Nairaland All You Need To Know About Nairaland.

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Adewale Stock

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Nairaland is a Nigerian English-language internet forum/community. Founded by Nigerian entrepreneur Seun Osewa on March 8, 2005, it is targeted primarily at Nigerian domestic residents and is the 6th most visited website in Nigeria.


Nairaland currently has over 1,400,000 registered accounts (August 2015) and is ranked as the 7th most visited site in Nigeria (and the most visited indigenous site) according to Alexa.com.

Nairaland reportedly has over 55 million Internet users, corresponding to 32.9% of the entire population. With Nairaland having a considerable but unconfirmed number of users based in the diaspora, this statistic suggests that a maximum of 3% of Nigerian Internet users are registered on Nairaland compared to Facebook's 11 million Nigerian users which correspond to approximately 20% of the Internet population. Nairaland, however, does have a considerable number of unregistered users, as registration is only necessary for posting.

What is Nairaland used for?
Nairaland is an online community and public space that serves as a meeting place for Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora, who constantly follow up on the events in Nigeria and participate in political debates about the country.

About Nairaland founder
The CEO of Nairaland and Snake Naija,

Oluwaseun Temitope Osewa was born on December 17, 1982. He is a Nigerian internet entrepreneur and the founder of Nairaland, a popular internet forum launched in March 2005, which was projected as the biggest African forum by Forbes.

YNaija listed him as one of the most innovative Nigerians in technology.

He was also listed among T.I.N Magazine's top 10 most influential Nigerian online entrepreneurs in 2015.

He is a Comand puter programmer, entrepreneur, and Snake handler.

The beginning was not rosy
In this 2006 interview, he narrated how all his businesses before Nairaland failed


” All my business projects before Nairaland were failures, except the one that became Nairaland. My web hosting business failed after just 3 months because I ran out of money, while I couldn’t execute many other projects I researched due to shyness and lack of capital. My blogs and the mobile phone forum that preceded Nairaland were successful but not profitable. However, it was on that foundation that Nairaland was built.”

So how did he hit the Nairaland jackpot?


How did this young man, who was just around 22-23 years then, think of starting a forum that will later become Africa’s numero uno? Let’s hear from the horse’s mouth:


“About 2 years earlier (2003) I had attempted to start a web hosting business, but after 3 months I could only boast of one customer, so I ran out of capital and the business died. It would probably have succeeded if I had managed my capital more wisely or raised more money as I got many hosting requests I couldn’t satisfy later that year.


After that first failure, I was encouraged to get certifications and a regular job, but I couldn’t go back to that kind of path after tasting creative freedom, so I kept researching business ideas and presenting them to friends and family, but no capital was forthcoming to carry any of them out. I did this for less than 2 years. (The last idea was a site for sending SMS messages. I picked up Python to implement it.)


Eventually, I decided to start a web forum, because it was the only idea that required no additional capital: I already had Internet access and a $15 per month VPS graciously paid for by a family friend. I created 3 forums in November 2003 (one for higher institution students, one for IT discussions, and one to cover the emerging GSM industry; the Mobile Nigeria Forum at MobileNigeria.com).


The Mobile Nigeria Forum took off, so I relaunched it in February 2005 with the assistance of Mr John Sagai Adams, who posted a link to the forum on his mailing list and participated enthusiastically in those early days. Other mobile enthusiasts like Mr. Yomi Adegboye pitched in to make the site a success. In a month or so, the forum had about 300 members, but the growth potential didn’t satisfy me.


I decided to start Nairaland when I noticed two odd things about MobileNigeria:


(1) Despite its narrow focus, it was the only Nigerian community that gave a voice to Nigerians at home. Most other Nigerian sites were owned and dominated by Nigerians in the US or UK. They covered only issues of interest to Nigerians abroad.


(2) The off-topic section of the forum, covering topics outside telecoms, like romance and jokes, was becoming more vibrant than the Mobile Nigeria Forum itself, suggesting the need for a more general-purpose Nigerian forum.


This gave me the confidence to take forums like Naijaryders and Talknaija head-on by starting a general-purpose discussion forum with a strong bias toward issues of interest to Nigerians at home. I felt that such a site could attract enough traffic to make enough money from Google adverts. That’s why I started the Nairaland Forum.” (CP-AFRICA.COM)
 

Adewale Stock

Administrator
Apr 15, 2020
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continued about Nairaland post

What you need to know
● Naira land, according to Alexa Analytics on 15 top websites in Nigeria, Nairaland is the 2nd most visited website in Nigeria.

● Nairaland is the largest forum in Africa.

● Seun Launched Nairaland 14 months after Facebook was launched.

