| COMMENTARY Fijilive.com Proves Power of the Online Press
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Fijilive.com was founded in 1997 by 37-year-old Yashwant Gaunder, a tall, unassuming Indo-Fijian who has only been using computers seriously since 1992. A newspaper journalist by training, Yashwant started his career in the 1980s as one of the original employees at Fiji’s first private radio station, FM 96. He then free-lanced with the now defunct Fiji Sun before joining the venerable Fiji Times and becoming an editor. Yashwant told us the Internet inspired him to do something different and challenging. His vision was to build the first, the largest and the best Web site in Fiji and the South Pacific. We’d say he’s certainly achieved that. To meet the demand, he now has a staff of 12, including reporters and webmasters. But says he’s not stopping there. He readily admits that he’s not a "webmaster" but rather acts more as a managing editor. In his words, "I play a large part in what content goes in the site." Fijilive.com was originally designed as a vehicle to republish existing content from Fijian publications such as The Review, a local news magazine. This led to the organization developing its own local news coverage of Fiji politics, sports and other issues of interest to the nation’s 830,000 inhabitants. When the coup occurred, the stage was set for Gaunder’s portal to gain worldwide fame at least among the journalistic and South Pacific cognoscenti. |
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Challenges overcome The coup presented challenges both in gathering and distributing the news. Power failures and intermittent telephone service plagued the capital of Suva (where the coup took place) but luckily Fijilive.com escaped unscathed. Fortunately, Gaunder’s office (and server) is located in a new building with good infrastructure. Although rebels did cut international telephone services, data lines were spared. As the Fijilive.com founder explained it, "All telephone lines were cut but apparently the Internet was forgotten. We were updating the Net every few minutes." Yashwant and company later realized that with a reporter in the Parliament building who was relaying info on a mobile phone they had a lock on the news. A Reuters story proclaimed: "Fiji Web site is world’s window on coup attempt." "We found out at night," said Gaunder, "that this was the case when everyone started calling us for interviews and pictures, etc." Ironically, the only time Fijilive went down, it wasn’t because rebels silenced their operation. Rather it was because of too many "hits." Said Gaunder: "Our server could only handle a maximum of 50,000 simultaneous hits. Pre-coup we only averaged 5,500 hits per day so on the third day when we received 175,000 hits, it killed our server. We now receive about 50,000 hits per day." The traffic, he explained, was mostly coming from overseas. Throughout the coup, Fijilive was praised for its objective reporting by the foreign press. "I think it’s crucial, it’s vital, it’s something the coup leaders may not so easily suppress," said Heinz Shurmann-Zeggel, head of South Pacific research for Amnesty International’s Secretariat in London. In Gaunder’s words, "We wanted to do our job as journalists informing the world in a balanced fashion." Ian Collingwood, an executive at Sunflower Airlines Fiji and founder of various e-commerce sites such as Pacificnavigator.com, www.fj2.com and www.mrlavalava.com, was an early adopter of the Internet in Fiji. He reckons that Fijilive.com’s coverage of the coup gave a shot in the arm to freedom of speech in Fiji and signals the nascent growth of the new economy in Fiji and the South Pacific. "Yashwant did a great service to Fiji, but his ability to fly by the seat of his pants typifies many local entrepreneurs. Here in Fiji we sometimes don’t have the government stability that first-world countries can depend on. That makes us a lot more dependent on our own business instincts and sheer ability to survive. "The Net is a great equalizer and in the Fijian world of cowboy capitalism, where guerrilla marketing and ability to react quickly in the marketplace is paramount — we fit right into the Internet equation. The lesson for us and other South Pacific countries is: Leverage the tools that will give you an advantage. That’s what Fijilive.com did." |
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Bullish about future Yashwant Gaunder is bullish about the future and confident that the Internet can play an important role in the growth of developing countries like Fiji. "The pity in most Pacific countries is maybe that the policy makers do not understand the Net or use computers. Last year we did a survey of local MPs and less than 10 percent had used the Net," he says. "Yet this is a great chance to bridge the rural-urban divide as well as educate our people," he adds. "The Net can be used for tele-medicine, etc. Unfortunately, monopoly ISPs run by government-owned companies are extremely slow in developing the sector. Governments have to open up the Internet sector and move faster because the whole world will leave us by the time we wake up." We agree with you, Yashwant. However, it’s not only isolated South Pacific nations that face stumbling blocks from their respective governments. The state of Hawai‘i, which has taken great strides in developing a home-grown e-commerce sector, still faces enormous challenges in this arena. According to Tony Clapes, author of the newly published "Blue Wave Millennium, a Future for Hawaii," to succeed in becoming an engine of the new economy, the private sector, the public sector and academia need to work in close cooperation. "We’ll need a full-court press to make Hawai‘i a hub of technology. We’ve become a solid bit player in the technology arena but that isn’t enough to ensure long term success. We need to create a leading role." |
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Rob Kay is a Honollu-based public relations practitioner who works with technology companies in Hawai'i and Silicon Valley. Jeff Bloom is the founder of Computer Training Academy/Network Resource Center, a computer education/consulting firm based in Honolulu. |
Published Nov 26, 2000 |
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