A price war has erupted among South Africa’s mobile operators, as each seeks to increase its slice of the pie in a country where there are nearly as many active SIM cards as there are people. The country’s third mobile operator Cell C recently slashed its data prices, halving them in some cases. It’s followed up this move with a new voice deal for its prepaid customers. South Africa’s first-and-largest operator Vodacom today responded with what it calls the “Freedom ...

Facebook ads don’t work, not even a little bit. Well that’s if auto giant General Motors (GM) is to be believed at any rate. The company, which spends around US$40-million a year on Facebook campaigns, says it is pulling the US$10-million it currently spends on paid-for Facebook ads. GM’s marketing chief Joel Ewanick told the Wall Street Journal that the company still views putting up relevant content about its products on the social network as an “effective and important” part ...

Having spent some time participating on most of the popular social networks from a B2B social media marketing perspective, I have listed a number of things you can do to ensure your social media efforts fail dismally. Commit these cardinal sins and some of the scenes from Dante's Inferno will seem like a picnic by comparison. 1. No “buy-in” from the entire organisation Social media is not a one man band. It is something that involves your whole organisation. Your community ...

Jane Austen was a big fan of an advantageous marriage, and so it seems, is Facebook. One's changes in relationship status are the most prominent feature on the Timeline after being born, and of course, joining Facebook. Facebook has even designed little icons for these events; I recently saw a friends’ engagement announced with a little blue ring and a neat date underneath. Is meeting the right person such a notable achievement? Irritated singletons might wonder why all the Timeline ...

Earlier this year European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said that internet users had a "right to be forgotten" -- the idea being that anyone should be able to delete all the data they have online at any time, except in cases where there is a legitimate interest in maintaining information in a database. According to the new EU policy, the "right to be forgotten" simply "would allow people to request that their information be erased and not disseminated online." Research fellow ...

Comment managers are nothing new. Whether or not we use them on our own sites, we’ve all gone to leave a comment somewhere and seen we needed to log in first—whether to Disqus or LiveFyre, IntenseDebate or something else. It happens on blogs about social media, it happens on blogs about gas station processing, it happens on blogs like this one. Why do sites use them? Are they helpful, and if so, how? Should you implement a comment management tool ...

The internet is a big place and companies like Facebook are dominating major parts of it. The concept of regulation has been floating about for a few years now and, more recently, Google and Facebook have found themselves in front of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) following privacy violations. What regulators are doing now isn't a very accurate approach according to Matthew Howett, Ovum's regulations and policy practice leader. At this year's Korea Communications Conference, Howett explored the new disruptive ...

Sony Pictures has signed off on a big screen adaptation of Apple co-founder and visionary Steve Job's authorised biography. Aaron Sorkin, the man tasked with with translating Walter Isaacson's best-selling book into celluloid is no stranger to tech stories either. He wrote the screenplay for The Social Network, for which the Hollywood veteran picked up an Oscar. In a statement to the press, Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chairman Amy Pascal explained why Sorkin had been picked: “Steve Jobs’ story is unique: ...

China’s wildly popular Sina Weibo has hit the 300-million registered user mark. That’s according to news published on the microblog’s site and translated by Tech in Asia. Thing is, the graphs published by the social network actually show it hitting 300-million users sometime in February.That’s significant, because it predates the real-name rules that had Sina Weibo’s bosses worried that their ad revenue would sink through the floor. That might be one reason the microblog didn’t publish its active user numbers, ...

Online classified sites are big business these days. There's a reason have been accused of killing the newspaper industry. Now one of the biggest of them all is making a new play in the app world. Global classifieds giant OLX has launched a free iPad app, which it claims is a first for the South African market. According to Simon Berger-Perrin, Vice President of Mobile at OLX, the app offers classifieds for properties, jobs, second-hand goods, pets, and more. "We ...