Johannesburg Leads Africa in Tweets

From VOA Learning English, this is the Technology Report.

The social media service Twitter is doing very well in the South African capital of Johannesburg. The city leads Africa in Twitter usage. A new study shows that Johannesburg averages one tweet every 13 seconds. The public relations company – Portland Communications carried out the study called “How Africa Tweets”. It gathered information about geo-tagged tweets from October to December of 2013. A geo-tag records position information of a Tweet. The study shows that over 600,000 geo-tagged Tweets were posted during the three months.

Allan Kamau leads the Nairobi, Kenya office for Portland Communications. He says it is no surprise that Johannesburg leads Africa in Twitter use. South Africa has the highest smartphone usage of any country in Africa. Mr Kamau says geo-tagged tweets do not represent the total number of tweets from each city. But he says, they do provide a dependable estimate of Twitter usage.

The company did its first study in 2012. Mr Kamau says the largest change he has seen is in how Twitter is being used.
He says consumers are now using Twitter to discuss faulty products or bad services. Mr Kamau says companies, organizations, and even sports teams – now value Twitter as a great resource for social involvement. The leading topic of Twitter across Africa is football – a sport known in the US as soccer. Mickey Modisane is the public relations director for the Orlando Pirates. He says the team’s Twitter account has 145,000 followers. He says he is excited about his team’s Twitter Popularity.