Editor’s Note: This post is by Gossy Ukanwoke, popularly known as “Africa’s budding Mark Zuckerberg“. He has been working on Students Circle for some time now while working on a means of improving education in Nigeria and Africa through Beni American University. You can follow him on twitter – @gossyomega. He’d be joining us for the #oTeKchat tomorrow – Friday, 20th of April, 2012 at 15:00 HRS (GMT+1) i.e. 3pm Nigerian time.
A few days ago, I was on Google+ and i saw a catchy hashtag – #gplusgidi and I became certainly interested in following it and checking the updates from the events. First I must commend Google for creating a locally focused event that brings Nigerians together to engage in conversations and usage of a web service and social media. +1 to them.
However this brings me to a certain question – What was the purpose of this event? Looking at the theme and guests at this event, I would easily imagine it was a gathering of celebrities and influencers. I know Twitter grew by the number of Celebrities and Influencers they got on their platform early on. These celebrities and influencers were in United States and across Europe and they had a pull of followers who were active on the internet and needed to be updated by the minute on what these celebrities are doing.
Twitter has grown exponentially internationally and one major African country using it is Nigeria. Over 60% or more of Nigerian celebrities and influencers use twitter and they tweet on regular basis and they have a huge base of followers and thanks to different mobile apps – Echofon, Uber, Twitter, Tweetdeck and more that run on Blackberry’s, iPhones, Symbians and Androids to name a few.
What’s my rant about? If Nigerian Celebrities are on Google+, it will certainly not bring users to the platform. Young Nigerians who will actively use this platform are not going to get on it because it does not add an extra value when compared to Facebook or Twitter that they are currently and actively using. The Google+ app is not built for the most common platforms in Nigeria – Blackberry and Symbian. This is definitely a minus for Google+ as Nigerians access the internet majorly via mobile.
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