Mxit's rise and demise

[Hanno Labuschagne]

Mxit's rise and demise

Former Mxit CEO Alan Knott-Craig said misunderstanding what Mxit really was, and not building a modern smartphone app from scratch, resulted in the demise of the messaging platform.

Launched in 2003 by Clockspeed Mobile, Mxit offered an affordable alternative to costly SMSes for people to communicate over mobile networks.

The application was particularly popular among teenagers and for most of them it was their communication platform of choice.

 

[Kodi]

aslr

 

[boobza]

Meanwhile AKC Jr said this in 2012:

More About Mxit: Africa's Largest Social Network - Forbes India

The CEO of Mxit, Africa's largest social network, tells Forbes India that they target the bottom of the pyramid and has 55 million users across 120 countries

www.forbesindia.com

 

[Flippy]

Wow , that dude has now run 3 companies into the ground.

Will probably be put in charge of eskom or saa next.

 

[supersunbird]

Got some ass thanks to mxit.

 

[RedViking]

News about more than a decade too late.

Next,

BBM

 

[Progenix Oj101]

Got some ass thanks to mxit.

Got married thanks to Mxit

 

[backstreetboy]

Preferred mig33 because it had free sms messages etc.

 

[Johnvgb]

“At the core we just did not understand what Mxit was,” Knott-Craig said.

 

[Willie Trombone]

Meanwhile AKC Jr said this in 2012:

View attachment 1068565

More About Mxit: Africa's Largest Social Network - Forbes India

The CEO of Mxit, Africa's largest social network, tells Forbes India that they target the bottom of the pyramid and has 55 million users across 120 countries

www.forbesindia.com

Nice, throwing shade on his dad's operation after dad bankrolled his business LMAO

 

[Willie Trombone]

“At the core we just did not understand what Mxit was,” Knott-Craig said.

Imagine raking that kind of money in and looking at it and saying "what is it even?"
IOW we got lucky

 

[Swa]

At the core they didn't understand what a smartphone was. Anybody could have told them in 2011 it was too late to start a smartphone app.

I'm still waiting for the next open standard that invites people from other platforms rather than competing with them. Will probably be decentralised.

 

[pks]

In retrospect, Knott-Craig said "Mxit was a dating app." And yet, Mxit was killed by BBM and Whatsapp which are NOT dating apps. Shows how much he understood then and how much he understands now.

 

[Gravedigger]

Ah, the good old of mxit.. I remember the times where you could play HTML type games, the was this one that called "Moonbase"? Had moonbuggies, etc. Type of strategy game

 

[Bighit]

I think the fall was that when WhatsApp came out, it integrated with your phone book automatically, where adding contacts on mxit was a manual process.

 

[supersunbird]

I think the fall was that when WhatsApp came out, it integrated with your phone book automatically, where adding contacts on mxit was a manual process.

No, the fall was no smartphone app.

 

[Leno]

I remember the horrible IOS beta they put out, it was like they had no UI people

 

[rvZA]

Not a single app or website, for that matter, has a lifetime guarantee. They will all eventually meet their demise. Technology keeps changing. Someone will bring something new, easier, better to the table and existing services will gradually die down. It happened before. It happens today and it will continue happening in future.

 

[j4ck455]

Wow , that dude has now run 3 companies into the ground.

Will probably be put in charge of eskom or saa next.

Those SOEs are already disasters, if you're going to get AKC Jr to ruin a company, choose one that is currently successful.

That said, there are some other SOEs I can think of that need to be completely wiped out (where AKC Jr could really accelerate things), SAPO and SABC come to mind.

 

[rvZA]

No, the fall was no smartphone app.

Agreed, but I think it was also their greed in terms of generating income. Even if they did have a mobile app, services like FB Messanger, Whatsapp or Telegram would have killed them off.