Professional Documents
Culture Documents
July 2009
Compiled and Presented
By
Eshaam Rabaney
Online Media Strategist
http://www.visualcv.co.za/eshaam or @eshaam
To discuss this report, feel free to contact me or tweet me.
1 Created By Eshaam Rabaney – eshaam.rabaney@gmail.com – July 2009
Overview
Excited and passionate about web technology, (and the capability it has to provide solutions to
some real problems here at home), it’s time that we took a closer look at how we have received
these technologies. Collecting organized data from over 200 South African twitter accounts, I
thought it is time to update the state of SA’s Twittersphere and share that back with the
community for all you marketing and Internet geeks (like me).
Before reading:
• South African celebrities were left out of my data collection.
• Brands and other “company” based accounts were excluded.
• Those related to the industry i.e. community managers, professionals, “Geeks” etc –
were excluded from my data collection.
From this, the most interesting (or rather anticipated) points of data I see centre around the
“activity” levels of many accounts.
• 65.5% failed to provide a homepage URL
• 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
In an attempt to figure out dormant accounts (or if users are keeping active) on Twitter, I
labeled users inactive if they satisfied all the following conditions:
• Fewer than 30 followers
• Fewer than 30 friends
• Fewer than 10 updates
By definition, 43.5% of South African Twitter accounts are inactive.
2 Created By Eshaam Rabaney – eshaam.rabaney@gmail.com – July 2009
User Based Statistics
To get an idea of how South Africans have been using twitter:
• 24.5% of users have a bio in their profile
• 42.0% of users have a location in their profile
• 34.5% of users have a homepage URL in their profile
• 88.0% of user’s profiles are public
• 73.5% of users have added a profile picture
With the 42% of those users who added a location to their profile, I tried to establish more or
less who makes up the South African twitter community:
Suggested Geographic
Breakdown
11%
Cape Town
42%
Durban
42%
Johannesburg
Pretoria
5%
Then to establish the gender distribution in our Twittersphere:
Suggested Gender
Breakdown
44%
Male
56%
Female
3 Created By Eshaam Rabaney – eshaam.rabaney@gmail.com – July 2009
My 3 most Interesting Finds
• 87.8% of users ranked high in the amount of people they follow.
o Clearly this explains why South Africa ranks #24 in top locations according to
Twitter Grader.
o This percentage suggests that a wide range of South Africans show no web savvy
by researching a “follow strategy” but rather a knee‐jerk reaction to the service –
“sign up, follow 100 people then hope to make it from there”.
o The best possible general reason as to why ordinary people sign up for twitter is
to connect with the international celebrities and brands.
• 43.5% of South African Twitter accounts are inactive
o As suggested before, most SA Twitter users show no evidence of a follow
strategy, thus relating to the fact that they have no set purpose for wanting to
be on Twitter. Hence when they answer the question “What are you doing?” and
tweet “Going clubbing and meeting my girlfriend”, they wonder why other
twitter users do not engage or follow them back.
o The buzz around Twitter is that their movie stars, artists and popular brands
have all come to a platform enabling a conversation between these idolized
figures. Finally when the excitement types a tweet to these figures, then after a
few days of waiting for that never coming reply, they disappear with
disappointment.
o I strongly believe that the numbers of SA brands and companies who use twitter
are close to the number of real active users. Thus setting a commercial
atmosphere impression to ordinary users, that twitter is just a marketing
channel, thus keeping people from coming back.
• 88.0% of user’s profiles are public + 73.5% of users have added a profile picture
o Proof that our South Africans are out an about on the internet and have become
very familiar with standard protocol of engaging online.
o Our approach for now cannot be that of anything standard, if we wish to set up a
social media campaign.
“International influence is rife among us, no doubt, but simply adopting their methodologies
and ideologies with regards to tapping into our local online community, will leave us baffled as
to where we went wrong.”
4 Created By Eshaam Rabaney – eshaam.rabaney@gmail.com – July 2009
“
As the AIR around our citizens THICKENS with
UNWANTED messages and interruptions, the
GOAL should NOT be to ADD to the
UNWANTEDNESS, but to CREATE
DELIBERATE and APPRECIATED value for us
to realize the unrealized potential in the differentiated
ACCESS we have to South Africa ”
5 Created By Eshaam Rabaney – eshaam.rabaney@gmail.com – July 2009
In Conclusion
• This document was about the analysis of the Twittersphere in terms of ordinary SA
citizens, who without them, without their engagement and without their participation,
we become nothing more than a novelty on the internet.
• For these reasons I left out South African celebrities, brands and people within the
industry as including them would have just skewed my data from presenting the
situation of the Twittersphere.
• Whether I used 500, 1000 or 2000 South African Twitter accounts, I am confident that
we will still see the same trends now found out in this document, until we reach (what I
like to call) a broadband culture.
• Is Twitter a waste of time? My answer, for now twitter remains “immature” so to really
harness and take the lead with the active accounts today, will take some thinking and
innovation contrary to international influences.
“ A revolution does not happen when society adopts new tools, it happens when society
adopts new behaviors. ”
6 Created By Eshaam Rabaney – eshaam.rabaney@gmail.com – July 2009