The pattern of social media in South Africa during the year 2013 makes an interesting study. The market research conducted by World Wide Worx and Fuseware reveals some fascinating details.
The heartening fact is social media in South Africa has come of age and has become a tool used by both adolescents and adults to connect with family, friends, business peers, customers and other industry stake holders.
Facebook attracted 9.4-million active users and held the top slot for the first time comfortably overtaking Mxit that reigned supreme till then. Difficult to believe but 87% of South Africa’s estimated 9.4-million active users on Facebook accessing the platform from mobile devices.
Mxit was the second most popular social media site attracting 7.5-million monthly active users during the year 2013. However, the popularity of Mxit declined from 9.3 million active users during 2012 to its present level.
Mxit users are however still sedulously devoted to the app and reportedly spending an average of nearly two hours on Mxit every day and sending an average of 400-million messages.
The research findings suggest that Twitter adoption in South Africa has registered a dramatic increase. To be precise, Twitter users rose by a whopping 129% in 2013. The registered users more than doubled from a meager 2.4-million in 2012 to 5.5-million in 2013.
The professional social network LinkedIn sadly not witnessing the phenomenal growth Facebook and Twitter have experienced. Nonetheless, LinkedIn is slowly but steadily gaining attention. It presently has 2.7-million registered users in South Africa, an increase of 800 000 fro the earlier year 2012.
The other South African based mobile social network 2go is poised to increase its number of users in South Africa – encouraged by the tremendous success it has found in other African countries like Nigeria.
Hold your breath – Instagram is not to be written off as a non-starter. From a mere 100 000 users in 2012, Instagram has certainly turning the corner in South Africa – so far adding more than half a million users in 2013.
Google Plus has started making waves with 466 800 active users. Unfortunately, Google’s social media site is not witnessing the type of stellar growth in South Africa with only a slender increase over last year’s numbers.
YouTube is not as popular as one would expect in South Africa. People here apparently prefer short, snappy videos that run for less than three minutes.
Your Turn:
What do you think about the social media growth in South Africa ? We’d love to hear your thoughts.