The insanely boring life…

It has occurred to me from the beginning of this year that the presence of South Africans on the web has been increasing dramatically.

A year ago, even , most people would not have been able to tell you what MySpace is, and now regular South Africans are already debating whether Facebook is better than MySpace. The implications of what I have just stated are astronomical.

First thing to be affected will be the way people socialize. With Facebook gaining popularity with more than 120 000 South African members already, one can certainly imagine teens communicating with each other in this way. Not to mention the fact that Facebook’s High School Networking System has pioneered a way school friends can communicate with each other.

With more people moving online to communicate, Telkom has to change its act. It is already doing that, in fact. They have price reductions coming in August and that is a move in the right direction, after years of trying to milk every cent out of a struggling South Africa.

I am not an economy boffin so I will not say much regarding it,  but with more people buying into ADSL and therefore turning to the internet to shop and sell their goods and exposing their business to a wider and potentially international market, one can only imagine the implications.

So what is the future of South Africa and its presence on the Internet? Well, we don’t know for sure, but if the direction it is currently heading in any indication, then we can be sure that South Africa will finally be able to stand on its own and not just be part of “Africa” (or as the Americans love to say, “I’m going to Africa,” referring, in fact, to South Africa).