This was a very interesting exercise so I figured that it might be interesting to expand on this and explore the stats available on South Africa. I’ve now created the first of hopefully a monthly report and you can view the stats in greater detail below, download the PDF version or grab some high-resolution images to use as you see fit.

Because I only had some figures from November 2007 I was only able to do a comparison of the total registered users on Facebook but this will obviously be expanded somewhat next month.

What I did find interesting (even with the limited data) was that the growth rate of registered users on Facebook only grew by 41,680 people in a three month period.

I have no official stats but I know from watching the trends in the past that registered users from SA had been growing at a phenomenal rate and this current figure tells me there is a major slow-down and possibly even a saturation in users.

As a result we dropped from #9 to #10 in the world for registered users while Turkey and France nearly doubled their figures during this same period.

I hope that this information is of value to some of you and I’d love to hear some feedback, if possible.

| View | Upload your own

What if I was his friend, how would I go about adding him?

It’s been a busy few weeks for me but none more than this current week. It seems as if all my efforts the last month or so have all come to a head and I’m pleased to announced the new Planet Apps portal for The Times. Planet Apps is a new site that will house all our online applications and we’ve started this portal with one new website and two Facebook applications.

TimesURL is a port of my Tiny Link project and when I showed the guys here what I did with Tiny Link everyone was impressed. After some planning we decided to port that site to the Avusa stable.

TimesURL has a cool new interface, thanks to Colin’s design skills, and we’ll be rolling this out into the newspaper as well as in other projects we have planned for next year. The integration between online and the newspaper is now seamless and we can direct people reading the paper to the exact location online with a simple 25 character url.

Prior to joining The Times we decided that a Facebook app was on the cards and it’s been on my list of todos for some time. On Tuesday I decided to finally look into doing an application for Facebook and by the end of the day I had completed two.

Developing for the Facebook API was much easier than I thought it would be and while the Facebook Markup Language took a little getting used to I’ve now got the hang of it all.

Our two new applications we have for Facebook include a News and Multimedia application. Here’s a quick breakdown of functionality for each:

News App: Displays a list of the latest news from The Times on your profile page. There is also a new icon in your left-hand navigation and when you click on it you are taken to a canvas page with all the latest news items and a blurb for each.

Multimedia App: The Multimedia application also displays on your profile page but you can actually view the latest video direct from your profile. Clicking on the Times icon in the left-hand navigation bar brings up a detailed page showing you all our latest multimedia with descriptions and images.

I’m really happy to be seeing some of our projects go live because it’s been a long time coming! Head on over to Planet Apps now and see what we’ve been up to.

Paul argues that

“Although Social Media is only just picking up steam here in South Africa, if you read the feeds on blogs and news sites in the United States and Europe it is fairly obvious that the whole thing is running out of steam.”

Now I’m not sure what news sites Paul is subscribed to but the ones I read tell the exact opposite but don’t take my word on it, let the evidence talk.

Robert Scoble, A-List blogger and Vice President of Media Development at PodTech.net, recently argued that social media sites Mahalo, TechMeme, and Facebook are going to kick Google’s butt in four years.

Michael Arrington, another A-Lister and owner of the popular Techcrunch blog, also linked to Scoble’s article and points out that

Scoble argues that the search results from sites such as Mahalo will appeal to more people due to their ability to be socially constructed as opposed to Google’s computer generated results.

While Arrington doesn’t necessarily agree with Scoble he’s also not disagreeing with Scoble’s thinking.

I’m pretty sure that while these are some good examples that Social Media is here to stay many will say that this only relates to the ever changing face of search and doesn’t really equate to any level of social networking or social media.

Silicon Valley start-up investor Esther Dyson appeared on the Charlie Rose show where she discussed her current projects in the technology space. During this interview she was asked if Facebook is the new Google and to that Dyson replied

“[It is] if you think Google is the next Microsoft.” So, is Google the new Microsoft? Dyson said, “It could well be.”

From my perspective I have to say that Social Media is changing the way we communicate on a global level. Search is becoming more relevant because of social media and will continue to do so for many years and social media sites are giving us a platform to communicate, share and evolve.

Paul goes on to claim that

All the new launches are reinventions of Social Media companies that have been around for years now or are simply new applications of existing tools. There is no real innovation in this space. Social Media has climaxed. It is all downhill from here.

Facebook’s recent emailing capabilities allow users to now replace traditional email communication and their Book Swap feature highlights how social media can relate to real-world practical uses so I’m just not sure about this statement either.

Is Social Media dead? I think not.

This also might explain the recent downtime and security issues they encountered!

I’m not yet sure what a Group Contributor should be doing for The Times’ Facebook Group so I’d better check in with the multimedia team and find out what the job entails.

I’m guessing it would have something to do with recruiting new Facebook users to the Group as well as working on content but more will be revealed as and when I know