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South Africans are beginning to embrace social media

On October 27, 2011, in Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, by Kate

South Africans have embraced social media as a core pillar of internet activity, along with email, news and banking.

MXit and Facebook lead the way in user numbers, while Twitter has seen the most dramatic growth in social networking in the past year and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) is the fastest growing network in the second half of 2011. These are among the key findings of a new study released yesterday by Fuseware and World Wide Worx, entitled South African Social Media Landscape 2011.

“The question of how many South Africans use each of the major social networks comes up so often, it became a priority for us to pin down the numbers,” said Michal Wronski, MD of information analysts Fuseware and co-author of the report. “The data was collected through a combination of Fuseware’s analysis of social network databases, information provided directly by social networks and World Wide Worx’s consumer market research.”

An analysis of Fuseware’s extensive database of Twitter usage, in conjunction with World Wide Worx’s consumer market research, shows that there were 1.1 million Twitter users in South Africa in mid-2011. This is a twentyfold increase in a little more than a year.

“This trend is only going to increase in the future as South Africans have easy access to social network on phones,” Wronski said. “Over 80% of the total online population is using Twitter.

“Although South Africa doesn’t have a high mobile penetration rate in comparison with Western countries, the social media penetration in regard to the online population is very high.”

World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck said the media’s obsession with Twitter was helping it grow. “Most radio and TV personalities with large audiences are engaged in intensive campaigns to drive their listeners and viewers to both Twitter and Facebook.

“The former, coming off a low base, is therefore seeing the greatest growth.”

As in the global environment, not all Twitter users are active users, with only 40% tweeting, but probably as many simply watching, following and using it as a breaking news service.

MXit remains the most popular social network in South Africa, with about 10 million active users. Its demographic mix runs counter to the popular media image of MXit as a teen-dominated environment. No less than 76% of the male user base of MXit and 73% of female users are aged 18 or over.

A surprising finding emerged from analysis of Facebook data. Of about 4.2 million Facebook users in South Africa by August 2011, only 3.2 million had visited the site in the year-to-date.

“This is partly a factor of many users moving on once the novelty of the site had worn off, as well as a result of the fickle nature of the youth market,” Wronski said.

“Once BBM picked up significant traction in private schools, for example, many teenagers who had previously flocked to Facebook, opted for BBM’s greater immediacy.”

While LinkedIn, aimed at professional users, also reached the 1.1 million mark, it came off a far higher base – but still saw 83% growth of South African users from 2010 to 2011. Of these, 112000 or 10% are business owners.

Consumer research analysed in the report revealed that future intention of usage of most social networks is strongly related to age. The younger the user, the greater the intention of usage.

“This is only one of many micro-trends shaping social networking,” Goldstuck said. “MXit, Facebook and BBM statistics illustrate, for example, that as social networks become more mainstream, their penetration within all age ranges deepens.

“This, in turn, will result in the continual flattening of the age curve as social networks mature.”