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Keeping
up with the Jukwas, Twitter goes mainstream: 2013 tech review (Social
Media)
Tendai Mupaso, Technology Zimbabwe
November 19, 2013
View
this article on the Technology Zimbabwe website
2013 has been
seen Zimbabwe explode with breakthrough after breakthrough in technology.
A lot has happened with new innovations taking root, changing our
lives in the process. As we draw closer to curtains down for 2013,
this will is the first in a series of review of headlining tech
issues that took place in 2013 starting with social media.
2013 has been
a great year for social media users and enthusiasts alike. 2013
was the most entertaining, engaging and valuable year in social
media in Zimbabwe. Electioneering, classified expose, commerce,
and the usual attention seeking were all part of the social media
mix that made social media in Zimbabwe memorable in 2013.
Keeking
up with the Jukwas
The Jukwas are
by far the biggest social media export to date. Before their fall
from grace, the “estranged couple”, especially Baba
Jukwa, kept Zimbabwe locked with stunning revelations I dare not
mention here. The ZANU PF mole leaked everything from alleged corruption,
election fraud, the president’s phone number went as low as
revealing the HIV status of political enemies. Baba Jukwa built
a reputation so much that local media ran on his every revelation
and in retrospect, it was probably silly to use a Baba Jukwa’s
Facebook poll as a prediction of the real election. MDCs Facebook
election victory was reversed on the ground blowing Baba Jukwa from
the highs of a global sensation back to earth competing with the
likes of Masasi epaFacebook for attention.
Baba Jukwa is
still elusive but no longer has the hard hitting pre-election election
revelations that brought him 400,000 likes and put him on them most
wanted list with a reported $300,000 bounty on his head.
Twitter
becomes mainstream in Zimbabwe
Although no
official or reliable stats are available on Twitter use in Zimbabwe,
Twitter has undoubtedly migrated from being Zimbabwe’s unfavourite
social network to stealing our attention from Facebook. Obviously
Twitter is not as big as Facebook in Zimbabwe but it has definitely
overtaken Linkedin which has over 200,000 in Zimbabwean.
Before, Twitter
was to a greater extent elitist with very few of the ordinary folk
on the platform, but now the platform is now mainstream and everyone
knows what hashtags and handles are.
With Twitter
it’s never about the numbers but rather the quality of engagement.
Thanks to award winning crowd sourcing platforms like @263chat,
Zimbabwean engagement on Twitter is predominately progressive compared
to the content found on Facebook.
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