Of particular interest is the per-country demographic breakdown of Google+ based on the country users list in their profile.<\/p>\n
With these new players and statistics available, it is interesting to look at which social platforms are most popular in South Africa.<\/p>\n
MXit<\/strong><\/p>\n MXit<\/a> remains South Africa\u2019s most used social service, claiming 10 million active users in South Africa, with 50 million registered users worldwide.<\/p>\n Alan Knott-Craig Junior<\/a>, CEO of MXit, said that they receive between 35,000 and 50,000 new registrations daily \u2013 mainly from African and developing countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Indonesia.<\/p>\n According to the 2011 Social Media Landscape report by Fuseware<\/a> and World Wide Worx<\/a>, 40,000 South Africans register on MXit every day. Less then 4,000 daily registrations come from outside South Africa.<\/p>\n Facebook<\/strong><\/p>\n Runner-up in South Africa\u2019s social network rankings is Facebook<\/a>, with SocialBakers reporting that South Africa has 4,840,360 registered Facebook users.<\/p>\n When Fuseware and World Wide Worx published their Social Media Landscape report in October 2011 they estimated the number of Facebook users in SA to be around 4.2 million.<\/p>\n Of those users, only 3.2 million visited the site in the previous 12 months.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile Facebook has reached only 8.7% of the South African population, it is used by 80.7% of Internet users in South Africa,\u201d said Arthur Goldstuck<\/a>, MD of World Wide Worx.<\/p>\n Goldstuck added that the number of users aged over 40 now far outnumbers those 18 and under: 860 000 against 550 000.<\/p>\n At 2 million users, Johannesburg has the biggest Facebook-using population in South Africa by far, followed by Cape Town\u2019s 860,000 and Pretoria close behind Cape Town at 840,000 users.<\/p>\n BBM<\/strong><\/p>\n Though there are no hard stats on the number of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM)<\/a> users in South Africa, a combination of statistics from the Our Mobile Planet survey and the 2010 Mobile Insights study released in 2011 by World Wide Worx help give an idea of BBM\u2019s usage.<\/p>\n Vodacom<\/a> also revealed that it has just under 2 million BlackBerry devices on its network alone.<\/p>\n According to the Our Mobile Planet study conducted by Ipsos<\/a> in association with TNS Infratest<\/a> and the Mobile Marketing Association, South Africa\u2019s smartphone penetration is at 15%.<\/p>\n Considering that Statistics South Africa\u2019s mid-2011 population estimate was 50,586,757, this puts the number of smartphones in SA at over 758,000.<\/p>\n Ipsos also said that BlackBerries make up 44% of the number of smartphones in SA, or over 3.3 million.<\/p>\n That means there are around 3.3 million potential (or \u201cregistered\u201d for the purposes of our comparison) BBM users in SA.<\/p>\n World Wide Worx said that in 2010, 3% of cellphone users said they use BBM, while 5% said they have BBM on their phones. Roughly estimated, this means around 60% of BlackBerry customers in South Africa use BBM.<\/p>\n Extending the rough estimate, around 2 million South African BlackBerry<\/a> owners actually use its BBM service.<\/p>\n Twitter and LinkedIn<\/strong><\/p>\n Fuseware and World Wide Worx also revealed last year that both Twitter<\/a> and LinkedIn<\/a> have seen tremendous growth in SA over the year, with both networks sitting at 1.1 million registered South African users.<\/p>\n South Africans are the most active Twitter users on the continent, a recent study from Portland Communications and Tweetminster found.<\/p>\n Analysing over 11.5 million geo-located tweets and a survey of 500 of Africa\u2019s most active users showed that SA generated over five million twitter updates in the last three months of 2011.<\/p>\n The next most active country was Kenya with 2,476,800 tweets. Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco trailed behind with under two-million tweets each.<\/p>\n According to Fuseware and World Wide Worx, of South Africa\u2019s 1.1 million registered Twitter users, about 405,000 are active.<\/p>\n Google+<\/strong><\/p>\n Earlier this year, Exponential Labs launched its PlusDemographics website which tracks Google+ statistics.<\/p>\n According to their findings, South Africa has 466,828 registered Google+ users.<\/p>\n Arthur Goldstuck from World Wide Worx predicts that Google+ is likely to more than double its number of users over the course of 2012.<\/p>\n The underrated<\/strong><\/p>\n Asked whether there are up-and-coming social players in South Africa that may be overlooked, Goldstuck said that there are a number of \u201csocial upstarts and start-ups,\u201d mostly in the instant messaging space.<\/p>\n \u201cThe quietest but fastest growing is 2GO, which has as many South Africans using it as are using Facebook. The noisiest is ZiNG<\/a>, which has a credible founder, but still has to prove itself,\u201d Goldstuck said.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/BlackBerry.jpg\" "\\"BlackBerry\\"")
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![\"\"](\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Google-Plus-Header.jpg\" "\\"Google")
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\n \nSocial network stats in South Africa<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n \n \n* Number of active users, not registered shown in absence of accurate data.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tfoot>\n \n Social network<\/td>\n Registered users<\/td>\n Source<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n MXit<\/td>\n 10,000,000*<\/td>\n MXit \/ World of Avatar<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Facebook<\/td>\n 4,840,360<\/td>\n SocialBakers<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n BBM<\/td>\n 3,300,000<\/td>\n Rough<\/em> estimate based on Our Mobile Planet stats<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n LinkedIn<\/td>\n 1,100,000<\/td>\n World Wide Worx and Fuseware<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Twitter<\/td>\n 1,100,000<\/td>\n World Wide Worx and Fuseware<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Google+<\/td>\n 466,828<\/td>\n plusdemographics.com<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n