With more than 20 million users, mobile instant messaging service MXit has beaten global players, including Facebook, Google, YouTube and Yahoo, as the top social networking platform among South African youth.
This is according to the Sunday Times Generation Next survey, which included 5 800 youths from six provinces. The survey also found MXit attracts between 25 000 and 28 000 new registrations every day, and its users send 10 times more messages per day than the total amount of global tweets.
With such extensive reach, MXit ranked first as the best cellphone application, beating other apps that offer music, games and the Internet, according to the survey.
This finding is in line with research from World Wide Worx, indicating usage of specific applications like MXit and Facebook Mobile far outpaces browsing on the phone, even though both are available on almost two-thirds of the phones used by SA's urban cellular users.
The World Wide Worx survey also indicates huge potential for the mobile instant messaging market. The research found that, while 28% of the urban cellular market is using mobile instant messaging, as many as 65% have the capacity on their phones, meaning only 4.5 million out of 10.5 million potential mobile IM users actually use it.
SA's youth fall in the bracket of those already using mobile instant messaging, as MXit tops their list of priorities. The Sunday Times survey asked the youth what they could not live without. Family came first, cellphones ranked second, followed by money, parents and MXit.
Ensuring its extensive user base is kept informed of Fifa 2010 Soccer World Cup highlights, the company partnered earlier this year with US-based Cole Solutions to offer MXit users seamless access to football content through its Smsstreamer.mobi service.
Smsstreamer.mobi covers real-time major football events from around the world, including the English Premier League, French Premier League, Spanish Premier League and Italian Premier League. It will also offer full coverage of the Soccer World Cup event.
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