It is yet another installment of the annual report: “The State of the Internet in Kenya” for the 2016 and just like last year’s report, there are key things to pick up from.
Growth in the various social media platforms
From the report, it was highlighted that more and more Kenyans have signed up for the major social networks, them being Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter and Instagram.
Apparently according to Facebook, there are 6.1 million Kenyans, which is up 1.8 million users registered last year. Twitter’s case is rather interesting; Nendo report puts the number of monthly active users at 2.2 million with a million daily active users. This is up from the 700,000 monthly active users estimated last year.
WhatsApp is an extremely popular chatting platform in Kenya and it is estimated to have 10 million users in Kenya while the likes of Instagram and LinkedIn are estimated to have 3 million and 1.5 million respectively.
Social media had a hand in the spurring of blogs
Blogs have enjoyed a continued show of growth in Kenya and it has been highlighted in the report. According to their findings, the lifestyle category recorded the highest growth (69%) followed by business (46%) and creative writing (36%).
Some notable growths were mentioned thanks to activities in social media. This year, we got to see the temporary shutdown of Chase Bank and one of the reasons put forward by the Central Bank is the role of social media in the whole debacle. “We also saw many new bloggers opting to create business blogs as opposed to other categories like creative writing…” it was highlighted in the report.
They also found out that there has been a general decline in readership in blogs under the political category (47%) and entertainment (37%). The explanation put forth is that the traffic is being diverted elsewhere (Facebook videos and YouTube).
