StartupsNigeria.Com - Discover Web Startups in Nigeria

Recently, I took some time off from this blog to re-analyse the blogosphere and what it has for me. My journey took me to several blogs on different topics and niches, and I've learned a lot more about blogging, niche topics, SEO, etc.

I've been working on a project the last 2 months and successfully launched a blog called StartupsNigeria. The blog reviews and analyses web startups in Nigeria, as well as tech/mobile products and services in Nigeria that are making an impact in today’s new web space. Since I've been following startup news and tech trends around Europe, US and Australia, I noticed that global blogs on Web 2.0, Technology, and Social Networking rarely cover the web 2.0 industry in Africa.


My goal with StartupsNigeria is to showcase Nigerian Web 2.0 startups, social networking/media and bookmarking sites that are creating a buzz around the world. The idea is to connect global web-savvy blogs and businesses with those in Nigeria, as well as to empower new Web 2.0 startups in Nigeria to developing technologies and applications that would add value to users.

So if you are interested in discovering new web startups in Nigeria and Africa, you can subscribe to the blogs RSS feeds.

Your visit would be appreciated too. Go to StartupsNigeria.Com

Social Network Startups: hurox, travel popnets, mytrybe, ifimpresident, araspace

This week, I'll be sharing social networking startups that got my attention. You can check them out and leave your comments on what you think about them.

There you go...

Hurox (pronounced “who rocks”) is much more than your average social network. Using some of the most advanced tools available, anyone can create virtually any “website”, no pasting code or programming necessary. Also, every Hurox member has the ability to earn monetary rewards for their efforts. Go see for yourself here

Travel Popnets is a new way for globe-hoppers and web-surfers to save, share and discover the best of the web wide world. You can organize all of your travel know-how and explore favorites shared by your friends. Check them out here

MyTrybe is a networking application that connects you with people that share your personal taste and interests. Get just-right recommendations and discover the people in your personal taste network - your Trybe! Visit the site here

ifimpresident.com is a social utility designed to network people through ideas rather than personal relationships. The main goal is to foster a comfortable atmosphere, where political dialogue can be achieved respectably. Users are linked to their peers based on their political views so that when you discuss politics through out site, it will be read by a targetted audience based on what views you yourself have. View the network here

Araspace is the first Arabic social networking site that has a bilingual interface with 100% Arabic and English support. AraSpace.com is dedicated to people throughout the world, especially Arabic speakers, who wish to meet and make friends. Like other social networks, you can find people with similar interests, share your views, announcements, photos, music, videos, and more! Go to the site here

Please feel free to leave your comments on what your think about these social network startups. Enjoy!

TheCollegeLife.com - A New Facebook?

TheCollegeLife, is probably the next generation in social networking for college students. The new social online community for students by students offers a centralized forum that allows students to interact with peers on their campus as well as others across the country. The site provides college kids a place to call their own without worrying that high school students and their parents could access their profiles.

Though fashioned like Facebook, the new social site is not keen on taking over the world, but has limited its membership to only college students, so you need a valid school email address to join TheCollegeLife. The site currently on beta version looks too simple and welcomes suggestions and criticisms.

TheCollegeLife has basic features like other social networks such as blogs, profiles, image galleries and messaging. Plus, TCL features a video section, and forums for students to share and discuss life, assignments, profs, and just about anything they like. The site is continuing to improve and other great features are in the offing. So watch out!

Whether or not TheCollegeLife would be widely accepted by college kids and schools around the world remains unknown. What we know is that it can never compete with Facebook.

JASEzone MashUp Professionals in Google Maps Mashup

JASEzone is a new professional social spot designed to help you network with other professionals and expand your business prospects. Like other social networks such as LinkedIn, you can create your profile that identifies your professional accomplishments and goals. Friends and colleagues will find you just as you can network with other professionals aligned with your interests. You can add more JASEfriends by inviting others to join the JASEzone and connect to you.

Your network consists of your JASEfriends, your JASEfriends' JASEfriends, and the people they know, linking you to thousands of friends.You get your own inbox for on site messaging and a free blog. Join groups related to gaming, politics, music and more. Discuss your favorite topics in the forums, or auction and purchase items in the JaseBid section.

Through your JASEzone network you can:

• Find potential clients, subject matter experts, and business partners.
• Be found for future business initiatives.
• Discover JASEfriends that can help you reach job opportunities.
• Get introduced to other professionals through your JASEfriends.

The JASEzone team recently integrated the profiles of its active users into a Google Maps Mashup. Currently only United States profiles show on the mashup but the team has plans to expand into Canada and eventually Europe, Asia, Central & South America and more.

FoodHood.com - Where Foodies Meet and Eat

Could you have imagined that any social networking site would connect people who love food to one place? As funny as this may seem, a new social community for food lovers worldwide has been launched to cater for all your foodie needs.

