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Meet Red Africa – Web Africa Rebranding

by Chris M on April 11, 2011 in Industry News with 7 Comments

Web Africa announced today that they have witnessed the huge potential of going red and are embracing it with open arms.

With the recent re-branding of Vodacom, there has been much hype with Cell C’s anti-red campaign and other brands jumping onto the “red” bandwagon either in support of, or to poke fun at the marketing hype currently going around about it. Brands such as Dulux and Virgin Active published some clever comebacks to the red campaign and Afrihost pledged their support by having a Red ADSL promotion.

Red Africa, formally known as Web Africa, have dived head first into doing an entire re-branding campaign in order to take advantage of the opportunities the red wave brings.

CEO, Matthew Tagg, had this to say about going red: “We had an extensive look at the industry and concluded that red must be the way of the future. Our previous branding is unsustainable in comparison, so we have decided to join the ‘redvolution’”.

Reflecting more, Tagg admits it’s a gamble. “We’re a bit late to the party and ultimately don’t know where this is going, but if everyone else is doing it, it’s probably a good thing! Plus my mom likes red too“.

To celebrate, they have launched an exclusive “Red Alert” special for  30Gb’s at R199 and are also throwing in an extra 100Gb’s of Download Plus bandwidth free of charge.
On top of this they will also be adding 100Gb’s of Download Plus bandwidth to everyone on the MyBB special at no extra cost.

Throughout the week they will open up the special for 30 sign ups every day at 12:00pm – first come first served. Specials close on Friday. These accounts will last for as long as the customer decides. Find more info here.

Bidorbuy acquires group buying site UbuntuDeal

by Chris M on April 11, 2011 in Industry News with 2 Comments

South African online marketplace and auction site bidorbuy.co.za has acquired Cape Town-based social buying site UbuntuDeal.co.za. This is the latest addition to the bidorbuy group of sites, which include Jobs.co.za, Jump.co.za, TheClassifieds.co.za, PayFast.co.za and Snaply.com.

According to bidorbuy CEO Jaco Jonker, UbuntuDeal complements the bidorbuy online marketplace: “While bidorbuy enables sellers to sell online to buyers far beyond their geographical locality, UbuntuDeal brings online audiences through the doors of local businesses. On top of that, bidorbuy focuses on products, and UbuntuDeal is more oriented towards entertainment and leisure experiences. Together, we are poised to bring some very exciting shopping events to the South African internet audience”

Launched in November 2010, UbuntuDeal is based on the business model of collective buying power. Every day, a heavily discounted deal is placed on the site on behalf of one of the participating merchants. If a certain number of people buy, the deal becomes available to all. If not, the deal is off. Currently, the site has daily deals in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Bloemfontein, East London and Port Elizabeth, ranging from restaurant vouchers and spa treatments to hotel stays and even Wi-Fi internet access.

For consumers, online group buying means great discounts. For businesses, it is a good way to turn available surpluses into cash and to market their services to a very wide audience without spending exorbitant amounts on marketing. Jess Green, Managing Director of UbuntuDeal, says that the social buying business model took off in 2010 and expects further growth this year, both internationally and locally. He adds that UbuntuDeal has clear advantages in this very competitive market: “We always feature deals that offer between 50% and 90% discounts, not less, giving the consumer a bigger and better deal. We pride ourselves on being a step ahead in terms of customer service and web site functionality. Last but not least, the merchants we team up with are happy with the whole process and their marketing exposure.”

Simple as the online group buying business model looks, the real challenge is attaining the critical mass of users. “This is where bidorbuy, a high traffic site with over one million visitors per month, will play a key role”, says Jaco.

Jaco adds that bidorbuy has recently launched a ‘deal of the week’ offering, which aims to offer the best deals for the South African audience on brand new, consumer products. “With the acquisition of UbuntuDeal, bidorbuy is now in a position to offer both product and experience deals to its audience, the largest e-commerce audience in the country.

Excellent prices for uncapped Business ADSL

by Chris M on April 4, 2011 in Industry News with 4 Comments

There are many ADSL options in South Africa, but few have stood the test of time. One such company is Web Africa, which has just released some new business uncapped ADSL packages and they’re worth having a look at.

Web Africa CEO, Matthew Tagg, had this to say about their new offering: “Web Africa Business Uncapped ADSL is intended for those who want the best possible performance from their ADSL line for their business. Furthermore, redundancy is par for the course with SAT3 bandwidth being primary and SEACOM bandwidth for failover. I believe this is going to be the top uncapped product available to Businesses in South Africa.”

Here is a quick overview of the prices:

With all business packages, the following added services will be available:

  1. A low contention ratio
  2. Prioritised bandwidth
  3. Premium 24 hour Business support
  4. 10 Email accounts
  5. Advanced usage management interface
  6. No contracts

I’m currently using Web Africa’s Titan 3 package, but during the course of today I’ll be moving onto one of their business packages and look forward to enjoying the prioritized bandwidth!

If you’re interested in reading more, click here, and you’ll be redirected to all the information on the Web Africa site.

What is GMail motion?

by Chris M on April 3, 2011 in Equipment, Industry News with 6 Comments

Update: ok ok, this was an April Fools joke. Caught me, but then again, this could be a product. Some of the actions were a little odd, but not enough to make it obvious.

