Something is stirring in the South African blogosphere. This year will probably be remembered as a time when blogs came of age, with more than 600 000 internet users visiting blogs by their fellow South Africans in just one month.
Electronic-media analyst Arthur Goldstuck has provided the online world with relevant South African statistics on the number of bloggers in South Africa for the month of August 2007.
In a blog entry posted this week on the Mail & Guardian Online‘s Thought Leader, Goldstuck says he believes that by August next year, “blogs will not only be a mainstream component of most online media in South Africa, but they will also be a dominant component”.
“In terms of social media and networking spaces, the shift in numbers has increased greatly. Facebook, which has had a three-fold increase in the past three months, is the symptom of the tipping point,” he told the M&G Online on Thursday.
Goldstuck — who heads the World Wide Worx research organisation and regularly provides insights and IT trend analyses to businesses and governments in Africa — said the number of South African bloggers in relation to the number of web users in the country is still low, but it is, in fact, an astonishing achievement.
One indicator of the growth of blogs is the rise of local blog aggregators — that is, guides to what is being read by others. Examples are Afrigator, the continent’s first blog aggregator; and the recently launched Amatomu, the first comprehensive tracking service for blogs and bloggers in South Africa.
Goldstuck’s statistics show there were 25 037 blogs in South Africa at the end of August, though only 11% were active. According to Vincent Maher, the M&G Online‘s strategist, the number of unique blog visitors during August, 621 204, would place blogs overall among South Africa’s five most popular websites.
This number, said Maher, lends credibility to the way the internet and its use is moving forward: it promotes collaboration between and sharing among users.
Goldstuck’s information was sourced from South Africa’s various blogging platforms, and he “interrogated” blogging services to ensure he could publish a true reflection of blogging in the country. Previously, educated guesses had been the order of the day. Some of these proved to be fairly accurate, despite the methodology being a few steps removed from augury.
Looking ahead, he sees more blogging growth in the next few months “and then it will level off”.
“By the end of the year we should see the number of [South African] internet users increase to 3,85-million, and broadband subscriptions will increase by 828 000. This will bring greater media attention until such time blogging will find its natural niche,” he said.