FoodHood.com is an online food in da hood that provides its community with great food, recipes, photos, secrets, prizes, restaurants, exotic and new food discoveries—everything a foodie could dream of. In the FoodRoom, you can discuss anything food, and you can also share photos of your favorite restaurant, backyard BBQ steak, favorite wine, etc in the FoodBook. You can check out The Scoop for the latest quirky food news and stories, or you can simply check out recipes for dinner.

I made the mistake of searching for some menus and not only did what I found whet my appetite, I started getting hungry. Ouch! My stomach! Here are a few of the menus...

Pork loin and Salmon/Yorkshire pudding Dip for HaiNam chicken/Pickled vegetable

Livesteez - The New Video Sharing Place for Hip-Hop and African-American Entertainment News

Have you ever wanted a place where you can meet people and discuss current events and politics while networking? The place is Livesteez - a new online social network and a forum especially devoted to urban youth which allows members to upload and share videos, discuss current events and politics, as well as network.

Livesteez news feeds and discussion boards almost exclusively feature Hip-Hop- or African-American- focused stories. View here, here and here. Livesteez is a perfect example of a specific social networking community that does not rest on its demographic differences, but adds innovative applications (video sharing in a social network, exclusive artist contracts) to keep its technology current and members satisfied.



But Livesteez might need to promote it's site better to reach audiences. The discussion forums seems to be begging for attention (who cares to talk?) and Livesteez appears to have just a handful of members.

Via: (Killerstartups)

Fiction Folks Mash And Make Money At StoryMash.com

Now, this really got my attention. Probably because I have a flare for fiction. A new social community called StoryMash, for collaboration, constructive criticism and a place to experiment and discover different writing styles is mashing up fiction readers and writers together.

StoryMash is a place where fiction folks start new stories, continue existing stories, or take a story in a different direction by adding a chapter to its middle! All the while earning money for every chapter they publish on StoryMash. If you are a reader, you can vote for your favorite chapters and choose how you want the story to continue. After reading a chapter you can select from among multiple followup chapters. And while reading a chapter if you have a great idea on what should happen next, you can register and submit a followup chapter!

The idea is similar to Helium where writers are paid from $20 to $200 for each article selected by their partner publishers. The difference is that with StoryMash, you pay yourself for each work you publish on StoryMash depending on the number of votes you get for your story.

Here is how it works:

If you're a fiction writer and want the world to know about your work, you will post your story to StoryMash.com. Then, other authors can add follow-up, or even middle chapters to existing chapters written by others. Branching chapters compete with each other based on the vote ranking of registered readers. Eventually, the best storylines will evolve into the most entertaining, and profitable storytelling possible.

The whole idea is a a collaborative system of user generated content where StoryMash provides a fair contract for writers; writers keep their copyright, and grant StoryMash a non-exclusive license so that StoryMash can adapt and possibly resell combined works. Plus, all authors are paid over 50% of all revenue made by the content they publish.

There are also periodic writing contests, and this February, over $500 in prizes will be given away. So start posting on StoryMash by share your creative writing with the world, and earning some cool cash.

Have fun!

Next2Friends Launches Beta And Connects Friends Next To Friends

Do you want your friends to be next to you? Next2friends is a new social community that's now on beta version until late March 2008 and limited to 250, 000 users during the 3-month beta period. The social site allows friends to stay connected to each other by taking advantage of mobile phone tools. It's got some amazing features that will get you attracted from the word "go".

Here are just a few:

Once you create a profile at Next2friends.com, not only can you make friends online but the site's Intelligent Proximity matching will send you updates on the Next2friends users that you passed throughout the day that share your interests.

Here's how it works: You set up a Next2Friends profile detailing all your likes, dislikes, quirks and everything that makes you who you are. Then, as you move about in the real world, if you have the Next2Friends software loaded onto your Bluetooth enabled mobile device, Next2Friends will automatically collect and match your data to other Next2Friends users you came into close proximity with. When you next sign into your account you'll receive notification of all the people you passed throughout the day who share your likes, dislikes, and yes, even your quirks.

With the Ask-A-Friend feature, you can also get a friend's advice on a pair of shoes you like to buy while you are shopping by sending them a photo and asking their opinion. With the Live Streaming Video, you can broadcast live events from any capable mobile device or webcam to your family and friends wherever they are in the world. They can watch the event in real-time with you, as it happens. The idea is for you to capture moments and share them with your friends with live video streaming while living in the real world.

But, doesn't the whole idea of the social networking startup seem like you don't have your privacy as it could be a way for people to track you throughout your day? Wouldn't that make you feel like someone's probably watching you?

The Saga Continues at SagaZone for the Over-50's

Saga Zone, created by the insurance and holiday company Saga Group, is becoming the social website of choice for the over-50s. The new social network site which has been running in trial mode for four months, was launched in October and currently has more than 13,000 users.