● Seun gave everyone minutes of hypertension when he wanted to shut down Nairaland perhaps it was April fool in 2006.

● Nairalander with the highest level of topics is Onila with 30108 topics

● In 2011 Seun was approached by a group of companies who wants to buy nairaland for 1 million dollars which is a 155million naira but he rejected the approach, and even nairaland’s estimated worth by a site ranker for the year 2011 was a 512million naira making it the most expensive Nigerian site.

● He is an indigene of Ogun state (this state has more firsts than any other state in Nigeria: Abiola, Obasanjo, Awolowo, Soyinka).

If you’re an active internet user, or you consult that machine to search for stuff, you would have come across Nairaland. Well, Nairaland is Nigeria’s biggest indigenous website and only Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Blogspot are more viewed than it. Put better, it commands more visits than Twitter and Wikipedia in Nigeria. It also bests sites like Punch, Vanguard, Guardian etc. It is the everyday most visited website in Nigeria and among the top 1000 most viewed sites in the world. Nairaland records more than one million views every day.


Nairaland’s primary audience is the average Nigerian middle-class adult, aged 30-45years. This demography is more familiar with it because it was created around the time they were adopting the internet – just as Gen Zs prefer Snapchat and Tik-Tok. Its structure allows users to follow sections they are interested in making it easier to find topics that interest them. Users can teach, learn, and engage in conversations revolving around contemporary issues without a limit on the number of characters in a post, as seen with Twitter. This allows many helpful conversations to thrive on the platform, giving it the title of Nigeria’s top information plug. A goldmine on information, Nairaland’s continued prominence is inextricably linked to Nigeria’s culture where unsolicited advice thrives; people flock there to get and give advice on a myriad of topics, and interestingly, to confirm certain information’s authenticity.


Nairaland is arguably the most optimised Nigerian website, accessible to any mobile phone’s browser irrespective of how poor internet connectivity is, even as basic as EDGE or GPRS. The simplicity of the site’s interface makes the website lightweight, ensuring load time is as fast as possible for its millions of users despite varying internet connection speeds. However, some see the bland User Interface and Experience (UI/UX) as a weakness, desiring a change because new users and younger Nigerians may find it challenging to engage with and trust the information from the platform.

Its Naira and Nairalanders
Nairaland has the potential to become bigger than it currently is. However, over the years, the founder has maintained the platform with few changes that could generate higher revenues. Seun prefers to keep it as an information plug such that the forum hosts virtually all kinds of topics from different sectors with a remarkably interesting Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).


A repository of information, it is a company Social network giants and Search engines would want to acquire because of the information and reviews its users share, and the exceptionally high customer retention rates. There are rumors that the founder had refused offers from Google and Nairabet’s Akin Alabi in the past.


Although it is mostly compared to Quora in terms of the operating model, Nairaland is more like Reddit. “It is to Nigeria what Reddit is to the USA. However, while Reddit has been able to leverage its diverse audience for growth and is currently valued at over $4billion, Nairaland is still struggling with the right revenue model and playing too small”- Research Analyst, Samed Olukoya.


Data from worthofweb.com estimates Nairaland’s value at $295million and Reddit’s at $4.56billion. It also estimates the daily revenue for both platforms at $55,408 and $1,381,318 respectively. Currently, Nairaland’s primary source of revenue is advertisements. It runs a Targeted Ad Platform where members can place adverts on sections where their target market can be most likely found.


As an information ecosystem, some members have become household names on the forum based on value-added. This helped them make money and become famous. One of such people is Suraj Oyewale a.k.a Jarus Hub. The need for career-related information led to Jarus Hub becoming a big business venture that sprung from Nairaland. Other individuals who made fortunes from Nairaland include Bimbo Akin-Emmanuel (Inspired Autos) and Akin Alabi, founder of Nairabet. This is a strength its competitors have found difficult to replicate.

What does the future hold?
There have been complaints about the need for the founder to improve Nairaland’s UI/UX urgently. Although an excellent platform for Nigerians to hear from and speak about the streets, Twitter now helps with that albeit not as in-depth. The force that is Nairaland is not the content or the UX; it is the audience. If they are not given a reason to stay, and new demography of users is not acquired, its growth may be hampered. Nairaland needs to adapt to the changing times.


In conclusion, Nairaland’s web statistics makes it an excellent platform for Corporates and Government to partner. It could serve as a hub with regard to sharing information or discussing policies or research. Nairaland has had a huge impact on employment in Nigeria; it has also been particularly useful in building awareness for many micro-businesses. The applications of the trove of information Nairaland possesses is invaluable. While the opportunities are huge, it is up to the founder to decide to look at the bigger picture, make improvements or still stick with the mantra – if it is not broken, don’t fix it.