Mobile Marketing SA » Blog Archive » South Africa is serious about Mobile

South Africa is serious about Mobile

Posted by Henre Rossouw in Consumer Convenience, Facebook, Mobile Marketing, Mxit on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 3:19 pm

Connect, Create, Engage As more and more software developers get into the mobile development scene, you can expect and even greater rise of mobile consumption. This is noteworthy for businesses in South Africa.

Facebook, the (new) social craze among a whopping 605 000 South Africans, have opened up their platform to mobile developers.

The repercussions of these are pretty simple: More users will have access to Facebook more often. When companies thought it clever to ban Facebook from the workplace, I bet the last thing they had on their minds was that Facebookers would just crank it up a notch and find new ways to engage their users and increase the social activities through mobile phones.

One of our local talents has taken it on himself to develop a platform on Facebook which allows users to see which of their friends are active on Mxit. (Mxit of course is the uber popular mobile instant messaging platform with a recorded 5.4 million active South African users)

That’s a whole lotta mobile for a great deal of people.

Facebook of course is also in negotiations with Microsoft and Google for financing an international “SocialAds” rollout which would again revolutionize advertising as we know it.

The only conclusion we can gather from this is that consumers will be able to spend more time away from the confinement of desktop computing, or the bulkiness of their notebooks (who would have thought we’d ever use bulk and notebook in the same sentence), but still be able to have access to a wealth of information and social activity through their mobile phones.

Many businesses would question the relevance of Facebook to there businesses which is a discussion for another day and another blog.

Keeping in mind that Vodacom has launched mobile advertising, it seems though that leading businesses have caught onto this trend and are looking to enter this market as quickly as possible.

Not only have they done that, they are also in development phase for a new social media platform, the Grid, which is supposedly a mashup of Facebook, Myspace and Mxit.

This is some serious mobile and serious social networking for a seriously large portion of our population.

Consumers lead the way in the social trends, people. This is very important. Too many businesses feel they have the power and are able to channel consumer behaviour according to their guidelines.

Maybe it is time to do some introspection into your business, put yourself in the shoes of your clients / customers and establish whether you wouldn’t perhaps see the value of converging your service offering with mobile.

If you know your clientele is mobile oriented, shouldn’t you be spending more time getting to know the options mobile marketing presents?

6 Responses to “South Africa is serious about Mobile”

Tyler Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Thanks for the mention Henre. You are spot on, South African business are just as serious about their mobile strategies. I see some really innovative stuff coming from the mobile scene in South Africa over the next year or two.
Henre Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Thanks for your comment Tyler. I catch your drift, the big brands are getting along nicely. Would love to see a more proactive effort from small to medium enterprises though. There’s still a great stigma attached to cost of technology though.
Agent Craig Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 8:19 am
One thing you forgot to mention about the GRID. Which is a crucial element is that the GRID includes advanced LBS (location based service) technology. Which means that it can locate you on a map, so it’s more mash up of Facebook and Google Maps with some MXit thrown in. The IM part of the application is considered by us to be only an added feature, in fact original plans had no IM at all. The media has branded the GRID, the MXit killer. But really it’s in a completely different league, so different in fact that the two could quite easily work side by side. There is a strong possibility that we will launch with open source code allowing for advanced user input.

If you want to know more contact me at craig(at)infectiousagent.com or simply join the facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5106213838

We are looking for beta testers and are willing to pay.

Nice post, thanks for the mention.
Henre Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 9:06 am
Craig, thanks for the comment. Yes, I completely left out the LBS part of the scheme, so thanks for adding that. The post is more mobile oriented, hence my reference to the mobile part of the Grid.

But, since you’re mentioning that it’s even possible to work side by side with Mxit, it just goes to show that mobile is becoming a huge part of social networking. It just reiterates my point that businesses need to get cracking on their mobile strategies for value added services, marketing etc.

Would love to test the Grid, I’ll pop you a mail.
Mobile Marketing SA » Blog Archive » Where Mobile is going: Three examples Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
[...] social networks that keeps popping up. Here in South Africa we have the now much discussed “the Grid” from Vodacom, Mxit and in all probability a host of new ones in the not too distant [...]
Agent Craig Says:
November 7th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Henre

Around here we don’t believe in what I like to call the “Closed Garden” approach. We believe you get far more goodwill from an open approach. So yes, we are prepared to work with those who share our views.

The thinking behind The GRID is that we carry our cellphones with us wherever we go. Not only can you bring your social network with you, but you can pinpoint where you are. So yes, it’s a very ‘mobile’ network.

As for business, we foresee any business being able to set up various forms of ‘advertising’ on The GRID without paying a cent. Consider a restaurant owner who tags his business location with images, a short video and a copy of his menu. He is likely to get coverage at only the cost of being a GRID user. Of course there will also be more substantial sponsored packages for those willing to pay :0

Hope you are enjoying your testing!