Google’s been working on a new tool, Google Motion, which really does sound like it’s going to get really interesting. After the xBox Kinect was released, it was only a matter of time until something like this came along, take a watch:

The CPA and Google Adwords

by Chris M on March 29, 2011 in Industry News, Search Engine Marketing with 4 Comments

Today I was reading up on the new Consumer Protection Act which will come into effect come April 1st 2011. Instead of reading it as a consumer, I was reading it as a business owner, so as to understand things from the other side. I’m not a lawyer and there is a great deal of legal jargon in it, so I think I’ve understood it correctly, so please be weary of my comments below.

One of the things I picked up from the new Act is that if you’re running your business ethically and above board, you should not have any problems with the change. As I started to realise this, I began to think about how it might affect various aspects of online marketing and that’s when I realised that many Google Adwords adverts may breach the new Act.

I know a lot of people don’t look at the adverts on Google search pages (or at Facebook Ads for that matter), but perhaps take some time to look at them. Because so few people notice adverts and so many advert blockers have been created, it pushes campaign managers to turn to sneaky tricks to attract clicks. When I say sneaky tricks, I’m merely referring to various ways in which things can be phrased. I’ve often seen adverts which bend the truth and upon clicking through to the website, something else is presented to you – this would be a breach of the Act if I’ve understood correctly.

If you run campaigns at your company or for a company, be careful, make sure that you’re not misrepresenting anything. “Groupon is being accused of running “false and misleading business and advertising acts” and running “bait and switch” ads on Google.com, according to a lawsuit filed by a bus tour company in San Francisco (read more).” – this is not something you want to ever get caught up in.

Have you thought about how this new Act might influence your marketing strategies?

R50 for a R200 Exclusives voucher!

by Chris M on March 23, 2011 in Industry News, Internet, Shops with 11 Comments

Sheesh, been a while since I did something on group buying, but I came across a great deal on a new site called Zappon – another group buying website driven by Avusa. Zappon launched today and I’m interested because it’s one of the first local group buying websites which is being launched to an already established audience. Group buying sites like Dealio launched to no audience and have had to build their audiences and get over the trust hurdle. Being able to compare the growth of a group buying site which has an audience to one which didn’t have an audience is going to be interesting.

Anyway, back to the point at hand..

Zappon’s just launched a new deal, literally minutes ago, giving you the chance to get a R200 voucher for Exclusives for just R50. Ye, you read that correctly, you pay R50 and you get R200 – no catches.

Take advantage of the deal by clicking here.

Top 10 mobile sites in South Africa

by Chris M on March 12, 2011 in Industry News, Mobile with 2 Comments

Nielson Online has released the latest statistics for the most popular mobile websites in South Africa which are registered with the DMMA:

  1. SuperSport Mobi
  2. News24 Mobi
  3. Junk Mail Mobile
  4. M.iol.co.za
  5. Soccer Laduma Mobile
  6. JobMail Mobile
  7. Zoopy Mobile
  8. Webmail Mobi
  9. Times Mobile
  10. MyBroadband Mobile

It’s clear that South Africans are hugely into their sport. I now need to try and find a list of the top 10 websites that include sites which aren’t monitored by the DMMA, because that would be far more interesting, there’s always a chance that we’d spot one or two which aren’t nearly as well known and are run by individuals.

Test drive Web Africa’s ADSL for free!

by Chris M on March 10, 2011 in Industry News with 6 Comments

Web Africa is launching an exciting new campaign today, which will get all ADSL users smiling!

Pay attention:

Web Africa’s new campaign will give users interested in test driving their services 3GB of ADSL data for absolutely free and it’s instant activation. You click through to the campaign website, enter in a few details and you’ll receive an email with a username and password which you place in your router and you’re good go. Absolutely free, no obligations!

What are you waiting for? Go get your data: http://www.webafrica.co.za/home/adsl/trial/

I’ve been using Web Africa as my primary ADSL data supplier for going on 6 months now, I use their Titan 3 package and in all the time, there was 1 instance of down time and it only lasted for about an hour or so. I won’t be moving to another provider anytime soon, not unless something goes seriously wrong!

SAReunited goes bang!

by Chris M on March 8, 2011 in Industry News, Networking with No comments

SAReunited has announced that it will be closing down due to social networks like Facebook, which make it impossible for smaller social networks to be profitable.

Co-founder, Amanda Tsinonis says, “Facebook, wonderful as it is, has left little room for smaller social networks to be profitable. Neither do we want to spend our time blasting members with advertising to fund the site, that was not what we set out to do. So we made a tough decision,”

It’s a pity SAReunited had to be about becoming “profitable” and that they couldn’t just run it for those members who cared about it. We all have to eat, for sure, but not everything’s about money. 800,000 members is a huge number, I certainly wouldn’t just shut down with that size database nor would I shut down something I’ve been running for 9 years – but that’s just me!

I wonder what they’ll do next – give me the website, I’ll make it profitable!

Government to stop Telkom’s monopoly

by Chris M on March 4, 2011 in Industry News, Internet with 3 Comments

The South African government has announced that allowing Telkom to control the market with fixed-line internet connections constrains productivity and economic growth. Removing Telkom’s monopoly would thus be the solution.

Two quotes are noted:

“Telkom’s monopoly of the local loop – the last stretch of infrastructure connecting homes or businesses to exchanges – means that fixed-line prices remain high,”

“An affordable, efficient and widely distributed telecommunications network is important for raising productivity and accelerating economic growth,”

Read more on Moneyweb.

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