Pinterest more popular than Twitter in Zimbabwe

Nigel Gambanga Avatar

For most people trying to understand social media in Zimbabwe there is one major tool to focus on really- Facebook. The platform reigns supreme among social media users in the country, something that is also reflected throughout the rest of Africa where it has 100 million users.

According to the latest figures from Statcounter Global Stats for Zimbabwean internet use, as at October 2015, Facebook commands 90.75% of internet traffic directed at social media and Pinterest is the second most popular social media platform with 3.26%, getting a slight lead over Twitter with a 2.82% share of traffic.

Tumblr, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Google+ fill up the next slots with stakes in social media traffic that range from 1.26% to 0.31%

StatCounter-Social-Media ZW 2015While these numbers are naturally open to a lot of scrutiny especially when you consider the anecdotal evidence that suggests a huge popularity for Twitter, the facts on the ground regarding Twitter suggest that this is rather accurate.

Twitter use in Zimbabwe benefited from the free Twitter campaign run by Econet Wireless, the largest broadband service provider in terms of subscriber numbers. During this period, Twitter had a larger presence among Zimbabwean internet users, coming in as the second most popular social media platform.

The end of that promotion is what probably caused the decline in Twitter popularity, though nothing seems to pop up as a clear indication on why Pinterest is growing in popularity. While Facebook, for example, has also been buoyed by preferential access through bundled services, not much noise is made about Pinterest.

So will this ignite a new wave of social media campaigns targeted at Pinterest users? That depends on several factors really. A lot has to be considered such as the type of product or service being promoted, the demographics that support the marketing campaign, and the objectives set for the campaign.

Most of this is easy to communicate through Facebook and its multi-functional approach to the social media experience, as well as its insane popularity. For Pinterest and other platforms like twitter or even Instagram , that might not be so easily executed.

Still, these changes in patterns and popularity will give social media professionals a lot to consider.

Statcounter analyses page views referred to by social media sites through a tracking code attached to over 3 million websites.To find out more about its methodology you can click here. 

7 comments

  1. Frank

    I doubt this is accurate. Pinterest beating Twitter in Zim?? I just am less inclined to believe this.

  2. theoathkeeper

    Ko Instagram ke?

  3. tinm@n

    That already tells me how unreliable this Statscounter company is.

    Forget the fact that hardly anyone speaks of Pinterest.

    Just the socio-economic factors will tell you that Zimbabweans simply cannot afford. Data is expensive and Pinterest is bandwidth intensive.

    Just doesnt add up.

  4. detective sherlock holmes

    Where does whatsapp fit? Isn’t t a social platform too?

  5. Taurai B

    I doubt that Pinterest is more popular than Twitter. You have made the fatal mistake of assuming that the quantity of traffic is proportional to the number of users/visitors. Pinterest is an image intensive site whilst Twitter on the other hand has more textual content, thus you can’t use volumes of traffic to measure popularity on an equal scale.

    The average pinned image is 11KB, whilst a twitter post is at most 140 characters. This means that per post Pinterest uses 80 times more data than Twitter.

    For each 12 items displayed on screen, a visit to Pinterest thus uses a least 1000 times more data than Twitter.

    When this is factored it greatly reduces the popularity on Twitter to the level of Google+ (assuming equal user data per visit ratios).

    Anyway, it’s never a good idea to measure popularity by traffic. You never know there could be 2 heavy Pinterest addicts driving the overall traffic up.

  6. Taurai B

    AMENDED COMMENT:
    I doubt that Pinterest is more popular than Twitter. You have made the fatal mistake of assuming that the quantity of traffic is proportional to the number of users/visitors. Pinterest is an image intensive site whilst Twitter on the other hand has more textual content, thus you can’t use volumes of traffic to measure popularity on an equal scale.

    The average pinned image is 11KB, whilst a twitter post is at most 140 characters. This means that per post Pinterest uses 80 times more data than Twitter.

    For each 12 items displayed on screen, a visit to Pinterest thus uses a least 1000 times more data than Twitter.

    When this is factored in it greatly reduces the popularity of Pinterest to the level of Google+ (assuming equal user data per visit ratios).

    Anyway, it’s never a good idea to measure popularity by traffic. You never know, there could be 2 heavy Pinterest addicts driving the overall traffic up.

    1. tinm@n

      It would be the worst if they base their traffic stats on size-per-request.

      I doubt they are that inept, though I am totally convinced that THEY ARE WRONG, SHOULD NOT BE TRUSTED and SHOULD NEVER BE CONSIDERED AS A RELIABLE SOURCE!

      And yes, I am shouting it out to you TechZim!

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