Warc, 25 April 2014
LAGOS: Social media sites are among the most visited across
Africa but in Nigeria mobile chat platforms and microblogs are proving the most
attractive to consumers, according to a report.
The Social Media Landscape in Nigeria, from communications
consultancy AfricaPractice, said that internet penetration in that country
stood at about 30%, with over 50m internet users; of these 72% visited social
media sites.
Google in its global and national forms were the websites
most visited by Nigerians, but after that came Facebook (3rd), YouTube (5th),
Blogger (6th), LinkedIn (8th) and Twitter (9th). Other rankings in the top ten
were taken by Yahoo! (4th) Nairaland (7th) and Wikipedia (10th).
While the number of Facebook users had steadily increased
over the past few years and stood at 6.5m in 2013, the report said it was
losing active users to other platforms, especially mobile chat.
Within Nigeria the leading mobile chat apps included Eskimi,
with forums devoted to jobs and music and over 10m users, 2go, which connects
with friends and new people and has just under 10m users, and WhatsApp, the
mobile messaging site with around 5m users. Blackberry Messenger, another
mobile chat platform is estimated to have over 2m users.
One reason for the growing use of mobile chat platforms is
the basic one off cost. These apps perform well on lower bandwidths and use
less data, making it more affordable, the report said. In addition, mobile chat
was cheaper than SMS.
Social media in Nigeria served four core purposes, the
report suggested, including accountability, civic engagement, branding and
information source.
Brands were "realizing the significance of being a part
of these networks and connecting with their customer base in non-traditional
ways". As in other countries, they were encouraging customers to engage
with them on these platforms, while also providing services through those
platforms.
Data sourced from How We Made It In Africa, AfricaPractice;
additional content by Warc staff
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