My screensaver for the week

We rolls like that.

Among my frinds on facebook, they has been a debate about what or which platform is better to use, Facebook or Twitter.  My take is that it all depends on what you want to get out of your online interactions.  I use both, both professionally and personally and they have both been working for me as I intended them to.

Facebook for me is more personal, as in like friends I know, went to school with, have somehow met them, something like that, though I have been using in for WildlifeDirect business for sometime now.  The thing with Facebook is that the lines are blurred between your social life and you work life.  I mean how do explain someone posting photos of you from that night out you most certainly want to keep under wraps.

I am sure the way FB will monetize their systems is to separate the social from the professional, career advisors will tell to keep your wall clean as employers these days go through your FB wall to get a feel of what and who you are but that is something next to impossible.  If FB had a closed social bit of their platform and a more business-y bit then I think they’d be raking in lots right now.

Twitter on the other hand doesnt pretend to be a social/family thingy, it is all about conversations.  Talk to me I reply, ask a question if I know it and I follow you I’ll tell you the answer.  Most of the guys I follow and who follow me are those I have never set my eyes on but, the act of tweeting to them everyday has bred a familiarity that I dont even have with my FB pals.

Finak thing, Microsoft/Bing and Google have now incorporated Twitter into their search, that begs the question which is better, FB or Twitter?

tweet cloud

Most of my time, of recent has been spent on twitter.  Here is a representation of my tweets.

I am currently in Kigali on Wildlifedirect matters, having a free morning we went to the Memorial Centre here in Kigali.  I must confess that I am generally a guy whose emotions do not show, but I must confess that that 45 or so odd minutes I spent there made me question a lot of things.

I’ll tell you more on Monday.  Right now it’s packing time we are leaving tomorrow.

I think this will be my last post this year, though I hope to get one out just before we cross into 2009, this year has been a rather eventful one I must say, it started out horribly to say the least but the latter part of it has been very very productive and satisfying for me.

First I started of writing and contributing to the CPB site, where Curt and I, report and try and document attcks, threats and persecution of bloggers around the world, something which I have come to learn is very prevalent despite what others might think.  In most parts of the world writing a blog post is usually a private matter governed by only your conscience, but in other place it is a life and death issue, bloggers have been killed and others are languishing in jail for very long jail terms.  Yesterday, Curt took a much needed break and I have now been appointed the editor-in-chief of the site, I hope I will be able to follow in his footsteps and even grow the site and our non-profit even bigger.

I also joined WildlifeDirect in September and my insight into conservation has grown amazingly, after a long period of viewing this as something not of my concern getting immersed into conservation projects and helping the conservationists with what I know best, blogging, has been satisfying a lot.  It is important i think that we, starting owning this projects and not thinking that it is for ’some other people’.  We should individually strive to leave this earth better than we found it.

I have had my writings published in a number of sites including The Tomorrows News Tomorrows Journalists Blog, a collective blog of young journalists, Kenyaimagine, an online news portal, AfricanPath, an african news portal and I have also had the pleasure of writing for Al Jazeera, and also an article of mine got published in The Mail & Guardian Newspaper of South Africa.  This has grown my writing portfolio and I hope that next year will bring more of the same.

I am very encouraged with the growth of our internet industry here in Kenya, everyday new material is coming out, new apps are being built, new sites are coming up and blogs are slowly entering the mainstream which to me is absolutely wonderful.  The good thing is that most of this enterprenuers are doing this themselves without waiting for the government to help them out, as it is currently just paying lip service, to the ICT industry. I await bigger things this coming year.

Happy holidays to you and see you soon.

Twitter fail page

Twitter Fails Again

Seems twitter is done after a very long time. (5 months I think)

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UPDATE:

Its back, that was fast

The TANDAA08 conference, hosted by the Kenya ICT Board was supposed to showcase what local content developers are doing and the goverment plans to support them as we wait for the fibre optic cable to land in mombasa for what promised to good and very fast times for our internet industry.

Due to work schedules I could not attend the morning session, you can get info on the morning session from here. but I got there at around 2:00 in the afternoon and I was impressed with what guys are doing on the interwebs.  Among the speakers who presented their sites or gave talks included:

Aly Khan Satchu – rich.co.ke

Dr Sevilla – Strathmore University

Dr Mwirigi Kinagwi – askadoc.co.ke

Nick Nesbitt – Kencall

Alex Gakuru – Skunkworks

Ken Njoroge – Cellulant

Clement Ouda – myjobshouse.com

Muthoni Garland – storymoja.co.ke

kenyanpoet.blogspot.com

Waithera – capitalfm.co.ke

Overall I can say that the conference fulfilled its aims, the government presentation would have helped guys know what support they can get from the ICT Board seeing as they’ve got a huge grant to help local content devs. get along.

It is heartening to note that many website owners are earning good money from e-commerce kenyaemerging.com being a very good example.  Capital FM Mobile for me was the best, a gprs service where you get business directory, forex rates, atm locator, news among other things, another plus being you only get charged by your service provider (Zain or Safaricom) and not by Capital, I will give most definitely give the service a try.

Alex Gakuru’s talk on Skunkworks was also very informative.

That said during the conference I started the feeling that the conference was starting to turn into a sales pitch forum with presenters pitching the companies, it isnt bad but next time do it subtly.

Points that came out:

• There is a market for local content.
• The pay for registration model for portals and content sites isnt feasible at the moment.
• Monetizing mobile content provision is easier. (because mobile users are used to paying for services)
• Gov’t registration need to be streamlined, too many vague licences

Not a definitive list but the few that I could gather.

Overall I must say the conference was good and more or less a success.

PS

If you attended and have more that I missed, please leave a comment and I’ll update as required.

I havent posted something for a while, work it seems has been alot, though am enjoying it.  It is also satisfying when you are doing something about conservation.  I think that I could do this for a very long time.

So today, I checked my blog visitor stats which I hadn’t checked for some time and was pleasntly surprised to find out that twitter has been for some time my biggest source of traffic.  One thing about me is that I use it alot both personally and for my employer.

I have come to find twitter since I started using it to be extremely helpful in researching for information about a particular item and for generally getting to know other people.  The fact that it has sent visitors my way is a plus.

I have massive writing projects going on right now and from Monday, I think I put out some stuff.

Enjoy the weekend.

Recently I had the honour of being asked to write a series of articles about the US Presidential Debates and the African
outlook towards them for Al Jazeera.
The first piece just went up and the other panellists make for interesting reading, (my article is also good ;=))
Have a read here and give feedback.
Enjoy.

Next week on Monday I will be starting an internship at Wildlife Direct, where I’ll mainly work with bloggers to build their blogs and generally to enhance their blogging experience.  Wildlife Direct is an organization which gives wildlife and environmental conservationists a platform to publish and get their experiences out to a wider world through blogs, it also handles donations to the bloggers.

I have been at Unilever Tea Kenya where I have enjoyed working and I am looking forward to working at Wildlife Direct because and most importantly, the work they are doing is very important as people only get to hear about what conservationists do when there is a crisis, while Wildlife Direct seeks to make this conversation continuous and proactive.  Secondly the job comes with a challenge for me to figure out ways of making the blogs more user and search friendly, a challenge which I am certain I will try my level best to overcome.

I was at the Wildlife Direct offices and from the little that I gathered then I’ll enjoy working there. 

There is a tendency to look at environmental and wildlife conservation detachedly and think that that is something for others to do, ‘we are all busy with other things’ that is something we should toss out of our minds.

Check out the various blogs on wildlifedirect,  you’ll find interesting stuff there, stuff that you did not know, and get involved.

More from me as I settle in.

Cheers.