The announcement by News24 that in April it hit the two million mark for South African unique users is no small potatoes. When you consider that the South African internet audience is estimated to be between five and 6.5 million, it means that Naspers’s News24 has certainly got the recipe right for general news websites in this country.

And that 2.1 million users figure from Nielsen released by Online Publishers Association (OPA) excludes the popular value-add zones such as Women24, Sport24 and Health24. Counting international users, News24 had 2.87 million unique users in April. The experts point that part of News24′s growth is organic as the internet audience in South Africa is on the upswing but let’s give credit where it’s due: These are good figures and puts News24 streets ahead of its competitors.

Nielsen’s figures puts the Independent Newspapers-owned IOL News and Avusa’s Times Live at 1.51 million 1.14 million and unique users respectively. (…Continues below graph, which was created from Nielsen Online’s April 2010 figures courtesy of the OPA)

Click on graphic to enlarge

On the value-add zones, JP Farinha, the CEO of Naspers’s 24.com digital division under which News24 falls, told Bizcommunity: “In terms of numbers both Sport24 and Fin24 are pretty big with between 400 000 and 500 000 uniques each. Health24 is next and then we have Women24, Wheels24, Weather, Food24, Channel24, Careers24, Parent24 and Gotravel24. Time spent on site is highest on Careers24, Blueworld, Games and our email product because of the types of activity. Our blogging platform, Letterdash, gets substantial audience but is spread across all our brands so can’t be counted as a single destination but its users also tend to spend more time on site.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MY FULL COLUMN, “THE WORD ON GRUBSTREET”, AT BIZCOMMUNITY, WHERE YOU CAN READ MORE OF JP FARINHA’S COMMENTS.

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There’s a few movers and shakers out there moving and shaking worthy of a wee blog post.

First up, Lisa MacLeod, who was the chief sub and managing editor of Business Day a few years back, has been made managing editor of the Financial Times in London. WHICH IS HUGE!!! And she’s only in her 30s so you can see how good Lisa is to rise that high at the FT,  one of the most respected papers in the world.

I worked for Lisa at Business Day in the 90s and she was a superb manager and one of the most organised – and genuinely nice – people I’ve come across in journalism. She also happens to come from Grubstreet’s town, East London, so don’t let any tell you that this is a plekkie of skates and surfers. Lisa has been working at the FT for quite a few years.

And then another East Londoner (though to be fair he was only born here and I think he might deny it)  is up to interesting things. Matthew Buckland is leaving 24.com’s innovation unit,  20FourLabs, to do his own thing. This includes a digital agency and consultancy based in Cape Town and Joburg and launching a new website, Memeburn, — which Matthew describes as “a Mashable/Techcrunch for emerging market tech“.

So exciting for stuff!  We could do with a bit more spunk in SA’s online news world – and Grubstreet is contributing to Memeburn so watch this space!

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