Toby Shapshak is editor-in-chief and publisher of Stuff, a Forbes senior contributor and a columnist for the Financial Mail and Daily Maverick. He has been writing about technology and the internet for 28 years and his TED Global talk on innovation in Africa has over 1,5-million views. He has written about Africa's tech and start-up ecosystem for Forbes, CNN and The Guardian in London. He was named in GQ's top 30 men in media and the Mail & Guardian newspaper's influential young South Africans. He has been featured in the New York Times. GQ said he "has become the most high-profile technology journalist in the country" while the M&G wrote: "Toby Shapshak is all things tech... he reigns supreme as the major talking head for everything and anything tech."
What is it about the portfolio that the communications minister so often seems bereft of their senses?
During the ongoing Please Call me saga between Vodacom and its former employee Nkosana Makate, Communications minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams last month tweeted: “Just shut up Vodacom and do the right thing. ’Talk to Makate’ instead of this poor PR stunt. Don’t talk to us until you have reached a settlement with him and his team.”
Turning 15 is a drag. Just ask any teenager about this most awkward age of life and the pain of living through it. Imagine then that you’re Facebook. Last week as the largest social media network reached this milestone it seemed every bit the gangly kid trying to look cool while being beset by angst and self-doubt. And being hated by the rest of the class.
Who really invented the Please Call Me service? It’s the question that’s been repeated innumerable times as the free messaging service saga reached a crescendo last week with threats, accusations and demonstrations outside Vodacom World. The answer – as is now common cause – was Ari Kahn, MTN’s lead data consultant who pioneered this innovative idea. “Callme” as he first named it, was an idea he had on the 15th of November 2000, he told me last week. Kahn briefed MTN’s lawyers Spoor and Fisher on 16 November and, remarkably, Kahn had a working prototype the next day. He had…
Facebook intends to combine is messaging apps – WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram – into a single backend so people can message across the various platforms. While Facebook clearly believes it will make it easier for its users to communicate, the rest of the rational world is alarmed at its unprecedented monopoly of communication getting worse, and potentially compromising our data privacy even more. The New York Times broke another huge story last week about Facebook’s plans to integrate the three services, which serve an estimated 2.6bn people. “The move has the potential to redefine how billions of people use the apps to connect…
This column first appeared in Financial Mail in 2015. It has all the makings of a grand story of a rags-to-riches story: a resourceful man who had a great idea that took off. It gets better, that inventor didn’t get a cent from his invention but now, in a David-vs-Goliath confrontation, he will wrest glory (and royalties) back through a lengthy and protracted court battle. But, is that inventor former Vodacom accountant Nkosana Makate or former MTN lead data consultant Ari Kahn? Last month, Makate, a trainee accountant at Vodacom in 2000 when he says he came up with the…
In the last few years while WhatsApp was being sued by privacy watchdogs in Europe for data infringements, Telegram was sued in Russia for refusing to compromise on its users’ privacy. Telegram is a messaging app that prides itself on its encryption and privacy. It was created in 2013 Pavel Durov – often called Russia’s Mark Zuckerberg – specifically to prevent his own government from eavesdropping on its citizens. It had 200m users, it said last March, including high-profile figures in Russia and Iran, where attempts have been made to shut it down. Prominent users includes ran’s supreme leader Ayatollah…
I’m not a big believer in New Year’s Resolutions. After years of trying to fulfil these improbable, sometimes impossible, behavioural change tasks, I – like everyone – gave up on this annual tradition. But this year I have a goal, a resolution, if you will. I want to move way from WhatsApp – and to use Telegram. As one of the largest messaging networks in the world – with over 1.5bn users – WhatsApp has become a convenient way to contact and communicate just about anyone. But it is owned by Facebook – who have proved they are not able to store personal information without…
Wow. After a charmed 21-year stratospheric run, gravity has finally caught up with Apple’s share price. It has grown steadily since Steve Jobs took over in 1997, and became not only the most valuable listed company in the world, but the first to hit the unprecedented US$1-trillion mark last August. Until last week. In a 1,400-word letter to investors, CEO Tim Cook that Apple was expecting a US$9bn revenue shortfall for its fiscal 2019 first quarter, which ended on December 29. Even though its expecting about $84bn in revenue, with gross margin of around 38%, it’s less than the previously…
When George Soros warned at the beginning of the year that social media had become a “menace” to society and “obstacles to innovation”, he could scarcely have known his admonitions would be proved so correct this year, as Facebook imploded in a privacy storm and he himself would became their target. By the end of this year, whatever niceties were left in our opinion of Facebook, the largest communications network the world has ever seen, have long been seared out of us. Facebook, like humanity itself, is open to manipulation, deceit, hatred, shaming and all the other awful traits that…
Just over a month ago I turned off my voicemail. After voice calls and SMSes, voicemail has been the longest used service I’ve had since I bought my first cellphone in 1996. It was an essential part of the cellphone era, wasn’t it? To say I hardly miss it, hardly needs to be said. Like just about everyone I know these days, my voicemail has politely implored people not to leave a message and to rather text or email me. I even helpfully spelled out my email address. People still left voicemail. For years it hasn’t really bothered me because…