COMPUTER MEDIATED
COMMUNICATION AND MOBILE

Group 10 Presentation Is About
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One of the areas of greatest technological
development has been the mobile platform. The
development of mobile devices like cellphones and
tablets is having a great impact on how we
communicate. In this stream we will be exploring
sites like Instagram, Whatsapp, Skype, Mxit,
Snapchat.

Evolution of Computer mediated
communication
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Mobile technologies came into existence to enable people to
communicate while they are anywhere outside the office or
home.
Communication provides voice, text messaging thus integration
of voice, data and video, such as the video conferencing which
is most suitable for business meetings in case of long distances,
results in minimizing costs and time for travelling.
Recent mobile technologies will substitutes computers and
laptops in most aspects of communication.

Evolution of Computer mediated
communication
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MOBILE PLATFORM
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Mobile operating systems:
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iOS and Windows Phone
MOBILE DEVICES
iPhone 5
Samsung S4

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MOBILE
PLATFORMS
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One of the companies that contributed largely in the software
perspective is Bell and Linux, which came with an open source
code UNIX operating system.
The mobile communication industry has used the luxury of these
parts to create more Apps and more features for these phones
such as the Mxit, Whatsapp, Twitter, etc.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MOBILE
PLATFORMS
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Companies like Sony, Dell, Nokia, Samsung, Microsoft etc.,
have made an impact on bringing about “game changing” the
culture of telecommunication industry at large.
BlackBerry has recently produced BB10 which has the ability
to video chart and to make voice over internet protocol calls
(VoIP) on Wi-Fi.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MOBILE DEVICE
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In the early 70’s, Motorola’s engineer Martin
Cooper made the first cell phone, It was called
the Motorola DynaTAC, and it wasn’t a tiny
device -- it was 9 inches (22.9 centimeters)
long and weighed (1.1 kilograms).
In 1994 the first smartphone, the IBM Simon
had a touchscreen, email and other features,
2007 Apple iPhone introduced mobile
operating system.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MOBILE DEVICES
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The evolution modern living has made it possible for mobile
businesses to outsource resources(motherboards, screens, batteries
that last longer etc.) that meets changing customer preferences.
From there communication has improve substantial allowing
different form of sharing of information between users all around
the world example instant messaging.

Instant Messaging…

COMMUNICATION MADE EASE
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INSTAGRAM
WHATSAPP
SKYPE
MIXIT
SNAPCHAT
Messaging service
2013 users
2012 users
Mxit
7.4-million
6.9-million (9.5-million
using 90-day metric)
BBM *
4.7-million (94% of
users)
3.3-million (97% of
users)
2go
1.1-million
1.5-million
Whatsapp
N/A (top free app)
N/A

INSTAGRAM

INSTAGRAM
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Online photo sharing, video sharing and social networking service
that enable its users to take pictures and videos and apply digital
filters to them.
It is an application available for companies with the latest mobile
operating software.
iPhone, iPad, Blackberry 10, Windows Phone 8 and Nokia Symbian
Devices and so forth; are the number of devices where Instagram
can operate.

INSTAGRAM
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Trends in the business
The development of new smartphone with high mega pixel is also
advantageous to the growth of Instagram usage.
Strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
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It enables people that are lazy to type a better way to tell a story.
The other strength of Instagram is the level of expertise that the team has
for example Kevin Systrom has been part of Google and Odeo which is
now twitter; and Mike Krieger interned at Microsoft Power Point’s team as
a PM and was a software developer at Xmarks.

INSTAGRAM
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Weakness
The weakness that are usually faced by Instagram users are
connection problems
The other problem about Instagram is that people are using it to
take normal pictures and videos therefore misrepresenting the
purpose behind Instagram “for people to share exclusive moments”.

INSTAGRAM
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Major issues facing the business
Since Facebook bought Instagram issues may arise to adaptation of
management style, procedures.
• Keeping a continuous satisfactory consumer presumption about
Instagram and meeting user expectation due to the merger and
technological advancement happening nowadays.
Competitors
• Instagram competitors are Sony, Swatch, Dunkin Donuts.
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WHATSAPP
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It is a proprietary, cross-platform instant messaging subscription
service for smartphones. Apart from sending pictures it also allow
users to send each other images, videos and audio messages as well
as their location using integrated mapping features.
This app allow people to share content easily because a receiver
can receive a message sent to him even if he is offline, but only if he
has airtime.

WHATSAPP
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Trends in the business
Whatsapp has over 190 million monthly active users, 400 million
photos are shared each day, and the messaging system handles more
than 10 billion messages each day.
With these numbers in place I thing this app is the mostly daily
accessed app in the world; because it has easy access at cheaper
rates.
The recent action by Facebook to purchase this app will contribute
positively to the upgrading of its features and performance.

