A Review Of The Reasons Why Most African Entreprenuers Start Of With Social Networks
I recently started wondering about all the fuss with social networks. They are the number one type of Internet service most African entrepreneurs start of with, think about it.
In Nigeria they are so many we actually only reviewed the biggest and most fun, which are Onlinenigeria, Naijapals and Naijaborn. In South Africa you get Zoopedup, Blueword, and Vialynx.
Also worthy of note is the large number of open source or Ning powered social networks which actually have vibrant communities. I had one, before we shut it down, Africanpath has one, and now the guy from Project Diaspora has one.
I think at this point in time, social networks are great to start because
- Most people have already been exposed to social networks and it won’t take a lot of effort to make them join a local version
- In terms of production, they are the easiest, in some cases with no programming required
- They have a large market potential (everyone) compared to stuff like social bookmarking platforms
- They have one of the largest profit potentials, look at facebook, or myspace.
- They are actually useful, to a community with crippled Internet infrastructure.
Making a social network is a good idea if your country doesn’t have many, and maybe is one of those few ideas which can be profitable at this moment. However at some point, African entrepreneurs need to move away from this trend, and possibly we already have.
I even shut down my Ning powered social network and opened a social bookmarking platform for African techies, it is great and is called slybeaver. Anyway All my best wishes to entrepreneurs trying to join the social networking crowd, I have left.
I think the market in Nigeria, South Africa and possible Kenya has dried up and now is the time to figure out another idea. I do not mean that the African social networking wars are over, I think they barely started. However people need to start branching out and thinking of other ideas.
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