Aside from blogs and mailing lists, the Kenyan web scene is somewhat still crawling with little else in terms of dynamic content and services that make the internet indispencable in the west. This is however quickly changing as connecting to the web becomes cheaper. Here are a few niche websites that I think should be watched… in no particular preference

1. mtaani.com

When I first heard a song from a local musician by that title I thought it sounded like a catchy name for a Web 3.0 site. After checking the name out, true to my belief there was actually a website by this name. It is an online advertising platform a la craigslist. There are quite a few big boys they are competing against but the no strings attached policy they have is what caught my attention. One thing that bogs me down when trying out a service is having go through many steps to finally get your ad on a site and theirs is quite simple. Just type your post, select your category and location, post and you’re done… hustle free!

This strategy I think is akin to getting the “traffic muscle” rather than trying to lock in your users with registrations, proxy payments, etc, as the other sites are doing. Craigslist, by the way, late last year also added a kenyan sub-domain to their franchise. It however does not enjoy the popularity it does in the west. It’s (craigslist) strength, simplicity, I guess, does not identify with the albeit ‘budding’ local web users who require abit of a walk-through on how to use the site. Mtaani gets a one-up for this. They could however do better on their categories which are few and should also take advantage of presence and localise them.

2. Huutr.com

I learnt of Huutr.com via twitter, of course. There have been quite afew attempts at a local social networking website, many of which have become dormant mainly because of being replicas of the global giants like facebook and twitter. Although Huutr.com is much like twitter, it feels more like a cross between twitter and facebook since it borrows features from both, such as in-line commenting. Again, I give it a chance since it suits a niche majiority of newer local web users.

Last I checked it has 453 registered members, including some prominent celebrity characters not verified though. Almost all the local radio stations have accounts on Huutr again not verified some of which are already pushing their content.

It will be a while befere I give a solid judgement on this one, but it’s worth watching.

3. mirror.ac.ke and get.co.ke

File sharing is also undiscovered terrain in web kenya. The first mirror.ac.ke has been around for quite a while and has been a great resource to the open-source community. I have clocked mega-byte downloads from the mirror site, however this was on a LAN connection. With 3G costs now in the reach of typical web users and hopefully if bundle-charging is phased out more and more local users will be uploading and downloading FOSS via mirror.ac.ke
It is not however clear how to go about uploading files to the Public Uploads folder, but its existence is a breather…

I just learnt of get.co.ke from @mwirigi twitter again so I’ve not had a chance to test it (If you do please post your experience in the comment area). What I know so far is that they give 360MB share space but cap bandwidth on unpaid accounts. Laban, from Penguin Labs, I think, is behind this one so I’m confident in its potential.

4. Pesapal

There have been rumours of local payment internet gateways that incooperate mobile payment but none has yet has taken the bold move to actually launch except PesaPal. 2010 is looks like the year when online trading will grow exponentially esp. with the enactment of the Information Bill. These guys seemed to have nudged global giants like PayPal into finally acknowledging African Payments, which was long overdue.
They offer a closed-source API to web-developers albeit at a not so ‘start-up-friendly’ price from my information sources, quite contrary to the FOSS that they promised. I think a OSS would have spurred more acceptance, with them getting a commission though, but that’s just my opinion.
They currently operate with M-Pesa, Zap, VisaCard and CreditCard. PesaPal has already been deployed on www.totallytoto.com and www.bagalicious.co.ke

5. wannabegeek.co.ke
I wasn’t sampling blogs but the rules have changed! but this is technically the sixth site… And of course please leave a comment on what you think about wannabegeek.co.ke so far.