Like other social networking sites, Saga Zone members can create their own profile pages, set up their blogs, contact friends or join in online discussions. Although there are no age limits on networks such as Facebook (with more than 50 million users) or MySpace (with more than 200 million users) - these sites are heavily populated by younger users.

A survey earlier this year by media regulator Ofcom found that older surfers make up a significant proportion of the internet population, and are much more likely to spend money online. Surfers over 50 account for nearly a third of all time spent online by British web users. According to Nielsen//NetRatings data from April 2007, Over 50s (who make up 41% of the UK population) now account for nearly 30% of all time spent on the internet as seen below.

Saga Zone is not the first attempt on the social networking craze among affluent older surfers. American website Eons launched last year with a focus on the baby boom generation. But despite raising £16m from investors Eons has struggled in the popularity stakes and was forced to lay off a third of its 72 staff last month.

Social networking right from your email account?

As was reported today on CNNMoney.com, Yahoo! and Google will soon launch another exciting feature to allow their email users social network through their email accounts. The companies are trying to make accounts into personalized home pages to challenge current social networking such as MySpace and Facebook.

With a pre-existing e-mail account which already has a social graph that shows the connections you make while you e-mail your friends, Yahoo! Mail and Gmail users can now engage in social networking with their friends, colleagues, etc

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This innovation will come at a time when the social networking market is fighting for dominance with Myspace, as the leading social network in terms of user membership.

The question is: Will email users be attracted to Yahoo! and Google's new initiative or just stick to Myspace, Facebook and others?

ConnectHit to Compete with Facebook and MySpace?

Social networkers may now socialize on a safe, clean, new social network called ConnectHit. Hopefully. Launched on November 1, 2007, the social networking features of ConnectHit.com is described as free, clean, and safe to create one's own private community.

ConnectHit allows members (currently 7 members in the network) to share photos, blogs and interests with their growing network of friends. They can create and customize their profile pages, use chat rooms, instant messaging, create forums, quizzes, polls, and pictures.

Popular sites such as MySpace.com, Xanga.com and Facebook.com have been under heavy scrutiny and criticism more recently for the social risks they expose members to. However, ConnectHit.com plans to enter this arena as the safe, clean, fun alternative to these popular sites that are getting a lot of media attention these days.

But can ConnectHit stand the competition?

Fashion Flirts Social Networking with Fashionistas

Hmm! Fashion now has a place in today's social networking trend. The new social network - Fashionistas is a fashion-centric online social networking site dedicated to providing passionate 'fashionistas' a free, one-stop communications platform to network with fashion enthusiasts globally while keeping up to date on the events in the fashion world.

Unfortunately, as I was posting this blog a click on the site could not open its url. I figured that I perhaps needed to be a fashion enthusiasts to actually see the site.

Well, Fashionistas will be a place where people who really love fashion, I mean, fashion editors, publishers, bloggers, designers, stylists, photographers, models, and consumers can meet, discover, share, and show off their work.

The site will allow each member to list their interests in fashion and through member profile pages (with a unique url at www.fashionistas.ca/yourname) connect and collaborate with other members of the network in order to share their passions about fashion. They can also upload images, video, blogs and just about anything in the world of fashion!

Kylie Minogue's Fans Live at Kylie Konnect

Fans of the singer Kylie Minogue, can now meet at Kylie Konnect, an online social network where they can create their own profiles, post their own photos, blog entries, meet other fans and make friends.

Kylie Konnect is just like any other social network, except that everything's all about Kylie Minogue. Her profile on the site features exclusive music, news, tour information and more, and allows fans to download exclusive behind the scenes footage and have a chance to win 'money can't buy' prizes. While promoting her latest single, "2 Hearts," Kylie will use a feature on the service that lets users upload content directly from their mobile phones to offer her fans exclusive pictures taken on the road.

Fans of other artists would be interested in seeing their stars launch their own social networking sites. So what if that happens? Well, I'm sure there's still a lot of space in the socio-cyberspace. We'll see...

Yahoo! Kickstarts A New Social Network

Who would have thought that the Internet search giant Yahoo! would not want to have a share of the fast-growing online social network market? Just a few days ago rival Google teamed up with MySpace to tackle Facebook's dominance in the social network market. Now, the heat is on!

Yahoo! has launched Kickstart, an online social network that connects college students, graduates and alumni professionals on the job market. In creating Kickstart, Yahoo! fancied Facebook's fashion as a US college network, thus Kickstart's users build a profile entering their college details, photo and any other revelant information.

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However, while Facebook is widely acknowledged as a social arena, rather than a professional one, Kickstart aims to create a professional network allowing users to find internships and jobs, or get career advice and mentorship. The site allows people to create a professional profile, browse company profiles and network with peers, professors, alumni and potential employers, all in the process of kickstarting their careers.