Hi -  james from mjelly.com here with another mobile 2.0 service of the week here at Germany’s no.1 mobile site.  We kicked off this series with a look at the best mobile services with a German flava – the free sms service mjoy.com, the mobile dating site flirtomatic.de and the mobile social networks itsmy and peperonity.  This week we’re moving to the continent of Africa and one of the most amazing mobile services out there – Mxit.  What makes Mxit so interesting is that it is one of the world’s first mobile startups to emerge from Africa and is also doing things like mobile education which no other mobile service has really begun to develop.

Mxit is a mobile chat and community platform coming out of South Africa

Mxit was probably the first mobile community platform to get mass market traction outside of Asia.  It was launched in 2005 in South Africa and quickly became the single biggest social network/ community service – bigger than facebook and myspace.  The service is basically a messaging platform including text/ IM,  file sharing, photo and video messaging.   This chat functionality can be extended to groups and ‘rooms’ which brands, music artists and other servic3e providers can manage over the network, a bit like myspace.  The service also interfaces with all the major IM networks (e.g. gtalk, yahoo messenger, MSN, ICQ).

Mxit continues to show really amazing growth in users and usage:

• 18 m member, growing at nearly 20k per day
• 17m daily user logins
• 250 m messages sent each day
• average user logs in seven times a day and spends an hour on the service

They have a range of different versions depending on the type of handset – so it covers the full range of users.  Mxit pro is the basic app which works on most java handsets, Mxit elite is for smartphones and Mxit Blackberry works on RIM devices. They also recently released a new version for the iphone and its quickly become the most popular app on the South Africa iphone app store.

Combination of mobile advertising and virtual currency business models

Because Mxit has been operating for nearly 5 years now and reached critical mass early on  it’s had a while to build its business model.  Firstly they have developed a range of  advertising formats that go well beyond simple text or banner ads.  The main ad unit that they offer is a splash screen which opens on startup – creating a very powerful channel for communicating with users.  The splash screen can be linked to a call to action such as a link.  The advertiser can target these ads by age or gender and choose how to display them for example on specific days or times.

Brands can also host their own chat zones or portals on the service and communicate with users that sign up to them, sending messages and content items or run competitions.  Advertisers using this option have included Peugot and Samsung.  The petrol station operator Engen also ran a campaign with its own hosted zone on Mxit which included a real world element – keywords placed on posters in station forecourts which enabled users to download ringtones, screensavers and other content.   10,000 people added the contact on Mxit and over 3 million messages appeared in the chat zone.  The campaign drove over 12,000+ downloads in 6 weeks.  In a lot of ways South Africa is way ahead of the US and Europe in terms of mobile advertising and this is a great example of that.

Mxit Moola is Mxit’s internal currency which can be used for premium features like chat-rooms, “skins” and other virtual goods as well as for media such as music tracks.  Users buy the currency using premium SMS.  Brands can also give away Mxit moola as part of their ad campaigns.

Mxit pioneering mobile education
The thing that really distinguishes mxit from other mobile communications services like mig33, Nimbuzz or ebuddy is that they are starting to develop services that go way beyond communications and chat.  For example, The Department of Education in South Africa recently launched a pilot project to deliver mathematics tutorials using Mxit.  This project, called “Imfundo Yethu Imfundo Yami” took 260 pupils to receive maths information over the Mxit network.   The children received maths questions over Mxit and had to provide solutions back, with the teachers working with them to help them.

As well as doing things like entertainment, fart noises and chat mobile startups need to address the big problems in the world like education and it is great to see that Mxit is doing this.

You can download mxit and other free mobile applications at mjelly.com (PC) and m.mjelly.com (mobile)

Author: James Coops has worked in the mobile internet industry since the dark days of ‘wap’ all the way through to the present day. In 2001 he developed one of the first mobile web sites to allow downloading of content over the mobile internet (previously this was done over SMS). He then spent 7 years working all over the world as a consultant for mobile operators, media companies, service providers and investors including the likes of O2, Vodafone, Telecom Italia Mobile, Discovery Networks, FIFA and Goldman Sachs. James has also written for Techcrunch UK, Mobile Industry Review and New Media Age Magazine and runs a directory of mobile sites and applications at http://mjelly.com (PC) and http://m.mjelly.com (mobile) and blogs at http://blog.mjelly.com. He loves Germany, especially the Weiss bier!