What’s happening Inside the Mobile Internet in South Africa?

Eshaam Rabaney

Jun 25 |13:53

Other Sources Include:

• MXit beats Facebook in SA – My BroadBand – Click here for Original Article
• State of the Mobile Web – Opera – Click here for Original Article

The 2010 MXIt Report – Insight and Analysis

Eshaam Rabaney

Jan 15 |11:20

What started out and failed as an SMS based game, became and succeeded as a free instant messenger application that runs on goodness of GPRS/3G enabled mobile phones. In its early days, MXit was a very “dingy” IM client with nothing really special about it, other than that it provided its users with real-time messaging at a fraction of SMS costs.

Today, that dingy IM client has evolved phenomenally. With a much more social and elegant application interface, its evolution has given birth to one South Africa’s greatest mobile-based social network. With an international user base spanning 15 million plus* and of that, 9 million plus* coming from South Africa – It’s about 3x more popular than Facebook in South Africa.

Screenshots of the new MXit v5.9

The sad part is that MXit Lifestyle (The company responsible for all this) is not really that company to share “meaningful” stats and data for guys like us, who really want to understand the effects and opportunity of this phenomenon. We are left speculating and unable to see what or how we can improve and anticipate in that very same market, the mobile market.

What drives my curiosity about MXit are three things:

User and Market Research
CRM Initiatives via the MXit Platform
Educational and Social Development

Being a fairly regular MXit user myself (as my age allows me to be ), over the holiday I bought some moola (MXit’s virtual currency) and I got listening in the Cape Town chat room and in some instances adding along to the conversations between the paying users of MXit.

What I came to discover are 2 most interesting things, as follows:

There seems to be a strong population of this service by people from those socio-economic troubled communities in Cape Town
Comparing the quality of conversation and attempting to find an average level of understanding between these chat room users, you will find (to no surprise because of point 1 above) that its weak and low.

There are a number of possible explanations to explain why this is happening, but that’s a whole separate blog post. Right now, these are just observations with no official data to back it and give some weight to them.

However, I am not alone in my interest in MXit. Marlon Parker who presented “Reconstructing Communities using Mobile Devices” and Steve Vosloo’s “m-Novels for Africa: A South African Case Study” are two fascinating presentations and a great opportunity to cross-reference my findings.

To cross-reference with Marlon Parker’s numbers:

Slide 15: 50 000 plus subscribers ; 25 000 plus Live conversations and 250 000 plus messages

Drug abuse and its related issues are almost always connected to those socio-economic challenge communities. These incredible stats shown by Marlon I believe are in direct complement with both my observations. With the connection to these communities and with the notorious reputations of these communities for an inadequate quality of education.

To cross-reference with Steve Vosloo’s numbers:

Slide 16: isiXhosa 33%* ; English 22%* ; Sotho-Tswana 17%* ; isiZulu 14%*….

I’ve quoted these estimates to further reference my observations. The fact of those three African languages paints a much sharper picture. That picture illustrating just how deep into these communities, MXit has penetrated.

If you did not already know, you can use MXit and never ever have to pay a cent (besides your data costs). Whilst both Marlon’s and Steve’s endeavours into MXit are free of charge to users, I believe that there is somewhat of a “USER Segmentation” happening with MXit. Where it is only that specific type of users engaging with the paying part of MXit.

Lastly, I asked my MXit buddies the question “What’s your favourite thing about the new MXit?” One responded –

“When you get a new contact, you can view their profile and if they have a name and surname or even better, their email address filled out, you can run it through Facebook search, and see how they really look, what school/varsity they are at, and more importantly who are there friends.”

Very interesting, don’t you think?

I wonder to what kind of extent is this user segmentation? What are the effects of that in terms of the overall market? What about this relationship between MXit and Facebook, is that the baseline for investigation into CRM over MXit? And whose job is it to inform and enrich the basic tech knowledge of these users to protect them from privacy infringements and for e-learning to gain momentum?

(*) Denotes Estimate

(http://www.mxitlifestyle.com/) Official MXit Website

(http://www.mxit.co.za/wap/) Official Download Portal for MXit

FaceBook South Africa Stats & Overview September 2009

Eshaam Rabaney

Sep 7 |11:42

Data is the new creative. We can observe people from their searching behavior, from profile selections, what causes action. The social networking site with the biggest South African audience is FaceBook. With nearly two million local users, a lot could be learnt from the success in adoption of FaceBook in a rather “broadband deprived” culture.

Other than the benefits of projecting possible exposure of your FaceBook Ad or “Ad targeting” as FaceBook puts it, the real-time data provided through this feature is most certainly useful in more ways than one.

As of September 2009:

Overall Scope of Penetration

South Africa Male vs. Female Breakdown

South Africa Facebook Age Trend Analysis

This is by far the most interesting stat to come out of FaceBook’s advertising tool. Three reason why:

a) The declining trend as the age group goes older shows that we are new entrants into these things – spelling “o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y”, opportunity.

b) The spike in the 18-25 age group is no co-incidence. This group of the High school finalists, college attendees and generally new entrants to life, suggest SA’s “tech-savvy” generation. They will be more susceptible to the benefits of web-technology like Twitter, LinkedIn and WordPress etc and become the trend setters for SA’s overall social media revolution.

c) Notice how the <17 group has a greater uptake compared to the uptake in age groups 41 – 45, 46 – 50-, 51 – 55, 56 – 60 and 61+. Although this age group cannot offer us much in terms of online purchases and/or premium membership etc. However, I believe they remain vitally important in “spreading the word” to their moms, dads, aunties and uncles etc about the cool things their favorite brands say and do online.

