New study reveals all about SA’s Twitter users

A new report claims there are 1,5-million tweets every month in South Africa and 55 000 active Twitter users in the country, with the majority of users being designers, students, writers and engineers.

The report, produced by Cape Town-based social media agency Fuseware, says that that SA tweets more on Tuesday than any other day of the week, while the least popular day to tweet is Sunday. It reveals that the average number of tweets per user is 346 and the average amount of Twitter followers per user is 115. About 23% of tweets are Retweets and about 47% address another user. About 1.5% of all tweets contain profanity.

Fuseware CEO Mike Wronski told Memeburn that his company has “a sophisticated data server that mines every single tweet in South Africa”. He said the information for this report came from analysing the data for March and April of this year.

A surprising find is that South Africa mostly tweets at night between 7pm and 8pm. Another common period for tweeting is first thing in the morning and over lunch.

Companies and brands that South Africa’s 55 000 Twitter users most talk about are Vodacom, Eskom and Microsoft, however, “sentiment analysis” of these tweets indicate that many of the tweets are negative, says the Fuseware report.

The most popular interests of SA Twitter users are love, life and music, and SA tweets mostly contain “you” and “me” and references to their day, what they love and what their plans are.

The most popular Twitter client is Tweetdeck, with 10% of all SA Tweeters using it, while approximately 35-40% of all tweets in South Africa are mobile — also a surprising finding, given the high mobile penetration in the country.

According to the report, the top three SA users with the most followers are @TinaCook, @FIFAWorldCupTM and @GarethCliff, and the top three users with the most tweets are @howdous, @donnette and @bertbrussen.

5FM DJ Sasha Martinengo is the user South Africa’s tweeters talk most about, while his colleagues Gareth Cliff and DJ Fresh (Thato Sikwane) also make a strong appearance in the most-talked about stakes, a strong indication of the powerful interplay and cross-promotion between radio and Twitter.

Memeburn.com contributor and Twitterholic, Khaya Dlanga, is the fourth-most talked about user, while a 19-year-old Australian woman named Hayely seems to have captured the imagination of SA tweeters as she comes in as the third most-talked about user in the SA Twittersphere.

The most common hashtag is #nowplaying, which indicates which song a user is currently playing, while the latest Internet meme, #touchmeonmystudio, makes an appearance in the top 20 along with #worldcup, #f1, #capetown, #generations and #wheniwasinschool, to name a few.

The bulk of SA Twitter users are located in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and although East London makes a bit of a showing. The majority of the country’s other major cities, such as Durban, Pretoria, Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth, seem largely disinterested in the micro-blogging platform.

The full report, based on data from March and April of this year, is available for download here.

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