Tuesday
Jan132009
SynthaSite Reaches One Million Users
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 9:58AM 
Late last year I was blown away to hear that a local startup, Synthasite, had over 400 000 registered users. When I congratulated CEO Vinny Lingham, he told me - with his trademark enthusiasm - that they'd soon hit a million users. I didn't doubt it, but I certainly didn't expect that it would happen so soon!I'm surprised that more local bloggers didn't pick up on this: a million users is hugely significant for such a new web startup, especially one with South African roots.
Although Synthasite's growth was initially driven by advertising, I think that most of their new users are being referred to it by word of mouth. It is a superb product, with an truly excellent team working on it.
In case you haven't encountered Synthasite before, it's an easy way for people to quickly create a website without having to know any code. It works with a bunch of design templates that you can customize, and add functionality to by simply dragging and dropping elements into it.
Unlike a lot of web2.0 startups, Synthasite's business model isn't based on advertising revenues. They make their money from domain names. i.e. users can easily upgrade from their free sub-domain (e.g. username.synthasite.com) to their own domain name ( e.g username.com), and synthasite makes a couple of bucks from every user that purchases the domains and hosting through their system. It's convenient, simple and adds value - not making money by getting in the way.
When I originally heard about Synthasite, I was blown away by the vision of anyone being ble to easily create their own, high-quality website. This, and other website builders like Tank (another *brilliant* local product), allow small business owners and entrepreneurs to save money and get onto the web quickly.
One thing I'd like to still see on Synthasite though is an option to easily mark any content with a Creative Commons licence.
I've also suggested to a bunch of my students at UCT that they can make some money on the side by using tools like Tank, Synthasite and Wordpress to create websites for people. In a country where jobs can be difficult to come by, they can offer opportunities to make a decent living.
Congrats to the Synthasite team!
Reader Comments (20)
One of the best things about SynthaSite and products like it IMHO is that people can easily create well coded decent looking sites and take ownership of their creation without having to gain years of design and HTML experience - whereas in the bad old days people would get the cheapest web developer they could find to slap an ugly badly coded site together just so that they could have "web presence", or sadder yet they would do one tutorial and try to do it themselves!
With these new tools the quality of the web in general improves and clients have higher expectations because the overall standard of the sites they are exposed to is so much higher.
Absolutely!
It gets more people interested in the web. It also means that exceptional code, design, and usability will be more apparent.
BTW - speaking of ugly sites - check out Berkshire Hathaway's site: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/ It's the simplest, no-design sites ever, for one of the world's most valuable companies.
I must say, the couple of small businesses I've sent to Synthasite have been blown away. What a cool offer.
Wow, a million users is pretty impressive. Tank isn't anywhere close to that number, but hey, we know most of the people in our showcase: http://withtank.com/showcase/ - that's gotta count for something.. ;)
Lol! Well the showcase sites on WithTank look beautiful - so that counts for a lot. I must say, I think the usability on the Tank websites is exceptionally good. You guys have a truly outstanding product, and wish you at least a million users this year!
btw (before I forget): thanks for the link, appreciate it.
Also: I like the idea of job/work creation through the use of internet technologies like these. We've got a couple of people building sites for a couple of other people already - it's definitely something we encourage as not everyone has the time/savvy/patience to build a site.
I'd love to see how one can take this notion further: specifically in communities where internet/tech penetration isn't that high but it should be. One of my favourite Tank sites is (still) http://www.donasmates.co.za/ - as I the one assisting in building the site I could see what transformation something we take for granted could bring about in organizations where tech used to be out of reach/budget.
can i create a social networking site with synthasite
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