The other day I found out that South Africa is the 10th largest Twitter user on the planet. 10th! That’s pretty damn cool. The US is by far the largest in terms of users right now, but we are right up there with the big boys, like the UK and Sweden, and ahead of many others, like Japan. And it’s especially amazing when you consider how low our internet penetration is.
So how come we’re punching so far above our weight? What does that say about us as a people or our national spirit?
Maybe it means that we’re innately “early adopters”, open to new things and ideas. Maybe new stuff fizzes our excitement glands into overdrive. I suppose being situated in the bottom end of “the dark continent” puts us on some kind of frontier — so maybe we’re used to pioneering new ideas, if not necessarily new lands. Hmm.
Or perhaps we are so far away from most of the world that we just simply want to share our experiences with them. It’s a platform for us to tune into the global radio and get our share of the airtime.
However, if I look at what SAffers, and more specifically Joburgers, are tweeting about today, the main trends (info thanks to happn.in) coming out are The World Cup, The Eskom Board and Bobby Godsell, Kelly Clarkson’s concert here, Chicken Licken (go figure?), Julias (there’s a great tweet from haiybo.co.za: “Julius Malema gets police protection after near-fatal exposure to IQ test!”) and The Berlin Wall. Just one “international” item in the top 10. So maybe we’re just obsessed with ourselves and use Twitter simply as a way to talk about me me me!
Whatever the reason, it looks like the people of South Africa are excited about and open to new technologies and new ways of communicating. If you haven’t yet jumped on the social media wagon, I suggest you climb aboard and take a little ride. Because whether we like it or not it’s here to stay and is only going to grow — especially in our country it would seem. And when more people start tweeting from their mobiles, I think we’re going to race up in those global rankings pretty quick.
Internet penetration doesn’t paint the full picture because it leaves cellphones out of the equation. Honestly, I’m surprised at the quality of this article. No research?? No stats? No number?
um, how about the ridiculous cost of bandwidth and therefore the relative economy of 160 characters at a time? everyone i know with a telkom line and dsl in their home is foreign and/or married to someone foreign. that amuses and amazes me, as i could never, ever surf the net from my work computer. no way.
Could it be that we’ve finally found at least one avenue that (a) works, (b) works quickly, (c) easily, (d) is not regulated by the ANC,(e) tolerates freedom of speech. Or could it be that South Africans relish the challenge of doing all of the above in 140 characters. Hmmm, that might explain the absence of @gwedemantashe or @gatshabuthelezi or @ancpromises or @anyotherverbaldiarrhoea? Maybe …
Maybe it is because the twits have nothing better to do?
I would hazard a guess that majority of SA users on Twitter are govt officials, municipal workers, Eskom employees, Telkom employees, the ANC youth league etc et al…why else wouldnt they be doing their job?
Read twitter as twit if you prefer!
So SA is full of twits. I could’ve told you that.
Greetings. This is not a comment but more a query. Perhaps you might forward it to Stuart Stobbs.
I was wondering if he is the son of William Stobbs, he looks very much like him. William was a childhood buddy (35 years ago) for many years until his family moved away. I know this isnt a ‘lost and found’ website but thought I might inquire anyway. Thanks for any direction you can provide.
Ivan Hemens
Also probably because it is still an english service.. The other countries will catch up pretty soon. The same thing went down with facebook!
I would think that because of the increasing number of mobile users there would be a lot of people who are easily able to make their Tweets. If that isn’t the case then my mind boggles!
Some interesting comments, thanks for reading and contributing y’all.
A few responses back:
Yes twitter is primarily English, although most Twitter applications (like Tweetdeck) can translate most languages, and in fact the most prolific tweeter I know tweets almost solely in Swedish. Also the language thing explains the top 4 countries (US, UK, Canada & Oz) but not so much the next 5 on the list (Brazil, Germany, Holland, France & Netherlands) – then there’s us.
Twitter is so often seen as a waste of time, and for the majority it probably is – hence the name ‘twits’, but perhaps my next article should extol the value of it for your company, your brand and yourself as an individual.
For the stressed analytical readers like Joy-Mari who need their daily pie chart and figures fix, the research which kicked off this article can be found here : http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/
Ivan – unfortunately I do not know William Stobbs, my father is George. He sounds good looking though
There are not many Stobbs’ in SA – most are in the UK.
@Billy As someone who tweets ALOT, so far most of the people who I know on twitter who are on most of the day are young, media/digital/entertainment/advertising/broadcasting fundi’s. Not a civil servant in sight.
Just a thought?