Category archives: Tech

Weekly Top 10: Fastest rising search terms from South Africans on Google

With the help of Google Trends we are publishing the top 10 searched for phrases (minus the sexy stuff of course) by South Africans on Google over the previous seven days.

Notes:
Thomas Madigage – Bafana Bafana assistant coach Thomas Madigage died in a car crash on Thursday evening
Die Antwoord – Lady Gaga vs. Die Antwoord. So will they be opening for her sometime soon?
yr.no – a weather service by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute
Windguru – another weather forecasting site

Fast rising searches
thomas madigage Breakout
die antwoord +850%
bosses day +250%
jub jub +200%
yr.no +90%
avon +60%
felix baumgartner +50%
soundcloud +50%
windguru +50%
cell c +40%

Why Knott-Craig Jr left Mxit

Mxit has announced the immediate departure of CEO Alan Knott-Craig Jr, and a “R100-million investment”. Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) unravels the shock move.

Alan Knott-Craig Jnr has stepped down as CEO of Mxit, barely a year after he bought it through his investment company, World of Avatar (WoA). He is also departing WoA.

“While the shareholders and I share the same vision, we differ on how to get there. Therefore, I agreed to go my own way. I wish them all the best for the future. Mxit is Africa’s biggest tech success story, and can be a global success story,” said Knott-Craig Jnr in a statement issued yesterday afternoon. The statement added that he would not be drawn further on the issue, suggesting that the terms of his departure include a confidentiality clause.

His departure comes as a shock, as he was seen as being heavily invested on an emotional level in the future of Mxit and social networking in Africa – as evidenced by his book Mobinomics, jointly authored with Gus Silber.

After group buying shake-out CityMob changes direction

by Herman Manson (@marklives) CityMob, the group buying site started by three entrepreneurs in Cape Town in early 2011, has made a significant change in direction as the shake-out in the group buying market continues.

Although profitable at the time the trio – Luke Jedeikin, Claude Hanan and Daniel Solomon, had decided to move away from the mass discount, quantity over quality focus in much of the group buying space. As their competitors closed up shop, including the Naspers backed Dealify and the Avusa backed Zappon, the CityMob founders had already identified their key differentiator and were planning the relaunch of their business as an online design retailer specialising in ‘flash sales’ (time-limited sales).

It was a natural evolution for the business which had specialised in sourcing high quality deals with top brands in its group buying days. Self funded to date, it didn’t have a massive database of users as some of its competitors had, and very little marketing budget, so all that was left was to compete on was product.

The entry of Groupon into the South African market shortly after the launch of CityMob helped the team up their game and taught them so hard business lessons as well, says Jedeikin, the MD at CityMob. As questions were raised as to the sustainability of the group buying business model, the entrenchment of Groupon as the dominant player in the market and deal fatigue starting to set in amongst businesses, CityMob needed to not only differentiate itself but also needed to find a position with a much higher barrier to entry, hence the move into selling products rather than vouchers.

Value of mobile overestimated in the short term, underestimated in the medium term says marketing technologist

by Herman Manson (@marklives) South African born eMarketing technology specialist company Acceleration (not to be confused with Acceleration Media) recently made international headlines when WPP Digital announced it had acquire a majority stake in the business.

The company, launched in Cape Town in 1999, had expanded to offices in Buenos Aires, Dubai, Johannesburg, London and New York and employs 160 marketing technologists. A hundred of them sit in Cape Town. Audited revenues for the year ended 31 December 2011 were US$16.8 million (R141.45 million calculated on an exchange rate of R8.42 to the Dollar).

Initially Acceleration started as a media planning and buying business but thanks to an early relationship with ad server DoubleClick got into the technology solution supplier business while also building a strong knowledge base in analysing and interpreting data. Today the business works not only with Google DoubleClick, Test&Target and are a global platinum Adobe partner

Services on offer include analytics and business optimization, management consulting, marketing campaign support, outsourcing and system integration. For publishers the company offers advertising system architecture, advertising system implementation and integration and related strategic and technical services. Their client list includes The Economist, Sky, UEFA, Fox News, AT&T, Safeway, Standard Bank, ABSA, the Mail & Guardian and many more.

