The news has kinda leaked out via my my LinkedIn status update – yes, it’s official, I’m moving over into the hot-seat in Careers24 as the new General Manager.
And I’ll be handing over my current responsibilities leading the central Development teams in the next month or so.
I’m super-excited about the move:
- I’ve been managing development, production and operations for other people for a long time.. this is my shot to get into the drivers seat and live or die by my own decisions
- Careers24 is sort-of the underdog in the market at the moment. There are a couple of strong competitors with a clear lead, and then a bunch of noisy job boards all fighting for attention. It’s good to have clear targets.
- It should be run with a much stronger technical focus in my opinion, but it hasn’t been until now. Looking for a job is all about search, and so is searching CVs. I plan on rolling out kick-ass search and matching functionality to both sides of the customer base.
- It’s a really interesting business model – if you want to get clever about it, it’s a platform business in a 2-sided market, with strong cross-side network effects. Actually 2 markets (for jobs & candidates), each with cross-side network effects, and the possibility to cross-subsidise across markets too.
- I’ve got great support from News24, and they are cooking at the moment… we got 250k+ South African users in a single day on Tuesday this week. Couldn’t ask for a better partner to build audience.
- I get to stay at 24.com and work with a great bunch of people. The saying is that familiarity breeds contempts, but it’s also great to be operating as part of a big team, with lots of collective experience, and niche expertise tucked away all over the place. Need some SEO advice? No problem. Want to test UI? Sure. Got deep database questions? Sorted.
Any time I move on from one role to another I feel like I’m leaving things undone, and if I’d just stayed a bit longer I could have made a bigger difference, but I’m pleased to say that the dev and design teams seem to be doing fine with only minimal interference from me, and they could probably do with someone new to join them in my place and bring some new perspective and experience to the table.
Watch this space…
Careers24 Jobs Online: 5306
Registered Users: 298211
I hope to report good things in the coming months.
Sometimes Cape Town really busts out the most incredible sunsets. I caught this one on my iPhone from the Sand Bar while having drinks and dinner with a couple of friends.
I’m impressed with the image an iPhone can capture with a pretty poor camera unit.
Sometimes we encounter an object that has no logical reason for its existance.
I encountered one of these rare things…. Behold, the hand-made Spork, fashioned from a simple plastic spoon.
Why??? What is its purpose?
I’ve had a Kindle DX for about 10 days now and thought I would jot down a few thoughts about it.
A couple of friends have said “Uh…you chose a Kindle? Really?” in a way that sounds like they’re asking “So you bought the whole Britney Spears back catalog on vinyl? Really?” – as if there’s something simultaneously uncool and outdated about the choice.
What lies behind the question is the imminent availability of the iPad, and the question is really “why buy the big Kindle, when you don’t have long to wait for the iPad to be released?”
In a word – the screen.
I had high hopes for the iPad. I really thought it would be incredible. I thought it was going to be the most sci-fi device you could have until robot girlfriends and flying cars are available. I was deeply disappointed.
No multitasking. No cameras for video conferencing. No direct file access to the device (iTunes only). And the most disappointing – a plain old, 1024×768 LCD screen with a backlight.
In other words, the iPad is a giant iPod Touch. I can’t really see it fitting in to my life when I already have a powerful Macbook Pro and I have an iPhone – what I really wanted was a device that I could use for long reading sessions.
I’m studying at the moment, and I cart around a backpack full of files containing material printed from PDFs. My eyes can’t take an LCD screen for a whole day at work and then still look at one in the evening.
Working at a laptop is different from reading on a laptop – when you work you actually look all over the place – different windows, your keyboard from time to time, around your desk etc.
Reading 100′s of pages on an LCD screen doesn’t work for me.
So it had to be e-Ink or a hybrid screen.
The choice was pretty simple for me – Kindle DX was the best way to get a high-resolution e-Ink screen with native PDF support for documents that were designed for A4 printing.
I would have preferred a Que or an iRex device with built in Wacom tablet for note-taking, but then the price would double.
If the iPad had used a next-generation screen from Pixel Qi, Liquavista or Mirasol then it would have been an obvious choice, but not with an IPS backlit LCD panel.
