234next.com, closed its print business but its online business is still relevant, thanks to its coverage of the 2011 elections. It continued to see drop after shutting down offline business but still managed to finish 6^th in 2011. Thnationaonlineng.net saw the biggest move in the top-ten moving from 16^th in 2010 to 7^th in 2011,that is massive! Saharareporters.com also made it to the top-ten moving from 11^th in 2010. Forum generally is seeing drop in ranking, no wonder nigerianbestforum.com is gradually fading out. The once dearling naijahotjobs.com has drop out of the list. Nigerianbestforum.com dropped from 7^th to 9^th and tribune.com.ng finished the list on the 10^th spot.

Honourable Mentions

Top Site in 2010

The table below shows leading Nigerian sites in 2010, the table is disrupted a bit in 2011. Expect more in 2011.

I expect to see more disruption going forward, but the big question is, how long will it take for real start-ups to displace the news sites on the list?

According to the newly released report of mobile web usage world wide by Pingdom; 3.18% of world wide internet traffic comes from mobile devices as Asia and Africa countries lead other developed countries.

Though there is disparity across African Countries but on the average the usage is significant;

• Several African countries have in excess of 20% of web usage coming from mobiles. Nigeria, for example, has just over 25%, Sudan just over 22%. But they don’t match Chad, which has close to 29% mobile web usage. In addition to these, there are several countries with just under 20% mobile web usage, for example Kenya.
• High mobile web usage is not uniform in any way across Africa. There are several countries with mobile web usage far below 10%.
• Several Asian countries, like India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Turkmenistan and Bangladesh, hover around 15% mobile web usage.
• Nokia phones dominate in these countries. In every single one where mobile web usage makes up an unusually high share, Nokia’s Symbian OS completely dominates. In some countries more than 90% of the mobile web traffic comes from Symbian phones. In others, it has a more “modest” market share of 60-80%. After that are usually phones from Sony Ericsson and Samsung. Smartphones sporting Android, iOS or RIM’s Blackberry have tiny market shares in these countries.
• One exception to the above point: Indonesia, where RIM’s Blackberry accounts for more than 31% of the mobile web traffic. But it’s still second to Nokia’s Symbian.

This is not surprising as the cost of wap-enabled mobile phone is cheaper than the cheapest computer in Africa and Asia. And given the low-income in Africa, mobile internet access is a necessity they can’t trade off!

Note: The numbers in this article are for the month of October, 2010, and all come from StatCounter, based on visitor statistics from more than three million websites.

The top-ten still remains tightly controlled by veteran websites as the structure remain intact giving room to only thenationonline.net to crack the top-ten spot for the first time in its life time. But interesting things happened; nairaland.com overtook live.com to become 7^th most visited site by Nigerians. Following almighty sites like Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Blogger and YouTube while still ahead of twitter.com. Punchng.com also gained a place amongst the overall sites (11^th spot). Both sites are Nigeria’s 1 and 2 most visited sites respectively.

Vanguardngr.com regained its 3^rd spot which it lost about 2 months ago, sunnewsonline.com also moved 4 places to stay on the 4^th spot while 234next.com maintained the 5^th spot. Gtbank.com still remains out of the top-five spot after been overtaken last month. Tribune.com.ng, naijahotjobs.com, saharareporters.com and thenationonlineng.net finished the top-ten list.

The top-ten list is still dominated by news sites with 50% of the sites making the list. We are keeping an eye on ngcareers.com to make the list in the next 2months as other job sites also waxing strong.

View this month’s table here.

