In hindsight, it's obvious that a country famous for internet scammers would have enough savvy people with access to the internet to have its own startups as well. Nice to see the positive side of Nigerian internet access for once.
I agree, however the existing sites do not necessarily cater to the Nigerian market or have local content. Cragslist is not in Nigeria; Nairalist stepped in to fill that gap.
I'm sure you saw the piece in NYT about how web companies are shifting focus to the profitable “Western” markets. http://tinyurl.com/cv8eoz The gaps that open up will be filled by local start-ups. Interesting times ahead!
I'm not saying they're not good, just saying they're nothing really new - just a locally produced "clone" (for want of a better word - I realise they're more than that) of another site. Not particularly innovative.
I hadn't seen that article, thanks. The point of it really seems to be that video sharing sites find it expensive to deliver to developing markets.
Ha, good to see my friend Oo linked to on there (he's a Nigerian who studies at the University of Warwick, where he's been trying to build a startup community). According to him, in Nigeria, everyone knows that internet fraud (and politics) is the way to get rich, but there aren't the same role-models for entrepeneurs as there are in Western countries. Interesting stuff.
something else to watch... your wallet. Nigerian startups have to overcome the hurdle of the assumption that any packets crossing their border are intent on defrauding you.
I think it would be cool to see some kind of google maps mashup showing various startups around to world. There would obviously be a lot on the US West Coast, but I'd like to see how distributed around the world they are.
Nairalist.com and nairalists.com are waging an interesting battle, the sites look exactly the same, even the categories seem to be the same. For now nairalist seems to be winning based on amount of classifieds posted, which is probably the only thing that users really care about.
Many of the ads you see on "Nairalists" are copied from Nairalist. It's an "interesting" battle if you're not involved, I guess, but it's not a very fair one. :-(
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 33.9 ms ] threadI'm sure you saw the piece in NYT about how web companies are shifting focus to the profitable “Western” markets. http://tinyurl.com/cv8eoz The gaps that open up will be filled by local start-ups. Interesting times ahead!
I hadn't seen that article, thanks. The point of it really seems to be that video sharing sites find it expensive to deliver to developing markets.