Over the past month, Swahilian scholars have been devoted to launching Facebook in East and Central Africa. These scholars have taken the original American version of Facebook and revamped it into a Swahili version by putting the website in the native Swahilian language and localizing the website as well. Swahili has become the fifty-first language that the social networking site has been launched in.
One of the main reasons for putting Facebook in the Swahlilian language was to "preserve the language." Scholars felt that by forcing Swahili's youth to use the social networking site in their native language, it would help keep the language from dying out through recent generations. Many European and Asian countries feel the same way as well because they are fearful of the huge impact "Americanization" has had on their countries, particularly Great Britain, France, Germany, and now Africa.
Another Phenomenon on the rise is the use of Twitter in Africa, especially South Africa. A recent study conducted by the computer software company Opera, showed that Twitter was the ninth most popular visited mobile website in all of South Africa and Kenya. The number one leading website in South Africa is Google, which dominates the country as their leading search engine and News sources.