As Arthur Goldstuck has pointed out in his research on the South African internet usership: the growth in numbers of internet users has slowed down (to about 4% a year), but internet usage among those already connected is increasing thanks to better access on ADSL and 3G/HSDPA replacing dial-up – he calls this our “experience level”. In other words, even though you might have been connected to the internet for a few years, it’s likely that you’re using it alot more each year (as your collective experience level rises).
Typically South African’s top sites were internet banking and news. Now you’ll see more social media sites listed in the Alexa Top 100.
The top 10:
- Facebook.com
- Google.co.za
- Google.com
- Yahoo.com
- YouTube.com (!!)
- Live.com (Windows Live)
- Wikipedia
- Blogger.com
- MSN.com
- News24.com
Further down we see the following sites:
11. Gumtree.co.za (Classifieds)
13. RapidShare.com (File Sharing)
15. & 16. Absa.co.za and Standardbank.co.za (free-falling!)
17. MySpace.com
23. Eskom.co.za (LOL!)
24. Amazon.com
27. Deviantart.com (I had no idea art was that popular here)
28. Flickr.com
40. Wordpress.com (I bet this would be in the top 10 if it included the sites built on the WP platform)
69. Digg.com
82. Pricecheck.co.za (Go Kevin!!)
and perhaps the most fascinating and surprising:
100. Quirk.co.za (well done chaps!!)
(Source: Alexa Top Sites, South Africa)
So my conclusion, and following up on the last post… The people with the marketing budgets are not living in a bubble, and Social-Media is way beyond being a fad here. Let’s get serious about this stuff and we can all help raise the profile of SA social-media sites, and our own expertise around that to boot.
Very interesting, but like with all data, we need to look at the bigger picture. Alexa gather it’s data from people who’ve installed their toolbar. See their help page for more information.
So when we think of the average South African internet user, they certainly don’t have the Alexa toolbar installed. Have a read of the page, and you’ll get what I mean.
It also explains why quirk is so high on the list. They have their own
SearchStatus toolbar, which uses the Alexa ranking as well. I’m sure many quirk clients and employees have this toolbar installed, and their ranking will definitely get a boost from this.
Oh, and the Alexa toolbar doesn’t track secure sites, so once you’re logged into your banking site, it stops tracking.
Dave!
How could you leave out PriceCheck?
Hanging in there at number 82! Whoohoo
Hey Andrew, thanks for qualifying this list, and helping me understand how Quirk was rated so high!!
Kevin: Eish!! You’re right, I’m a bad oke for not putting that in… *updating*
Lol, nice!
Dave – spot on! The quirk toolbar add-on is very helpful!
As the local SearchStatus fanboy I’m sure my excessive time spent online helps them get to 100
Strictly speaking, Google beats Facebook (add 2 and 3), but either way, Facebook has come from almost nowhere a year or two ago. Bring on the new broadband technology (where, oh where, is Wi-Max). It should see ADSL become the new dial-up. Then sites like YouTube (and MyVideo and Zoopy) are really going to take off. I’d view a lot more videos online if I didn’t have to wait for them to buffer every 10 seconds.
nice post, nice coverage.. keep up the good work
Interesting that if u had to compare this with where marketing Rands are going to, it really wouldn’t resonate with this list.
This is encouraging to see and really resonates with what we were thinking where things would go to.
The next level of this is going to be Social Graph. Marketing is about to get a whole lot more interesting. I put some of these interesting changes on my blog.
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Interesting that if u had to compare this with where marketing Rands are going to, it really wouldn’t resonate with this list.