Social/video network for wilderness fans carves out a space among niche networks

… Meanwhile Andy Hogg was dealing with the elephants. Every November they stomp through the reception area of his Zambian safari lodge to munch from the mango grove. All the tourists at the lodge were recording the annual stomp on handy-cams and posting them on YouTube. They were getting tons of hits. “Why don’t we create ‘SafariTube’? It’ll be huge!” Hogg asked Michael Lorentz, a boutique safari guide who takes Hollywood A-list types and finance gurus around Africa. Lorentz himself was looking for a way to get conservation causes communicated to a wider audience—no one outside Africa seemed aware rhino were being poached out of existence. Lorentz had taken Clay Knight on safari: excited, they decided to bring their idea to him.