Social media goes mainstream in SA

Social media has gone mainstream in SA, according to a new study released today by World Wide Worx (WWW) and information analyst Fuseware.

The report, entitled: “South African Social Media Landscape 2011”, is the result of a combination of Fuseware's analysis of social network databases, information provided by social networks, and WWW's consumer market research.

While local success story MXit, and international giant Facebook, continue to dominate in user numbers, the other social networking services are seeing considerable growth. According to the report, social media is now a “core pillar” of Internet activity in SA.

Twitter has shown the most dramatic increase in the past year, with 20-fold growth and a reported 1.1 million South African users.

The WWW Mobility Report published early this year, showed that only 6% of SA mobile users were using the service, but 23% of the mobile market said they intended to use the service in the future.

Co-author of the report and MD of WWW, Arthur Goldstuck, says the media obsession with the micro-blogging site is a major driver of Twitter's growth.

“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 very low base, is therefore seeing the greatest growth,” says Goldstuck.

Reflecting a global trend, only 40% of Twitter users in SA actually tweet, and the report notes that many users just follow others and use it as a breaking news service.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently revealed Twitter user statistics for the first time, saying the platform currently has 100 million active users - half the number of people who have registered Twitter accounts.

According to Costolo, 40% of active users don't say anything on Twitter and only log in to see what others are saying.

The report shows professional networking site LinkedIn has also reached 1.1 million users, although it came off a far higher base than Twitter. LinkedIn notched up 83% growth in South African users from 2010 to 2011. Of these, 112 000 or 10% are business owners.

BlackBerry's BBM service has emerged as the fastest growing social network for the second half of 2011 in SA.

“The rate of BBM growth is a factor of Blackberry growth - for much of the last quarter, BlackBerry has been taking 70% of the smartphone market in SA, and that has been driven to a large extent by the demand for BBM, along with the low cost of unlimited Internet access on the device,” explains Goldstuck.

Goldstuck says this has meant a growth rate for BBM of about 500% through 2011 and into early 2012.

“After that, the momentum will slow down, and it will become a question of how BlackBerry addresses the demand for a more app-friendly phone.”

Cross-platform messaging service WhatsApp is widely seen as a major threat to BBM. Goldstuck says the researchers have not yet been able to measure use of the service in SA, but they have anecdotally picked up a strong surge in interest in the application.

“This is partly driven by Nokia's marketing of the app as a BBM alternative on their phones,” says Goldstuck.

Home-grown stalwart MXit is still the most popular social network in SA, with approximately 10 million active users. Contrary to popular belief, the platform is not just a teen-dominated network - the report states 76% of the male user base and 73% of female users are aged 18 or over.

MXit is also still growing according to the report, but Goldstuck says churn is very high.

“It is entering a phase where churn will probably exceed new sign-ons. A lot depends on how the new management refreshes both the app and the brand.”

With the proliferation of new social media services, it has often been said that users are unlikely to switch services once they have invested time and effort into building up a social graph on a particular platform.

However, Goldstuck says social networkers are fickle. “Although inertia does prevent moving initially, when the next big thing becomes cool enough, the early adopters tend to move over. When it becomes mainstream, the rest follow.

“Under-25s multitask better than any other age segment, and are easily able to absorb multiple networks. However, it then becomes a question of where their primary focus goes, and that focus drives the next big thing.

“While the sheer scale and scope of Facebook makes it a formidable player that will probably hold onto its users for longer, that didn't prevent Twitter from going mainstream,” notes Goldstuck.

An interesting finding in the report is that of the approximate 4.2 million Facebook users in SA, only 3.2 million had visited the site in the year-to-date.

Co-author of the report and MD of information analysts at Fuseware, Michal Wronski, says: “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.

“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.”

The report also notes that future intention of usage of social networks is strongly related to age - with younger users showing greater intention of usage. Goldstuck says, however, that statistics show that as social networks become more mainstream, their penetration within all age ranges deepens, flattening the age curve.

As for the future of social media in SA, Goldstuck says: “Thanks to mobile, it will become a standard way for most South Africans to interact with each other, with brands, with politicians, and with themselves - it is a wonderful form of navel-gazing that convinces users they are being productive with their time.”