Mxit's rise and demise

RedViking said:
The difference is that Mxit would have been a MASSIVE success. But due to no vision they went down quickly.
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The problem they faced was a proper business model for the service going forward. Messaging became a free service globally. There was no way they would have succeeded if they did not get rid of they pay model and focus on other sources of income, such as advertising. Even this may not have generated sufficient income for them to survive. I think their death was inevitible.
 
Swa said:
I'm still waiting for the next open standard that invites people from other platforms rather than competing with them. Will probably be decentralised.
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It’s called email.

Bighit said:
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.
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No, they underestimated IMs. BBM killed them then Blackberry killed itself.
WhatsApp existed but initially it was iPhone only and you had to pay.
For a long time MXit’s only competitor was Mig33.

supersunbird said:
No, the fall was no smartphone app.
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They did smartphone apps but it was too late and not worth it.
Those with Blackberry had BBM and maybe WhatsApp.
Those with Android Or iOS had WhatsApp only.

Leno said:
I remember the horrible IOS beta they put out, it was like they had no UI people
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Well iPhone’s weren’t really a thing then locally, even Telkom Mobile(8ta) didn’t exist at the time.
Mobile data was stupid expensive and BIS was worth it at R60/month.
 
I never used Mixit, as I was using MSN messager like all the cool kids.

Most of us went straight to whatsapp after that.

We are mostly on signal and discord now
 
One of the rich kids in my class had an iPhone in 2008.

I distinctly remember him showing me how garbage the Mxit app was compared to the other apps on his phone.
 
Swa said:
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.
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Not sure what you mean by that. E.g. Telegram is open and anyone can build an app that hooks into it.


In terms of already installed and everyone has access to, would expect RCS to at one point dominate, it will mostly be a question of desktop/other device integration, I'm expecting someone to make an app for that that will sync it across devices and allow people to leave a spare phone at home or something to always send through.
 
Sapphiron said:
I never used Mixit, as I was using MSN messager like all the cool kids.
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MXit used Jabber, if I remember. It also had a PC app at some point.
konfab said:
One of the rich kids in my class had an iPhone in 2008.

I distinctly remember him showing me how garbage the Mxit app was compared to the other apps on his phone.
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Sure it wasn’t a knock off? The 2nd model started with 3rd party apps.
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Sapphiron said:
Mixit is a cautionary tale of innovation turning into arrogance
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I don’t think the original team stuck around, if I remember I think @Rouxenator knows them.

Johnatan56 said:
Not sure what you mean by that. E.g. Telegram is open and anyone can build an app that hooks into it.
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Not end-to-end encrypted.
Signal tried the federated approach and well they decided never again.
 
It started to die off around the latter part of 2010 if I remember correctly, its peak was probably 2005- early 2009.
 
JuliusSeizure said:
It started to die off around the latter part of 2010 if I remember correctly, its peak was probably 2005- early 2009.
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Seems about right.
Motorola Razr, Motorola v360, Samsung E250 basically all went away with the launch of the BB Curve 8520.
 
Last edited:
It was clear at the time that the company had moved from a small, highly-motivated team to a bloated, arrogant company, which, although bought at excessive price, was failing to deliver on even basic working solutions. They had a whole bunch of devs on hand, but apps didn't work and their e-commerce platform just never happened.
 
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