Zim news app sees spike in traffic
Zimbabwe’s leading mobile news app, Zim News, has tripled its usage over the past number of days as the dramatic political events in the country unfold. The latest usage statistics were released by biNu, the technology company behind the development of the #datafree Zim News app which has more than 100,000 installs to date.
Designed as a simple news reading app, Zim News displays a variety of news sourced from RSS feeds published by news publishers on the internet. biNu’s real-time monitoring has shown a dramatic increase in Zim News usage since 14 November.
“As news of a possible military coup has been emerging in Zimbabwe, it’s become evident that the country’s citizens are relying more heavily than before on Zim News to receive updates and clarification on the situation,” said Gour Lentell, CEO of biNu.
By 15 November, app usage had tripled to more 3 million page views - an equivalent of nearly 100 million page views per month. Each user spent on average 93 minutes in the app, with 85 page views.
Yesterday, 16 November, Zim News showed 3.2 million page views, with users spending on average 94 minutes each in the app, navigating an average of 83 page views. Despite the high number of page views, daily data usage per user was 1.1 MB, and the app itself has a small download footprint of only 4MB.
Zim News is zero-rated on Vodacom, CellC and Telkom in South Africa, but not in Zimbabwe. However, the biNu platform on which Zim News has been developed resulted in data usage efficiencies up to 98% compared with other apps and websites. This makes it a popular and affordable source of news, particularly in a country where data costs have otherwise proved to be prohibitive for most citizens.
biNu transcends the data cost barrier by obsessively focusing on data bandwidth efficiency at every level of mobile content delivery. Using the biNu App Publishing Platform, organisations can build ‘data lite’ versions of their current app or mobile content offerings. biNu-powered apps typically use between 80%-98% less mobile data compared to other apps and mobile websites, making it possible to reach and engage a liberated mass market, at scale.
*Zim News #datafree can be downloaded via the Google Play Store or from https://datafree.co.za.
