Having gone out to ask a number of
people to tell me the social networks they are aware of, I noticed that
it almost starts and ends with Facebook and Twitter. This is no surprise
as Facebook is home to over five million Nigerians, and Twitter is a
very mobile friendly, application with very high usage and also home to
about 3.5 million Nigerians.
However, there is more to social
networking than these big two, especially if you are looking to put out
and consume specific times of content while engaging with other people
online. So, here are five social networks you want to check out – and be
on, if appealing to you – either as a consumer (of content), or a
creator as well.
Slide Share
As the name implies, this platform
allows users to share their slides – either in PowerPoint or PDF format.
Don’t for one second think this is a place to just drop off documents,
as it a super cool resource centre for slides covering almost any issue,
topic and subject.
Perhaps what makes this social is that
you can easily sign up/in with your Facebook account, follow users who
share interesting slides – with the option of getting notified when they
post a new slide, and even have the ability to drop comments on their
slides and contact them. I’d say no further, but for more you can check
out slideshare.net Keek
Continue reading after the cut...
If a picture is worth a thousand words,
then a video is about a thousand photos. Although you may argue it is
often more than a thousand, you may just be wrong when it comes to Keek.
This is an application that allows you share at most 30-second videos
on your feed. You also get to follow other Keekers with interesting
streams of videos.
No worries about what platform on which
the app works on, as the developers have gone all out to have it
available on all of the major mobile platforms – Android, iOS, Windows,
and BlackBerry (from BB10). You can also Keek from the web on your PC,
using your webcam. With the world embracing concise content, this is one
social network you don’t want to miss out on.
Pinterest
Photographs are amazing as they don’t
capture memories, events, happenings like video would do. Instead, they
capture moments. Moments are everything and that is why Pinterest is one
social network to be on if you are the photo/image content type of
person. Coined from the words ‘Pin’ and ‘Interest’, this social network
allows you pin interesting photos, themed via boards, to a canvas on the
web.
You can have boards with themes like
‘Food I Love’, ‘Book of the Month’, ‘People and Places’, etc, and pin
related photos on them, as people have the option to follow either your
whole canvas or just boards of interest to them. You also have the
option to re-pin what you find interesting from other people’s canvas to
yours – just like you would retweet. Welcome to photo-heaven.
Eskimi
Eskimi is one of the largest social
network with Nigerians on it. It boasts about 5.7 million users and an
average of one hour spent on the platform daily by its users. Now that’s
amazing for a social network you may not have heard of. So, what’s so
special about it and why should you be on it? First, it is very mobile
friendly (with a new web interface) for both feature and smart phones.
So, no need to wary as to your phone specifications.
Furthermore, it is home to a good number
of people with defined demography – age, and pyschography – interest,
which them makes it easy to have targeted engagement; something valuable
to brands and advertisers, not forgetting content creators. There are
also Fan pages on Eskimi, which you can join to engage with/on brands,
issues, causes, etc.
YouTube
Think 30 seconds is just too small?
Then, YouTube is what you want to be on. Although YouTube is popular,
many hardly know it is a social network. It is more than just watching
videos. It entails having an account. All you need is a Gmail address,
and subscribing to channels of interest, as well as dropping comments.
No more excuse on it being too heavy for
the mobile devices, as YouTube is now optimised and the consumption
rate for Nigeria is shocking. Imagine 500 years’ worth of videos watched
on Facebook daily, and 72 hours of video uploaded every minute, with 70
per cent of these stats as mobile users. Get on it!
-Nubi Kayode (nubi@otekbits.com)
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