Shock jock Gareth Cliff has attracted just shy of 80,000 followers on WeChat in South Africa, but this may not be enough to make a serious local dent against other social networks.

Former morning drive radio host of South African national music station 5FM, Gareth Cliff, left the station at the end of March to launch his own online radio station dubbed ‘CliffCentral.com’.
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On his 5FM show, Cliff gained a reputation for pushing the boundaries of free speech, often landing himself in trouble with South Africa’s broadcasting complaints commission.

And he has continued that brand in a more vehement way online with CliffCentral.com.

The ‘shock jock’ has also garnered among the most Twitter followers for a South African at over 600,000, while on Facebook the radio star has over 400,000 likes.

CliffCentral.com, in particular, has its own WeChat account which is used to stream his radio show.

"The CliffCentral Official Account on WeChat has just under 80,000 followers. And it's only been 12 days since we launched CliffCentral, so be sure to watch this space," according to Gareth Cliff.

But while CliffCentral has done well to notch up 80,000 followers in short space of time, WeChat may need a bigger boost in a market where it is a social network underdog.

According to the "SA Social Media Landscape 2014" report compiled by World Wide Worx and Fuseware, Facebook is South Africa’s largest social network with 9.4 million active users.

Meanwhile, WeChat was reported to only have 5% of the user base in South Africa.

World Wide Worx managing director Arthur Goldstuck has also indicated that WeChat’s user base could grow to about 13% in the next year or two.

But WeChat -- which is owned by Chinese internet giant Tencent and has a market of over 100 million active users outside of China, mainly in India and surrounding countries -- is upbeat about its South African operations amid its aggressive marketing campaign in the country.

"South African smartphone users are continuing to adopt WeChat as the mobile social communication network of choice and the user engagement with the Official Accounts for Highveld Stereo, the Oscar Pistorius Trial Channel and now CliffCentral are proof of this,"
Brett Loubser, managing director of WeChat Africa has told ITWeb Africa.

South Africa has over 50 million handsets, according to research firm BuddeComm. However, a reason for the country’s low WeChat take-up could be because smartphone uptake in the country is still low.

The southern African country’s biggest mobile operator Vodacom said in February it had 7.2 million smartphones on its network out of its total of 25 million active subscribers in the country.

Nevertheless, WeChat looks set to continue marketing to South Africa’s smartphone audience.

“WeChat is a well recognised brand in South Africa and the marketing focus is now shifting towards becoming more of an enabler for brands. We are therefore searching for more opportunities to work with brands to create unique mobile experiences for customers and supporting these experiences with through the line marketing."