South Africa’s 10 Most Influential Bloggers (According To Mandy)
You gotta hand it to Mandy – she knows how to get read better than the rest of us do. The insatiable Mandy de Waal has made the transition from hard core journalist and real world entrepreneur into the Web 2.0 equivalents in record time and I daresay she’s ruffling a few sensitive feathers in the process. Mandy is a damn good writer, prolific researcher and knows which buttons to press and strings to pull to get results.
Her most recent thesis, published at her new joint-venture with Moneyweb (with Alec Hogg), is titled SA’s Ten Most Influential Bloggers. It’s a list, it’s ego-driven and it’s link-baity. A sure recipe for success!
I was lucky enough to crack the nod on the list (despite the fact that pickings have been slim on this site for some time now, which I’ll explain later), and share it with a few notable mentions:
- The Outspoken – Justice Malala – Fiercely frank, completely uncensored, Malala is one of the most relevant and bold political commentators of our time. He also writes a hysterical column in the Financial Mail. He should do us all a favour and blog a bit more often.
- The Numbers Man: Launched prior to the 2003 World Cup Mark Keohane’s site rakes in traffic big time. In April this year 64,486 visitors from 156 countries visited the site chalking up 1.1 million page views. Kudo’s to www.keo.co.za for creating the blog/site a sports mad nation is mad about.
- The Author – Ndumiso Ncgobo: Writer of the hilarious best seller “Some of my best friends are white” and resident spear chugger on Thought Leader. He’s the only blogger to report live from Polokwane and live to tell the tale.
- Chris Roper: With Tom Eaton off writing film scripts, Chris Roper is one of the few satirists and columnists that still make us laugh. He’s wickedly funny and way too smart for his own good.
- Super Mom: Tertia Albertyn is a South African blogging success story. She’s built an enviable community, won a host of awards, pumps traffic to her blog and now has a book out.
- The Cultural Blush – Vernon Koekemoer: We all cringe when the ad of his latest CD comes on TV, but he’s a viral wonder whose influence has lasted a lot longer than 15 minutes. For good or bad, he’s ‘moered’ his way into our popular culture.
- The social media stars: Vincent Maher, Matt Buckland, Rafiq Phillips and Mike Stopforth. They should start a cult, a new religion or a rock band.
- The Multi Media Men: The ZA Tech Show and Khaya Dlanga. The upstart tech podcasters and the YouTube vlogger who are obviously having loads of fun and capturing everyone’s attention with cool compulsive content.
- Hayibo – Not strictly a blog, but in a world where satire is outpacing and outnumbering traditional news, Hayibo has grabbed attention with major word of mouth.
- Adii: When designers and bloggers the world over start clicking on your blog for creative inspiration you know you’ve achieved influence.
Much thanks goes to Mandy for including me on the list. What are your thoughts?
Mike, what are your thoughts? Not spotting anything in your post that looks like an opinion.
Um…
“Mandy is a damn good writer, prolific researcher and knows which buttons to press and strings to pull to get results.”
“It’s a list, it’s ego-driven and it’s link-baity. A sure recipe for success!”
I’m no Vincent Maher, but surely those are opinions??
I know I know chill out – you’re talking about the list rather than the content of the list, is my point. Smacks over breakfast tomorrow I guess.
He he. Ok. I think the list is balanced – more so than any other attempt I’ve ever seen. I think it is a very good effort.
It’s a list I’d be proud to showcase to overseas bloggers, even if I wasn’t on it :)
Look forward to smacking you over breakfast.
Mandy is certainly controversial, good people on the list and well done Mike for cracking the nod :)
At the risk of being controversial myself, do we see the likes of like Seth Godin, TechCrunch (Michael Arrington), Chris Brogan, Scobleizer, CopyBlogger etc on the list?
How many of us are that influential?
Keo & Vernon – uhu?
Keo – not influential and questionably a blog. Keo is a phenomenal success, no doubt, but is a sports (rugby) news source. It might have been influential at one point and the man himself might’ve been influential but as a blogger, not in my opinion.
Vernon… really? Need I say more?
The only question i have Mike is: Should I respond with or without my spoon in hand?
There is a big difference between social, successful and Influential.
Oh this list makes me so angry, only because there’s a ton of people mentioned and I never made it. Maybe she’s never looked into entertainment blogs beyond 2Oceans. And that’s on the record Mandy.
Nic – influence can be defined as the ability to influence popular culture. Vern did that in under four seconds. It’s irrelevant whether you like him or not – the point is how he influence culture in a radically short space of time. Keo started as a blog and has massive reach.
Wezz – I rate your blog big time and that’s ON THE RECORD! It just doesn’t have the reach it should right now – hopefully that will change because it’s hugely witty – innovative.
Vincent Maher – please give yourself a smack at breakfast from me.
Mike Stopforth – My cheque’s in the mail. But given that I’m a lowly journalist, don’t expect much.
Mand – hmmm…. I’m sure the title of the article was influencial bloggers?? To my knowledge Vern isn’t a blogger… unless you have a url for me??
What about http://www.watkykjy.co.za ? We’ve been around for almost 10 years, stirred kak and are ultimately responsible for VK.
Vernon Koekemoer doesn’t blog, he stares at a telephone and his thoughts get projected onto the internet.
@Mandy I know, I know I’m just ragging you. I’m not talking about wezzo.tumblr though, I’m on about ChumpStyle. We won a couple of awards in the past and may or may not have started and entertainment/humor bloggoing trend in SA (probably not though).
Here’s the problem.
If the president of Iran blogs, does that make him a influential blogger? Well because he is influential in other areas you might be able to call his blog influential because of that.
But if he was a blogger alone his blog would have no effect. Therefore your article is titled wrong. It should be the 10 most influential people that blog, but not the 10 most influential bloggers because their blogging is not the influence. Although technically you can call them bloggers. So the title can be right but its misleading.
Take a blogger that is not famous and change the world with his blog, this guy can be called a influential blogger, but not someone famous from something else that also has a blog.
So a influential blogger would then be someone that influenced society USING HIS BLOG.
Just my opinion, you can disagree if you want.
I’m starting to think that breaking into this circle is gonna be harder than I initially thought.
It’s funny how the same names keep popping up and the circle is closed. I am yet to receive sustainable support/readership from you guys with my blog and for that reason, it will never break through.
The blogosphere in SA is smaller that it could be because of this, but then I guess that it begs the argument that leaders must have followers to earn their title, doesn’t it?
@HoTsTePPa I’m genuinely sorry you feel that way. In my experience the vast majority of the ‘leaders’ in the SA blogosphere are nice guys and girls who write fairly well, engage the community and work hard on their blogs. If you’ve done these things and are still not ‘breaking through’, we’re doing something wrong.
Have you tried attending a few “real life” geek dinners or 27dinners to meet up with people and put some names to faces? Are you promoting your blog posts on Twitter??
@HoTsTePPa You should try getting off blogspot. Your posts are great but using blogspot no one will take you serious.
Who are these leaders you are talking about?
I have not found any “leaders” in the sa blogosphere.
On the same note. I think Mandy De Waal is a influential blogger. Some controversial posts she does.
Great to see that web2.0 and blogging is creating thought leaders….some more than others….
Really interesting, keep up the good work!!
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