Over the last few years I have been tracking the Top 20 most popular websites in South Africa. Comparing 2010 and 2011 results revealed that social media was definitely growing as a high priority for South Africans.
In this analysis there are some interesting and valuable pieces of information we can observe.
LinkedIn beats Twitter
LinkedIn has taken the third place as the most popular social network in South Africa. I have seen this coming for some time as more and more professionals have been taking to LinkedIn to improve their networking skills. My personal LinkedIn profile currently connects me to more people than my Facebook profile.
The rise of LinkedIn makes it clearly evident that business to business marketing become a priority through social networking. In addition, this places LinkedIn firmly in the South African recruitment industry as a network with a powerful database of industry professionals across South Africa.
First National Bank comes out on top
Banking has always been a popular activity for South Africans online. In 2010 we saw Standard Bank as the bank of choice but over the last few years FNB has comfortably claimed the first position a the online bank of choice.
FNB offers its online clients first rate online banking (although every bank has a pretty decent Internet banking service) and the big plus (which caused me to change my banking to FNB) was the iPhone app and easy connection to PayPal. FNB has done a fantastic job at identifying the needs of South Africans and offering services that appeal to them. Congratulations FNB!
To all those who are interested here is the complete list of the Top 20 websites in South Africa in 2012:
- Google South Africa
- YouTube
- Yahoo
- Gumtree
- Wikipedia
- News24
- Bid or Buy
- First National Bank
- Blogspot
- StandardBank South Africa
- ABSA
- Windows Live
- Amazon
- Independent Online
- WordPress.com
- Microsoft Corporation