The media business, known as Acceleration Media, was spun off in 2005 in reaction to major media agencies investing in digital capacity and sold to Kagiso in 2008.

Richard Mullins had opened Acceleration’s Johannesburg office in 2000 and today serves as Managing Director, Middle East & Africa (MEA) at Acceleration.

Acceleration opened in Dubai four years ago and it’s become a big growth market for them says Mullins. This is because most major companies active in the Arab world has a presence there. In Africa Kenya and South Africa are the major markets.

Social secrets of the digital divide

by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) Our society is held back by many digital divides. Those who have computers and those who don’t. Those who have Internet access and those who don’t. Those who create mobile apps in their spare time and those who are over 21.

Seriously, though, the digital divide is real, it’s a drag on the economy, and it exacerbates the gap between the haves and have-nots.

The one digital divide that has been crossed, however, is the gap between those who could afford a communications device called a phone, and those who could not. Today, 80% of South Africans have a phone. That’s the good news. The better news is that, as the average phone becomes more advanced, it becomes a tool to help users cross several other digital divides.

The findings of the South African Social Media Landscape 2012 study, released by World Wide Worx and Fuseware, reveals startling secrets of social South Africa.

The key findings of the research were that, at the end of August, 5.33-million South Africans were using Facebook on the Web, 4,6-million were on WhatsApp ,2,43-million on Twitter, 1,9-million on LinkedIn. A huge 9,35-million were active on Mxit.

Because Facebook does not measure mobile-only usage among those who have registered via their cellphones, however, the full extent of its penetration is significantly understated: primary research by World Wide Worx shows that 6.8-million people were accessing Facebook on their phones in mid-2012.

Weekly Top 10: Fastest rising search terms from South Africans on Google

With the help of Google Trends we are publishing the top 10 searched for phrases (minus the sexy stuff of course) by South Africans on Google over the previous seven days.

It looks like a slow news week over the past seven days. End of the month meant searches for logging into online banking products dominated the list of fastest rising web search terms on Google by South Africans last week.

Radio not converting on air audiences into online audience

In light of the recent online radio listenership scandal MarkLives wondered how offline radio stations are viewing internet radio. We caught up with Attila Bernariusz, divisional head of Kagiso Digital, for some insight into where Kagiso sees online radio headed. Kagiso owns majority stakes in Jacaranda FM and East Coast Radio, minority stakes in OFM (Free State), Gagasi 99.5 (Durban) and Heart 104.9 (Cape Town) and an economic stake in Kaya FM (Johannesburg).

MarkLives: Are all your stations streaming online?
Attila Bernariusz: Yes.

MarkLives: What value and functionality does digital streaming add to radio brands?
Bernariusz: With 20% of Jacaranda’s online streams originating from outside of South Africa’s borders, digital streaming broadens the stations reach. With 93% of Jacaranda’s online visitors also listening to the station via another mechanism other than online, digital streaming broadens the stations frequency with its core listeners.

MarkLives: How are you integrating social media into your offering?
Bernariusz: Readers are able to share Jacaranda’s website content socially. Jacaranda’s DJs are able to post content to Jacaranda’s social pages. Jacaranda launched Ja.fm. Ja.fm uses crowd sourcing to allow online users to vote songs up and down the Ja.fm playlist, thereby determining which songs play next – enabling full participation from the audience.

MarkLives: Your digital radio audience is still quite small – what are the barriers to mass adoption and when do you expect them to be overcome?
Bernariusz: Most radio stations in South Africa have not been able to convert more than 10% of their on air audiences into online audience (online audience divided by on air audience). Of their total online audiences they have converted, not all of them listen online. The challenge is access to the internet, and the cost of doing so. As more South Africans start going online (for more than just email and chat (BBM, WhatsApp, Mxit, etc…)) so too will radio stations grow their online audiences.

Digital campaign lands Prestige Award at Pendorings

by Herman Manson. Ogilvy Johannesburg walked away with the highest accolade in Afrikaans language advertising, the Pendoring Prestige Award, for its digital driven campaign MK is… for Afrikaans music channel MK.

Daily Maverick, iMaverick turns the corner

by Herman Manson. Fast emerging as South Africa’s most influential website, the Daily Maverick has turned a financial corner, alongside its sister tablet publication iMaverick, according to publisher Styli Charalambous

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