Justin Hartman, Managing Director of the company said, “This deal effectively puts full control back into the hands of the original founders of the company and I am confident and excited about our future moving forward.

“We strongly believe that we have a solid business plan and everyone involved remains committed to realising our long term plans for the company.”

Commenting on the implications for users of Afrigator Hartman added, “The deal will have no impact whatsoever. Our services will continue in exactly the same way as before and there won’t be any change in how people access Afrigator properties.”

// ENDS //

About Afrigator

Afrigator Internet (Pty) Ltd is a technology company based in Cape Town, South Africa. In April 2007 Afrigator.com, a social media aggregator and blog directory, was launched to the public. Afrigator also pioneered Adgator, a blog advertising network reaching more than 600,000 unique users in January 2009.The company has already enjoyed a fair amount of success by receiving the accolade of having being listed as #20 of 31 top non-US start-ups to watch worldwide by Business 2.0 (money.cnn.com). In a feature for the New York Times (nytimes.com), Afrigator was voted as one of the Top 10 International Products for 2008 by US technology site ReadWriteWeb. For more information, visit http://afrigator.biz.

For more information please contact:

Justin Hartman
Afrigator Internet
Tel: 0215251071
justin@afrigator.com

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!

Last week I got to work only to find that a camera crew from FinWeek had taken over the office and was set and ready to shoot us. Well, you know what I mean.

The article has been written and published and this morning we got hold of an early edition of the FinWeek mag, which has a feature on Afrigator. Apparently the editors decided that Stii and I weren’t aesthetically pleasing enough and used a (cool) pic of Justin for the article. You can read the article online here or rush out and get your copy of FinWeek to see Justin in all his geeky glory. I’ll add some more pics to our photostream as soon as I get hold of them, but there are a couple that you can view now, so go on – take a peek.

Thanks for the support FinWeek, you rock.

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.

Demand Media, which has raised $320 million, is on a quest to find the top next-generation new media companies and has partnered with Vator.tv to find great companies to complement its ever-growing library of cool sites.

The winner gets to fly down to meet with the mergers and acquisitions team at investment company Demand Media, as well meet Demand’s CEO Richard Rosenblatt. Coupled with also gettting blog exposure with profiles on VentureBeat, Mashable and Andy Plesser’s Beet.TV

Yesterday we received some coverage on VentureBeat in relation to the competition and as they point our we’re currently sitting in #7 spot but we’d like to climb a little higher!

If you like our service and feel it’s worth a vote in the competition then simply go to the competition homepage, register, scroll down and cast your vote for Afrigator’s pitch.

Marshall Kirkpatrick is a Lead Author at Read/WriteWeb and was previously a lead blogger at TechCrunch and he’s written a glowing review on the Afrigator beta site.

This is an amazing achievement for us and I’m really happy to see the International community finding true value in what we’ve created.

Bizcommunity has also done a follow up story on the Read/WriteWeb coverage.