As a Nigerian, I can confidently say that one thing we Nigerians love is to gist! It’s no wonder that two friends, who met in September 2012 while working at one of Nigeria’s biggest e-commerce start-ups, decided to create a mobile app that provides news content from all categories of websites of interest to Nigerians. The result was QwikGist.
QwikGist is a free mobile news aggregator that generates content from over 22 of the most visited news, gossip and sports websites in and outside Nigeria. This mobile app allows users to select what content they prefer from a list of available sources. It also allows users to share ‘this gist’ with their friends on Facebook, Twitter and via email.
“Imagine getting all the news, gossip and sports stories from the websites you love the most in Nigeria, the US or the UK, all on your Blackberry. You stay up-to-date and don’t miss a thing anymore” – QwikGist Review On Blackberry Store.
Onyeka, a well-established internet marketer and professional website designer in Nigeria, conceived the idea, created the user experience and designed the user interface for QwikGist, while Pelumi used his samurai programming skills to dissect into zeros and ones every process that was used to create QwikGist. Together, both men have created a beautifully designed Blackberry app that launched on Blackberry App World on the 1st of December, 2012 and has gotten over 25,000 downloads in just 17 days.
It is interesting to note that 90% of QwikGist downloads have come from within Nigeria, with Lagos, Abuja and Rivers States providing the most downloads. However, according to the QwikGist team, their tracking data, provided by Blackberry Vendor Manager, show that Nigerians outside the country who have limited access to Nigerian content are a lot more appreciative of QwikGist with lots of positive reviews. Female users spend an average of 60 – 120 minutes using QwikGist every day (data provided by Blackberry WebTrends ) with over 13 gossip content sources most of their attention. On the other hand, male users spend between 30 – 40 minutes per day, mostly in the early hours of the morning and between 6 – 8 pm at night, going through mainly news and sports content.
QwikGist is free and currently available for download on Blackberry App World. The first version (QwikGist1.0.0) was launched on the 1st of December, 2012. But the team has taken into consideration feedback from users to launch an improved version currently available on the Blackberry App World as QwikGist (Nigeria) 1.1.0. The app works fine on Blackberry 5.0 upwards, while the QwikGist team is looking at launching the Blackberry 10 version in the first month of January. Also the Android version is coming soon in January, 2013 for Google Play Store.
QwikGist hopes to attract at least 100,000 Blackberry users within the next quarter and the team has set their sights on taking at least half of the 3 million Blackberry users in Nigeria within the next 12 months. They also intended to reach the South African market where a huge amount of Blackberry users exist today.
QwikGist: Blackberry App World, Website, Facebook, Twit
[Image via Flickr/ L.e.e]
