South African chat app Mxit has officially shuttered its operations, as app sign-ins or account registrations no longer function.
Spare a thought today for Mxit; the South Africa chat app which swelled to enormous numbers and then died a quiet death.
Mxit today formally shuttered its mobile app, wherein users will no longer be able to sign in or register for a new account. The development takes place a year after the social media company announced that its corporate operations would shut down, while its intellectual property would be donated to the Reach Trust.
Read: Mxit formally shuts down corporate operations
While the app can still be downloaded from vendors such as the iOS App Store, the instant messaging client which South Africans used to swear by will never function again.
Mxit held a popularity amongst South African teens ahead of the smartphone renaissance in 2005, but failed to innovate ahead of the arrival of larger platforms such as BlackBerry Messenger and later WhatsApp in South Africa. The app, which took several years before reaching smartphones such as modern Android handsets or the iPhone, never regained the fame it garnered on older feature phones.
The app, which reported that its monthly user base was constituted by some 7.5 million users in 2013 – a figure which plummeted to 1.2 million monthly active users in 2015.
While some might reminisce of the hours and days poured into the chat app, the service remains important for having pioneered the South African instant messaging space – an arena in which Facebook-owned WhatsApp now holds court.
Read: Opinion: Why Mxit deserved to die
What are your thoughts? Are you disappointed to see Mxit gone forever, or have you left the service behind for good in exchange for using platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or BBM? Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Follow Bryan Smith on Twitter: @bryansmithSA
