Highest praise for Afrigator by top global tech blog

“Afrigator is a very original site that goes beyond what Techmeme does in content... In some ways it's like what Technorati is trying to do with its move to multimedia, but better executed in this case…” and “Afrigator is a particularly well executed example of just the kind of service that any region or niche could use to aggregate and filter the growing number of social media sources around the world. This is a project worth spreading the word about” is just some of the praise heaped on this South African initiative by reviewer Marshall Kirkpatrick, who also writes that ReadWriteWeb is a huge fan of developers working outside the US.

Left to right: Mike Stopforth, Justin Hartman, Stii Pretorius, Mark Forrester.

First time in same room

On Tuesday evening, 27 November 2007, at Primi in Melrose Arch, for the very first time the four founders of Afrigator - strategist/developer Justin Hartman, strategist/marketer Mike Stopforth, developer Stii Pretorius and designer Mark Forrester - were together in the same room to present the new design and functionality, which has turned the blog aggregator into a true social media aggregator covering blogs, news, podcasts, videos and images for the African continent. With this, Afrigator also moves away from being a direct competitor to popular South African blog aggregator Amatomu.

After the networking event, local web entrepreneur and blogger Charl Norman reviewed Afrigator on Bandwidth Blog and then dropped the link to Kirkpatrick, a contact on his Google Talk instant messaging list. Not more than 10 minutes later, the Read/WriteWeb review was up and the word being spread virally on social media services such as Twitter, Facebook, Muti.co.za and other blogs.

Hartman told Bizcommunity.com, "Being compared to major International websites like Technorati and Techmeme is a major achievement for us. Often Africa is forgotten about in the online space and this level of exposure just confirms that we are certainly moving in the right direction with Afrigator. I'm extremely excited about our future.”

Feedback makes long hours worthwhile

"Afrigator is such an exciting project for all four of us; reading all this positive feedback we are getting from such influential sites just makes all these hours we have been ploughing into it so rewarding. Africa's certainly talking and now the rest of the world is starting to listen!" says Forrester, whose design work on the aggregator has been termed as a “real highlight”.

Adds Stopforth, “Read/WriteWeb is my one-stop shop for news that matters most on the web. To be mentioned on the site alongside some of the most progressive startups around is pretty surreal. I just hope it boosts awareness around African and especially South African startups on the whole"

When asked to comment, Pretorius was still speechless.

"It's great to see that the big US bloggers are noticing our small Internet community and its phenomenal achievements so far,” enthuses Norman. “Writers from abroad are so interested in our local startups as they want to report about quality companies doing innovative stuff outside of Silicon Valley. Afrigator did a great job with their beta release and the review on RRW is evidence of that! Africa indeed has a world audience!"

For more:

• 27dinner - powered by Eskom [blog with links to presentation, photos and other blog posts]
  
• CNN highlights SA Web 2.0 startup[article]
  
• Social media aggregators benefit business [article]