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On July 11 I began a survey / campaign to source the top 50 South African websites based on user votes. This has certainly been an interesting exercise! There have been those who have entered into the spirit of the exercise and those who have seen it as nothing more than a waste of time and a tool to weaken the South African blogosphere. I have had messages of affirmation and others critical of this initiative.
Running this survey has never been a scientific exercise and in no way can the results claim to be conclusive. There has been no control group, no minimum vote count, in fact it is been a singularly unscientific approach! Readers were asked to vote for their favourite site - end of story!
You will see from the results that the big players have received many votes - indicative of their usefulness to the South African internet user perhaps. However there are a number of relatively unknown sites/blogs that deserve greater attention. Some voters unashamedly voted for their own sites/blogs. Where I picked this up, I have taken away their vote! Please do yourself a favour and visit the lesser known sites - you may just pick up a gem! In fact, why not feature some of them in a blog post to raise their profile.
The top ranked sites were (in alphabetical order) -
* Amatomu
* Grabble
* iBlog
* Keo
* Muti
* MyBroadband
* News24
* SA Good News
* SA Rocks
* SA-Venues
I guess there is not too much surprise in these nominations. These are sites that will be popular with internet regulars because they provide useful and informative content that is updated regularly.
However the following sites also received nominations - although some are corporate and others are seemingly odd nominations, it has to be remembered that this is cyberspace democracy! They all received votes whether we agree with their nomination or not! Take a look here :
* Afrigator
* Bed On Bricks
* BizCommunity
* Blue World
* Cape Gateway
* Cape Town Daily Photo
* Charity Wines
* Cherry Flava
* EishCoZa
* Friends of JZ
* Golfers Information
* Goldfish
* Good Citizens Club
* Grow South Africa
* Hunter of Genius
* iMod
* IOL News
* Jonga
* Jump
* Mahala Media
* Mail & Guardian
* Mnet
* Modelbase
* MoneyWeb
* Mweb
* My Kinda Prices
* MyVideo
* News Phorum
* Pixels For Charity
* Private Property
* SA AirForce
* SA Property
* SA Rugby
* South Africa - sourcing cheap flights to,from or within SA
* SuperSport
* Tertia
* The South African Insult
* Think Money
* Tomorrow Today
* Urban Mamas
* Vottle
* Weather SA
* Webtrepreneur
* Yeigo
* Yuppie Chef
Please leave a comment with your thoughts on this list. I have my own thoughts but will leave these for another post - let's hear what you have to say first!
Wednesday, 01 August 2007
50 Top Websites - End Of Survey
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11 comments:
Hi Arthur, it would be interesting to see a ranked list too if poss.
Interesting list,quite a cross section. A ranking, particularly for those in the Top 10, would be fun.
Interesting that Afrigator, Iol and Mweb only made it into the 'also rans.' I would also reckon Yeigo could move up the list quite substantially in the next 12 months.
I reckon there is merit in this initiative. This gives the average SA internet user a chance to discover sites that have given their visitors enough joy that someone(s) has taken the time to nominate them. There are loads of sites with loads more hits than those sites listed above. But I doubt that viewing your bank balance would necessary be counted as a fun experience on the web, for example.
Furthermore, it gives our young and upcoming web designers a little extra motivation to up their game. Nothing wrong with that.
The most interesting blogging experiment I've seen in some time, and it's opened my eyes to some new sites. Cant understand why Friends of JZ didn't make it into the top 10; and I didn't realise Grabble was so popular.
As the owner of two of the sites in this top list I'm very happy but I agree with capetonian that not even I knew that my search engine, Grabble, was so popular...
I would also like to see exactly how many individual voters there were. That might help to put this all in to a bit of perspective.
How can I get you guys to take a look at http://www.best-juicing.com? Think I'm onto something fresh and good there...
Thanks to everyone who nominated and voted for www.bizcommunity.com! It makes my day to know that we at Biz are of use to you. :)
Hey Arthur, Just a point to note. SARugby.com is not SA Rugby. The official union website is at sarugby.co.za and is not much to write home about. SARugby.com is an independant site with no affiliations to SA Rugby Pty (Ltd)
grabble? You must be kidding..
It's quite interesting how this is quite a different result from the Alexa rankings for South African sites.
Arbitrary, but fun. Pity I found this too late to make a few suggestions.
Hi,
What about Virtusa ? (http://www.virtusa.co.za) Perhaps this South African web startup can be added to the updated list of SA based web startups.
Virtusa is a social community similar to the popular Digg where users can discover and share just about anything on the web (especially the South African web).
Moreover, this is also the 1st of such South African web startups to have a revenue share model for South African based Adsense publishers ! How awesome is that ! And, since Virtusa is targeted, the competition is lower, thus revenues are not limited !
Hidden features of Virtusa is that SA based webmasters and publishers can also indirectly increase their traffic as well as search engine rankings. All this by simply submitting interesting and quality news (just like digg). Users can also vote (digg) the submissions, create and join groups, and much, much more !
Must say - a simply South African web startup but one that truly has a good point to it and one that serves a purpose (a treat for South African publishers) i'd say ! So far - looking really good !
http://www.virtusa.co.za
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