Loading ...The three months from April to June 2007 are likely to be remembered as the beginning of the tipping point for social media and social networking in South Africa. Most of the country’s key platforms and innovations for what is collectively known as Web 2.0 emerged during that period.
While it was obvious that growth was exponential, at no time during those three months was it obvious just how big it was going to be.
There were five key moments for Web 2.0 during that period:
The result was that, after a slow build-up, an explosion of activity occurred in July and August 2007, representing a true tipping point for the phenomenon. A tipping point, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s book on the topic, occurs when change happens quickly and unexpectedly after an apparently slow build-up.
But while Facebook is instantly measurable, the same cannot be said of blogging. Educated guesses have been the order of the day. Some of these have proved to be fairly accurate, despite the methodology being a few steps removed from consulting animal entrails.
That is all changing. The people behind all the major blogging platforms in South Africa have agreed to supply their numbers to World Wide Worx, to be reported in this blog and elsewhere from time to time.
First, a disclaimer:
And the first numbers are in. For the month of August 2007, the following activity was reported on South African blogs:
Number of blogs at end of August: 25 037
Number of active blogs (updated in last two weeks): 2 953
Percent of active blogs: 11%
Number of posts in August: 39 938
Page views in August: 5 198 693
Unique visitors in August: 621 204
Source: World Wide Worx
Incidentally, a quick nod to Vincent Maher for the best guesstimate around on the size of the South African blogosphere. He recently put it at about 20 000 blogs.
Those figures are astonishing for a phenomenon that has only reached maturity in the past three months. However, they also need to be seen in the context of online media in general. There are at least four media sites that have more visitors than all the blogs combined, and nine sites that have more page views than all the blogs combined.
But if August did indeed represent a tipping point, we can expect exponential growth in the coming year. By the end of August 2008, blogs will not only be a mainstream component of most online media in South Africa, they will also be a dominant component.
Fascinating collection of data - and its implications are very exciting. Thanks for sharing it with us, Arthur. I hope your figures will add weight to activities that most mainstream media (including online media) still think amount to navel-gazing. Let’s hope the next few months prove as definitive.
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