Mike Stopforth

For some reason I’ve been ignoring MyGenius.com - the Southern African social network for business people. I have been a member since late 2006 - MyGenius’s very early days - and never quite got in to it. I get the odd message from a MyGenius member wanting to connect but have spent little no time on updating my profile or adding content to the site.

Recently I decided to give MyGenius another go based on two realisations. Firstly, the value of social networking is undoubtedly found, or much easier mined, in niche communities. The quintessential example is Charl Norman’s Zooped Up community for owners of modified cars and suchlike - completely useless for me but absolutely invaluable and addictive to people entrenched in that community. MyGenius cannot be compared to MySpace, for example, because it’s not trying to be a globally dominant player. It’s simply trying to do what it does well.

If you have nothing better to do feel free to watch me talking about “The importance of Networking” on Alishia Seckam’s show, ‘Africa’s Entrepreneurs’ on CNBC Africa at 13h50 20h30, tomorrow, Tuesday 28 May (we’re recording at 14h00, sorry for the confusion).

The producer has nominated MyGenius, local business social networking site, as a case study and I hope to cover the subject of personal digital profiles and the Google CV, if I get the chance.