Roads & Chapters

Sometime last week I posted this article on Techzim about why I don’t use Google+ much, and why I think the reason behind is something that discourages most other internet users in Africa. It’s basically a speed issue. Google+ as a news topic is that interesting an issue we got an avalanche of traffic from all over the world after I posted the article on Hacker News. The story actually made it to the top 5 news items on Hacker News. Techzim obviously couldn’t handle this sudden surge and the whole day we had to put up with “resource limit reached” errors from our hosting.

For me, this points to one thing, people really wanted Google to succeed with Google+. I know I did. I still do. But more and more, I encounter cases where I see the old Google I loved, may really be gone.

We’ve a number times in the past written about music, piracy and how local artists can help themselves survive their-music-everywhere-for-free age. One such article was penned by Brian Gondo about a week ago. But speak as we may about the industry, we’re not musicians. So it was great today reading a comment to Brian’s story by one of the best hip-hop artist there is out there (yes, not just best in Zim) Tendai “Tehn Diamond” Nguni: 

The music itself is no longer the primary income engine. That’s the global trend. Making mp3’s available and trying to do that in an effort to make money is not the way, the goal should be to beat obscurtiy with wider distribution. I am an artist living and working in Zimbabwe, and I believe that piracy is not the enemy, obscurity is. The music should service as the foundation to bring potential fans into an artist’s conversion funnel, where u look mainly to recoup money off the intangible products an artist can provide. The best example being live shows, u can’t pirate a live experience, the emotion, the direct contact with the artist. What a major player in the industry like Gramma should be doing is looking to be come a company that helps artists develop and strength their brand, with the music as the foundation of that. To develop a wider and more reliable network of live venues and go on a mission to re-educate bothe artists and the fans. Piracy isn’t killing the industry, its a lack of forward thinking innovation.

And just in case you don’t know who he is, here’s his Facebook Page. You can also watch this video here to get an idea of just how much talent and quality work Tehn’s about.

So, a friend of mine and  guest blogger on Techzim, Jabulani Chirinda, has been over the past month or so arguing the case of WhatsApp as a social network to rival Facebook, Twitter and Google+ in the future.  I have been saying it won’t, but have founding his arguments for a mobile-only social network pretty convincing.

See I don’t really use WhatsApp that much because I aIways had a disliking for texting. It’s really basically that my fingers are fat and have never really owned a mobile device that didn’t require me to painfully focus on the task of texting.

So anyway, Jabu suggested something I found really interesting on Friday; to use WhatsApp as a content sharing platform the same we share Techzim links on Facebook, Twiiter and Google+. I said yes because it’s the first time I’m hearing such a suggestion and I’m getting this feeling there might really be something there. And a bonus is I’ll get a chance to test Chirinda’s mobile social networking arguments.

So anyway, the problem is that WhatsApp has a limit of 15 members, at least that’s what this says. So how to get around this? Have people re-share with other groups? Have multiple groups with different contacts in them? Or maybe this can be limited to a small group of people that participate in the intense debates about Zim startups and technology. Will be thinking more about it. Or do we need to start thinking of a new mobile social network to just address this issue directly on our own? And maybe expand it to other Africa countries where a huge number of internet users, like here, are mobile first and mobile only. Ribe? 

This past week I spoke at two events, one was at a Food For Thought  discussion at the US embassy Public Affairs Section and the other the TEDxHarare Change event.

it was very extremely encouraging to feel the hunger for knowledge; there was so much enthusiasm to discuss more, learn, explore new ideas.

There was of course the usual “there’s just no cash in this economy” complaint echoed for every “Yes we can”. Which to be fair, is very valid reason why most people don’t even try to venture out there. But i think we need to start building companies that address the money issue. Traditional source of money and what startups in other countries rely on is just available here.

Will write more about my thoughts in a future post. Today I just wanted to point you to the presentation. Here’s a link to a PowerPoint file so you can modify it an use for other purposes if you need to (no need for credit btw)