A combined study from the University of Cape Town and Harvard has revealed that three-quarters of South African "young people" have regular conversations with strangers on social network cum instant messaging service MXit.Over 26 000 MXit users took part in the study. Close to a third of survey respondents said that their after school activity consisted of chatting on Mxit, with 42% stating that they chat to strangers on a daily basis.The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has dubbed Africa ...

Social gaming giant Zynga is set to launch its own social gaming network in a bid to reduce its dependency on Facebook.The new venture, entitled “Project Z” is envisioned as an online community where people can play the company’s popular titles without having to go on Facebook."For two years we have been building out products that we hope will enable a platform for direct relationships with consumers," Zynga co-founder Mark Pincus said during the first press event at ...

First India unveiled a US$45 tablet. Now Bangladesh has unveiled an Android-powered US$130 laptop. This locally made laptop, like the uber-cheap tablet will hopefully bring advanced learning into even the most rural of areas.The prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina released the Doel (meaning Magpie) at an unveiling ceremony in the capital city of Dhaka. Hasina said that by 2021, the Doel would help Bangladesh to become a middle-income nation. The Doel is the national bird of Bangladesh.Hasina said, “Every ...

A South African video of an antelope colliding with a surprised mountain biker has become a worldwide internet hit almost overnight, racking up just under 5,3-million views (by Wednesday morning) in just over a day.During a mountain bike race near Albert Falls in KwaZulu-Natal, a province in South Africa, cyclist Evan van der Spuy was dislodged from his bike by a flying Red Hartebeest that appeared to be trying to jump over him."Watch the buck!" screamed another mountain biker ...

Social media is not dangerous or "just a consumer thing" for businesses, according to Gartner analyst Carol Rozwell. Social has turned the corner from "interesting" to "imperative", letting you "search out good ideas, and adapt them to make them work for you".Upper management in their 30th-floor, wood-panelled offices have yet to understand the "upside of social media" -- and many are unwilling to explore the benefits their organisation will receive. While many are business and social media savvy, some are ...

South African media giant Naspers has quietly rolled out its payment gateway product PayU to the Indian market.According to Indian digital news site Media Nama, the gateway has first been deployed on Ibibo and its eCommerce sites tradus.in and goibibo.Ibibo is a social network co-owned by Naspers and Chinese web giant Tencent.PayU claims to enable and empower “businesses and individuals to safely transact and easily participate in the economy via mobile or the web”.It also allows websites to ...

BlackBerry users in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region have found themselves cut off from online-communications for three days running, following a failure of BlackBerry's Internet Service.The first outage of the service, which allows BlackBerry users to browse the internet, send and receive emails, instant message using BlackBerry Messenger, and access a wide range of apps at a monthly fee, was on Monday and lasted over 12-hours.Tuesday’s outage struck at approximately the same time Monday’s began. This ...

Worldwide social media revenues are on track to reach US$10.3-billion this year, a massive 41.4% increase from the US$7.3-billion achieved in 2010. That’s according renowned research firm Gartner.According to the Connecticut-based firm, the biggest growth area is, unsurprisingly, in advertising. Interestingly, however, the next biggest area of revenue growth is in social gaming.Social media advertising revenue, which includes display advertising and digital video commercials on any device including PCs, mobile and media tablets is forecast to total US$5.5-billion ...

With five-million users, Prezi is becoming the online presentation tool of choice. The service is a cloud-based (SaaS) presentation software and storytelling tool for exploring and sharing ideas on a virtual whiteboard. It has gained enough momentum to rival other presentation tools like Microsoft's PowerPoint. Prezi is stylish and slick and turns presentations into a creative exercise.Prezi is used as a platform for bridging linear and non-linear information, and as a tool for both free-form brainstorming and structured presentations. ...

Twitter’s advertising model kicked off more than a year ago in April 2010, and it is already starting to get a lot of traction in the market, albeit a lot less than where Facebook and Google ad revenues are pitched at the moment. But how are marketers taking advantage of Twitter ads?Twitter revenueThis year Twitter will bring in US$139.5-million in revenue, which is a 210% increase on the US$45-million that it brought in over 2010. By 2013 it ...