Edumela.com social network shuts down

MONKAGEDI GAOTLHOBOGWE
Staff Writer | Wednesday October 20, 2010 00:00

For the last decade the website has been trying to build itself into one of the world's more popular and profitable social network sites.

Edumela.com, which had successfully penetrated South Africa, Lesotho, and was also used by Tswana speakers in the Diaspora, went off line during the week preceding Botswana's independence day (end of September) as users trying to log on were greeted with a message showing that it was hacked by 'Arab attack', with a picture of a green human skull & bones appearing.

When Mmegi phoned the founder Santos Thomas once again about the future of Edumela.com last week, the youthful IT specialist said the team running Edumela.com had told him they were contemplating closing it down, but would not disclose the reasons. He promised to get back to Mmegi but never did.

It would seem the sponsors of the famous social networking site had given up on it ever striking it rich as one website, By Value.com, recently estimated the value of Edumela.com to be only US$12,417, while another ranking website Alexa, ranked Edumela.com number 436,355 in the World.

Alexa website also estimated Edumela.com's daily advertisements revenue to be only US$7, with 385 page views per day. Edumela.com was hosted on a server that locates in Wayne PA United States.www.edumela.com and was launched on August 21,  2000.

The free for all social networking site attracted local college students, as well as Batswana college students abroad, and users in neighbouring South Africa and Lesotho.

It allowed users to freely express their thoughts on various topics of concern, without revealing their true identities and one website rating estimates it had 1,148 page views per day.

In fact the visits were increasing between April and October when it shut down, according to another web rater, which puts its visits to over 200,000 in September.

However it is not clear whether the social network closed down as a result of pressure from the powers that be, or the sponsors had given up hope that it would be as successful as its predecessors, Facebook, Myspace, Tagged, and other emerging social networking sites.

Thomas, who founded the social networking site with friends while studying BSC at the University of Botswana in the 90's was not willing to divulge what actually led to the closure of the website, but told Mmegi that he had already left it in the hands of a team of friends to run, although he would not identify the new owners.

Edumela.com sponsors watched as newcomers such as Myspace, which opened in 2003 struck gold. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (the parent company of Fox Broadcasting and other media enterprises) bought it in July 2005 for US$580 million.

Another newcomer, Facebook, which was launched in 2006, as a social network service has grown to be the leading website in social networking, with over 500 million active users today. In fact on October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6 percent share of Facebook for US $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion.

Another popular social network service that came way after Edumela.com was established is Youtube, created only five years ago.  The video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos was bought by Google Inc. for US $1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google.