Jul 30

Written by:
2009/07/30 09:54 AM 

The micro blogging world has taken off like a wild bonfire. Twitter is estimated to be worth $585 Million, while Gatorpeeps is brand spanking new. A start-up from the Guys at Afrigator, a blogging aggregator for Africa. Twitter has millions of users,ranked in the top twenty of the most popular service and website. The Twitter web page has a Google Page rank of 9, that is very high. How then is Gatorpeeps better than Twitter? I am not saying that Twitter is bad, in fact it is the opposite. It is a great service. But it does not meet everyone’s need. Let me then explain to you.

South African. African. Local.

Twitter is a world wide phenomenon. It has attracted millions of people from around the world. Which in and of itself is not a bad thing. Twitter is primarily a USA service, with a good majority of users in the USA. It is located in the USA, it’s servers are in the USA.

The problem is, I do not stay in the USA nor in the UK or any other place where Twitter is used a lot. Although I do have lots of followers, the majority of them are foreigners. There is very little we have in common when it comes to Business, culture, country etc.

With Gatorpeeps, this is totally different. Gatorpeeps is a local South African service. It is aimed at South Africa, as well as the African continent. I can get local followers in my own country, even in my own city. This is one of the reasons why Gatorpeeps is better than Twitter, at least for the local market.

Micro blogging services have been used to promote blogs, business, ideas. Where is the point in promoting a South African business in an international market. Yes, some have done that successfully, but 99% of us have not had that opportunity. Gatorpeeps allows us to promote our blog and business to the local community. To where we can and will make the most impact.

My friends and followers are also local. Our blood is Green. We understand the culture.  We experience the same things. We are brothers and sisters of Africa. Even with a great service such as Twitter, it cannot meet these needs as well as Gatorpeeps can.

We need to promote this local service as much as possible. Get as many people involved as we can. Show the world that some good things do come out of South Africa.

Gatorpeeps might not be, or get, as big as Twitter, but it certainly will prove to be more useful to South Africa and Africa in general.

IT’s all about Blogging

Gatorpeeps is developed and run by the guys at Afrigator. Afrigator is a blog aggregator for the African continent. They are all about blogging. It stands to reason that their new baby Afrigator will have the same influence. In fact they readily agree that Gatorpeeps is about blogging.

Why is this significant? Well in recent times many have moved to Twitter to promote their blog and posts. Trying to increase traffic, which in turn will increase sales and / or income.  In my experience I have been receiving more traffic from Gatorpeeps referral than from Twitter. Does this mean that Twitter is not working. No, not at all. All it demonstrates is my point that Gatorpeeps is better suited for Local South African Blogs.

Gatorpeeps is a place where we can help promote each other. It is a place where we can link to and interact with our local brothers and sisters. It is a place where I can read South African Blogs. Lets make this a great South African micro blogging service. Lets start promoting each others blogs, peep about it, talk about it, comment on each  others blogs.

Some Improvements.

Like Twitter, Gatorpeeps is by no means perfect and I believe it has a long way to go to improve. It can only get better. My duty, your duty, is to make a positive contribution in making this service a world renowned, world recognised service. How do we do this? By giving positive feedback and positive suggestions.

Here are my few suggestions that could make Gatorpeeps even better.

• Enable grouping of friends and followers. For example, having a group for "co-workers" or "local peeps" can help you quickly see what your co-workers are saying or find up-to-the-minute information on local events such as traffic accidents.
• Auto Complete. It will also help in times where you’re having trouble spelling someone’s username and #hashtags
• Text links in the Gatorpeeps update stream. With a 140 character limit, it’s often difficult to have links in a peep without robbing yourself out of precious characters. By allowing users to peep hyperlinked text, not only will it give them a little bit more room for including additional characters, but will also make Gatorpeep updates look cleaner.
• Update-Threading. Like most forums, the updates and posts are threaded, allowing you to follow a conversation more easily. The current user interface doesn’t allow you to easily view a conversation between two or more people.
• Display meta data through hover tooltips A tooltip is an effective graphical user interface element that allows users to view more information when they hover or click on a text or object of interest without having to leave the current web page. One way tooltips can be helpful is in seeing the bio information of a Gatorpeep user when you hover over their username on your Gatorpeep feed.
• Add a Built-in URL shortener. I know that Gatorpeeps has a URL shortener toolbar item. But it would be great if they could automatically shorten URLS in the update stream or have a place somewhere on the web page to do that for you.

Got any more ideas? I am sure Justin, Stii and the boys will be glad to hear them. Why not post them in the comments. I am sure they will see them. If not I will make sure they get your ideas.

How are you using Gatorpeeps? Are you promoting it as much as possible? You can use both Twitter and Gatorpeeps at the same time. In fact Gatorpeeps has a feature to auto post your updates to your twitter account. My challenge to you is to help promote this great service. Lets make it a Twitter rival for Africa. I ask you to promote this post to all you Afrigator and Gatorpeeps followers.

Let me know your thoughts on Gatorpeeps. Do you think it is a good service or not? How are you using it?

Follow me at Gatorpeeps @ http://gatorpeeps.com/robertbravery

Related Reading:

How to make Gatorpeeps work for you

GatorPeeps – SA Twitter – What I like about it

Acronyms to use on Gatorpeeps and Twitter

You know you’re addicted to Gatorpeeps when …

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