Mxit is no longer South Africa’s largest social network.

This is according to a report called 'SA Social Media Landscape 2014' from World Wide Worx and Fuseware that is to be released at the end of 2013.

The researchers say that Mxit, which has previously held the number one spot with 9.5 million active users in South Africa now has 7.4 million users.

The researchers go on to say that Facebook has become the biggest social network in the country with 9.4 million active users, up from 6.8 million users a year ago

World Wide Worx and Fuseware have said in a statement that Mxit has started to feel the effects of competing with other instant messaging services such as WhatsApp and 2Go.

However, vice president for communications at Mxit, Sarah Rice, has told ITWeb Africa that Mxit’s decision to change its reporting methodology for measuring users has led to the significant dip indicated by World Wide Worx and Fuseware.

“The numbers are correct but I will tell you the reason for that,” she said.

“At the beginning of the year Mxit changed its methodology to measure users over a 90 day period to 30 days, this resulted in the drop in our numbers,” she explained.

“If we measure our numbers over 90 days, we would still have more than 9 million users. We’ve been completely stable,” she added.

In the meantime, other results of the yet-to-be-released study say that Twitter saw the highest percentage growth among social networks in South Africa, as figures point to a rise from 2.4 million users to 5.5 million over the year: growth of 129%.

Meanwhile, Google+ has remained the laggard among social networks in South Africa, with only 466 000 active users, the researchers have revealed.

“The most significant finding, aside from the growth itself, was the extent to which social networks are being used on phones in South Africa,” said Arthur Goldstuck, managing director of World Wide Worx, in a statement.

“No less than 87% of Facebook users and 85% of Twitter users are accessing these tools on their phones,” he said.