Umuntu Media, an online content provider based in South Africa recently raised $1 million series A funding from Netherlands based E Ventures Africa Fund (EVA). It launched iZambia.co.zm in January, followed this up with iNambia.co.na earlier this year and also plans to roll out similar portals for Angola. Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe very soon.
According to a statement published by the company, their vision is to become the biggest online portal in Sub-Saharan Africa and to change the way African’s communicate, transact and interact. It is planning to launch in a total of 19 markets with a focus on localised content, mobile apps and building online communities. Johan Nel; the company’s CEO previously worked as a marketing executive at Naspers’ 24.com stable as a divisional head for digital publishing.
The platform’s entrance into Zim will be very interesting as there currently isn’t a holistic online portal with the scope Umuntu is gunning for. Besides having the financial muscle to allocate resources locally, the company’s exclusive agreement with Etype South Africa as the media sales partner will work in its advantage.
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I don’t understand their business model. What innovation are they bringing to the market? The industry has moved a long way from yahoo.com, allzimbabwe.com, et aliter.
The site appears to be based the open source Joomla CMS which raises the question about Umuntu media’s technical prowess and capacity to offer real unique innovation, One would expect a custom built web app from a company that has ” the financial muscle to allocate resources”. Ironically the sites includes the following in their Disclaimer “You may not disassemble or decompile, reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to discover any source code contained in Ixxxxx”.
That said it appears to be practical and complete although I can not seem to do away with the disappointing notion that the site’s content is manually aggregated living ample room for potential bias, missing relevant content, out right inaccuracy and unethical journalism considering that the site admits
that “As most of the content on Ixxxxx comes from other users, we do not
guarantee the accuracy of postings or user communications or the
quality, safety, or legality of what’s offered”. This automatically disqualifies the website as a reputable news source, a general requirement for portal websites.
Although the websites’ privacy policy explicitly states that Umuntu Media “don’t sell or rent users’ personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes without users explicit consent” it also states that “We may also share personal information with corporate affiliates who… provide joint services.” The personal information mentioned includes financial information. Considering that they have chosen to offer their service on a stock standard open source CMS like Joomla it is within reason to doubt Umuntu Media’s ability to protect your financial information, keeping in mind that the recently hacked Zimbabwe Stock exchange website is based on a similar system. Umunutu media has this to say about their security: “We use lots of tools
(encryption, passwords, physical security) to protect your personal
information against unauthorized access and disclosure, but as you
probably know, nothing’s perfect, so we make no guarantees.” Every potential user is therfore faced with this question, what useful and unique service does Umuntu Media offer that justifies the real risk of having your entire online identity and finances stolen?. I can’t think of one.
The “Music & Videos” section appears to offer by far the most potential and usefulness. But on a system that is based on user generated content it appears that if a similar model is used for the Music and Videos then piracy could be an unacceptable reality. Although the idea has been done one too many times in Zimbabwe already it is yet to be done well, Umuntu Media appears to have all the ingredients to be the long awaited exception with its own imperfections of cause.
I agree with alot of what you said, but your reasoning against Joomla needs to be corrected.
The ZSE website was implemented using Joomla BUT its demise(of being hacked) was not because of it being Joomla-based.
Joomla is a tool like ALL opensource software. If a Joomla flaw was exploited in the breach, it was because it was NOT patched by the admins of that website. The software, as is, without extensions AND up to date is very secure. Third party extensions and lazy administration(by not patching) is what could have provided an attack vector for the hacker.
Would you blame a brand new, well tuned grand piano for bad music?
I think not…
blame the pianist
I think the danger of basing a service on sock standard widely available “open source” platforms gives hackers a perfect opportunity to find a vulnerability, The fact that Joomla constantly updates their security is proof that as a system Joomla too has security flaws that pop up unexpectedly, and the lag time between a security flaw being discovered, Joomla fixing it and administrators implementing it on their sites is more than enough room for hackers to destroy your life.
that can be said for all opensourse systems. what you are saying for Joomla holds true for Drupal, WordPress, MODx, Typo, Apache, Memcache, Hadoop, Linux…and almost everything that powers our internet.
u do know that the internet is mostly powered by FOSS?
your blame on Joomla is misdirected and misinformed.
I totally share the same suspicions you have concerning security & privacy.
Firstly, though not important, it is not common practice to declare what you use to implement security… it provides no assurance at all. And IMHO, is best left out.
Most importantly this statement: “…but as you probably know, nothing’s perfect, so we make no guarantees…” has to be the most careless statement of them all. It reflects alot on them, concerning user privacy. They may as well have said, “we do try, concerning privacy”
_____________________________________
Daggers aside, any locally-generated content is welcome and should be encouraged. I may have a few thoughts on how well it will succeed but I am hopeful that they add value to this new landscape in Zim.
I totally share the same suspicions you have concerning security & privacy.
Firstly,
though not important, it is not common practice to declare what you use
to implement security… it provides no assurance at all. And IMHO, is
best left out.
Most importantly this statement: “…but as you
probably know, nothing’s perfect, so we make no guarantees…” has to be
the most careless statement of them all. It reflects alot on them,
concerning user privacy. They may as well have said, “we do try,
concerning privacy”
_____________________________________
Daggers
aside, any locally-generated content is welcome and should be
encouraged. I may have a few thoughts on how well it will succeed but I
am hopeful that they add value to this new landscape in Zim.
I am building mine! Muchaona zvenyu! Come-on ma-Zimba we can do this ourselves. If techzim can conceive this professional site so can the rest of us developers out there! A bit of creativity, self belief and dedication is all it takes. Do we really need umuntu media? I am not denigrating umuntu but only saying it’s something we can do ourselves. It’s certainly within our grasp.
Hi
Firstly thanks to http://www.techzim.co.zw
for featuring Umuntu Media and sharing our story with your readers. Every time
I read an article about us it fills me with pride and I know fellow entrepreneurs
/ aspiring entrepreneurs reading this will share the same sentiment. Secondly I
really appreciate all the comments. Being
a media / tech guy myself I enjoy these comments / arguments and as a start-up we
need input, critique and hopefully also some kudos from time to time. We are
always improving our reader’s experience, we are constantly improving our
technology and platforms and when we launch iZimbabwe in November you will already
see a much improved UI / UX on the portals and mobile devices. We are also busy
building a mobile platform called mimiboard that will be launched on Android,
WAP, J2ME, WEB, SMS and USSD. I will keep http://www.techzim.co.zw
posted about this as we need Alpha users like yourselves to crit.
Lastly: iZimbabwe will employ local journalists and local
sales / marketing personnel. Our publisher in Cape Town who sits on the management
team of Umuntu Media is also a Zimbabwean.
If you have any questions, or need more information or would
like to get involved please email me directly: johan.nel@umuntumedia.com
Yours in media
Johan Nel
Umuntu Media: CEO
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