In Nigeria, Google+ may just remain a ghost town of celebrities that will post up pictures and status updates that will get 1 or 2 +1’s and shares / reposts as is the case currently. The engagement on the platform remains minimal at best.
Young Nigerians in Universities love to communicate in real time on their most popular platforms – Blackberry’s and Symbians. In general, it is quite noticeable that Nigerians love to engage each other in conversations, arguments and an expression of thoughts and knowledge. SMS was a big hit in Nigeria because it allowed people to type up messages, send and get responses. Then it became Yahoo messenger at some point. I believe its Nimbuzz and 2go now. It is also noteworthy to mention that the use of whatsapp is also on the rise even with the one year free model.
Facebook has gradually created an app for every platform that you can think of. They have collaborated with mobile telecommunications companies across the globe – African ones inclusive to provide free mobile access to facebook through the 0.facebook.com via any mobile phone browser. They have also allowed the access of Facebook through SMS options and shortcodes. You do not even need to have internet access to update your facebook.
A few days ago, Facebook launched the groups for universities. We know where this is heading to because Facebook understands the user engagement that university level students present. Twitter has taken this same route of SMS updates for tweets and direct messages.
With these very strong competitions in the Nigerian market, I believe Google can follow a more personal model approach to get frequent users on the G+ platform. These frequent users are those young guys and girls in the universities who want to remain actively in touch with each other, share videos, pictures and messages effortlessly.
I have a few other recommendations for Google
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The SMS from Gmail was smart and such value added services can be replicated in their other products.
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Acquire Nimbuzz and/or 2go (as they have the user base in the market) and integrate them with gtalk.
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Have gtalk available on all mobile platforms
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Create certain free accessibility to the Google+ platform in collaboration with mobile companies
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Create SMS access to Google+
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Add photo sharing to the gtalk
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Each university Google gives the apps for education should have a Google+ page and after class conversations can be driven within the pages through different hashtags
A party can only build a handful of signups. These influencers will not build tangible user growth as they may have to use either Twitter or Facebook to ask their followers / friends to join them on Google+. Google can build on their efforts in providing educational apps for the local universities in getting the students to use the Google+ platform.
