At 15, Nadav Ossendryver started the Kruger Sightings website and has garnered 80 million YouTube views to date.
A video of two leopards attacking a huge python was captured on Ossendryver's YouTube channel.
Social Media Star
Now in matric, Ossendryver has picked up South Africa’s Social Media Star of 2014 at the SA Social Media Landscape 2015 research study conference launched by Fuseware and World Wide Worx on 16 September.
World Wide Worx managing director Arthur Goldstuck said Ossendryver proved that having a powerful vision leads to success.
Ossendryver said: “People are drawn to passion. If you make videos on topics you love, those people will watch. I have always been in love with wildlife and have wanted to share that love through the means of sharing people's experiences.”
He pointed out that his YouTube channel did not exist in isolation, but was a hub of activity across several social media platforms, going under the brand of Latest Sightings.
“It’s easy to see what he did right, but incredibly difficult to replicate the model. It takes a combination of understanding the topic and the community on the one hand, and on the other coming up with both great content and a great content-sharing model," said Mike Wronski, CEO of data analytics company Fuseware, which analysed the YouTube data for the study.
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