Category: Social Media
Technikari Ep 5: Sasai Watch is set to take on YouTube in Africa. Will it work?
[PODCAST] Cassava Fintech International will be taking on YouTube in Africa with the addition of Sasai Watch on its super app. Will it work?
Sasai to take on YouTube & others in Africa with Sasai Watch
Cassava will be taken on YouTube and other content platforms in Africa with a new product called Sasai Watch.
Facebook unveils its 2020 Africa year in review
Facebook has unvieled it’s Africa 2020 “A Year in Review” which looks back on all the key investments and work the company has on the continent.
Facebook may be forced to sell off WhatsApp and Instagram
The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit yesterday that may force Facebook to sell off WhatsApp and Instagram as independent businesses.
Top 200 most influential African women on Twitter features 2 Zimbabweans
Jessie Majome and Linda Masarira are on Women in Africa & Smart Data Power’s Top 200 Most Influential African Women on Twitter rankings
Sasai’s African & Talented promotion extended due to public demand
Cassava has extended Sasai’s African & Talented promotion to the 29th of November 2020 due to demand.
A case of living by social media: the very public death of Ginimbi
Just as much as Ginimbi lived his life on and for social media, his death has been on every post almost- are we now junkies?
A list of Sasai features that were promised at launch but never came to be
On August 1 2019, Cassava Smartech drew the curtains on their newest shiny object – Sasai. They pitched a social payments app that would combine the best of messaging and payments rolled into one. That vision is yet to materialise, and a big reason for that is because many features that were promised at the […]
YouTube’s Creator Academy has courses for content creators looking to grow their channel
I’ve had a YouTube channel for the better part of 6-7 months now and whilst I wasn’t posting content to it seriously, I decided to to do so. There was one problem, I had no idea where to start and apart from reading a few articles on the interwebs most of the stuff has been […]
MTNs “Sasai” partners MusicTime to offer free music streaming in the messenger
MTNs messaging application, Ayoba (think Sasai) recently announced a partnership with MusicTime that will allow Ayoba users to listen to music at no cost from within the messenger. MusicTime in Ayoba (MTiA) as the feature will be called is live for Ayoba users in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Rwanda, Uganda, Congo Brazzaville, Guinee, Guinee […]
Facebook partners with the NBS Zim to increase blood donations in the country
Facebook in partnership with the National Blood Service Zimbabwe (NBSZ) have announced a new feature to encourage people to donate blood. Starting today, Zimbabweans who are between 18-65 years old, will have the option to sign up as blood donors on Facebook, be notified when blood donor centres near them have an urgent need for […]
Win US$1K by composing a song for EcoCash
EcoCash is hosting a social media singing competition that will see the winner walk away with US$1000. The song will probably be used for marketing purposes as the entries that will be considered should be themed around living life the EcoCash way. So what do you do, if you want to participate? Follow these steps; […]
ZANU-PF preparing to wage war on social media
ZANU-PF has announced they will be creating provincial social media teams. The duty of these teams according to a Chronicle report will be to “defend the party and government programs on social media.” This is a pretty interesting development and when you consider the party’s image online, it’s surprising ZANU-PF didn’t do this sooner. According […]
Ministry of Health’s Twitter account has been put under temporary restrictions
Yet another Zimbabwean government-affiliated Twitter account has been placed under temporary restrictions. This time it’s the Ministry of Health’s Twitter account. Earlier this week, the account of Information Secretary Nick Mangwana was placed under temporary restrictions. The assumption of that ban was that it may have had something to do with Twitter’s fake followers. The […]
Chin’ono & Ngarivhume banned from social media after getting bail
Yesterday, prominent journalist Hopewell Chin’ono and Jacob Ngarivhume who had been arrested on the 20th of July were finally granted bail. Apart from the $10 000 & $ 50 000 bail, instructions to report to the police 2-3 a week respectively, and surrendering their passports, the two were also banned from using social media. Yuhp, […]
Nick Mangwana’s Twitter account may have been restricted because of fake followers
Nick Mangwana’s Twitter account has been placed under temporary restrictions because of some “unusual activity”. This is the second time that a government-affiliated account has prompted action from Twitter. A couple of weeks ago the account for the Ministry of Information was suspended by Twitter. The Ministry’s account appeared to have been suspended because a […]
ZimPapers TV Network & KeYonna TV shortlisted for TV licences by BAZ
Remember those 12 TV channels that were supposed to start airing content this in August? Well, August is here (about to end actually) and the airwaves have not been lit up by new channels. By the end of the year, in fact, by August, our aim is to have at least six independent television channels. […]
