South African’s are in 7th heaven after an announcement yesterday that the country’s most admired landmark, Table Mountain, was chosen as one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature.
The campaign, created by Swiss-based New7Wonders Foundation, used social networking and technology to activate a global voting campaign. Mxit, Africa’s largest mobile social network, dedicated its platform to helping Table Mountain win this global accolade.
According to Mxit’s new CEO, Alan Knott Craig, the results were outstanding.
‚We are excited for both South Africa and for Cape Town. Our team at Mxit pulled out all the stops for this campaign and the result is simply phenomenal. In the last few weeks of voting, our traffic for the campaign exceeded any other voting initiative that we supported and this is testament to the extent to which South African’s will back their national pride, culture and heritage. Well done South Africa, we did it!,‚ says Knott Craig.
Mxit, which has over 44 million registered user accounts, with roughly 80% being South African (of which 10-million are active, according to World Wide Worx research), supported the campaign by developing a dedicated portal for South African’s to vote for the New 7 Wonders initiative.
To promote voting, the mobile social network promoted the campaign among its vast user base through adverts and notices throughout the social platform, and on other online platforms.
Table Mountain was originally chosen as one of more than 400 global natural wonders. In the second phase of the campaign, Table Mountain was amongst 77 natural wonders that made it through to the second round.
Some of the 28 finalists included Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Uluru (Ayers Rock) in Australia, the Grand Canyon in the US, the Galapagos islands of Ecuador, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the Dead Sea in Isreal.
The New 7 Wonders winners announced tonight are:
1. Table Mountain, South Africa
2. Puerto Princesa Underground River
3. Komodo Island, Indonesia
4. Jeju Island
5. Iguazu Falls in Brazil / Argentina
6. Halong Bay
7. Amazon
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