The gala event, held at the posh Movida night club in Johannesburg, saw big agencies such as Gloo and Stonewall+ as well as large publishers like 24.com and Avusa win multiple awards. Afrigator was by far the smallest publisher to win an award and it is a massive achievement for us to be recognised and awarded by the digital illuminati.

For a full list of all the winners make sure you visit the 2009 Winners page for more detail.

In case you’re not sure what The Bookmarks is all about here’s a quick bio from the official website:

The 2nd Bookmarks Awards will celebrate the brave agencies and publishers who push the boundaries, come up with incredible creative concepts and manage, despite all the odds, to make a difference for advertisers and industry players.

The Bookmarks aims to benchmark the best in digital media, for both publishers and advertisers, whilst at the same time promote digital as an integral part of the marketing mix.

The Bookmarks will reward creativity, results and online media excellence. Have you performed miracles, or come up with a concept that really worked for your client or business? Have you come up with the most amazing creative execution that wowed users and got real results for advertisers? Or have you as a publisher achieved the balance between commercial success and audience appeal?

ReadWriteWeb has given Afrigator an honourable mention in the Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008 list.

This Top 10 list features FriendFeed, Google Reader, Twitterfeed, Feedburner and Yahoo! Pipes. Here’s what RRW had to say about us.

Finally, we love African social media aggregator Afrigator – it’s a great way to learn about what’s happening all over the continent and it’s a great use of RSS. We named it one of the Top 10 International Products of 2008 but we think it deserves an honorable mention in this category as well.

Once again we are humbled by ReadWriteWeb’s support of Afrigator and it’s a great way to end off a fantastic year for us!

To be included in the list along with massive properties like Netvibes and Zohois a great testament to the efforts the guys have put into this company and I was particularly chuffed to see that this article made the New York Times’ Technology section.

Now all we need to do is figure out how we can get similar local recognition and then we’re well and truly sorted!

We could not have chosen a better partner in MIH Print Africa as their strategy for Africa aligns perfectly with ours and is an important development for the social media space across our continent – validating the importance of blogging and social media in Africa.

Our Vision

When we started Afrigator in April 2007 we had no idea that we would be where we are today and our sole mandate at the time was to try and create a compelling and useful product that bloggers would enjoy using.

Since then our strategy hasn’t changed but we have evolved to not only serve bloggers but anyone who is interested in social media developments across Africa.

Afrigator is about social media and our users and this vision will not change moving forward. As a privately funded operation we had limited resources at our disposal and this deal gives us plenty of room to turn Afrigator into a mature and useful product.

What this means for our users

Fundamentally this deal is hugely beneficial to all our users as we can all finally focus on Afrigator full-time. We have also employed Lester Hein as our Product Manager who will join the team at the beginning of October and we plan to expand our development team in the near future.

All of this means that not only will the vision remain in tact but we’ll also be more efficient and focused on our users as the team grows and expands.

There are big plans for the development of the website itself and we plan to launch some innovative products along the way.

If you have any questions or would like further information please get in touch with us – we’d love to hear your thoughts!

Read more on this topic here or download the official press release here.

Afrigator has hit yet another milestone and this time we’ve been featured in one of the leading business and technology magazines in the world, Business 2.0.

The CNN backed publication recently picked 31 of the world’s hottest non-U.S. startups of which Afrigator is featured atnumber 20.

Being featured among big players like Joost and Naspers owned Pixrat is a huge honour for us and now we really have high expectations on us to deliver a better, more streamlined product in the future.