I came across a very insightful post over at Experience: The Blog where the author uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to tease out some of the reasons for online behaviour, in this case why people join online communities. It is a very good analysis of the motivations behind people’s behaviour and set me thinking about the online social media scene in South Africa and why companies who engage in online social media campaigns may be jumping the gun a bit.

South Africa is still in a very fragile state of uneasy equilibrium socio-politically, nearly fifteen years after the end of apartheid the overall majority of the black population is not very much better off than before the end of apartheid in 1994. Economically, the majority of the country’s wealth still are controlled by a small minority of predominantly white people, the reasons and dynamics for such a state of affairs which falls outside the scope of our present conversation. The result is that when it comes to information technology and the ecosystem around ICT tools, we still have a very unequal distribution of access to these modalities. In other words, the average black student or child still does not have access to computing resources and their parents still are not in a position to afford a computer; most of the time they are still struggling to just provide in the basic needs like proper housing and enough food on the table in the face of a struggling economy and rising fuel and food prices.

When one speaks of social media, you are thus speaking, in a South African context, of a small minority of predominantly white geeks and geekettes with an odd sprinkling of Coloured, Black and Indians thrown in who are leading the conversation and an incestuous in-clique parrotting and echoing each other’s blogs and blog posts. Recently a furore broke out when one freelance journalist made a list of the prominent figures in the South African blogosphere and almost all of them turned out to be white. One coloured blogger quickly reacted with a counter-list of non-white South African “Web 2.0″ personalities and his post was severely criticized by many on the “white list” as being divisive and hurting those he mentioned on the list. How exactly it would hurt them I could not imagine, I suppose all the white boys would fort up and keep the business and the action within the in-clique and ignore completely anything that any of these “troublesome” coloureds have to say…?

The point is, social media and social media marketing and social media strategy is an almost pointless pursuit for businesses in South Africa when the same small group of people who are also the same group who got the contracts to develop these sites, now have to go around and stir up their small, limited circle of friends to go and see what Company A or B has put up and comment there or add a digg, or del.icio.us bookmark or in South Africa’s case Muti or Laaik.it or Amatomu or Afrigator. Once anyone has put anything up and he goes: “hey guys go look at my post” a small number of his/her buddies will rush over and throw two cents worth of “nice post, keep at it” into the comments collection-box and be on their merry way to look at the next shiny little pebble on the internet highway.

When it comes to companies releasing press releases about new products/programs or initiatives they are launching, we are stuck in the old top-down hierarchical mentality of wanting to control the message and releasing stiff, formal templated media releases that does not contain anything with a potential of going viral or being worthy of being shared with your friends on Facebook. The Vodacom animated meerkat is a much despised brand property on Facebook where there is actually a group called “I fucking hate the animated meerkat from Vodacom” with 15,642 (South African) members.

Some of the bigger media companies have in-house “social media experts”, mostly web development geeks who saw potential in this new frontier opening up and all sorts of “consultants” offering “New Media and Social Media Strategy” services for exorbitant fees. Most of these consultants are based in closed in-clique centres like Johannesburg and Cape Town where most of the action is happening and the market is so small that there is usually stiff competition from the same group of individuals for the available social media gigs. This then inevitably leads to some behind-the-scenes intrigue and gossip mongering and trying to keep it “within the family”.

This means that in a South African context where an incompetent and corrupt government alliance are failing all it’s people, every community is closing in on itself and protecting it’s own and being very protective of the available small pieces of pie going around. The hierarchy of needs that Maslow talks about thus comes into play with people who have access to technology and the education enabling them to wield that technology adequately and competently, keeping it to themselves in order to remain ahead of the pack in the African bush. You then find a situation like you have at present in the online Web 2.0 South African zoo, those who have been benefitting from apartheid through privileged education and upbringing and access to good education and resources banding together only with those from similar privileged backgrounds.

Everyone else is not “worthy” and it is not their problem or their concern why “these people” aren’t educated or sophisticated enough, it’s been fifteen years of Affirmitive Action and BEE after all! We thus see a very vicious racism rearing it’s head where the Australian passports and emigration visas are being dusted off and old Afrikaner Boer generals are nostalgically praised in popular culture to signal a return to the “good old days” if only in spirit and not in the everyday reality.

My point in waffling on like this? People form communities around common and shared interests. Many of the small minority of active participants in the South African blogosphere or Web 2.0 scene share only one thing: being white and their parents having benefitted from the previous apartheid regime. They are thus the custodians of the old wealth and the old ways and are doing everything to protect their position of privilege from being usurped by pretentious nouveau-riche blacks who wants to overrun and nationalize everything in sight. Recent political developments like the ANC youth league president threatening with killing for the very unsuitable presidential candidate does not exactly help in easing their fears.

So social media strategy and social media marketing online in South Africa is only existent for a small minority of privileged white geeks and their equally small potential white and privileged audience who might be enticed into visiting a site and leaving a comment or sharing it on a social bookmarking site. The rest of the population do not have computers, many access these sites from work or school or university and then only to check the odd e-mail and zombie bite their friends on Facebook. Most of the teenagers are clogging up the GPRS networks with Mxit from their mobile phones and those (mostly white kids) that have access to 3G use it to play XBOX or World of WarCraft online.

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal blog, the opinions expressed here belongs to me alone. You are free to differ from me in the comments, but please keep it civil and on point, I tolerate no monkey business

When I stayed in Burma (2001 – 2004), I had the opportunity to watch this amazing display of acrobatic skill and showmanship while travelling through the country as an ordained Buddhist monk from monastery to monastery. I got this in my Twine digest today, and you can see the write-up about the film Mystic Ball over here. I got my Twine invite only a couple of weeks ago, but it is the most valuable and high signal ratio social network out there to date. When you subscribe to groups or Twines around topics of interest, you always get a daily digest of all the high-value articles and links that has been Twined or shared by memebers who also belong to that group of Twines. Never has a day gone by that there was not a couple of articles that I clicked on to go read or save and share, mostly to do with Web Development, Open Source, Linux, Myanmar (Burma), Tibet, Buddhism, Social Networking, Semantic web 3.0, Twitter and WordPress . My Twine profile is over here. Please leave a comment or send me a mail if you would like me to send you a Twine invite, it is in invitation-only beta at the moment, but I have a couple of invites to share

From the website:

This lovely, lyrical documentary introduces Chinlone, a Burmese sport that soars somewhere between acrobatics, hackey sack, and Balinese dance. This game, unknown outside of Burma, became an obsession for Greg Hamilton. For the past 20 years he’s painfully tried to whisk the distinctive woven-rattan ball, faithfully returning to Burma to play in tournaments, becoming the first westerner to do so. What makes this film so rewarding is Hamilton’s candid autobiographical account of his slow learning. At first he is laughed at, but after 8 years of filming, he slowly gains respect from the Burmese. Chinlone is a beautiful non-competitive game. You “win” by keeping the ball in the air for your teammates — a fit metaphor for life, and a perfect frame for this extremely contemplative but dynamic film. Greg’s story is really not about sport, or the Zen of Burmese Hackey Sack, but about how to learn and love.

– KK