Just come to Cape Town

A new online magazine about Cape Town, come2capetown.com, which was quietly launched last year, has experienced fast growth over the past few months. Co-founders of the magazine, Manc Zandhuis and Guus Bierens, decided to create the magazine site after the realisation that South Africa’s perception abroad was negative. Zandhuis also says that most people (including Capetonians) don’t even know what’s going on in the city. Until June 2004, the site focussed on getting users to subscribe to a monthly e-mail newsletter, but this has changed. “We’ve moved away from that and the newsletters have become a small part of four linked sites – essentially the same site in four different languages (English, German, Dutch and Flemish) for four different markets. The local site is based at Cape Town’s Bandwidth Barn. The Bandwidth Barn is a always-on, high-speed, networked building in Strand Street which provides small IT start-ups with the infrastructure they need. “We’re here because of this unique initiative,” says Zandhuis, “The Internet is our business and with such resources available, we can plan huge things for the future”.

Also on my site.