It emerged this week, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, that Snapchat, a Californian start-up that develops a smartphone app of the same name popular among teens, recently spurned a US$3bn-plus all-cash offer from Facebook to buy it out. The offer value was at least three times the already
Stellenbosch-based Mxit, the social mobile chat company now chaired by outgoing First National Bank CEO Michael Jordaan, has released version 7 of it social network for feature phones, with iPhone and iPad versions coming later in the week. The launch of Mxit 7 is
Twitter has to be one of the more interesting modern-day concepts: a platform where people from all over the world can share ideas, thoughts and breaking news in bite-sized portions of up to 140 characters. Apart from being a means for celebrities to
Users of home-grown mobile messaging platform Mxit remain highly loyal to the platform, despite the fact that the service was recently supplanted by Facebook as the country’s biggest social network, according to what World Wide Worx and Fuseware are calling a “final analysis” of their “SA Social Media
It began in 2006 as a pretty stupid idea: a service that let you post public messages on the Internet but limited them to 140 characters. Seven years later, Twitter has burrowed deep into the fabric of parts of society. Its highly anticipated initial public offering provides a fascinating glimpse
Naspers is within a whisker of smashing through R1 000/share for the first time and reaching a market capitalisation of R400bn thanks to an 80%-plus surge in its share price in the past 12 months. The growth in its value in recent years has been nothing short of
Writer and activist Cory Doctorow says competition keeps Google behaving ethically because it believes there are benefits to be had. However, as it moves into sectors where it faces fewer rivals this may not always be the case. “In the areas where Google actively competes
Until now the largest social network in South Africa, Mxit, which claims to have 7,4m active monthly users, has been knocked from the top spot by Facebook, with an estimated 9,4m active users, a number the researchers say may actually be on the conservative side
The South African government had over the past year submitted 14 requests to Facebook and three to Google to get information about certain users, Beeld reported. Facebook did not grant any of the requests, and Google granted one request, after receiving a court order in a case involving defamation
Naspers’s decision, 12 years ago, to buy a stake in Chinese instant-messaging, entertainment and online advertising company Tencent continues to pay big dividends for the South African-headquartered media and technology group. Financial results published on Tuesday
