South Africa all a-Twitter

Catherine — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:39:32 +0000

As a copywriter at MediaVision’s South African office I often find myself contemplating the implications of being in the online industry in a third world country. Of course the beauty of the globalised internet age is that it doesn’t matter too much where in the world you are, as long as you have the right clients, and a working computer and functional internet connection, which I sometimes take for granted.

In a country where less than ten percent of the population has access to the internet it is crucial for businesses to analyse their market and its internet usage trends, if indeed they are online. Since social media and micro blogging are increasingly becoming indicators of a business’s online activity, the most recent statistics for Twitter use in South Africa provide some interesting insight into the subject.

According to Alexa Twitter is the 7th most popular website in South Africa, behind Google (.co.za and .com), Facebook, Yahoo, YouTube and Wikipedia. According to the Sysomos report of June 2009, South Africa was tenth on a list of most Twitter users by country, accounting for 0.85 percent of the total Twitter population.

If this figure is correct then at the time the report was compiled 467 500 out of a total of 4.5 million South African internet users visit Twitter in an average month (this figure is contested in different reports). This means that roughly one percent of all South Africans are on Twitter, though the figure may have increased since last year and will undoubtedly continue to grow.

Lists of the most active South African Twitter users are also revealing in terms of online behaviour in our country. While the top American Twitterers are celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey, Britney Spears and Barack Obama, the most popular South Africans, or those with the biggest Twitterholics, are people such as Alain van Heerden, Bruce Attridge, Tina Cook and Gareth Cliff. While the USA Twittersphere is indicative of their dominant celebrity culture, our main players tend to be bloggers or social media and SEO gurus – people directly involved in the online industry.

This suggests that our online activity, at least on Twitter, is mostly generated by working professionals, rather than younger people who use the internet as a means to get closer to their celebrity idols.

For South African businesses this means that although the Twitter population here is relatively small, those who are using it are influential. It also means that while the network continues to grow there is still space for businesses to make a substantial impact and innovate, particularly in sectors which have yet to jump on the Twitter bandwagon.

South Africa all a-Twitter

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South Africa all a-Twitter