JORDAN MOSHE
He is the first South African to achieve this degree of popularity on the video-sharing platform.
There are fewer than 3 000 YouTube channels that have more than 1 billion views in the world. “It shows that we are passionate about wildlife, because if we weren’t, we definitely wouldn’t have been able to reach so many people,” says Ossendryver.
The 23-year old entrepreneur founded Latest Sightings in 2011 as an online platform for those on safari, rangers or tourists, to report the animals and events that they are seeing in real time. Users report their location, time, and sighting to Latest Sightings, which in turn broadcasts these “tings” (a reported sighting) to other app users and also over various media including Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
“These sightings allow users to enhance their safari experience as they get a heads-up on where sightings are taking place,” Ossendryver says. “Because we help so many people see many amazing sightings, it’s inevitable that someone will spot something unique and rare.
“We then take the rights to those videos and share them on social media, helping the footage go viral. Our YouTube channel is made up of a collection of the best wildlife footage.”
He says Latest Sightings helps to market South Africa and safari destinations to the world. “We are becoming a lead-generation platform for world-renowned safari destinations around Africa to showcase the sightings one can expect to have when visiting that park. We use Kruger Park videos to entice people to visit Kruger, and we are starting to do that for other game parks around the world.”
Latest Sightings is second only to Disney Channel on YouTube in South Africa. It’s Ossendryver’s passion for wildlife that drives the site. “I love the park, and I’m the biggest user of the sightings and the community,” he says. “I know what content people are looking for because I’m looking for the same things they are. When a video stands out to me as amazing, more often than not, the community feels the same way.”
He says his channel was the first platform of its kind for sharing amateur wildlife footage. “People were so used to the David Attenborough documentaries made with budgets of millions of dollars,” he says. “Our footage is more relatable. Videos are taken with phones, and there are always people shouting at the lion in the background. People see that, and feel that they can film something like that too one day, which makes them connect to the videos, and causes them to share.”
Ossendryver says the biggest challenge he and his team face is getting users to understand that an unreliable signal isn’t a massive hinderance to the use of the app. “Although some sightings disappear after five minutes, some last the whole day,” he says. “We find that a lot of people won’t even try our platform because they feel it won’t help.”
The most rewarding experience is when there is a sighting of an animal that is injured by a snare, and the site’s administrators take it upon themselves to get hold of everyone in the vicinity of the animal. They keep a lookout until rangers get to the scene to save the animal. “We feel like we are there, and part of the mission,” he says.
Reaching one billion views means a lot to Ossendryver. “For one, it shows the hard work that my incredible team puts in every day, making sure that the community is happy and seeing lots of game,” he says. “For the business, it shows that we know the landscape of social media, and how to use that knowledge to generate interest in the various parks.”
Ossendryver’s next goal isn’t about views, but the number of parks covered. “Kruger and the rest of South Africa have amazing content, but imagine the content that can be recorded when our platform is being used in all the different parks around the world,” he says. “By the end of next year, we would really like to be in two other countries in Africa.”