Top Ten

1. nairaland.com
2. punchng.com
3. vanguardngr.com
4. sunnewsonline.com
5. 234next.com
6. gtbank.com
7. tribune.com.ng
8. naijahotjobs.com
9. Saharareporters.com
10. thenationonlineng.net

The Movers

• gnaija.net            +102
• Ui.edu.ng            +66
• webtrendsng.com  +35
• OnlineNigeria.com  +33
• nigeriamasterweb.com  +31

The Shakers

• zenithbank.com  -20
• mtnonline.com  -9
• Taafoo.com  -6
• epaymonster.com  -9
• multilinks.com  -5

Debutants

• nysc.gov.ng
• gnaija.net
• Ui.edu.ng
• OnlineNigeria.com

Rebounds

• platgroupng.com (Last time was June 2010 on 39^th spot)
• webtrendsng.com (Last time was December 2009 on 44^th spot)

Drop outs

• kalahari.com.ng -40
• Getnaijajobs.com -32
• jobcentrenigeria.com -31
• laspotech.net  -30
• mobilitynigeria.com -26

Trends

Trends that are shaping up and that may continue for next couple of months is the growth of job sites. With 10% of top 50 and 13% of top 100 sites in Nigeria being job sites, this pointing to a positive development in the job industry.

Another growing trend that has not made impact on the ranking table is e-payment service; in the last 3 months 3 new e-payment services have been launched paving way for a possible solution for online payment problem that has stalled ecommerce in the Nigerian web industry.

Investors

It’s no doubt that Nigerian web space is heating up as foreign investors are beginning to sniff around for possible investment in Nigerian startups. This is led by big companies; Google, Nokia, MTN, Samsung financing tech events to explore the developers community to see viable startups.

We have also been contacted by foreign investors for recommendation and so far, we are seeing pattern brewing up in the industry.

Businesses

On the business side, just a few business sites have been able to get enough traffic to make up the list. Gtbank.com is the leading light of them all for the past one year. Conversely, mtnonline.com has also remained consistent for the past one year.

These are companies that embraced technology in service delivery and engage their customers online. We hope to see many more companies learn from these companies to improve their businesses (preferably outside of Banking and Telecom, anyone?).

Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur should get it straight; the perception of Nigeria is a big task we really have to overcome. Fine, investors are willing to come into the country but they really need to be sure you have enough passion to continue with your startup till it gained traction. The top industries, jobs and classified have been of good interest to investors in Nigerian web space. Well, it will soon be crowded but you can shift your focus to more industries that are underserved.

Social Media

We reported last week about Facebook users in Nigeria exceeding 2 million make, mobile and the continuous buzz around Facebook and twitter is making them gain more users in Nigeria. Facebook users in Nigeria will grow because less than 5% of Nigerian internet population is on Facebook while in some countries it is as high as 62%. Should we say local social networking sites have lost it? Yes or No, either way you are right but they can still get creative by leverage on the buzz of these social media giants to grow theirs instead of trying to compete.

For now, let’s keep our hands crossed as we are set to move to the next level… Remember to nominate interesting sites and personalities for Nigerian web awards 2010.

This is just he beginning…

Nigeria and other African countries witnessed massive growth in number of Facebook users. Still at the top is Egypt, followed by South Africa, Morocco and Nigeria with Tunisia closing up at the top five.

In Nigeria, the number of males (67%) on Facebook is more than double the number of their female (33%) counterpart.  Total number of Nigerians on Facebook is 2,001,220.

Young adult have the most users;

• 25-34years= 40% (800,488)
• 18-24 years =36% (720,439)
• 35-44 years = 11% (220,134)
• 16-17 years= 5% (100061)
• 45-55 years=4% (80,048)
• 65+=3% (60,036)
• 13-15 years=2% (40,024)
• 55-64=1% (20,012)

The President, Goodluck Jonathan’s official page currently has more than 305,886 fans meaning that it has garnered about 15.2% of the total Nigerian population on Facebook. The largest Fans on Facebook!

On the other hand; you may want to ask, why do we have as much as 60,036 elderly persons on Facebook? Well that points that older people don’t only use the internet in Nigeria, but also go with the trend; social media! The number of Nigerian elderly on Facebook is much more than total Facebook users in Malawi and Mali.

