ShujaazFM's Boyie 'too popular'
28 September 2010

The charismatic DJ Boyie (DJB to his friends) is one of the characters depicted in ShujaazFM, the multimedia Kenya youth communication phenomenon. Like any self-respecting urban youth, Boyie has a Facebook page (in fact 2 million Kenyans are already on Facebook). Kades, the actor who plays Boyie in the radio versions of ShujaazFM, explained this to a group of UK parliamentarians on their recent visit to the celebration held to mark the 5 millionth Shujaaz comic (see film - top right).

There are two sorts of Facebook accounts -personal and fan sites. ShujaazFM wanted to create a special relationship with the fans of DJB so initially they opted for a personal account, unaware that there is a cap on the number of friends that were allowed.

Rob Burnet of ShujaazFM explains:

"Facebook is a great way of building brand loyalty and recognition for ShujaazFM and to back up what we are doing in the comics and radio by giving the audience a chance to talk back to Boyie and to us. We wanted Boyie to seem as real as possible. We have a great actor who brings the character to life on the radio and so we felt it was only right for him to have a Facebook account too. However, Facebook we found has a rule that no-one can have more than 5,000 friends - which we have quickly reached. So we now need to move Boyie over to a fan site set-up, which has no upper limit on the number of friends allowed."

In addition to 5,000 Facebook friends, ShujaazFM also receives around one thousand SMSs a week. You can follow Boyie's adventures on Facebook too - search for DJ Boyie on Facebook and click like.