Meet Charl Norman. At first sight, he doesn’t look dangerous. You might even encounter him at business or social events, exchange business cards and not even think of contacting the authorities. “Hmm, nice logo, you might say,” as I did, and then carry on with the business of the evening.
Mistake. Charl Norman is a danger to society.
He describes himself, disarmingly, as an “ambitions young entrepreneur workaholic with a passion for the internet”. Which, as we all know, is shorthand for: “Want to build the next Google and will destroy the internet if that’s what it takes.”
So far, he has succeeded in destroying the productive working hours of those who ventured on to the internet for innocent pursuits like researching their next car purchase. Instead, they landed on his social network with a difference, ZoopedUp.
This is like a Facebook for cars, but without all the distractions. Your profile pic is your car, your friends are cars (granted, they do come with owners), your blog is about cars and your applications are engine modifications.
And then there is the car blog itself. Aside from being a good advertisement for why tag clouds are usually such an eyesore on blogs, car blog is punted as “the auto news blog featuring new car reviews, concept cars, F1 news and modified car talk”.
Now if the amablogoblogo were only about cars, fellow Thought Leader Dale Imerman would have been a shoo-in here with his Kameleon Koncepts blog and Creative Rides web site. No, that’s not merely a free plug for Dale: it’s an inkling of just how broad this modified car obsession goes in blogdom.
But Charl has also found several other ways to mimic the watercooler, that one-time arch-enemy of productivity (see also Windows Solitaire, Facebook, etc).
The key weapon in his arsenal is Blueworld, a social-networking site that predated Facebook’s arrival in South Africa by a few months (It was first built in 2003 as a conventional website). He acted as strategist, designer and marketer, all in one, explaining that “workaholic” label.
The site includes a 130 000-member user community, clubbing gallery, photo and video galleries, chat rooms and, of course, a blogging platform. Several thousand blogs have been created on the site, of which a few hundred remain active. The site also functions as a dating portal for registered users, making it a social one-stop shop.
“Blueworld is all about meeting people,” says Charl. “When you come across someone’s profile, you can use the media they have posted as an indication of their character.
“Our unique ‘hook’ for a social network is taking photos in nightclubs and driving the users back to the site to look at their photos. It’s then we encourage them to create a profile and invite friends.”
Seeing that is far too small a project to keep him occupied beyond his early-morning Red Bull, Charl is also responsible for the following blogs:
And then there is a “glamour” blog that trades in gossip about the likes of Lynne Spears’s braindead offspring and her hotel-heiress friend. Since the latter may not be named or even linked to on this blog, due to an ancient code of limits on bad taste, suffice to say that Charl did the theme design and plug-in research for the blog.
This all sounds as if Charl has been at it for decades, but in fact his first blog posting occurred a little more than two years ago: a CD review about Eminem’s latest release on a standard Blogger template in March 2005.
“It was a shocker, but I was quite chuffed at the time,” he says. However, having built his first website five years earlier, he knew there was much more to blogging, and set about further developing his first project, Zoopedup.com, originally built when he was 16. “It was the first serious web property I published and got me featured in many newspapers and magazines.”
His next goal? “Further developing my social networking start-ups and innovating on the Web 2.0 front. Basically eat, sleep and live the phenomenon that is Web 2.0.”
You would assume, from this statement, that he doesn’t have a life. You would assume correctly: “I work 24/7 from 7am to 9pm. My online hobby has become my work, which is my life.”
Finally, after merciless interrogation, he confesses that he doesn’t do it all himself, although he does handle all his blogs’ design and content himself.
“For Zoopedup.com and Blueworld.co.za we have our development team in Cape Town so we can pay them Cape Town salaries,” he says with an evil grin. “In Jozi, myself [chief strategy officer] and our managing director, Bradley Voges, handle all the meetings, finance and innovation, with a third partner, Brendt Brooks. We have a few online ad agencies that take care of our ad sales, which is our revenue model. And we have investors in Blueworld who pay the bills.”
These investors are Teljoy and The Creative Council, who along with the operational partners own shares in Blueworld Communities, the holding company for Blueworld, ZoopedUp and the gay social network Gaypeers.com. Blueworld was initially financed from the partners’ own pockets, and then later from advertising revenue. The investors made it possible to bring in more engineering resources and other staff.
Unlike most serious bloggers, Charl doesn’t fall for the obligatory trick question: “Will blogging replace traditional journalism?”
“The majority of blogs are more casual than a seasoned journalist’s opinion. I think both mediums will remain prominent. Blogs are useful for average Joes to express their opinions in their own environments, where huge media outlets have select editors who dictate which stories get published.”
The bottom line is less about philosophy and more about adrenalin: “The business of online is very exciting and innovative. You never know who will be tomorrow’s market leader. It could be you.”
* Know anyone else it could be? Nominate them as blogging players of the week here or by e-mail. Also, please feel free to visit my new blog at The Big Change
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