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Black Internet-user numbers skyrocket

By Tracy Burrows, ITWeb contributor.
Johannesburg, 16 Oct 2003

Search portal Ananzi says browsing by SA`s black online users has grown sharply, to 30%.

Ananzi, which records over 10 million page impressions per month, bases its finding on an informal, voluntary users` survey posted on the site recently.

"The Ananzi survey was put online as a purely voluntary exercise, with no rewards or incentives, yet yielded more than 6 000 responses," says Ananzi MD Mark Buwalda. "We are running this survey on Ananzi continuously over a period of one year, and chose to collate the survey results over three separate time frames to check on reliability. We found the feedback remarkably consistent each time."

Buwalda says the most startling statistic was in the optional `ethnic origin` category, where 30% of those who opted to answer, selected "African", indicating a "huge and rapid growth" in South African black Internet users. The Caucasian response in this category was still largest at 51%.

Other statistics revealed that on Ananzi, male users are in the majority by 60% to 40%; average age group responses show 42% aged 22 to 31 and 30% aged 32 to 45, with very little response from the teenage bracket.

Another point of interest was Ananzi`s business/personal user split of 59% personal to 41% business.

"We`re very happy with these results," says Buwalda, "not only because they show we are catering for a larger public, but also because we are seeing an improved spread across the different ethnic groups, making the Internet a more representative medium in SA."

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