Laaik.it? Nothing to laaik yet really.

Elan says in his interview with Charl Norman:

“We believe that SN platforms like Facebook are very hard to compete with but social Media such as Digg is an easier area to challenge because we are sure we can provide MUCH more local relevance than a Digg can. You won’t see a headline about SA winning RWC on the Digg, Reddit or Stumble Upon front pages?

The interesting challenge is going to be if our local competitors like MG, IOL, iafrica, Times etc will be willing to add the laaik.it button? They are all adding Digg, Muti, Reddit buttons etc - Hard to see how they cannot add us.. we want to see content from everywhere on the site. We are not trying to create a walled garden for Media24. That’s NB.”

It looks like it was probably built and researched around 24.com’s own user base. Elan says they are not trying to build a walled garden for Media 24, yet they have nothing new to offer to the world outside their garden walls. I was asked what I thought about it yesterday and my immediate answer was: “it is 24.commish”. It lacks basic functionality, as Adii said, and the link submission process is tedious. Not at all well planned at this stage. Their users would use it regardless. Yes, it is true, they are still in beta so it could be argued that those things are still in the development schedule.

I can see no reason whatsoever that the above mentioned people would not add your button. It would drive your share of the online community to them so there is absolutely no reason why they would not do it. Apart from the fact that it is hard to add something that is not there. I assume it is still in the development schedule? Riiight, well let us know and we’ll add it.

Another thing, just in case you were wondering, is that if you do happen to implement a submission API of sorts, I’m pretty sure the guys at Muti would enable their submission process to add everything that is being submitted to Muti to Laaikit automatically. Double exposure! Thats breaking down walls for you. It remains to be seen if you are true to your word in that you want to play outside the 24.com garden walls. Prove it. Give us API’s to work with and it might become very, very interesting!

I do not think this is a threat at all to Muti. My guess is that the only users Muti would lose at this stage is the Mclaren entourage. Big loss, I know. We’ll just have to learn to live without them.

I do however agree with what Uno said, they have 60% of the SA online share and that in itself is a good thing. We’re all going to benefit from the exposure to a great big chunk of the SA online scene. It is good. They are going to expose their walled in users to the rest of us, so I’m quite excited about that.

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Tags: laaikit, muti, social-bookmarking

11 Comments to "Laaik.it? Nothing to laaik yet really."

• Elan said: On 10/26/2007 at 7:40 am

  I laaik it.

  We will look at the API suggestion.

  I’m all for open web ideals when there is a mutual benefit in the ecosytem.

  In this case I think there is : )

• Henre said: On 10/26/2007 at 7:45 am

  Stii, I’ve read the posts you linked to and while I agree with the sentiments, I’m willing to give them some to rectify the situation. Why?

  Well, because it seems 24.com struggle to get it right sometimes, but I believe that when the do, the barrier separating a large chunk of the online community could be broken down.

  And that is fantastic news. Our blogger community here still carries too much of a marketing and tech flavour, don’t you agree?

  We need to get the people involved as well. 24.com has that power in my opinion.

  Your thoughts?

• Justin Hartman said: On 10/26/2007 at 7:51 am

  Stii it’s a nice piece you wrote here. I’ve left untold amounts of comments on this but I just wanted to say Henre that tech and marketing blogs are the trend world-wide. I don’t think this particular thing is going to change it because we’ve seen from International experience that the bog consumers are generally interested in these two areas.

• Stii said: On 10/26/2007 at 7:56 am

  @Elan Thats the spirit! Its all about collaboration at the end of the day and your attitude might just win this round if you can produce.

  @Henre: Man, you are soooo right. The problem is we’ve been saying that exact same thing for quite some time now and it is hard to get people involved if they really don’t want to. Part of Muti, Afrigator and Amatomu’s success is the fact that they listen to the people and try to please and improve. The problem with corporate efforts laaik laaik.it is they often could not give a shit as they’ve got the biggest chunk of market share anyways. At least Elan shows some promise and is keen to listen, but my guess is he’s got some higher trees to bend to get his way. If he can manage that, it could play out differently and get very excited for everyone! Look at Ananzi for example. They are a dinosaur. Yet they do not even attempt to make any efforts to improve their disposition.

• Henre said: On 10/26/2007 at 8:05 am

  Justin, thanks for the follow up. It’s accepted that the majority of interest would always come from those two areas as we are more technology orientated. I do however believe though that to get your blog to fulfill its true marketing or brand affiliation capacity the fundamental component, consumers, are lacking. These people obviously surround themselves with more social activities which I strongly believe 24.com is a haven for.

  My point is purely this, Digg etc is a great source of traffic, while maybe a bit too technical for certain bloggers’ (like mine) value proposition. Where 24.com is much more socially driven albeit inside their walled garden. By releasing that potential I believe that we’ll also find perhaps a new trend in blogging where our posts might be more subtly geared toward tech and marketing and much more socially engaging. In terms of branding we’re (I’m) looking to establish a brand affiliation and probably some direct sales. Simply speaking in a marketing tone (of which I’m guilty) and a tech tone (of which many are guilty) to like-minded individuals defeats the possibilities that blogs possess.

  No?

• Laaik it? Dislaaik it? You be the judge on 24.com’s new social media site : Bizcommunity Blog said: On 10/26/2007 at 9:10 am

  [...] Update 26 October: The dialogue continues on Stii’s blog. [...]

• Reasons I might Laaik.It at Media In Africa Blog Solutions said: On 10/26/2007 at 11:31 am

  [...] Many posts, comments and conversations have been dedicated to the launch, so my piece will not focus on that. I’ll try and give my personal opinion on the implications the platform might have on my blog and presumably many other business oriented blogs. [...]

• Neville Newey said: On 10/26/2007 at 1:25 pm

  Hi Stii, great article!

  Regarding the API, there is already a (free) Muti API (Muti “hooks”) that the laaik.it guys could use to add anything submitted to muti onto laaik.it as well. In fact I am more than happy to assist them in doing so. Perhaps the media 24 guys who are one of the few major players to have not added “muti this” links anywhere would be willing to reconsider. Either way I am always happy to see the hooks api being used

  Regards

• Stii said: On 10/26/2007 at 2:22 pm

  Attaboy Neville! See, Elan? Its all a question do YOU want to play?

• Kerawa said: On 10/31/2007 at 12:02 am

  Help a young cameroonian to achieve his challenge: get 1000 ads in 20 days.

  His article is here http://ekwogefee.akopo.com/post/2007/10/29/challenge-the-kerawa-effect.-d-day-20

  You may read it, it’s very interesting

• LaakIt « Africa 2.0 said: On 11/05/2007 at 5:01 pm

  [...] L’avis d’un programmeur d’Afrigator [...]

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Filed in: Social Web, Web 2.0, muti.co.za by: Stii