AfriCam is back with 20m hits a month

Johannesburg, 30 Aug 2002

Six months after liquidated game viewing site AfriCam was resuscitated by its original founders, the site is again attracting up to 20 million page impressions a month. Despite its growing global popularity, the owners say AfriCam will remain a small business for now.

AfriCam, once seen as SA`s most innovative e-business success story, sought voluntary liquidation late last year. At its peak, it had dozens of live Web cameras installed in South African game reserves and elsewhere in the world, and attracted up to 38 million page impressions a month. Its collapse at the beginning of this year was mourned by thousands of dedicated "AfriCammers" around the world.

The business was bought back by a consortium headed by original founder and Real Time Travel Connection MD Paul Clifford, founder Graham Wallington, former CEO Peter Armitage, "adventurer" Alex Wills and Djuma Game Reserve owners Jurie Moolman, Pippa Moolman and Campbell Scott.

Armitage says AfriCam is "soldiering on", with around 100 000 individuals having re-registered on the site, and sufficient donations and advertising revenue to keep the site viable. At this stage, it does not appear that the site will have to resort to a pay-for-content model.

"The hype is over," says Armitage. "We are basically a small business, operating with low margins and a very small staff." There are only two full-time AfriCam employees. The shareholders provide their services for free and many of the costs are covered by donations. "For instance, viewers in the US have bought us four new Webcams."

AfriCam is now running eight live cameras in SA, as well as an Osprey Cam in the US. The underwater Bahamas cam will also go live again soon.

An online survey is also under way to determine whether viewers would be prepared to subscribe to a polar bear cam.

"The Internet world is in complete disarray at the moment," says Armitage, "so our strategy is to simply keep AfriCam going without eating up a lot of cash, and we will look at further plans later. However, we have had talks on a significant project involving international TV. Any announcements on this will be made only later this year."