Africa's biggest mobile social network has kicked off the year with a new executive team, as it sets out to execute its growth plans for 2013.
As of Friday, headed by CEO Francois Swart, the executive team is made up of chief financial officer Richard Newton, chief marketing officer Vincent Maher and chief operating officer Andrew Davies.
This follows a media statement last month in which Mxit vowed to hit the ground running in 2013, with an "extremely focused technology and business plan" to double its user base. Swart said at the time that an "intense strategic planning process" had been completed, which involved each sector of Mxit - and resulted in a staff downscale that saw 41 employees take voluntary retrenchment.
Platform development
The Stellenbosch-based company's overall strategy, says Mxit spokesperson Sarah Rice, is based on improving user experience and growing into new markets - particularly those of East and West Africa.
Rice says Mxit is strengthening its offering by "upgrading the core product, partnering with developers to bring new, relevant apps to the platform, and making it even easier to build and manage a community".
In addition, she says, the apps team is working towards finding ways to support developers in a more effective way. "While 2012 was about introducing the idea of application development on Mxit to the market, 2013 will be about ensuring we are providing the best environment for developers."
Mxit's latest Android application is set to be released this week. "[The app] will give our users a good idea of the look and navigation that they can expect to see from Mxit in future."
Community matters
Mxit says it will also leverage its African community platform, Mxit Reach, to forge a solid, growing user base.
"Our expansion into West and East Africa, coupled with Mxit Reach's efforts to bring the power of the social network to NGOs across the continent, will also support Mxit in attracting and retaining users."
Established in 2008, Mxit Reach is a mobile service for the promotion of community upliftment and education in Africa. The programme has recently taken SA's Childline service via Mxit to children in Zimbabwe.
"Childline Zimbabwe has begun to use Mxit to offer children in Zimbabwe a cheap, safe and anonymous way to ask for and receive assistance. Childline SA has been offering counselling on Mxit for many years and it's great to see children in another country benefit from our platform."
Swart is confident the social media platform will grow significantly beyond SA going forward. "The ability to bring people into the social and information age, regardless of location, income or device, is a powerful opportunity.
"We are already bigger than Facebook on the mobile phone in SA and I have no doubt that we will see similar success throughout Africa."
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