Maybe I am being too critical but given Telkom’s reputation regarding its Internet services, and with online communities, this will be a challenge.
I would like to go a little further and expand on the four elements Telkom mentioned: social networking, news, photos and video communities.
Please tell me why I should switch from Facebook or MySpace? There are also other local alternatives such as Blueworld, Digspot and Vrinne. Is Telkom going to compete with all of these? At the time of writing this, Facebook had over 28 000 South Africans.
What kind of news? We already have News24, IOL and iAfrica. We also have plenty other niche news sites. Is it going to compete or aggregate? Will it include blogs?
Photos are very vague. Does it want to emulate a Flickr service? This would have to be done very carefully. 24.com Albums didn’t take off too well and I can’t see myself moving from Flickr. However, Zoopy doesn’t seem to be doing to bad, regarding its photo service.
YouTube has been done already, what is Telkom going to offer that is any different? MyVideo and Zoopy are taking the market as well. What is its strategy for this? Do it want to pump more ridiculous advertising down our throats?
This is going to be really interesting to see. If Telkom has a brilliant social media/web 2.0 team then it might just be able to pull this off. I am not sure who really wants an all-in-one package but the new web is a wave – surfs up!
