Some interesting stats

One of the things that I find fascinating is the amount of stats that those in the know are able to pull off the internet and its various applications.

Posted at MyNews24 (http://blogs.news24.com/mynews24/top-10-articles-on-news24-this-year) is the list of the top 10 most read articles on News24 todate.  The blog states the most read is Malema kicks out BBC journalist – 132 293 reads; 2 is AWB man causes chaos at TV studio – 111 348 reads and 3 is Don’t read this with that white tendency – 98 065 reads.

The first two are news reports, while the third is an opinion from News24.com columnists Khaya Dlanga n the Malema incident.  (http://www.news24.com/Columnists/Khaya-Dlanga/Dont-read-this-with-that-white-tendency-20100413).  Khaya will be speaking at the wtfmediaconf in October. (http://www.wtfmediaconf.co.za/who/speakers)

However the first two events, the ‘white tendecy’ and Visagie, the “AWB man” who sparked the phrase ‘Don’t touch me on my studio’,  a phrase which gained instant ‘status’ status, took place within days of each other.  It most be one of the most active news weeks in SA for a while.

(Although I would suggest that being in the month of May would indicate that more than a third of the year has past.  That impression would, in fact, be wrong.  This is one reason why stats are wonderful.  They give perspective.)

Perhaps more interesting is the report by Fuseware, a social media and search engine optimization agency, on South African twitter usage.  It is free and you will find the link on the home page of the their website (http://www.fuseware.net/).

Having seen Fuseware’s report my first thought was there are 50 million registered twitter users in the world. Only 15 million are active (equal to SA potholes).  SA’s 55’000 tweeters (active or registered figure I am not sure) simply do not register on the world stage at 0.11% (No, I don’t mean 11 per cent but 0.1 per cent).

Perhaps this is enough for us to be drunk on.  We are a small country with slightly more than 10% of the population online and a fluctuating 100 – 104% mobile subscriptions.  Over-expression, boisterousness, emotional swings (including anger – sadness) are classic symptoms of the 0.11% measure of BAC intoxication and new adoption of Twitter.

Back to Fuseware’s report, a surprising small number of Tweeters swear online and most of the Tweets are indeed from mobiles (34-40%) which is expected in country with 50-million connections.  It would also appear that peak tweeting hour is early evening although tweets are steady throughout the day (after 07h00 to about 20h00) but with a dip after lunch (14h00) until 17h00.

The lowest number of weekday tweets is Thursday .   So is it a question of avoiding the afternoons and Thursdays, is this a lull and an opportunity to stand out or is it no-one at home?

Users with the most tweets (219,392) is howdous (How Do Us).  I thought about following them but if their profile page is anything to go by they only tweet links – so will be giving them a miss.

Strangely the newspapers are 4th (iol)  and 10th (News24).  With so much content and vibrant web pages it is odd that these two news agencies are not putting out teasers to generate sales.  But then maybe it is not as simple as that.

Most satisfying and completely surprising is to see that a simple classroom hashtag #smed10 is listed as number 5 on the list, below now playing, follow friday, facebook and South African Music Awards.