A little more than a week ago we received an email from a South African based Zimbabwean called Tendai Joe, whose journey to where he is now has served as a great example of striving and making a difference against all odds. Just to give you an idea, Tendai rose from adversities of living on the streets as a young boy in a small town in Zimbabwe to working with large organisations like Telkom, SABMiller, Vodacom and the Nelson Mandela Foundation in South Africa. His story poses the question “What’s your excuse?” to many of us.
So Tendai has a passion for social media and the impact of tech tools today (he has tweeted over 148,000 times and has 10,900 followers) and through his experiences working with non-profits and large enterprises in South Africa he realised there was a gap he could fill by creating “an events site that would take people off their computers and mobile phones into real life meet ups”. He’s just launched that solution, and it’s called Whenpages.
Whenpages is basically an event discovery and sharing platform. It provides a date based social board for posting past, present and future events. The site also has a liveblogging feature for blogging as an event is takes place. This according to Tendai, will particularly work for conference organizers, journalists, PR managers and avid bloggers who might feel the need to share whatever they will be witnessing.
According to him, the startup is still operating from his flat in Sunnyside Pretoria as he’s still raising finances. Tendai says Whenpages is available to anyone from anywhere around the world to join and use but that they are targeting markets where there is high internet penetration and growth.
We think it would work better if they targeted a specific country (city even) and then expanded the service to other geographies as it becomes popular. There’s a physical footwork side to this startup in terms of getting the initial 500 or so events on the site, to basically show activity (and therefore value) to members and event organisers. This activity and relevance to their market will encourage site users to start posting and sharing their events. There’s definitely a gap in online event discovery in many African countries. I know Zimbabwe is one of those. We rely on a classifieds site whose focus is not even events.
Since the Whenpages platform is already in place, they can even take a leaf from the Kenyan team that won the ForgetMeNot Africa Apps Challenge and take Whenpages to Econet mobile users in Zimbabwe via SMS, so anyone without an internet connection can discover, submit and share events!
Share
Home
21 comments
beautiful site. fast and functional(from the surface). had a quick scan. so far, am impressed!
Thank you
Two cents … that website is unattractive. No comment whatsoever on purpose, functionality etc.
Just on aesthetics, I’m repelled. That is all.
Surprised you’re “repelled” @71f2ae3452547e2c4fcc684c5c6b4280:disqus
What exactly did you find unattractive about the design?
All of it, bro. Also, UNattractive means there’s nothing I find attractive about it. That’s just my opinion. Maybe it’s that green. Unpretty.
Thank you for your feedback Joe, we are not going to change the colour though. It works for us.
Fair enough 🙂 Wish you the best of luck
@71f2ae3452547e2c4fcc684c5c6b4280:disqus i find the green quite lively and refreshing, lol, i guess tastes differ, lol. Good work @facebook-1272151651:disqus and Team
Before I say anything I need this in bold “Honest Criticism is expensive I don’t give it out for free”. Since its Tendai Ill give him 1% my expensive neural dose.
The design I’m sure will be worked on since its in β
“Global market”? !! Global!!???
Convince me to use it instead of http://meetups.com
… that’s enough for free.
For more you will have to consult thotFAQtory
NeRudo give us time, you will see what we are building. We do not even consider meetup.com as our competition. We have other sites we compete with, that is eventbrite.com and eventful.com.
There is nothing that can stop us from going global. In a week, we have Silicon Valley investors talking to us.
Your criticism is welcome though.
What specific shortcomings did you find though? It’s interesting you raised the issue of not giving free crits when no-one asked you to; I wouldn’t accept your criticism if you were paying me for the “expensive neural dose”.
@facebook-100003622755124:disqus My criticism is free: I think it’s fair to say when a page is viewed in 1920×1080 but only shows the banner and one line of text – the banner is probably way too large.
@facebook-1272151651:disqus keep it up. Honest criticism: not everyone cares about the weather in Gauteng, Pretoria. I suggest you use Geo-IP to pick up user’s location & display relevant info, or nuke the widget altogether.
We are working on the site, that is why it is in BETA. Thank you for your advice Tapiwa.
full of it.
there’s the conventional geek who’s arrogant but worth his/her salt
you dribble unbacked and empty “criticism”
impressive breath of fresh air design…i liked it. yes there will always be room for improvement and i recommend we give our brothers constructive critiscism/feedback if any instead of just plainly shooting them down.
I like the look of the site, I like the idea, I wish Joe all success with it. Marketing it will be a key I think – time to set up facebook page etc
Somehow this idea does not sound new, the small circles of idea sharing may prove costly to others#just saying
Me like it, the colour theme, good. Even though a lot to click around, the site is still simple enough to browse on mobile phone. Dont be surprised if l turn up next week to be the investor from Silicon Valley.
And well done for staying away from flash type of adverts. You have already shown your hardwork by keeping the site simple.
Likes the page design. This can be a hit if it gets more populated with the events. Is this crowd sourcing?
Found the Site very easy to navigate – was disappointed when I tried to post an event for Harare – Zimbabwe – not listed as an option
[…] This name is synonymous with short comedic skits and monologues with a Diasporan theme performed by the eponymous character who has the catchphrase “Kuripwa Kugara”. Behind the videos, is a coordinated effort between Baba Tencen himself and Tendai Sean Joe, whom we have written about here before. […]
[…] This name is synonymous with short comedic skits and monologues with a Diasporan theme performed by the eponymous character who has the catchphrase “Kuripwa Kugara”. Behind the videos, is a coordinated effort between Baba Tencen himself and Tendai Sean Joe, whom we have written about here before. […]