I realised earlier today that I’m a big “LOUD MOUTH” for supporting South African start-up’s, and yet at the same time, most of the time I spend on the net (other than local news sites) is on the international sites - google, facebook, flickr, youtube etc etc

So I’m going to make a concerted effort not only to register and test out local South African websites BUT ALSO TO USE THEM.

Now with some sites I’m not sure this is possible, as I’m not looking to move the whole of South Africa away from Facebook and onto the new 5fm Facebook copy (or one of the other hundred that are going to be springing up in the months to come) - when I read about the new 5fm 2.0 whatever they’ve come up with, I had no desire to try it out, but now that I’ve thought about it, I want to see if South Africa is creating sites as good as the international players…

Having said that, with a site like a facebook copy, I don’t think i’ll be moving over regardless, as it’s an international concept - I love being able to say howzit to friends of mine around the world no matter where they stay or which country they’re from..

Anyway, i’m getting sidetracked - Zoopy review time.

I am totally content with YouTube and Flickr for my photo and video needs, but I’m going to try support this local player a little. (Zoopy is responsible for donating a video camera to the Ernst & Young Toastmasters club i’m involved with - and their camera video’d me giving my first speech last week - see Zoopy guys, sponsorship DOES pay off)

[disclaimer: I don't think i've actually met any of the Zoopy guys and the camera definately wasn't the reason for spending 30 minutes of my valuable time writing this - but perhaps the fact my speech is going to be on the Zoopy site in a few days time - Lloyd? - prompted me to start thinking about supporting local more etc]

Camera appreciation aside Zoopy guys, so far the experience hasn’t been the best one:

1. I registered on Zoopy under my name, Eric, and after submitting the form, it gave me a message back that the name “Eric” was already taken. Fair enough, but Zoopy didn’t take me back to the page I had previously filled in. It just told me it was taken! And when I clicked some link, I had to start from scratch filling in the registration form again.

2. I uploaded a couple pics, and used low resolution ones around the 50k mark, rather than the big 4mb ones - the Zoopy system displays pics “stretched” (is that the right word?) and as the resolution wasn’t high enough, the pics look blurred.

3. I decided to upload a 50Mb movie - After a few minutes I realised it was unfair of me to upload such a large file at the business I am hanging out at today - Where is the STOP button? I closed the page, and am still not sure whether that did the job of stopping the upload!

So at the moment, I’m not sure if I wasn’t “proudly South African” why I would use Zoopy over YouTube?

Sure, in time, with more South African’s uploading South African flavoured content to Zoopy, I’ll spend more time on the site, but for a person that is content with uploading their content to YouTube and Flickr, the only reason to use Zoopy over the international players OTHER THAN simply Proudly South African, is that your audience is more targetted.

But I do preach the “support South African start-up’s” mantra on a regular basis, so I’m going to be giving these boys a chance.

Now if I knew how to email the Zoopy Logo to Zoopy (rather than upload as it’s SOO convenient to email), and I knew how to pull the code from Zoopy and insert it easily in my blog, I wouldn’t be pulling it from Flickr! But I guess that’s my fault rather than Zoopy’s - a person gets used to using the system they know!

Ama Safrica