Sasai turns to content creators and influencers to draw users
Sasai has struggled to keep users once they’ve downloaded the app. Numerous features have been added and they have worked on the app for over a year now without any mainstream success. Getting influencers on board The newest acquisition method Sasai is using is getting local content creators and influencers to start using the application. […]
Ministry of Information Twitter account suspended again
Back in April, the Ministry of Information’s Twitter account was suspended. Whilst it never became clear why the account was taken down – it’s happened again. Yes, the government’s official mouthpiece has been suspended twice in four months now. What did they do this time? Similar to what we think happened last time, the account […]
Strive Masiyiwa announces imminent launch of Sasai Pay & Content Platform
Strive Masiyiwa took to his Facebook to announce that Sasai is launching a payment service in a week’s time. In his FB post, he talked about Sasai Pay in the context of consumers buying audio/video/music content online to solve the problems of piracy. In a post published yesterday, Econet Global’s Chairman announced that the platform […]
Facebook’s integration of Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger takes a step further
We’ve written about Facebook Portal before. Essentially this is Facebook’s grand plan to make sure that their social media platforms (Instagram and Facebook) and their messaging application are integrated. This integration seems to be finally happening. As reported by the Verge, some Instagram users are being met by the pop-up below when they open the […]
TikTok accused of breaching user privacy yet again
An investigation by the Wall Street Journal recently revealed that TikTok was unlawfully collecting data from Android users for over a year. The application allegedly collected MAC addresses enabling identifying and tracking of users outside the TikTok. Google and Apple haven’t allowed applications to read the MAC address on Android & iOS devices. TikTok allegedly […]
#ZimbabweanLivesMatter trends on Twitter as Zimbabweans take their protest to social media
On the 31st of July Zimbabweans were supposed to take to the streets and protest against bad governance and corruption… The 31st came and went but the streets were empty. Zimbabweans could not protest because the government banned the protests. Why? Well, different government officials said different things. Home affairs Minister Kazembe Kazembe said the […]
Nyaradzo Group has launched a Facebook chatbot called Sahwi
Nyaradzo Group has recently introduced Sahwi, a chatbot that was developed to enhance its customer’s experience when interacting with the business digitally. Sahwi is available to assist clients on the Nyaradzo Group Facebook page. The Facebook bot is an automatic, menu-driven, quick response chat. The menu options guide clients on questions that they can ask […]
Instagram is rolling out a fundraising feature
Instagram announced that they will rolling out a way for users on the platform to fundraise. This could be for a personal cause, for someone they may know going through a difficult time, a small business or any number of initiatives. The reasons behind this decision seem to be the coronavirus and social movements that […]
Hopewell Chin’ono’s Twitter account deleted following his arrest
Yesterday, prominent Journalist Hopewell Chin’ono was arrested by law enforcement agents at his house. Shortly before his arrest the journalist tweeted that the law enforcement agents had made their way to his residence and were harassing his workers. Shortly after his arrest, his account which wasn’t verified was taken down Twitter users going to the […]
Verified Twitter accounts hacked in a crypto-scam
Last night Twitter verified accounts were hacked, these accounts included those of prominent international figures and companies Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Uber and more. The hack left the following post (which had a link): Twitter moved to remove the tweets and suspended some functionality to verified accounts. The initial wave of […]
WhatsApp Business is getting QR Codes, aiming to help businesses extend their reach
WhatsApp recently introduced QR Code contact sharing. They are extending that same service to users on WhatsApp Business. The function is pretty much the same as for sharing contacts. The slight difference in application here is that QR codes for business are, according to WhatsApp, a digital front door. Businesses can display QR Codes outside […]
Twitter is apparently working on a subscription service
Twitter seems to be working on some sort of subscription service model. A job listing on Twitter Careers is looking for a senior software engineer for a new project called Gryphon. “We are a new team, codenamed Gryphon. We are building a subscription platform, one that can be reused by other teams in the future. […]
How close is Facebook to integrating WhatsApp and Instagram in a cross-chat platform?
Last year, Chief Executive of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg said that he wanted to put all their social media holdings under one umbrella. Instagram and WhatsApp have, for the most part, been their own separate entities. The apps themselves are distinctly different from each other but their parent company, according to NY Times, says the underlying […]