About the hundredth person told me to start a blog for Bemba Media. Aaron and I have known this for quite a while, but needed to make time to do so. Here we go! We officially started Bemba Media in September 2007. Things have been really hectic. At the very moment we had the resources, we decided to build the Bemba.com, that we had in our minds for so long, as fast as we could possibly do so. We shouldn’t have. After the first launch in October, let’s call it Bemba 1.0, we soon saw that we needed to innovate it. Why? Well, because it could not stand out of crowd.

We decided to make Bemba more interesting by showing social activities within the community. People can now see whether their friends have saved a new website, changed their picture or made new friends. More important, people are able to actively follow website posts of others. We also started experimenting with connecting my Flickr activity into my Bemba profile. Let’s call this Bemba 1.5.

And, we are still not satisfied. Aaron and I went to Le Web 3’07 in Paris for new insights. It was a great event to meet online media professionals and learn more about where the web is heading. Some insights might seem as obvious no-brainers. But once you’ve truly experienced the situation, they become really meaningful.

Let me mention some of them. ‘Simplicity rules. Solve one problem really well!’ ‘A clear user interface and stunning visual design are key differentiators’. ‘People already have friends on ‘their’ social network websites’. And quite a few more.

Watch this presentation by Evan Williams of Twitter at Le Web 3′07 to understand the strength of simplicity!

Le Web 3’07 gave us a lot of new energy and we see many ways to improve Bemba in 2008. And we know how. January is going to be a very busy month, but we’re ready to go for it. I sincerely hope that you will follow our steps towards Bemba 2.0. If you have any suggestions, please let us know!