You’re certainly not going to find much truly SA social media stuff on the wanky procession of crap that is Digg and Reddit…

There is no wrong in creating something that already exists if the market it operates in is not already saturated. I do think that markets get saturated a lot more on the internet than they do on ‘earth’
This is probably due to the fact that implementation thereof is a lot more time-friendly online. I think Muti has a relatively small share of the Already tiny South African market, which, on a global scale, is miniscule. This is probably why Uno has a gripe toward local internet startups in a saturated market.

That aside, there is no reason why this type of project should not be pursued. As we all know, one can always top something with value-added features and just a general improvement. The Japanese do this very well. However, if you cannot actually improve on the already formidable service, then there is no point in pursuing the project. (I am talking about muti and digg).

It is also very difficult to run a country-specific application online, as you immediately cut off 99% of the potential market. (that is if the specific country is South Africa)

That aside, I think that internet startups from South Africa does build brand awareness (or country involvement awareness) and this is attracting, albeit slowly, some international traffic to South African internet. So, no matter how unique the startup, it is still acting as some form of advertising for south africa’s online business. One day, a unique product/service/application will come out of South Africa, and there will be a market to embrace it due to the former online projects.

Uno, Pussyfooting is not necessarily always the right thing to do, but one must distinguish between pussyfooting & motivating.

Hi Uno

Remember that Reddit came about after Digg, but still managed to capture a significant portion of the market. I am not suggesting that muti is as good a platform as reddit but I want to illustrate that by your logic Digg could have rendered reddit insignificant. But reddit survived and indeed flourished because a community evolved around it. Do you not think that it is possible for such a community to evolve, albeit at a much smaller scale, in Southern African?

Mike: Thanks for your support, it is very much appreciated.

“You aren’t helping by giving uncritical support! Groupthink and yes-men type support aren’t going to help, you really need to look at the product and say,”Well, actually it’s been done before, so maybe you should do something a bit different.”

What a lot of kak! I’m not going to criticise every initiative that comes out of Africa that slightly resembles an overseas iteration (like my company for example), simply to be a non-groupthinker.

I think Muti is brilliant, and I love what Neville is doing with it, regardless of how similar it is to Reddit, Digg or anything else. I say bravo, at least he’s doing something.

Should we criticise Justin Hartman for Grabble? Should we criticise IncuBeta for Clicks2Customers? These are all successful, yet not entirely brand spanking new ideas. Well done to them.

Believe me, if I think it’s crap, as I did with picknplay.co.za, I’ll say so. But I’m happy to be a Yes-Man and Groupthinker if the group is right.

I’m a great supporter of doing stuff on your own, by that I mean not outsourcing, but rather taking the initiative and going alone. So with that mindset I am supposed to be quite an ardent supporter of sites such as Muti.co.za, but at the same time I am a huge non-supporter of uncreative thought, and cloning something smacks of that.

And my gripe isn’t necessarily with Muti or Myvideo or Blik or watever, it is with the commentators. You aren’t helping by giving uncritical support! Groupthink and yes-men type support aren’t going to help, you really need to look at the product and say,”Well, actually it’s been done before, so maybe you should do something a bit different.”

It’s probably a bit of a weird analogy, but take Bush and his advisors. His core group of advisors only tell him what he wants to hear, and in the process they go into Iraq and stuff things up. That theory has shown to be able to apply to quite a few other cases as well, and I don’t want to see it happen in South Africa where we have such great opportunities.

So, in short, I fully support local start-ups, we must just be really sure that what we are doing isn’t a generic clone but that it is a truly South African product, in the same league with Mrs Balls, a braai and the Soweto String Quartet (let’s forget about Steve Hofmeyr). At least if that is your intention. I reckon we should stuff the local poor bandwidth penetration and go for a bigger, global market. Why the hell not?

The add to muti.co.za feedflare was a result of mining arb thoughts & combining those thoughts with lessons learnt (XML) while thinking.

See you at the next 27.