Last week an exciting new tech publication, initially aimed at a South African audience, called Memeburn launched. The brains behind Memeburn is Matthew Buckland, a well-known figure in the online media industry who recently became self-employed after leaving 20fourLabs which he started after joining Media24 a couple of years back.

Earlier this year, Matthew asked me to contribute to Memeburn (read my first post entitled Why PayPal sucks and Kwedit doesn’t) and I thought that instead of me simply blogging about the launch, I would pose some questions to Matthew in an interviw format and share them with you here:

1. What is Memeburn and why did you decide to start it?
   

   Memeburn is a site that tracks emerging technology trends, carrying news about this sector and opinion from key influencers. You’ll therefore see a bias towards discussions around social media, mobile and startup companies in the tech sector. At the moment it has a South African bias, but the idea is to make it relevant to Africa and the broader emerging market regions. It’s also a job resource via Memejobs, which aims to attract a more entrepreneurial-type of person — someone who would thrive in a startup environment, sees the bigger picture, is passionate about the web and their work in it… someone who doesn’t care about “9-5″.

2. How long did the site take to build and what technologies did you use?
   

   It took about three months on a part time basis, starting in December. It’s a wordpress site. With it’s own customised theme and design, layered on a pre-existing theme that served as a blank slate. I started looking for the name and had about five options (including “memecube.com”) around about the middle of last year.

3. Who else was involved in the project?
   

   Two other people from Creative Spark, the parent company, were involved on a fulltime basis: Tim Gane on the editorial and project management side and Dan Bailey on the heavy PHP plumbing and server side. Vincent Maher helped with the early designs. I also bounced the odd crazy idea off Vincent and Nick Haralambous every now and again.

4. How does it compare to other sites that cover technology and the web?
   

   I used Mashable, Techcrunch and Read Write Web as examples — so you will see how they influenced the structure and design of memeburn. I tried to achieve a hybrid of a blog and a traditional media site. I’m still not happy that we are there yet. We’re still working on that and as the months go will make a few more changes, particularly to the homepage and category sections. In terms of design, I like sparse websites with pockets of busy-ness here and there, anchored in ample white space.

5. Is your target audience local or international and do you think its a reasonably sized market?
   

   Initially it is local and aimed at some parts of Africa (I’ve been talking to key people in Nigeria and Kenya). After we’ve stabilised the site and the business model, we’ll push harder at a more international audience, with a general emerging markets bias. I think the local market here is small, but not insignificant. Also with more broadband coming online it can only grow bigger.

6. What other sites influenced/inspired you, if any?
   

   Mashable, Techcrunch and Read Write Web

7. How did you manage to get so many influential people to participate prior to launch?
   

   That’s a good question. I can be persuasive :-) But I guess it’s because I’ve been in the online industry for a while and it’s helped that I’ve built good relationships with many players in the industry. I’m overwhelmed at the support we’ve received and the willingness  to participate from some very busy and influential people. Why do they do it? Like me, we see the industry as an ecosystem — we want to grow it, spread knowledge and ideas and build relationships — this is a good way to do it.

8. What improvements/features are you planning on rolling out in the near future?
   

   There is quite a bit we had to scale back just to focus on the basics. There are quite a few improvements we can do on the homepage, newsletters and memejobs. There is some blog aggregation we can do. The directory needs improving. I’d like to bolster the editorial team too. Our challenge is to stay focused on what is most important and not get distracted.

9. What success indicators will you be looking at to determine how well the site is performing?
   

   It will boil down to what traffic figures the site achieves. If we manage to publish solid stories that attract international attention — that would be a strong success factor in my mind.

10. Finally, it would seem that 2010 is the year that Internet start-ups rise from the ashes in South Africa. What do you think are the reasons for this and what advice can you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
    

    I think there is an overwhelming world move towards entrepreneurship. In many respects we are entering the “age of the entrepreneur”. It has to do with the fact that technology and the web have lowered the production and distribution costs significantly. You don’t need big investment to start off an online business or publication. So much knowledge, open-source technology and resources are available online for free. Online businesses can be bootstrapped with minimal investment.

    You often hear now of corporates searching for an “entrepreneurial type” of employee or opening innovation divisions with a more entrepreneurial outlook. This is a direct response to this changed paradigm for business and publishing that the internet era has ushered in.