The man who built South Africa’s first big social network – MyBroadband

Before Facebook became available globally, before Twitter, and before WhatsApp, South Africa had a mobile instant messaging and social media application called Mxit.

Namibian-born entrepreneur Herman Heunis created Mxit and launched it in 2005 — when flip phones and the Samsung W250 slider were the most popular cellphones in South Africa.

The first iPhone only launched two years later, and the smartphone revolution would only properly begin in 2008 after the introduction of the iPhone 3G, BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve, and HTC’s Android-based phones.

Heunis began his career in technology as a programmer in 1980 after studying for a BCom degree at Stellenbosch University.

He became a software specialist at the institution in 1985 and launched his own information and communications technology consultancy in 1990.

In 1997, he launched Swist Group Technologies, a consultancy specialising in software development.

Clockspeed Mobile, a research division of Swist, developed and launched Mxit based on Heunis’ concept — borne out of reassessing a failed SMS-based massively multiplayer game the company had created.

When Mxit launched in 2005, it gave many their first taste of cheap mobile instant messaging.

Even though data wasn’t cheap in 2005, Mxit brought the cost of 160-character messages down from roughly 30c–80c for an SMS, to under 1c.

It was a massive success. Clockspeed soon became an independent entity and was renamed MXit Lifestyle (Pty) Ltd.

Mxit wasn’t perfect, though. It only ran on devices with a Java ME runtime, and chat participants had to be online at the same time to exchange messages.

While it was a cheaper alternative to SMS, Mxit was not a complete replacement for SMS.

Despite its shortcomings, Mxit’s strength was that it ran on just about every cellphone it could support.

This was a huge achievement at the time, as the phone market was highly fragmented, and apps often had to be customised for specific devices to accommodate their quirks.

Thanks to its commitment to running everywhere it could, Mxit saw massive growth.

WhatsApp employed a very similar strategy in its earlier days, which helped it overtake entrenched competitors like BlackBerry Messenger, Google Talk, Skype — and Mxit.

Mxit was considered Africa’s largest social network, attracting the interest of large investors. Naspers acquired a 30% stake in the company in 2007.

The platform grew exponentially in the 2000s. By 2012, it had over 10 million active users and recorded between 35,000 and 50,000 daily registrations.

At Mxit’s height, Heunis decided to step back from his wildly successful company, selling it to World of Avatar in September 2011.

Founded by Alan Knott-Craig Jr., World of Avatar was backed by former FirstRand executives Paul Harris and GT Ferreira.

However, Mxit was too slow to adapt to how smartphones changed the mobile landscape in 2009 and 2010.

Platform standardisation had eroded Mxit’s advantage, allowing competing app developers to build for a huge selection of devices by supporting just a handful of apps.

While the market remained fragmented — with iOS, Android, Symbian, BlackBerry OS, Windows Phone, and others vying for market share — it was much easier to maintain four to six different apps than dozens.

The new generation of smartphone apps also leapfrogged Mxit in functionality and design.

WhatsApp was a drop-in replacement for SMS with a clean, user-friendly interface. BlackBerry Messenger came with a host of powerful features like read receipts that also gave it an edge.

By 2012, it was already too late to save Mxit. BlackBerry had become South Africa’s smartphone of choice, and WhatsApp had quietly grown into the dominant cross-platform mobile messenger.

Knott-Craig left the company in October 2012 due to a “difference in strategy with the company’s shareholders”.

Francois Swart assumed the role of interim CEO at the company, and Mxit started to retrench employees due to lacklustre financial performance.

Former FNB CEO Michael Jordaan was appointed chairman of the Mxit board in September 2013, but by then, the platform’s fate had already been sealed.

Independent research showed the number of monthly active users on Mxit had fallen to 2.7 million by 2015.

In October 2015, Mxit announced it was shutting down commercial operations and donating all its intellectual property and technology assets to The Reach Trust.

By the time it shut down, Mxit’s active monthly users had dropped to 1.2 million. At the same time, WhatsApp had grown to 10 million users in South Africa, and Facebook 13 million.

In a statement regarding its decision, Mxit said the success of cheap smartphones put it on a downward spiral that was impossible to come back from because it did not have a decent smartphone app.

In 2015, Heunis posted on Twitter that he regretted being unable to stay on as Mxit CEO.

“It had all the ingredients to become a major success story. The missing catalyst was new energy,” he said.

Heunis said that selling a company you started is traumatic.

“Fact of the matter was, I was extremely tired and burned out, and staying on as CEO was not in the interest of the company,” he said.

Heunis never returned to the world of technology.

After retiring as an Internet entrepreneur and leaving the public eye, he focused on his hobbies — photography, travelling, mountain biking, wine, and olive oil making.

Heunis was an avid cyclist, competing in endurance races such as the Absa Cape Epic.

He passed away on 24 August 2022 after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 63.