Yea, I mean it! A Nigerian topic trended on Twitter today. I wrote earlier this month about Nigerian topic #abaversion which also trended on twitter. Today @JideAboderin start #nigeriangrammar and other Nigerian tweeples took it up till it got trended on Twitter.

This is a sign that social media adoption in Nigeria is on the upward trend! In our last review of Facebook users in Nigeria, we discovered that over a million Nigerians are now on Facebook, wow!

You may want to wonder why all this? Well not to worry! The internet is mostly used by people who catch fun and Nigeria is no exception. @niyyie tweeted and I quote “The #nigeriangrammar trend on twitter is “hilariously funny”. ) If only the energy was channeled into a productive cause for Nigeria.” That was a good point there! As Nigeria’s image continued to be battered abroad, we need to use every possible opportunity to showcase the good side of us.

Nigeria, now is the time to make use of opportunity with our online strength to show the world that, we are not a terrorist country and that we have enormous enterprising youth talents right here!

Generally, Nigerian browsing pattern still revolves around Mail, Social Networks, Search, Forum, News, Jobs and SMS. On the global scene, Yahoo, Facebook and Google are the top sites Nigerians visit. On the local scene, forum site nairaland.com is the top site follow by two news sites and SMS. After last month’s news site drop in traffic, we witness a rebound as couple news site have wax strong even as more are dropping off. The top-ten now have five news sites.

The sites covered in this report are basically the top 50 Nigerian sites.

The Movers

Gloworld.com moved 35 places. webtrendsng.com 18 places, jobberman.com 17 places, smartbuyng.com 16 places, alireta.com 14,and  kwarapolytechnic.com 13

The Shakers

Mynaijanews.com dropped 24, nigerianbulletin.com 18, careersnigeria.com 18, thenationonlineng.net 15, and zenithbank.com dropped 13 places.

The Drop-outs

9jamovies.com

osundefender.org

unilorin.edu.ng

nigeriamasterweb.com

Twitter, founded in 2006 by veteran web startups team and since then have been a choice of every internet marketer, blogger and companies as outpost to their various target audience. It has garnered as much as 50 million users making it move closer to full mainstream adoption.

One of the main benefits of twitter is its real-time nature giving updates of information as they occur around the world. Top search engines (Bing & Google) are worried at the pace twitter is moving, it reads on their faces that they had liked to acquired the firm but twitter has continuously rebuff acquisition. Even though it still struggles to make money, it’s a toast of everyone!

The deals

At the recent Web 2.0 submit, Microsoft announced the deal signed with both Twitter and Facebook to make updates from the sites available in their search results, giving people access to real-time information from the sites. Well, while the companies (Facebook & Twitter) are still struggling on profitability, I sure believe this deal is money backed, which is good news for them.

Entered Google; as the news of Bing’s deal making the headline, Google’s Marissa Mayer announced deal with twitter, also to make the tweets available on its search result. This is a good deal for Google for now, as more attention will be garnered and in the process make more money from its sponsored link.

Effect on Google and Bing

As the quest to garner attention grows, the giants are scouting as much as they can to get it through every available means. While this will create a big buzz for now and drag more people to the search engines, the relevancy will now be of great importance. Twitter updates are free and open to the public, user’s post are not monitored or verified hence people can make pitch and get listed on Google and Bing search result ASAP.

One of the advantages of these search engines (Google in particular), is relevance and correctness of their contents, the results from twitter updates (for now) can not be validated, and this will question the results of the search engines unless a separate tab is created. Look at it this way, if top ten results on either Google or Bing are from Twitter and they don’t in anyway match your request (after linking to the websites), what will you do? Make a new search? I guess they need to make the tab separate and uncluttered with the main result.

The winners are still the giants, more ads inventory to sell, more attention to be capture and more money to make!

Effect on Twitter

Well twitter is in search of money for its empire, having got funding up to $155M making, money is its top priority. While making money could be daunting, since most twitter users don’t use it from their home page, strategic alliance is sure a step they are looking into. They recently had a deal with Federated Media. Since Twitter doesn’t have the attention on its main site (to which it can make money), then the site’s bye-product “Tweets” is the way to go!

Twitter’s deal with the giants is a non-exclusive type, hence they can have same deal with as many companies as they like. This is a good deal for them; since these sites have the attention any site could be dreaming of.

General Market impact

As the socialization of content continues, more and more content will be visible from every angle. So if you say something about someone online, believe me another person can get to know about it.

Also getting your site listed on search engines is now a matter of making an update on your twitter account.

Companies should also be ready to manage their reputation across the board, because their customers will be everywhere speaking about their satisfaction or dissatisfaction of their products.

On the good side, if posted updates are relevant, the general searchers will be the one to benefit from it. They don’t need to search Twitter, Google and others to get information; a search is enough on a single search engine!

The battle for our attention continues, remember these giants’ needs to be profitable year-on-year so they are still in search of what’s hot around the internet. Expect more!

Photo credit: Mashable.com

In my last post I discussed about what corporate strategies was and how to get started defining one. Title for today simply wants to focus on how to form a team that will deliver a fulfilling web strategy.

The Team

Snap shot of those who should be on the team;

• The CEO or COO
• The CIO or top IT personality in the organization
• Customer Support personnel
• Sales & Marketing
• External consultant (Web designs, Developer and Strategist)

That’s the ideal fulcrum of people you should make members of the team, now let’s look at their respective roles in the building process. Remember, less is better, don’t let too many people be in the team so as not to slow-down the process.

