A Rough Breakdown of Foursquare Usage in South Africa

We constantly get asked about Foursquare usage in South Africa. However, due to the very private nature of the platform, it is very difficult for us to get any usable information with regards to absolute user numbers, top venues and checkins .

However, we have noticed that a significant proportion of people connect their Foursquare accounts into Twitter, to auto-update their statuses when checking in to places.

We have analyzed every single tweet in South Africa for the past 6 months containing Foursquare checkins and mayorships, and found the following figures:

Total number of check-ins and mayorships: 45000 over the last 6 months

Total number of unique users checking in: 7800

Top locations being checked into, country wide:

Location	Checkins published to Twitter
Neighbourhood (163 Long St, Dorp St, Cape Town)	179
Rafiki’s (First Floor, 13B Kloof Nek Road, Tamboerskloof, Cape Town)	158
Tennyson Ave (Tennyson Ave, Senderwood, Germiston)	154
Home	150
Mercury Live (43 De Villiers Rd, Cape Town)	146
The Gardens Restaurant, Company’s Gardens (54 Queen Victoria St, Cape Town)	137
OR Tambo International Airport (JNB	112
Virgin Active	109
Standard Bank Head Office (5 Simmonds Street, Johannesburg)	67
Rlabs	66
Ster Kinekor	62
Wynberg (Wynberg, Southern Suburbs)	58
Craig’s home ( Sunningdale)	58
Mugg & Bean	56
King Shaka International Airport	51
Cape Town International Airport	51
Virgin Active (35 Melrose Blvd, Melrose Arch, Johannesburg)	50
DRAFTFCB Johannesburg (164 Katherine Street, Sandton)	50
Planet Fitness	48
OR Tambo International Airport (JNB) (Cnr R21 & R24, Kempton Park)	44

Neighbourhood, a restaurant / bar in Cape Town, has been the single most checked into place in the country, as extrapolated via Twitter results.

Rafikis comes in spot number 2, which is also a bar in Cape Town. It seems that Cape Town, as shown by Fuseware’s Twitter stats from last year, also seems to be the early adopter crowd for Foursquare.

Beyond that, we have a collection of pubs, restaurants, gyms and airports that trail close behind.

Top 5 users Checking In

Twitter User	Checkins
@lindirudnicki	369
@siphelelevundla	270
@arielkatzen	246
@simonjgr	234
@mhlunguoluhlaza	200

There are a couple of die-hard Foursquare users already, with @lindirudnicki coming at the top – averaging two checkins per day for the last 6 months.

Traffic Statistics for Foursquare: (excluding those using the Foursquare app)

	Country	Worldwide
Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	24K	6.8M
Unique visitors (users)	18K	4.5M
Reach	0.4%	0.3%
Page views	120K	37M
Total visits	32K	9.4M
Avg visits per cookie	1.3	1.4
Avg time on site	4:50	4:00

Audience Interests for Foursquare:(excluding those using the Foursquare app)

Interest	Affinity
Restaurants	19.7x
Food & Drink	6.3x
Microblogging	6.2x
Blogging Resources & Services	5.1x
Advertising & Marketing	5.1x
Beauty & Fitness	4.6x
Specialty Travel	4.3x
Business & Industrial	4.3x
Gifts & Special Event Items	4.2x
Consumer Electronics	4.2x

So What Are the Absolute Numbers?
We can make an educated guess taking into account multiple data sources, that there are any number between 30000 and 50000 users in South Africa on Foursquare. Although this shows that the network still has a way to go before it becomes mainstream, explosive viral growth is not out of the question. The active number of Twitter users in May of last year was given as 55000, and this number has grown nearly 10 fold since then.

Important Note

This data does not in any way represent the overall usage of Foursquare in SA. It shows how Foursquare is being used by everyone in the country that has connected their Foursquare accounts to Twitter, and who accesses Foursquare on a browser instead of the application. However, we can still make some useful extrapolations from this data.

If you need more data for a specific venue, please contact us.