Software giant, Microsoft, recently announced the launch of its localized content portal in Nigeria. In a media parley with both the traditional media journalists and bloggers which took place at different times on the same day (last week), the portal MSN Nigeria was officially unveiled. This portal was built in conjunction with South-African based publishing partners – Kagiso media – and Microsoft intends to provide a fully localized version of the MSN portal to Nigerians. This would be a one stop portal for local news, lifestyle, entertainment, sports and many more. So, if you are a fan of the MSN portal, there are now more reasons for you to stay connected to the portal.
This is not the first time Microsoft is launching a localised version of its content portal in Africa. The previous launch in South Africa has experienced huge success. According to its publishing partners, Kagiso Media, the South African portal has grown quickly into arguably one of South Africa’s largest local content websites. Based on this success, Microsoft proceeded to launch the Nigerian localized portal version.
Speaking at the event parley with bloggers, Asly Yerdekalmazer – Microsoft’s Executive Producer, Middle East and Africa – provided some insights into the scope the portal aim to achieve in the long run. Microsoft intends the MSN portal to be the go-to-place for fully localized news, entertainment, lifestyle, sports, weather and other interesting contents.
Microsoft’s MSN has proven to be serious global players in the online content publishing market, growing to become one of the largest portals in Africa, with approximately 3.3 million unique visitors per month. MSN Nigeria will host local contents on various sections of its platform, and this would be done initially by partnering with local content publishers to produce original contents.
Speaking at the Lagos launch, Microsoft’s Acting Country Manager, Awawu Olumide-Sojinrin explained that the MSN Nigeria portal is more like the universal MSN homepage but now dedicated to Nigeria’s local news, sports, lifestyle, entertainment and weather contents. It also includes helpful links to other Microsoft-related services such as Bing, Outlook and Skype. At the same event, Marcus Stephens, General Manager of MSN & Skype, Microsoft’s Publishing & Advertising & Online assets in Sub-Saharan Africa, a division of Kagiso Media, said “there is a growing hunger for localized contents across Africa as undersea cables, mobile broadband and falling Internet access costs bring more people online. We aim to address this need with the same formula of locally relevant, easy to digest contents that we offer our audience in South Africa,”
Also at the event was Justin Dewhirst, Area Executive Producer, CEE & MEA, Apps Media & Publishing Microsoft who said, “MSN is about bringing contents together in one portal and Kagiso has built the expertise for great experiences on the Windows operating system”. Microsoft’s MSN deal with Kagiso would also feature Ad Dynamo as the advertising platform which would provide contextual advertising on Microsoft’s network of sites. The latter includes Windows Live Hotmail which currently has over 800, 000 users in Nigeria and Windows Messenger with over 820,000 active users in the country.
The launch event was highly interactive and it allows the representatives of Microsoft – Asly Yerdekalmazer and Steven Vanhemert of Kagiso Media – to rub minds with some of Nigeria’s online journalists, sharing ideas on trends in blogging, social media, messaging, content sourcing and working to make the most use of local content consumption, amongst other things.
The bloggers commended the initiative and provided helpful tips on achieving the aim of building a portal which could fast become a household name platform, especially among the teeming youths and the thriving online community in Nigeria. They also suggested the adoption of words usually used in local parlance, quite popular with the content consumers, both on the portal and in the writing style.
