The survey, which was part of the Sunday Times Generation Next Survey, interviewed over 5800 youth from six provinces.<\/p>\n
MXit took first place for best cellphone application and best social networking application. However, South African youth could handle living without it — family came first.<\/p>\n
This was revealed when participants were asked what they can’t live without. Cellphones ranked second, followed by money, parents and MXit.<\/p>\n
“This shows a well-grounded South African youth population.”<\/p>\n
MXit founder and CEO Herman Heunis said MXit was a true South African success story, attracting between 25,000 and 28,000 new registrations every day.<\/p>\n
“Its users send 10 times more messages per day, than the total global Tweets sent per day,” he said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The application has over 20 million users.<\/p>\n
MXit first introduced mobile instant messaging to the country in 2003 with users sending messages at a fraction of the cost of the traditional sms.<\/p>\n