SA social media numbers revealed

New data from World Wide Worx and Fuseware reveals the latest social media user numbers in South Africa, with Facebook still leading as the country’s top social media platform.

According to World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck, Facebook is proving to be a highly successful platform in South Africa for marketers, with the click-through rate on the site increasing from 48% in 2013 to 64% this year.

As of August 2014, there are 11.8 million Facebook users in South Africa, with 9.2 million accessing the network via mobile. The most popular phone amongst Facebook users is the smartphone/feature phone hybrid, the Nokia Asha.

Meanwhile, Twitter‘s presence in South Africa has also grown over the last year, with a 20% increase in local users to 6.6 million. The most prominent device used to tweet from is the BlackBerry, Goldstuck said.

Mxit numbers were down quite significantly to 4.9 million users (from 6.5 million a year ago), but still has a very engaged audience, Goldstuck said. The average Mxit users logs in 5 times a day and uses the platform for 105 minutes, daily.

The only other social network to show declining numbers is Pinterest, which shrank by 70,000 users to 840,000 in South Africa (from 910,000 in 2013).

Professional network, LinkedIn, has seen massive growth in the country, boosting its local users by 40% to 3.8 million users. This is in line with global trends, which has seen LinkedIn grow to 313 million users world-wide.

Instagram has also shown big growth in SA, up 65% to 1.1 million users from 680,000 in 2013. The most-used hashtag in the country is #CapeTown.

YouTube has grown to be the second largest social platform in the country, now with 7.2 million monthly active users – up 53% from last year. The top South African YouTube channel is Kruger Sightings, Goldstuck said, which was started by a high school student Nadav Ossendryver.

Ossendryver’s YouTube channel has had over 75 million views, with 400,000 people viewing daily.

Goldstuck said that it is difficult to measure Google+ users in South Africa, with data unavailable, but noted that Google’s social platform had 540 million users, globally.

South Africa social media stats

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