SA Rocks

In agreeing to do a Technology Thursday article for SA Rocks I promised myself that I would not write anything about current projects that I am personally involved in however so much is happening in the Video Sharing (a.k.a. YouTube) market in South Africa at the moment that it really is impossible not to say more.

In yesterday’s Beeld newspaper the first video sharing website to hit SA shores, MyVideo graced the inside pages of the local newspaper and they gave them a pretty good review. Only a day earlier and Zoopy, the newest contender to the market, went into live Beta stages and are making serious noise as they go along. Then there is the little project I’m involved in called Twac which also went into Beta stages only last Wednesday.

From going nowhere slowly, South Africa has been hit hard with YouTube-type websites in the last few weeks and initial appearances would imply that this is exactly what people have been wanting for some time now.

YouTube is the original global video sharing website to make it big in the world wide web and there are mixed reports that between 40 and 100 million videos are viewed daily on the website. Technology giant Google were so impressed they decided to acquire YouTube for a mere $1.65 billion which is a very big price to pay for a website that loses between $600,000 and $1 million a month.

The question now though is how do the three local contenders compare with each other and the global giant? Trying not to be biased here I have to admit that I think all three websites offer some fantastic, unique qualities that differentiate them from each other.

MyVideo have decided to place themselves in direct competition with YouTube. There is unfortunately little difference between MyVideo and YouTube from a functionality perspective but that isn’t necessarily a problem as video sharing does become more accessible to South Africa where bandwidth constraints are always an issue. In essence we now have our own YouTube which will hopefully be faster and more accessible.

Zoopy is going to be a really valuable service. Not only do they have the video sharing capabilities but they have also integrated photo sharing, similar to Flickr.com, and for me this is their strongest quality. The integration between a YouTube and Flickr type website is a really positive move in the right direction.

Twac on the other hand is trying to be very different. In principal it is a video sharing website however there is a strong focus on being a unique content provider. The draw card for Twac is the professional comedy clips added weekly as well as the user generated content created by the youth which is currently being developed in 16 schools nationwide.

There is little doubt that the launch of these websites is a sign of the growth and development of our technology and as Internet access grows in SA we’ll see sites like these becoming invaluable to communities at large.

Justin Hartman
http://justinhartman.com

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