: 28% [?]

Ever knew what an Online Reputation Monitoring tool is? Well it’s exactly what it says, a tool that you use to have your brand under a big zoom.

BrandsEye is a new service by Quirk eMarketing, that you can use to protect your brand, track and quantify the exposure you have and see what other people are talking about you.

For those that haven’t heard what BrandsEye is about here is how it works.

They will track every piece of online text that mentions your brand, including blogs, press release websites, twitter and more other. It then tags and ranks them according to the relevance and the credibility of the source, in real time, and using a set of statistical learning algorithms and some sort of human intelligence processes they come out with the final score.

The score is highly customizable offering all sorts of charts that will help you better understand your brand and what it needs.

Who’s going to be interested

First thing that popped into my mind was that I am already able to track my brand (Alex Ion for example) for free, using services like Google Search, Google Notifications or Technorati. Why should I pay the rumored $750 price?

The answer was simple. They’re going after large brands, the upper end of the markets and they don’t plan to compete with the services I mentioned. Aim high is usually what makes money. They’re doing it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 29% [?]

A lot of people speculated some time ago that the user-driven social content website, Digg, is going to sell but they were wrong. It’s been a few months since the last rumor, but here we go again. TechCrunch has inside tips that Kevin Rose may actually sell this time having two media companies and two Internet giants, Microsoft and Google, to make their bids.

The investment bank Allen & Co. was saying last year that Digg would probably accept offers below the $300 million mark and they were probably right because Google is prepared to bid in the $200-$225M range.

Who’s buying is very important, especially to Microsoft who’s the only company to serve advertising on Digg for a three years contract. If Google buys it then the contract will probably be terminated and Google wins, this is why Microsoft will probably go higher.

I wasn’t expecting it so soon, and to be honest I think they will lose a big portion of their users when the sale gets a green light. What do you think?

Popularity: 12% [?]

For the last couple of months the guys behind Blueworld have worked hard to come up with a fresh new layout and managed to highly improve community functionality. Today the new Bluworld went live and here is some of the new changes outlined :

The activity page is where you land after logging in and is a summary of what happened since your last visit. Videos, images, blog posts, group invitations or new ‘friendships’ created are all featured here, making it a great way to discover new friends. An important feature is that you can also filter the news feed to show just your friends activity instead of the entire site’s community. This is where Blueworld is unique as you can discover new friends through their activity as your’e not limited to just your friend’s feeds.

Profiles and groups.

Your profile is where everybody sees what you’ve been up to lately, what videos you’ve uploaded, pictures shared and more other. A new feature that I find interesting is that you can set your mood or your status so that your friends know how you’re feeling. You can also drag the profile boxes around on your profile and customize the profile’s theme. This involves being able to change the header image to a graphic of your own and choose your profile colour.

If you would like to join a group it’s simple. Just click the groups link and here you will find everything the community have created lately. It’s an easy way to stay updated to what interests you. You can create public and private groups with each featuring a blog which the admin can use to publish news to the group. Groups are also customizable with themes and custom headers - you can view a custom group here.

I could go on and talk more about video or albums sharing but this is all pretty standard social networking stuff - you can share videos and photos with users being able to rate, discuss and bookmark the media.

Finally, one of the features that struck me the most is that you can now vote for the best content and tag certain pictures.

Voting is easy, there’s an “Love It” button you press when you like something and a “Hate It” when you don’t like it. Tagging is just as easy. Upload your pictures and add your friends names in it, or the car’s model and so on. You also get to leave messages on other user’s images, which is pretty cool.

So what makes Blueworld unique and sets them a part from the masses of other social networks on the web? Well, I think because its a open social network where users by default publish media to their profile like blogs, videos and photos as public content. On Blueworld when you publish media you can set the privacy of your content to either public which is viewable to all and will feature in the sub areas (e.g. blogs, videos, albums) or set as private so only your friends can see it. If you publish content to your profile and set the privacy as public you can discover new friends (and vice versa) through their media that have similar interests to you. Blueworld is about meeting new people, making friends.

If anyone wants my honest opinion the new Blueworld site is not only looking much better but the layout and the new features are very useful. It gets my vote as one of South Africa’s leading social networks.

Go see for yourself

[Disclaimer: Charl Norman is a shareholder and founder of Blueworld and is also the owner of Bandwidth Blog. This is an article by Alex Ion]

Popularity: 8% [?]

Though no country in Africa sells the iPhone, there are people to own one.  You buy it online and then use all sorts of jailbreak software to “crack” it. Apparently there is a small market of iPhoners that would like the websites optimized for their phone.

All these being said, there are news from Afrigator. After launching the second version they are now optimizing their site for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. They use a browser detecting software to make sure you’re redirected to the appropriate location.

Here’s how Afrigator looks on an iPhone.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Acceleration Group have sold their media division, “Acceleration Media” to Kagiso Media and Lagardère Active Radio International (LARI) for an undisclosed amount.

Acceleration Media is one of the leaders in the South African online media with a profitable track record and great knowledge, so the deal makes sense for the buyers that wanted to diversify into digital media. What was a company like Kasigo - that owns lots of radio stations but no sites - supposed to do to enter the market? Yes, the answer is “buy someone”.

Another reason why I think this is going to be a good deal is because Acceleration Media and Acceleration Group were heading into different strategic directions. It’s not good business to follow two different paths, they knew it and sold.

However there are a few concerns because it will be interesting to see how Acceleration will continue with the current business model now that they are owned by a media owner? It’s interesting to note Kagiso Media’s RadMark venture which they use to sell adspace to all their radio stations. Will they apply the same principle with Accelaration Cape Town?

How do you feel about it? Here is the press release.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Today Mail & Guardian launched a stand alone job site, dubbed JobConnection, that will replace their previous jobs portal which was hosted on M&G’s main site.

This is a good addition knowing that job portals are a very competitive market in South Africa with big players including CareerJunction, JobMail or BizCommunity’s job area.

Getting back to JobConnection I’ll start with the design. It’s clean and simple with good colors for my eyes and though it doesn’t have much content, you get exactly what you need. Browse jobs by category easily, advanced search form to view only what’s important for you and a Newest/Popular jobs tab to keep you up to date.

Uploading a CV, posting jobs or setting up alerts to new offers is as easy as a mouse click on those big banners in the right.

From what I’ve seen JobConnection partnered up with CareerJunction, South Africa’s number one online career site and with BizCommunity to offer advertising and media industry jobs. This sounds like a good deal.

There is one thing I don’t like about the whole layout of the site and I’m talking about the ugly Adsense banner in the right. Why I don’t like it? Because it’s not matching the site’s colors. They could be making big bucks with it (or not) but I would change it with some CPM advertising or I would fit the colors to match the design.

As you can see this review is pretty positive because of the functionality and the usefulness of the site, so if you’ve been looking for a job lately, take a look on JobConnection, maybe they can help you out.

by Alex Ion

Popularity: 9% [?]