Johannesburg is the biggest tweeter on the continent, according to recent research. TheMediaOnline reports.
A new study conducted by communications agency Portland has analysed tweets coming out of big cities in Africa in the last three months of last year.
It revealed:
Johannesburgers tweet the most in Africa, followed by Ekurhuleni residents, then those living in Cairo, Durban and Alexandria in Egypt. Nearly 345 000 tweets came out of Johannesburg in that time, with Ekurhuleni, east of Johannesburg, standing at 260 000, Cairo at just over 227 000, Durban at around 163 000 and Alexandria at almost 160 000.
The number of tweets peaked on 5 December, the day that anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela died.
The most popular weekdays to tweet are Tuesdays and Fridays, with activity rising steadily through the afternoons and evenings to peak at 9pm.
The popular topic to tweet about is soccer, which was discussed more than any other matter, including the death of Mandela. Orlando Pirates is the team that is most mentioned, under the hashtags #BlackisBack, #PrayForOrlandPirates, #OperationFillOrlandoStadium.
Brands are increasingly seeing Twitter action in Africa, with the hashtags Samsung (#SamsungLove), Adidas (#Adidas) and Magnum ice cream (#MagnumAuction) seeing much action. Political hashtags in South Africa haven’t had much impact, yet.
“The African Twittersphere is changing rapidly and transforming the way that Africa communicates with itself and the rest of the world. Our latest research reveals a significantly more sophisticated landscape than we saw just two years ago,’ said Allan Kamau, head of Portland Nairobi.
Head of Portland’s digital arm, Mark Flanagan, said Africa’s Twitter users contribute to linguistic diversity as well as perspective on political and social issues. “Twitter is now established on the continent as a source of information and a platform for conversation,” he said.
The most common languages used in Africa are English, French and Arabic that account for 75.5% of the total tweets analysed. But Zulu, Swahili, Afrikaans, Xhosa and Portuguese are used a lot too, the study found.
