Normally we wouldn’t get involved in something like this however, since we’ve been piloting and testing our new “social stream” functionality (see the one we did for the US Government) we figured this might be a good opportunity to roll one out for The Parlotones.

Last night saw the launch of the new Giant Mistake wine by The Parlotones and with that we’ve launched our social stream which tracks the conversion that is happening around this wine. Have a look at the screenshot below and click here to view it in action.

Through this social stream we are now able to track mentions across Twitter, Afrigator, Flickr, YouTube and Digg. We’ve also introduced a new feature to the stream that is able to track fans of The Parlotones. At the moment fans only work on Twitter but we’re looking at expanding that to other platforms in the future.

On Monday morning we’ll be publishing some exciting news for all you Parlotones groupies so watch this space for the big announcement.

This has been an exciting project for us to be involved in and with it we’ve managed to evolve the social stream even further. We hope that you guys find it useful and if you have an idea for another social stream then let us know!

This social stream (as we’re dubbing it) showcases all the latest developments of the US mission into Africa and we cover all the major social media websites from Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Afrigator, Delicious as well as the official content from America.gov.

In recent times the world has witnessed how US politics has led the way for social media usage and this unique offering is no different. For the first time you can get a detailed account of the US mission to Africa in a nicely formated and chronological way.

For us, working with the US Government is a huge honour and it’s been great to see the enthusiasm coming out of Washington DC. We’ve seen how the focus has shifted and Americans are taking Africa far more seriously today than ever before.

We hope that we’ll have many more social streams in the future but for now, enjoy the US in Africa stream by clicking here.

The SA Elections website, which is powered by The Times, decided that they would like to include thoughts from bloggers on the site and the logical step to take was for Afrigator to lend a hand. So, we built them a special feed which would let them gather the thoughts of bloggers from around South Africa. This benefits the site by making it much richer with more content, and it benefits the bloggers by sending more traffic from interested readers in their direction.

The prize comes in the form of advertising, which we think is very cool for a blogger 

The winning SA blog will get R20,000 worth of Advertising on Afrigator.com and the best new blog will receive R10,000 worth of advertising.

In simpler terms, best SA blog will get 100,000 ads (gasp!) and the best new blog will get 50,000 ads from Afrigator. If those numbers seem very big, it’s because they are!

Remember, there’s still time to get your blog in the running for this cool prize so get on over to http://www.sablogawards.com/2009/

Afrigator is supporting the cause offering the Earth Hour Campaign advertising space on the Afrigator site to promote this very worthy cause.

You can give Earth Hour your support by signing up at http://www.earthhour.org.za or follow their updates on twitter: http://twitter.com/earthhourza

For now, have a look through some of the videos done for this campaign

For a couple months now we’ve been working hard with the 24.com development team and today the fruits of all our labour have finally come to fruition. This new integration means that anyone who has a blog on the 24.com platform can now click a single button and they will automatically be signed up to Afrigator and will start to receive detailed stats about their blog.

We’ve also created a skinned 24.com version of Afrigator that allows users of the 24.com network to view ranking, latest blog posts and newest members within the community.

If you’d like to read more about the integration then I recommend you read our latest blog post on the 24.com platform over here or you can download the press release over here.

Along with Google, WordPress and a few others – Afrigator is now an official sponsor of BarCamp Africa.

BarCamp Africa is a chance for people from Silicon Valley to learn about Africa on many levels: the place, the people, contemporary issues, outlooks, opportunities and more and we are proud to support any initiative that encourages discussions between Africa and the developed world.

For those who don’t know a BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants and you can read some detailed FAQ’s about BarCamp Africa over here.

This year BarCamp Africa will be held on the Google Campus in Mountain View, California, USA on October 11, 2008. If you’d like to attend then book your seat now as there are only limited tickets left.