Across Africa, Egypt has almost a million more males than females while South Africa is the only country on the list with more female than male.

Business impact

All over the world, social media spending has increased with businesses that were experimenting with social spending last year now on the increase. Same is applicable in Africa! Leading the pack is south Africa with average of $0.49 cost per click followed by Nigerian ($0.34) and Kenya($0.33). Egypt with the most users, spend far less than the top 3 on the list.

Top-ten Spenders

We can not over look the cultural impact of the countries also in the aspect of spending. Northern African countries on the list (Egypt, Algeria and Morocco) are more conservative than their Sub-Saharan counterpart.

Penetration

Penetration is the number of internet users, compared to the Facebook population. Nigeria is at the bottom of the pack, with a shallow 4.5% penetration. At 43million internet users, Nigeria has the best of chance for growth going forward. Mauritius that has 77.72% penetration may soon stop given the internet users’ population in the Country.

Overall

There is a significant growth going on in Africa, internet users are growing daily and focus of multinationals are now on Africa as they look up to fertile ground for their businesses.

Social Networks on the continent have not really gained ground except for Mxit that has continued growing and expanding to countries on the continent.

More businesses in Africa will adopt social media advertising as the key to profitability is to go where the customers are and now that Africans are spending more time on Facebook, businesses will surely move there.

On the political sphere, social network will also play a big role as the continent battles to stabilize democracy. Nigeria has witness massive growth of politicians launching their Facebook pages and placing Google ads. As we count down to the election period, expect more to happen on the space.

Top African Countries on Facebook

Nairaland.com remain in the number spot follow by punchng.com . nigerianbestforum.com moved 4 places to stay on the 3^rd spot while gtbank.com remain on the same spot as last month.

Taafoo.com break into the top ten for the first time as other veteran on the top ten list remain there except for ngrguadiannews.com.

We saw a record growth in educational sites on the top fifty-list as 3 (waecdirect.org, yabatech.edu.ng and laspotech.com) new tertiary institution websites join the league. Lasunigeria.com could not meet up with the top fifty but it showed a massive increase in growth, currently on 54^th spot.

In all we have about six website making the cut for the first time while just 2 sites came back to the list after dropping of in recent month.

View this month’s table here.

Top Ten

The Movers

• smslive247.com 50
• web4africa.net 36
• bbnsms.com 25
• nigeriamasterweb.com 16
• nigerianelitesforum.com 13

The Shakers

• mobilitynigeria.com 17
• naijapals.com 15
• careerenigeria.com 14
• smshulk.com 12
• independentngonline.com 12

Debutants

• ndlearecruitment.org
• waecdirect.org
• laspotech.com
• yabatech.edu.ng
• web4africa.net
• smslive247.com

Rebounds

• bbnsms.com
• nigeriamasterweb.com

Trends

There is education frenzy in the air, Waec result was recently released while the private WASSCE (GCE) is starting next week. Also quite a number of universities are conducting registration for new students and require that they do so online. This has helped increase the ranking of the sites.

In all, 50% of the top ten sites are news site, while others are forum and a social networking site with gtbank.com as the only corporate site making the list.

We recently wrote about our President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan joining Facebook to engage Nigerian youth. He has consistently used the platform to communicate with fans on the page and it went from 2,ooo fans at our last writing to a whopping 100,000 today.

With just about 11 comments posted by the president, he got the following comments and likes;

That is an average of 1,946 comments and 2,117 likes on each comments. The post is driven mostly of praise singers but more aggressive people are joining the page and asking the president serious questions like the proposed 10billion for the Nigeria at 50 Anniversary and electoral reform.

Any impact so far?

On monday the president announced to  rescind his decision to suspend super eagles from international competition qouting some of the comments on the facebook page as the reason for taking the decision. Should we say the president is connecting perfectly with the people? Only time will tell!

During the time of writing this article… another 156 has joined the president’s page making it 100,156!

What is you view so far about the presidents Facebook presence?