I had the privilege of witnessing Justin Hartman announce Gatorpeeps.com to the world during BarCamp Nigeria 2009 in Lagos Nigeria. After a few weeks of use, I am still excited about it. Gatorpeeps – essentially a subset of Afrigator – is a micro-blogging platform that enables users to share their thoughts in just 140 characters and also network with one another.
A glance at gatorpeeps.com brings a name to one’s mind – Twitter. Matter of fact, Afrigator once connected to Twitter and republished Afrigator users’ twits. Gatorpeeps has now effectively replaced Twitter in that area. Gatorpeeps is African and more relevant to African bloggers. I am thus sharing 5 things I have loved most about Gatorpeeps.
Web Design
Being a website designer myself, I appreciate clean and attractive website design. I couldn’t help loving the clean Web 2.0 look. The overall design of gatorpeeps fits nicely into the look-and-feel of its parent site – Afrigator.
Tight integration with Afrigator
Aside the uniform web design, Gatorpeeps is closely knitted into Afrigator. I was happy to find out that I did not need to create a separate login just to join Gatorpeeps. My existing Afrigator login was all I needed (I wish this had been the case with AdGator).
Twitter integrated
Gatorpeeps is connected to Twitter’s API. In lay man’s language, that means my peeps (excluding replies) automatically appear on my Twitter updates. Since my Twitter account is linked to other services like Facebook, my personal blog, Yahoo etc, my updates from Gatorpeeps would automatically be broadcast on the other platforms. I tested it this morning and it worked. Life couldn’t be sweeter for a geek. 🙂
Gravatar
I was a bit surprised to see my snapshot on Gatorpeeps. I didn’t remember uploading any profile image. It turned out that Gatorpeeps grabs snapshots from gravatar.com Gravatar (an abbreviation for globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally-unique avatars.
Community
Gatorpeeps is basically about social networking, and it does that very well. There are several communities of interest one could join, one could follow friend’s blog posts, it includes one’s latest blog posts in every peep, there are multiple tools to enable you integrate your peeps into your blog(s) and other social networking platforms.
Some blog posts from the team behind Gatorpeeps:
- Justin Hartman – Afrigator tried to buy Twitter, we launched Gatorpeeps instead
- Mike Stopforth – Afrigator Launches Gatorpeeps
- Mark Forrester – Gatorpeeps launches at Barcamp Nigeria
- Jayx – Afrigator Introduces Gatorpeeps
See also, How to make Gatorpeeps work for you and remember to follow me at Gatorpeeps via http://gatorpeeps.com/niyyie
Are you an African blogger? What has been your experience with using Gatorpeeps so far? Share your thoughts here and now. Happy Peeping! 🙂
Great post Oluniyi. Glad you are enjoying Gatorpeeps and thanks for taking the time to write a review. Stii is a genius isn’t he!
P.S. Love the theme you are using 😉
Great post man. Agree with everything you say. It’s clean, Effecient, has some extra features that twitter does not.. All together nice.
BTW, thanks for the blog post mention, Much appreciated.
Oluniyi – simply put I love this post but then again I can’t be objective about it 😉
Well done and it’s great to see peeps outside of South Africa supporting and using Gatorpeeps!
@Robert, Mediocrity is a bastard while excellence has multiple siblings, including me.
@ Justin, conflict of interest aye? 🙂 Truth be told, you and your team are shinning lights on this dark continent. What can I do but support you? I love Africa.
Okay, you’re inspired me to check out Gatorpeeps. Will let you know what I think once I do…
Ok. It’s been close to 48 hours now Nana. Care to share your views about Gatorpeeps?
just started using it today…
Hmn. Let’s know how it goes! Happy Peeping.
Erm, confession. I only played once. Spent ages trying to upload my pic as a Gatvar and its still not showing.
Need to spend more time playing…
Gatorpeeps rocks!!! its wonderful how I was already a member way before the site even got launched 😉
nice work at Afrigator Team 😉 and nice post David
regards
@Nana – what’s your Gatorpeeps username? Maybe we can assist you?
@Mambe – thanks for your kind comments – looking forward to seeing you more on Gatorpeeps!
How to make Gatorpeeps work for you…
If you are an African blogger and have your blog listed on Afrigator, chances are that you know about Gatorpeeps but can’t seem to understand what it is nor how to use it. Thus, the social networking website is grossly under-utilized by its users…