USA in Africa’s social stream
by Stii
We’ve been planning this new addition to the Gator stable for a while now. We were unsure if there would be a need for it or if it would even be worthwhile doing, but decided we’ll build it anyway for our own use if nothing else. A couple of days ago we were contacted by the US Embassy in Pretoria and got the news: “We want to work with Afrigator“. Such a random and unexpected call! Needless to say, we were excited. We finally had a purpose for our latest idea and needed to prioritize it FAST.
We had to play quickly though since Hillary Clinton will be visiting various African countries and they wanted this ready for her visit. We did it as quick as possible bringing together all of the US’s social activities and mash it up with what other people say on Twitter and in the African Blogosphere.
We feel that circumstances favored us immensely since President Obama has both strong ties to Africa and truly believe in the power of Social Media. It fits what we at Afrigator do perfectly and we are privileged to collaborate with the US Government on this project.
This is only phase one and we are looking to release this new feature to Afrigator users soon so they can build their own social streams for topics they feel passionate about. I’m not committing to a date at this very moment, but it will be soon. Please let us know what you think!
[...] More on the initiative and the mechanics behind it over at stii’s blog … spread the word [...]
As great as this is, I just really wish we can start seeing less talk and more action for a change, especially after reading an article such as Company Launches Fiber-Optic Cable for Southern, Eastern Africa. Everybody in South Africa knows that prices are not going to decrease, well at least not soon. And we needed it like yesterday.
Although I agree Charl, I do think there is much more important issues at hand currently. Bandwidth and connectivity is the last of their concerns!
[...] Stii one of the founders of Afrigator wrote about here, it is part of a new features they are trying [...]
Sure, I can appreciate that we are in a global economic crises with people losing their jobs by the boatload, which is indeed more serious. But the FUD is just getting a bit excessive by now. The old issue remains: we need to see changes on ground level. Less talk by politicians, and more action would always be welcome. Be it by the US or otherwise (our locals governments are probably far worse in that particular respect).
[...] About Afrigator I don’t know, I guess it is guys just innovating and going about their South African entrepreneurship ways. Our post was a bit too much concerning the thing, they did write about it on Stii blog. [...]
[...] Stii one of the founders of Afrigator wrote about here, it is part of a new features they are trying out. Published in web 2.0 Tags: Africa, African [...]