South African Search Engines Scoop
by Rob Stokes
Darren and I met with the team behind 24.com on Friday… it was very interesting indeed!
I have to say, there are smarter minds behind that business than their ad campaign gives them credit for. It was great to gain an insight into their bigger plans and ultimately the future of the South African internet landscape. Sometime in the next few days Darren will be posting the answers to a few questions he threw at Charles, their MD.
Coincidently, I have also just found out that Vinny and his gang have put Google Co-op to work by rolling up a new South African competitor for TwoFour to worry about. Its “officially” only being launched tomorrow but I couldn’t resist letting it out the bag early. It’s called Sekamo which is Sotho for “comb” as in combing the web. Its relevancy isn’t bad and I know they are improving it daily, although I have to say that 24 is still better on my benchmark search phrase “fly fishing” - sorry guys.
All this is good from a competition = innovation perspective although I do like the fact that the revenue generated by 24 stays in South African whilst Google only sends Vinny about 80% of Sekamo's revenue. That said I’m sure that for a while still, Google will be able to monetize the South African internet much better than 24, they just have more resources and more experience in yield management.
Where does this all leave Ananzi? They spent a small fortune last year on TV ads and yet still insist on pissing off their users with pop up ads… that’s so Web 1.0.
Comments
post a commentYeah, I'm with coda, if I'm not using google, it's always jonga.
Posted by Rich...! on 2006/11/06
I don't like 24.com... Duno why, just don't. :/
Posted by Tyler on 2006/11/07
Hmm, Sekamo kinda reminds me of my own google custom search engine - Rockr.co.za. That site took about an hour to build. The interesting thing here is the amount of time *not* put into the service - where 24.com and Jonga build real search engines and spend time and money building something from scratch, someone else can come along and create a "competitor" with no time and effort. Attach a couple of cloned ning.com apps, choose an african language name et viola, you're a competitor in the search space without writing a line of code.
Posted by Shaun Dewberry on 2006/11/11
Ananzi needs some healthy competition in the SA search arena. It's their own fault and poor marketing descisions to waste their spend offline.
Posted by Doug on 2006/12/01
Website Designing India provides customized website designing, website maintenance, flash website designing, dynamic websites, web promotion, search engine optimization, website submission, e-commerce website, portals & vortals development, intranet applications, software development, multimedia cd presentation from Mumbai, India
Posted by Web Master on 2007/03/01
Lets face it gentlemen, no matter how much we can hate google, and how we like different search engines, google is still one of the most used search engines, the same goes fro msn, yahoo, and many others. All we can do is use the search engines that we think are the better sites. Ananzi has come a long way so lets give credit where its due. Keep this in mind, and keep an open mind to different sites.
Posted by Juan-Michael on 2007/04/30
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Posted by coda on 2006/11/05