Mail & Guardian are fooled
One of the many functions the press fulfill is to inform the man in the street of when something newsworthy appears. However, one needs to keep an eye on these guys (& gals of course), because occasionally they get it wrong. Like the Mail & Guardian did in an article today (27 April 2007) - perhaps they imagined that since it is freedom day, they were free to write what they wanted.
New flight comparison tool
It was with some excitement that this correspondent started reading a Mail & Guardian article about a new airline price comparison website for South Africans, at hotprice.co.za. It is these types of price comparison tools which we, at SouthAfrica.TO, believe will help to drive down airline ticket prices in South Africa.
No MG, Travelstart were actually first
The article opens up with alluding to the convenience of having one website where you can compare prices between all South African airline companies - and then how the Hot Price website has made this dream a reality. I was thinking, whoa - Travelstart released their airline price comparison tool some time back (in late 2004 Stephen Ekbergh, a Swedish entrepeneur, relocated to Cape Town and launched his price comparison tool in South Africa - see article on SA airlines online strategy).
Mail & Guardian were fooled
On navigating to Hot Price's site, I was taken aback to see them advertising the Travelstart search engine. The famous Hot Price flight comparison tool is nothing more than the Travelstart search engine. All that Hot Price are, are affiliate marketers for Travelstart. Mail & Guardian were fooled into writing an article which is basically a free advertisement of an affiliate marketer.
Mail & Guardian's review
Mail & Guardian then went on to explain their experiences of the airline comparison tool - isn't it wonderful how they go about reviewing Travelstart's tool years after it was launched, without even mentioning Travelstart. And then Mail & Guardian contacted the owner of the Hot Price website, telling them they'd managed to get a cheaper flight at Mango Airline's website; to which he responded that the search tool is "still in beta phase". Really! I wonder whether Travelstart share this notion that their price comparison tool, which has been in use world-wide for years now, is "still in beta phase"!
Mail & Guardian clamp down on criticism
Immediately after reading this erroneous article I wrote an entry about it in Mail & Guardian's forum - within 5 minutes (I kid you not) and without explanation the Mail & Guardian had deleted this forum entry - it seems Mail & Guardian's idea of freedom of expression extends only to spewing out that funny brown smelly stuff which appeared in their article, and not to writing forum entries correcting their rubbish. Perhaps they should divert some of the energy they are expending in policing their forums to checking their articles.
Maybe Mail & Guardian thought that deleting my post would silence me - they have a lot to learn about the power a web 2.0 environment gives to freedom expression.
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