"We continue to see day to day and even hour to hour that young, black South Africans want a site that talks about what is important to us, and shares the latest news about the people we know and care about,” says Zibuyile Dladla, executive editor of ZAlebs.

"Our audience is 90% in South Africa, 90% black, and between the ages of 18 and 35 years old. We have over 500 000 unique visitors in this market, making us, we believe, the largest site in South Africa and definitely the most engaged."

ZAlebs is run by Dladla out of Johannesburg with support from Bhala Ventures. The venture and media development company was founded by Gisele Wertheim Aymes, publisher of Longevity and former publisher of ELLE SA and ELLE DÉCOR SA; and James Cannon Boyce, formerly of the Huffington Post and digital strategist behind (RED) during its early years.

“I have never seen a site with the passionate engagement that you see on ZAlebs. On Twitter, we often have posts with a 30% engagement rate and on Facebook, we average over 200 000 engagements every single day," says Cannon Boyce.

Wertheim Aymes adds, "Advertisers and brands are starting to notice that sites like ZAlebs have the audience they really want and the numbers are really there". She notes that brands such as KFC, ShowMax, Research Unit, and RwandAir have started working with ZAlebs.

What does the future hold for ZAlebs?

"We have big goals for growth and some next steps. We are adding to our team, we just launched our first email program, and our content is growing every week. We want to see if we can get to one million unique visitors and then go from there,” Dladla adds.

Cannon Boyce says, "We see this as a model that will continue to boom in South Africa. We are looking at other countries where there is a real need to build a local, smart, fun, engaging site for people within that country that is built for them and by them.”

He confirms that the company is looking at countries ranging from Kenya to Nigeria and hopes to be live soon in at least one more country.

"I have seen the media landscape shift dramatically in South Africa in the last five years, and even more so in the last 18 to 24 months. The brands from Europe that used to attract so much interest are in decline and the marketers are catching up to where the audiences truly are," Wertheim Aymes concludes.

For more information, visit www.zalebs.co.za. Alternatively, connect with them on Facebook, Instagram or on Twitter.