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Latest Social Media in numbers

Marlon — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 15:52:08 +0000

AS we continue seeing the rise and growth of Social Media accross various industries, it is clear that we are seeing large volumes joining the bandwagon. Below we share some of the statistics proving that Social Media is still breaking ground. How long this will last will depend on how its being used by businesses, non-profit organisations, governments, communities and youth at large.

Facebook:
- It is estimated that Facebook has reached over 500million users.
- People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook and the average user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events
- More than 500,000 active applications are currently on the Facebook Platform
- Approximately 250 million users log into Facebook daily
- More than 100 million active users currently accessing the site via mobile technology.

Twitter:
- Twitter indicated that it has more than 190 million users tweeting with more than 65 million tweets a day. (South Africa has 55,000 active twitter users as indicated in a recent study.)
- The use of an open API ensures that 75% of Twitter traffic is generated from outside of twitter.com
- Approximately 65% of the world’s top 100 companies have a twitter account
- Twitter’s search engine gets more than 600 million queries a day. Monthly, this is proportionately more than Bing and Yahoo.
- There are more than 70,000 applications currently using Twitters API

MXit (South African based Mobile Social Network):
- More than 20 million users in South Africa growing at 4000 new users per day.
- Estimated 25 million users log into MXit daily
- Approximately 350 million messages are share via MXit per day.

The above is just an indication of how Social Media is still growing and being adopted by users hungry for sharing and engaging via the web and increasingly more so via mobile.

Reconstructed Living Lab: supporting drug users and families through co-operative counselling using mobile phone technology

Marlon — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:28:31 +0000

Latest research by RLabs and the JamiiX Mobile Drug Counselling support system provided the following evaluation:

- In practical terms, the advisors have the capacity to help more people (n = 27) in a two-hour session than advisors at helplines (n = 4).20 The DAS system aggregates the conversations for the advisors, allowing them to respond to the requests more easily and faster.
- The DAS system enables multiple advisors to assist during a given session.
- When an advisor does not have the necessary experience or skills to deal with a case, it can easily be transferred to someone with the necessary skills.
- The advisor receiving the reassigned conversation can view previous conversations with the client, so questions need not be duplicated.
- The advisor can refer a person in need to any other organisation, and maintain a help directory of available services.
- The service proved to be particularly useful for families of drug users, and they were offered family sessions and help if required

The full research paper was publsihed in the South African Family Practice journal.

RLabs Vision and Mission Statements

Marlon — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:56:11 +0000

Last week the RLabs team went on a day retreat to plan for the future as well as looking at the Vision and Mission of this vibrant and growing movement. Below is the Vision and Mission of the Reconstructed Living Lab that captures the heart of what we stand for:

Vision:
To impact, empower and reconstruct local and global communities through innovation

Mission:
- To create an interaction space for collaborative design, creation, dissemination and application of knowledge
- To develop and empower champions in communities through innovation
- To give hope and make a difference
- To be leaders in innovation continuously adding value

RLabs joins Youth Research Partners

Marlon — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:12:03 +0000

This week was another exciting week for the RLabs family as we officially joined the Youth Research Partners Network. Youth Research Partners are a global partnership of youth research and marketing specialists in Africa, The Americas, Europe and Asia. We collaborate to share insights, best practices and better serve clients. We are really honoured to be part of this dynamic and excited partnership and looking forward sharing more about this collaboration that will change the future of youth marketing. For more information about Youth Research Partners at an upcoming Young Ideas Salon webinar and read the official RLabs announcement here.

RLabs features in The Star Newspaper

Marlon — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 10:40:58 +0000

Celebrating the partnership between RLabs and MXit during the Drug Awareness Week, The Star newspaper featured the Angel project that was initiated by RLabs. This service is FREE to all MXit users and provides them the opportunity to access information and LIVE counselling in the area of substance abuse. Read more about the LIVE Counselling Service on Technology for Community Empowerment.

Virtual Rehab on MXit

Marlon — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:32:06 +0000

The collaboration platform Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) has created a live counselling portal, JamiiX, on mobile social network MXit called ‘Angel’. According to RLabs, the portal is for South African youth in need of substance abuse counselling, and is being released in conjunction with Drug Awareness Week (21 to 27 June). Currently Angel have over 40,000 subscribers with more than 1,000 of those subscribers accessing the LIVE Counselling services via their mobile phones. More about this collaboration can be read in the IT Web (22 June 2010) article.

Mobile Phones for Social Change reaches 130,000

Marlon — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:27:36 +0000

With the celebration of drug awareness week in conjunction with MXit, RLabs increased its counsellor capacity and had a massive growth in the Angel user numbers. Angel is an information portal providing support to users in the areas of substance abuse, abuse, depression, stress and coping. Today the Angel information service passed the 40,000 subscriber barrier and in conjunction with RED HIV/AIDS information service (60,000+ users) by Cell Life and our various Mobile Counselling services (30,000+ subscribers accross services) RLabs with its partners have reached over 130,000 users via mobile phones for Social Change. This is only the beginning as many more services will be deployed over the next few weeks (via MXit and JamiiX) to bring about social change in Communities in Tension.

Source: Technology for Community Empowerment

Etv Tech Report Comes To RLABS

kingross — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 14:32:37 +0000

On Saturday Etv Tech Report (Etv) visited RLABS to do a story and some filming on what we are doing and how we are using Social Media to empower our communities. They arrived to at RLABS round about 1.30pm and started almost immediately with the interviews and gathering information as to how RLABS came into existence.

They did an interview with Marlon Parker the founder member of RLABS and then later requested to interview some of the staff and management team. They selected Craig Ross (Innovations Manager at RLABS) and Monique Ross (She’s The Geek, his wife) to tell them more about their stories and how RLABS had helped them in their recovery.

Craig and Monique both come out of a lifestyle of gangsterism and drugs and have amazing testimonies. Most important of all they are using what they have learnt to help others that have been in the same boat they (on drugs) have been. Look out for Etv’s new show and the story of RLABS. Etv will be back at RLABS on Saturday to do a story of Marlon Parker’s new initiative: JamiiX.

Mobile Journalism with youth

Marlon — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:24:37 +0000

The collaboration between RLabs and Cape Community Newspapers to bring Mobile Journalism to the community have been going well with the last few weeks having a focus on technologies such as Twitter, Facebook and blogging to share stories via their mobile phones. The learners from 3 high schools in Cape Town have been taught some basic journalism skills the first few months ranging from writing, editing, ethics to photography. The next few weeks we will focus on how the learners can use their mobile phones to share stories in real time using available technologies such as Social Networking tools.

Source: Technology for Community Empowerment

Visit by BBC Digital Planet

Marlon — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:11:40 +0000

A few weeks ago the RLabs family was visited by the amazing BBC Digital Planet team who took a tour of the Cape Flats and learned more about how we are using Technoloy and Social Innovation to make a social change in the lives of communities in tension. We were honoured having Gareth and Colin with us who gave many of the RLabs team an opportunity to share about their experiences. You can listen to the podcast online on their Digital Planet show that aired 8 June 2010.