WHATSAPP
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
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The most powerful strength that Whatsapp has is that it’s suitable for all
mobile phone users, old and young generations .
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Which means it’s usage will continue to grow because it is also cheap for
instant it helps students to create groups where they will easily share
ideas concerning the current group work.
Weakness
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The weakness with this app is that sometimes it’s become irritating to
receive messages even if you are offline.
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WHATSAPP
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Competition
The competition that Whatsapp faces comes from Mxit, WeChat,
and Viber, but the number of users that use this app daily makes it
to dominate the market division of instant messaging.
The other reasons that makes this app to dominate the industry are
the limitations that other competing apps have.
Example Viber is compatible with Blackberry, iOS, Mac, Symbian
and Windows phone.

SKYPE

SKYPE
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This is a free premium “freemium” voice over IP service and instant
messaging client, currently developed by the Microsoft Skype
Division.
The service allows users to communicate with peer by voice using
microphone, video by using a webcam, and instant messaging over
the Internet.
Calls to other users within the Skype service are free of charge,
while calls to landline telephones and mobile phones are charged
via a debit-based user account system.

SKYPE
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Trends in the Business
This app has become popular for its additional features, including
file transfer, and videoconferencing. It is a hybrid peer-to-peer
and client-server system.
It makes use of background processing on computers running
Skype software, and this is reflected in Skype’s original proposed
name of Sky Peer-to-Peer.

SKYPE
Strengths/Weaknesses
Strengths
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It key strength is that it enables people to see each other when
they are talking and companies with different decentralised
offices can use Skype to make a videoconference.
It can enhance the way employees perform work while at their
homes.

SKYPE
Weakness
• The weakness is that it requires a lot of resource for a person to
use it.
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Major Issues facing the business
Some network administrators have banned Skype on corporate,
government, home and education networks, citing reasons such as
inappropriate usage of resources, excessive bandwidth usage, and
security concerns.
The competitors are Linphone and Google Hangouts.

Mxit

Mxit
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Mxit is an IM application used to exchange text messages, pictures
and videos.
The Mxit concept was born in 2003 after the failure of Alaya, an
SMS based game, due to the high cost of sms at the time.
Mxit then became arguably the most popular Instant Messaging app
in SA.

Mxit
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Trends in the business:
The rise in the number subscribers of Woolworths’ MySchool
MyPlanet app by 55 870 has been attributed solely to Mxit,
thus showing the effectiveness of Mxit as an advertising
platform for Businesses.
Mobile advertising grew by 75% in 2013 alone.

Mxit
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
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Mxit is compatible with many platforms; the app can run on over 8000
different devices.
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With more than 85% of its users being in SA, Mxit is not very popular
internationally.
Weakness
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Mxit is mostly criticized for its lack of security and its exposure of young
girls to pedophiles.
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Mxit
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Competitors and potential competitors
Mxit is competing with the likes of Whatsapp, BBM, WeChat etc.
which are also IM apps and offer much more than what Mxit has to
offer in terms of the size of files that the apps allows the users to
share.
Issues facing the business
Mxit is used mostly by teenagers, under the age of 18, and there has
been a growing trend of a phenomenon called sexting. These apps
have become the place where the pedophiles find their targets

SNAPCHAT

SNAPCHAT
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Snapchat is an app where users sharing photos and videos. The
user take a photo/video and can then edit it and send it to the
other user who will then view it temporarily before it is destroyed
from the servers.
Though Snapchat went public in July of 2011, towards the end of
2012 it still had not made any revenue, but just over a year after
that the company had rejected acquisition offers of $3billion and
$4billion by Facebook and Google respectively.

SNAPCHAT
Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
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Snapchat users feel more comfortable sharing messages on this app
over the other apps because of its functionality of disabling the
content after the user-set period has expired.
The disabling of chat history on Snapchat helps people not to be
embarrassed once they have sent too many messages without
response

SNAPCHAT
Weakness
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Snapchat has been a playground for hackers who have hacked into
their system and publicized the personal details of its users.
“SnapchatDB.info” is a website where personal details of the app
users were published
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Major issues facing the business:
Mxit and Snapchat are both used mostly by teenagers, under the
age of 18, and there has been a growing trend of a phenomenon
called sexting. These apps have become the place where the
pedophiles find their targets.

SNAPCHAT
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Competitors and potential competitors
This app is competing mostly with Instagram which has also
established itself as a platform for sharing editing and sharing
pictures and videos.
An upcoming competitor of Snapchat is wire which was valued
at $1.8 Million before it was even released.