Mike Stopforth

I call myself a Web 2.0 expert. I run a company, Cerebra, which exists to make money helping our clients understand and where necessary utilise Web 2.0 technologies and trends.

As niche as we are, we’re not alone. We have global and local competitors. In South Africa, we have two kinds of competitors - those that started as social media agencies or companies from day one (Younique, Longtail, would be examples) and then companies that have existed for some time in either the digital sphere or general marketing, advertising or branding spaces that have adapted their focus to align with the ever-increasing need for social media services and products (AtPlay, a division of Saatchi, is the quintessential example).

Gino Cosme, a colleague of mine at Cerebra, has managed to do what I so desperately want to do but lack the fortitude to accomplish - he’s not only published a free Introductory Guide to Social Media for download, but he’s keeping it regularly updated.
Gino is a huge asset to Cerebra as our account director. [...]

Erik Hersman pointed me to this video via his Twitter feed - apparently it’s an internal Microsoft sales video that covers an old Springfield tune, obviously with new lyrics (if you can even call them that) to educate staff on the major features of the platform. If it’s a joke, whoever pulled it has [...]

The team at Brandsh have combined with Standard Bank to provide yet another awesome to it’s clients (and potential clients) via the StandardBank.mobi mobile portal - ATM and branch location services.  Navigate to http://standardbank.mobi on your cellphone right now to check it out.
The service is painfully simple to use but incredibly powerful. Standard Bank [...]

Standard Bank have broken new marketing ground by becoming South Africa’s first major brand (or any brand for that matter) to publish a social media release for our national Pro20 cricket tournament, of which they are the major sponsor. It seems quite appropriate that the progressive, game-changing nature of the 20-over format of cricket [...]

The team at Zoopy.com have edited and published a video of my talk at the recent New Media Marketing Conference. Here is the clip (complete with English phrases that I tend to make up on the fly. I reckon it’s just part of my charm…):

Your comments, as always, are encouraged and appreciated.

I’ve had this review saved in my WordPress drafts for some time now, but after I noticed that Saul was kind enough to mention my blog in his post I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t published it yet. So here goes…
Saul Kropman authors The Outlet - “Interesting commentary for interesting people” [...]

Congratulations to the following three suggestions for improvements to Afrigator, which according to my records, where the leading submissions on the Muti Hot page last night at 22h00:

Nic Haralambous
Nic suggested that we bring competitive rankings back to Afrigator.
In my honest opinion I think Afrigator has lost some fight since it decided not to rank blogs [...]

It’s our first birthday and in keeping with the spirit of innovation and community we’d like to ask you - the dudes who actually make Afrigator tick - to help us come up with some innovative new ideas for improving the experience, look, feel or whatever of the site…
Announcing the ‘1 TH1NG‘ Afrigator birthday competition!
Submit [...]

Considering I ‘couldn’t get it up’ at New Media Marketing 08 (damn the technical gremlins - my Mac is supposed to just work!), here is the presentation you never got to see…

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Your comments, as always, are welcome.