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Mobinomics : Mxit and Africa's Mobile Revolution
‘In these crisscrossing threads are woven the fabric of a community, a society, an economy, a nation. And beyond that, the world itself. But the technology isn’t the dream. The dream is what you can do with it.’
Three revolutions changed the face of South Africa, the economic powerhouse of the African continent, in 1994. The first was democracy, as millions of newly-enfranchised citizens went to the polls to elect a new government. The second was the internet, bringing information, learning and entertainment into millions of homes. But the real signal of change in the air was the arrival of an electronic device that would put undreamed-of power into the hands of the people. The cellular phone. In a country where less than four per cent of the population had access to a landline phone, mobile telephony opened the gateway to new ways and new worlds of communication. Today, more than 90 per cent of South Africans own at least one mobile phone, and they're not just using them to talk to each other. Mobiles have become tools of education, entrepreneurship, trade, empowerment, activism, media and upliftment.
With the advent of the mobile internet, mobiles have also become the hubs of the most powerful force in modern communication. The social network, bringing people together in an interchange of ideas, opinions, chatter and commerce that is changing the way we understand and define communities.
This is the story of the biggest and fastest-growing social network in Africa. A network that took shape in the townships of the Western Cape and has grown to be part of the lives of more than 50 million users in 120 countries, sending more than 23 billion messages a month.
This is the story of Mxit. A cultural force, a community of millions, with its own economy, its own infrastructure, its own language and its own traditions.
This is the story of Mobinomics, the new economy of mobile, and how it is connecting people and changing lives. Read it and learn. Read it and understand. Read it and be moved by the power of mobile.
Three revolutions changed the face of South Africa, the economic powerhouse of the African continent, in 1994. The first was democracy, as millions of newly-enfranchised citizens went to the polls to elect a new government. The second was the internet, bringing information, learning and entertainment into millions of homes. But the real signal of change in the air was the arrival of an electronic device that would put undreamed-of power into the hands of the people. The cellular phone. In a country where less than four per cent of the population had access to a landline phone, mobile telephony opened the gateway to new ways and new worlds of communication. Today, more than 90 per cent of South Africans own at least one mobile phone, and they're not just using them to talk to each other. Mobiles have become tools of education, entrepreneurship, trade, empowerment, activism, media and upliftment.
With the advent of the mobile internet, mobiles have also become the hubs of the most powerful force in modern communication. The social network, bringing people together in an interchange of ideas, opinions, chatter and commerce that is changing the way we understand and define communities.
This is the story of the biggest and fastest-growing social network in Africa. A network that took shape in the townships of the Western Cape and has grown to be part of the lives of more than 50 million users in 120 countries, sending more than 23 billion messages a month.
This is the story of Mxit. A cultural force, a community of millions, with its own economy, its own infrastructure, its own language and its own traditions.
This is the story of Mobinomics, the new economy of mobile, and how it is connecting people and changing lives. Read it and learn. Read it and understand. Read it and be moved by the power of mobile.
199 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2012
6 people want to read
About the author
Alan Knott-Craig
15 books4 followersAlan Knott-Craig is a South African mobile entrepreneur with a passion for African business opportunities. He is former CEO of iBurst and now runs World of Avatar, the company that recently acquired Mxit. His first book was the very successful and inspirational Don’t Panic compiled to remind South Africans ‘why not to pack for Perth’.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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August 31, 2012I hadn't heard of Mxit before I read this book. I actually got the copy from the author Alan Knott-Craig himself when he was speaking about Mxit and Africa's mobile scene at a Hasgeek event in Bangalore. Its interesting to read about the way Mxit started around 2004 when mobile phones were still not pervasive and even less so in South Africa. Even now most phones are fairly basic and people are very price sensitive to packet data charges. Given this, the book talks about how the network grew adoption starting from a relatively poor part of South Africa and then almost spread like wildfire unlike Facebook which started in the well connected and richer Harvard environment and spread top-down.
By using the volume scale of messages on Mxit and charging a very nominal fee, the service was able to bring in revenues. The book talks a lot about how Moola- their virtual currency was built, gained importance and affected a lot of the communication. It also talks about how the Mxit platform is used to solve Math problems in a crowd-sourced manner in real time for school kids, how it helps the ones with poor access to healthcare communicate with intermediaries for advice and guidance in a culturally conservative society while handling religious and racial discrimination. It also talks about how small text based mobile books are being used by teenagers to improve their language skills and a lot of other practical uses the platform has evolved into just due to the sheer scale and human creativity. As a side note, it handles more traffic then Twitter on a daily basis the last time I checked.
A few interesting technical aspects on how the service was scaled when needed, how privacy and spamming is handled, how kids and women can protect themselves on such a large social network are also addressed. I was impressed by their feature wherein they introduce a bot that would engage the first person to join a chat room in a friendly conversation which on average would last about 20 minutes, just about adequate for a real human to also join in the group and avoid the bounce rate while keeping people engaged. To top that, they introduced an evil bot which would speak slang and abuse occasionally and found that people spent about 2 hours trying to talk to this seemingly useless bot. Tells us something about social network?
A great read for people on developing useful tools for low resource setting and maybe looking beyond the mainstream media while making assumptions on people in developing countries.
By using the volume scale of messages on Mxit and charging a very nominal fee, the service was able to bring in revenues. The book talks a lot about how Moola- their virtual currency was built, gained importance and affected a lot of the communication. It also talks about how the Mxit platform is used to solve Math problems in a crowd-sourced manner in real time for school kids, how it helps the ones with poor access to healthcare communicate with intermediaries for advice and guidance in a culturally conservative society while handling religious and racial discrimination. It also talks about how small text based mobile books are being used by teenagers to improve their language skills and a lot of other practical uses the platform has evolved into just due to the sheer scale and human creativity. As a side note, it handles more traffic then Twitter on a daily basis the last time I checked.
A few interesting technical aspects on how the service was scaled when needed, how privacy and spamming is handled, how kids and women can protect themselves on such a large social network are also addressed. I was impressed by their feature wherein they introduce a bot that would engage the first person to join a chat room in a friendly conversation which on average would last about 20 minutes, just about adequate for a real human to also join in the group and avoid the bounce rate while keeping people engaged. To top that, they introduced an evil bot which would speak slang and abuse occasionally and found that people spent about 2 hours trying to talk to this seemingly useless bot. Tells us something about social network?
A great read for people on developing useful tools for low resource setting and maybe looking beyond the mainstream media while making assumptions on people in developing countries.
March 4, 2016
I found this book disappointing. There was a lot of general hype about Mxit but less detail about how the network scaled and the decisions the company took about its business model over time. I also wanted more detail about how the various applications that sit on the platform relate to one another, for example, how is pondering panda an income stream? How does it provide business intelligence to other parts of the system?
February 27, 2013
Interesting how an idea as simple as making it easier for people to connect via mobile could lead to such interesting and diverse applications. Brilliant insight into what mobile devices and apps could really become. Plus, it's African. Way cool.
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July 20, 2012Opened my eyes to the wider scope of MXIT. Seems it is more like a a place than a network.
February 3, 2017
I like how Alan elaborates on the journey of mxit and the mobile revolution. The failures and the success can teach anyone inspiring to innovate in the mobile space quite a great deal.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews