I’ve been evaluating the african social bookmarking space for some time now and think that an analysis of the two leading social bookmarking sites in Africa would be a great idea. The two sites in question are South Africa’s Muti.co.za and Nigeria’s Sturvs.com

What Are They?

Muti is a social bookmarking site inspired by Reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa. The site was founded by Neville Newey and Dave Duarte.

Sturvs is a web 2.0 sharing and voting website where users can share music, videos, articles, web resources and also promote events and services. The site was founded by Temi Kolawole and Bode Ojo.

Registration

Registration is fast and easy for both sites by filling in a simple form. Once you are a registered member, you can start submitting items and other members can vote for them.

Submission

Submitting items in Muti is easier than in Sturvs. All you need to do is copy the Url of the page and the title and add tags if you like and your item is up on the page. This takes only 10 - 15 seconds. On the other hand, submitting items in Sturvs is similar to Digg where you add the Url and are taken to another page that requires you to give a summary of the article and add categories, tags, logos, etc. This process takes about 30 seconds for an item.

Voting

For Muti, voting is usually done by clicking on the up arrow which appears to the left of all submitted Urls which automatically increases its ranking on the “Hot” view. Voting also determines the “kudus” of a user. Kudus are earned (or lost) by other users voting for a submission. Thus if you submit an article and ten people vote it up whilst three vote it down, you will earn seven kudus for that article.

For Sturvs, users are given the ability to vote on stories submitted by other users, and the “sturvs” with the highest votes make it to the front page. This means control is given to you, the user, to decide what makes it to the front page.

Tags

Tags in muti are similar to those found in del.icio.us but differ in a few fundamental ways. Muti uses co-operative tagging, meaning that any registered user may tag any item. You do not have to be the submitter of that item and nor do you have to save a copy of that item to tag it. All tags by all members are shown below each item.

On the other hand, Sturvs doesn’t have a tag system, rather the site allows only the content submitter to add a category (business, blog, music, news & politics, etc) to the article.

Design

Both sites have a nice interface, but built under different web applications. Muti is entirely built from scratch in Python, while Sturvs is built with pligg and might be considered less innovative from a technical perspective, but more innovative from a marketing angle.

Features

Sturvs has interesting web features such as Sturvs Search, Facebook Application, Sturvs Toolbar, Sturvs Blog , and Sturvs Store. Check out Sturvs tools. I’m yet to see any Muti add ons and web applications. If there are any, please let us know.

Update: For Muti there are two different Facebook applications, there are also Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk and Tumblr streams. There is also a mobile muti site which is a mashup using the api (m.muti.co.za).
For simple bookmarking from any browser there is the Muti bookmarklet available that is compatible with most known browsers.

Traffic & Reach

Muti’s traffic seems to be unstable over the last few months, while that of Sturvs has been relatively stable. Though Muti seems to be doing well with its traffic, I think that Sturvs traffic has seen an exponential growth considering the fact that most stuffs on sturvs are mostly Nigerian content. Muti, on the other hand, generates content from other African countries other than South Africa.

Technically, Muti’s reach and content should be an advantage to boost its traffic, but rather Sturvs seems to have a better traffic, even though it has lesser African audience reach compared to Muti. From the Alexa graph, Muti gets more traffic from South Africa, while Sturvs gets more traffic from the U.S and Nigeria.

My Final Thoughts

Although I use both sites to drive traffic to this blog, I’d say that Muti’s simplicity and scalability is quite unique. Perhaps this is because the site is entirely built from scratch in Python. In terms of page loads, Sturvs takes more time than Muti, and is not so user-friendly as compared to Muti.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Sturvs (some people feel I’ve given the site too much credit here on StartupsNigeria), but Muti’s Pan-African nature coupled with its simplicity and user-friendly nature seems to be giving the site more attention around Africa. In fact, when I add items to Muti, especially when they have an African concern, they get more attention than when I add them on Sturvs.

I’m recommending both sites to drive traffic to your blog or site. You can also add their bookmarklets to your site to enable your users to Muti this or Sturv that.

Do you use these African social bookmarking sites? What are your thoughts about them?