South Africa FaceBook Social Stats

These are just a collection of some stats which you are able to pull from the advertising tool. These stats are far from accurate as not every single South African facebook user has specified the applicable field in their profile. However, these stats are still useful in terms of understanding and finding reason for action.

State of South African Twittersphere – Top 5 Questions

Eshaam Rabaney

Aug 11 |00:00

Naturally as an online media strategist, the first thing I would want to do is to gain some insight and perspective for tactical definition. As Twitter is an international channel, pulling data for just local users is an extremely difficult task. Not being stopped by this fact, I went through just over two hundred local twitter accounts. Either through their location specified or twitter stream – I was able to ensure the local user. Two hundred may same as to short of a total to want to audit, however all that was needed was perspective to be guided by and insight to project on.

I then went on to collect my findings and presented the “State of the South African Twittersphere”. I received a number of questions relating to the publication. In it, I have found some not so surprising things (to me at least). Namely, that many South African users show no real interest in it or show knowledge about the micro-blogging platform.

• 65.5% failed to provide a homepage URL / web link
• 75.5% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 58.0% have not specified a location
• 74.5% have not updated within a 24 hour period
• 87.8% of users show high following numbers, as oppose to a level following‐to‐follower ratio

Top 5 questions I received about this report…

1) Who is really using Twitter in South Africa then?
a. Twitter is very much dominated by our techno-guy or geeks. These kinds of people all run blogs or websites and use the service to promote themselves. Also, people with agenda’s – these are your guys at your South African websites, be it from web affiliated business, photographic/graphic to media etc. Of course there are those odds that use Twitter as a “civilian” – But sadly they are out-numbered by SA’s real Twitter users.

2) Is there a point in including Twitter as part of a Social Media campaign?
a. In terms of ROI, there’s no point. I’ve always said, look at your JSE 100 then tell me why you think they haven’t really come on-board like the Fortune 100 has came on-board with this channel. However, when the time is right, be sure to see them in full action! Right now, I think it’s just a novelty to be on Twitter (For companies) –“like teens being cool at a brand new mall, the place be”.

3) What do I mean by the “right time”
a. Right now, we lack a vital component to social media in general i.e. your “e-citizen”, then we lack “e-citizens” because of an almost non-existing “broadband culture”. Once time spurs a broadband culture which in-turn produces “e-citizens” then let the ROI begin.

4) What does it mean for brands already on twitter i.e is there a competitive advantage to this?
a. I don’t believe so. The problem is that due to the current reality of the South African Twittersphere, content will not travel as effectively, also the time spent trying to maintain a corporate account for about 2000 followers, could of been time spent working on other things serving larger audiences. Once the quality in adoption of Twitter in South Africa improves (dependent on your social media strategy) companies will be able to easily catchup with those who have had a presence for a longer period.

5) If I had to write a Twitter strategy, against this backdrop, what would it look like?
a. I’ve always used liked the analogy of Oxytocin (The hormone which induces labor). If medical technology has advanced to the point where we can induce labor – why can’t we take social media technology and use it to induce an audience. To answer your question, my strategy will be very inducing

MXit’s MXchange, congratulations or condolences?

Eshaam Rabaney

Jul 3 |12:21

We are all familiar with the highly recommended Gumtree.co.za, which gives ordinary people the chance to sell the goods and services, apply for job vacancies or search for accommodation and motor vehicles etc online. Launched recently in BETA, MXit Xchange takes the Gumtree model and allows MXit’s users to access the principal of Gumtree right on their most favored social network.

However, MXit user’s had a different agenda as oppose to the agenda of the heads at MXit Lifestyle. Currently MXit Xchange holds about 35 000 listings, but not a single legitimate listing to even whisper about. What went wrong you may wonder?

Personal Dating Board – Since one must pay “moola” (MXit currency) to chat in the chat rooms to obtain new contacts, most user’s saw this as an opportunity to advertise their age, sex, race and number followed by a short word of their own to describe their appeal, hoping to obtain new contacts for free.
Illegal and Unorthodox goods and services – Some saw the MXit Xchange launch as a means to promote their “Businesses” , these businesses ranged from pirated movies to branded clothing at strangely rock-bottom prices.
Begging Board – Here, every MXiteer took the opportunity to put them out there by advertising their desperation and willingness to do anything for minimum pay. I was surprise to see MXit actually added this category “Jobs”, given current circumstances.
Spam, Spam and more Spam – Blank ads, sick ads, funny ads, stupid ads etc, you name it and MXit Xchange has it all.

In response to this, MXit launched what I call a “sedative”, which encouraged legitimate posts through a chance to win a brand new cell phone. Sure MXit could ban the abusers from the social network or even remove the bad ads, but the severity of this problem is beyond that. These are moola paying MXiteers, and banning them will not reflect too well on the profit margins.

These are the main problems that MXit Lifestyle has to urgently address if this product is to set an evolution, to the way we did our business before on Gumtree. It’s evident that MXit is guilty of anticipating incorrectly and not paying enough strategic attention.

Do not get me wrong, this is no pessimistic tone, but rather a concerned tone. There is great potential out there, but since MXit holds millions of user’s, a holistic approach to these product models is crucial to kick start the South African internet industry to the standard of our international neighbors.

At the same time, the nature of this product is a milestone for the South African internet industry and has all the potential to cut into Gumtree’s big slice as the number one local listings website. MXit users have shown not the slightest bit of support, which makes me question the effect this product will have on MXit’s confidence to venture deeper, and more importantly the confidence to venture deeper into larger endeavors.