I’m glad I made the choice I did – the Kindle screen is amazing. At this point, I think I prefer reading on it to reading on paper. The soft grey screen with crisp text is extremely easy on the eyes, and it’s absolutely flat, unlike a book or magazine page that seems chaotically bendy and unstable after using the Kindle.
On the down side, it’s difficult to manage files on the Kindle. Although you can simply connect it to your computer via USB and create folders and documents on the device, they all appear in one flat non-hierarchical view. I have about 200 documents stashed on mine, and it means scrolling through 13 pages if I want to browse the whole collection. I’ve been assured that a software update is on the way, but until then it’s an interface failing.
Overall, I’m super-happy with the device. It does exactly what I wanted it to do, and it reminds me a lot of my first monochrome iPod in it’s focus on doing just one thing very well. No regrets on the Kindle, and I’ll take a closer look at the iPad when it hits version 2.
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MWEB For The Win
The uncapped ADSL products they launched were not revolutionary in the sense that they were the first to market or had features never seen before, but MWEB managed to nail the right combination of timing, features and price to create a killer product that fired the imagination of consumers.
I realised this a few weeks back when I heard my hairdresser’s kid asking her for money to go to the internet café and I asked whether she had a computer at home and was considering getting her own internet access. She said that she had heard that MWEB were the ones to go for, that they were doing something special.
That sort of spontaneous awareness is the stuff marketing people dream about – unprompted recall of just one brand when asked about an entire industry.
Enough has been said about the merits of the actual products, but I want to comment on the brilliant way MWEB has embraced their Facebook group to engage with their customers and critics after the launch of their uncapped products.
The “Free the Web” campaign started as a Facebook group without any reference to MWEB, and built up to over 12 000 group members shortly before the product launch announcement. The groups description claimed the following:
On March 18, MWEB launched their new ADSL products and revealed that they were behind the previously anonymous Free The Web SA Facebook group. Some online commentators had spotted the setup and worked out that it was likely to be an ISP announcement, while others were deeply disappointed to discover that a large company with a vested interest was behind the campaign and set up a short-lived protest group to vent their irritation.
Within days many competing local ISPs had announced competitive uncapped ADSL products, a fantastic outcome for South African consumers – better pricing than we’ve ever had and lots of choice.
MWEB may also have unwittingly set the tone for the group by originally pitching it as a consumer lobby group aimed at addressing an uncompetitive industry, as it attracted a vocal group of dissatisfied internet users and gave them a platform to vent their frustrations.
At this point many companies would have had a round of high-fives with their PR and online marketing companies and left the Facebook page to rot, but MWEB instead put a team of facilitators into the group posting under the handles “MWEB Guy” and “MWEB Business Guy”.
Unfortunately the honeymoon was short-lived and it didn’t take long for network issues to appear. Customers who were getting poor speeds (and random non-customers happy to throw a few free punches) started to leave brutal and angry comments on the wall.
The response from MWEB was amazing – the long-suffering “MWEB Guy” just kept slogging it out and responding to critics, and in the latest act of engagement, Rudi Jansen, MWEB’s CEO has started posting directly into the group under his own name, much to the confusion of some who seem to think he is another MWEB tech support person.
This particular individual does unintentionally get right to the heart of the matter when he says “I want to speak to a person, not voice prompts, that’s why I’m here”.
Whether this guy knows it or not, he is interacting directly with the CEO of a large organisation and being given the opportunity to comment on using their products and the frustrations he is experiencing with their service and support. Facebook is being used here as a platform to cut through all the layers that usually exist between customers and suppliers and allow them to communicate directly and publicly. There are a couple of CEOs who make great use of social media (notably Gian Visser, CEO of a competing ISP), but it’s the first time I’ve seen the top guy in a South African organisation the size of MWEB take the time to get involved, face his critics head-on, take responsibility for the issues and engage with his customers in a very direct and immediate way.
Comments like these show the power of this engagement to build loyal customers in the face of temporary problems:
I’m impressed.
UPDATE: See below – one of MWEB’s vocal critics has been swayed by Rudi’s out-of-office-hours efforts to communicate with the Facebook group. Gives me the warm’nfuzzies.
from → Industry comment