South Africans continue to take to social media like white on rice, with mobile evidently driving much of the uptake. This is according to data from the annual SA Social Media Landscape report by World Wide Worx and Fuseware, due to be released in its entirety today.
Last year, social media platforms Facebook and Twitter were said to have crossed the urban/rural divide in SA - and this year's statistics reveal South Africans are sticking to the tried-and-tested platforms, as well as exploring other, emerging ones.
The social media study, which looked at data from August 2012 to August 2013, will be delved into later, but for starters, here are 18 statistics indicative of South Africans' behaviour when it comes to social media today:
1. Twitter has grown by 129% in the year to August - from 2.4 million to 5.5 million users in SA. South Africans post 54 million tweets a month, with 85% of these originating from mobile devices.
2. There are 9.4 million South Africans on Facebook, which has seen the highest growth yet over the past 12 months.
3. Eighty-seven percent of users access Facebook from a mobile device.
4. Oliver Tambo Airport is the most checked-in place by South Africans on Facebook, with 454 000 check-ins over the past 12 months.
5. The world's top five most-visited sites are Google, Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Baidu.com (China's main search engine).
6. SA's top five most-visited sites are Google, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Yahoo.
7. World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck says Mxit has "lost its mojo", with 7.4 million active monthly users currently on the platform (down from 9.5 million a year ago) - but those who do use the platform are highly engaged, with the average user spending 95 minutes engrossed in it.
8. The top 200 YouTubers in SA each have more than 1.5 million account views.
9. There are almost no celebrities among the top 100 of these YouTubers.
10. In SA, there are 466 828 active Google+ users - 0.7% of the global Google+ base.
11. Relatively new mobile messaging platform 2go has 40.4 million registered users, with 4 million of these being active in the last three months. Of these, 9.01 million users are Nigerian, with just 1.1 million residing in SA.
12. There are 2.7 million registered LinkedIn users in SA, with the top demographic being those aged 25 to 34 (34%), the top industry being finance and the top category entrepreneurship.
13. The top five chat rooms South Africans spend time in are those that deal with the topics of romance, Christianity, health advice, Islam and Manchester United.
14. The top free app in Apple, Google and Windows app stores is WhatsApp.
15. The Apple App Store's other top downloaded free apps are Instagram, followed by Darts, Facebook and YouTube.
16. Windows Phone Store's other top downloaded free apps are Facebook, WeChat, Pacman HD and the Bible.
17. Google Play Store's other top downloaded free apps are Facebook, BBM for Android, BBM Android Registration and WeChat.
18. There are 680 000 active Instagram users in SA, with Amaro being the most used filter.
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