Two months after receiving investment from Vodacom (which now owns a 40% stake in the company), South African social media site Zoopy has started to roll out some of the large scale community improvements they hinted at when announcing the Vodacom deal.
Members of Zoopy.com, which launched in March 2007, are able to upload and share videos, photos, podcasts and blogs – both online and via a choice of mobile applications. Until now, users have been doing so using international bandwidth to connect to Zoopy’s overseas servers. This is standard practice for most medium to large online businesses in South Africa, who are often left with little option but to host internationally when faced with much higher local hosting fees. The downside to hosting outside of the country, however, is reduced loading speed of websites and, in Zoopy’s case, media files like videos and photos.
According to Zoopy CEO, Jason Elk, this is now a thing of the past for Zoopy visitors. “As of today, we have servers in South Africa that will deliver Zoopy content using local bandwidth for South Africans. The significantly slower international speeds and low bandwidth caps in SA (many users only budget for the 3GB they receive per month) have left us as frustrated as any other internet user in the country. So we’re prepared to do what it takes to deliver our media at amazing speeds, whether viewed on Zoopy.com or embedded on other sites or blogs. And for our members, an increase in upload speeds when adding media to your Zoopy profile will make things quicker and more convenient too,” says Elk.
Zoopy has also just increased their upload file size limit from 100MB to 200MB. Elk explains, “If we’re giving visitors a quicker and more comfortable experience over local bandwidth, we wanted to add to the enjoyment by giving them more space to express themselves as well. Members now have 200MB to play with and can upload longer or better quality versions of their videos, for example. As always, this service remains completely free.
“These improvements are part of a determined plan to bring the Zoopy community everything they need to manage, view and share their media in all the ways they’ve hoped for, and more.”