CEO or COO

The CEO is the engine room of the company, with keen understanding of the business role, the role of company in the industry and the future of the company. In case the CEO is not available, the COO or vice-president can stand in. These other people are members of the Management and will be able to voice the importance of the web project and be able to allocate resources according to the company’s budget and strategies. Even though the CEO may have an idea of the importance of the web campaign, he should further be educated by the consultant or the IT person on the strategic roles of the web. The CEO will be more concern about the ROI of this campaign hence making sure that overzealousness is curtailed in the process. I have seen in some companies in my course of consulting with clients that, some CEO may have read, heard and seen some positive effect of the web (and IT), they just want it implemented ASAP, hence given less room for thorough implementation and strategies. So, thorough briefing or education is very important.

CIO or IT Personality

In most organizations, there are separate department for IT and a figure-head in form of manager or CIO. IT personalities are generally informed to a large extent as to what is happening on the internet, the service providers, competent vendors and experience as to how to implement the web strategies. Their roles are very important so that you don’t over pay for services to be rendered by the external consultants.

I have seen some companies making the web building process a sole responsibility of the IT department to their detriment. Most IT persons don’t know rudiments about the business, and mostly placed in the support department. So they just implement the website just the way they think other people do it with the company’s operations in mind.

Customer Support Personnel

The web has evolved from just another brochure for marketing to customer service. With the advent of web 2.0 and its child social media, web sites are now responsive giving the customer service department a better way to help customers faster. The customer service personnel should be in the team to tell their story, how customers respond, which method they like to be served and the trends.

Sales & Marketing

As Newton once said “Everything remains at the staff of rest until a force is applied”, in business nothing really happens until a sale is made! The sale is what brings in the money, while the marketing is worth expose to people what you have to offer! The input of these departments is very important because it is the ultimate thing that will affect the bottom line which will make the CEO happen and every other staff members and investors.

The sales and marketing persons explains the method they have been using, how they have performed so far, what they want change, what is hot in the market and ways to make them reach the customers better. If all their comments are well taken note of and integrated into the web strategies, the success of the web campaign is inevitable.

External consultant (Web designs, Developer and Strategist)

Getting an expert in these areas is very important, if your IT department are not web savvy, you must consult an external person to help you in this process.

Talking about the web consultants, you need to understand that, the web is vast and in most cases one person doesn’t know it all. Firms generally consultant with a web designer or developer who are basically tech people and may not be able to maximize the potential of the web. Yea, well they will provide their service to your liking but I will like to add that the impact of a strategist is the void currently needed to be filled in your next web campaign (in case you don’t have one). The role of the strategist is simply to create a bridge between the business process and the web technology at hand for optimum return. This will make sure that, all efforts are geared towards serving the customer and at the same time getting good return on your expenditure.

Summary

I will summary the works of each team members as; CEO brings the business needs, challenges and focus to the ground, while the customer services & sales and marketing personnels brings the business process, customer needs and their ideas to fore, the web designer/developer create the web pages and application while web strategist link the business need with what the designer/developer is doing for effective return and monitoring.

Do you have a web team? What are they comprised of and how have they performed so far? Drop comment below…

Sidmach Technologies

They developed Waeconline.org.ng, jamb.org.ng Nigeria‘s first online examination registration websites. I will say these projects opened a new chapter in the web industry in Nigeria!

Looking at Sidmach’s portfolio, they have more government related projects than Taviatech.

They have offices in Lagos, Abuja and Portharcourt.

Taviatech

“Tavia Technologies Limited is an experienced technology company offering Web, Wireless & Business Intelligence services. We have consistently provided first class services to our valued customers in the Telecommunication, Banking, Oil & Gas, Law Firms, Insurance, Real Estate, Non-Profit, Recreational, Manufacturing Industries and other sectors. “

Taviatech has been in the business for 10 years and have deployed high-end solutions including Interswitch e-payment system (website), MTN, Access Bank, FCMB, Starcomms portal and other great solutions. Their office is located at Motor ways centre in Ikeja, Lagos.

This is just the beginning as more companies will be featured here. We will also look at individual designers that are world-class from Nigeria.

Stay tuned!

First public beta of the much awaited naijaborn.com has just been released. Top African developers and entrepreneurs have been working tirelessly on this project. Naijaborn.com with the aim of bringing Nigerians together and celebrate the icons, was conceived by Francis Oghuma of Qubestreet (Nigeria and South Africa) and partnered by Mambe Nanaje of Afrovision Group Cameroon.

Naijaborn.com has debuted and its ready to take on other social networking sites. Built from scratch by the Naijaborn team, it boast of unique features common on social networking sites.

Lagosians.com, a fast growing Nigerian social networking site has finally moved its site away from Ning.com to its permanent server, this is to enable it function properly has ning.com platform is too restricted to make it perform as the founder wants to. Available from today june 1, users are now mandated to re-register on the new platform while they can still interact via lagosians.ning.com. Though the user signup on ning has now been suspended, it hoped to convince its over 15,000 members to re-register.

With this lagosians.com case, I think running on platform like ning.com is not viable for a full-fledged social networking site. This is a big mistake made by the lagosians.com crew. Giving number of users they have amass in its short time of launch, convincing them all to come and register could prove to be a tough task.

I await for more SNS, we hope to see these sites develop a business model that can make them profitable and sustained for time to come.

What is your view about this recent developments? Are they going to scale?

We also talked about Web 2.0, the hype around the world on web usability and user experience. We sure believe you will find this edition helpful.

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