Pls don't mention Blogs....
I mean forums

WhatsApp hookup groups...a friend in Nigeria told me Nigeria has the highest number.

donbachi:
WhatsApp hookup groups...a friend in Nigeria told me Nigeria has the highest number.

What has this got do with this post

Tokfora
https://tokfora.com

I think this one got the vibes

I love this question.

Nairaland has become too toxic for my mental health especially since Tinubu won the election.

I now rarely visit this site

The Nigerian sub reddit


Groups on Facebook

I built one from scratch as a side project earlier this year but later shut it down though I added additional features like paid member subscriptions, badges and marketplace for selling digital products e.t.c

I don't think I'll ever have time to touch the source code again sef

YoungCabal:
I built one from scratch as a side project earlier this year but later shut it down though I added additional features like paid member subscriptions, badges and marketplace for selling digital products e.t.c

I don't think I'll ever have time to touch the source code again sef

Why did you shut it down? Also was it Nairaland clone (copying the “outdated” NL look) or was it a more modern forum software like Discourse aor Reddit?

@OP,
I’m also intrigued why there aren’t many more successful Nigerian forums. NL and LIB were the vanguard respectively for forum and blog. And while many other successful blogs have sprung up after LIB, the same cannot be said for forums

airsaylongcome:


Why did you shut it down? Also was it Nairaland clone (copying the “outdated” NL look) or was it a more modern forum software like Discourse aor Reddit?

@OP,
I’m also intrigued why there aren’t many more successful Nigerian forums. NL and LIB were the vanguard respectively for forum and blog. And while many other successful blogs have sprung up after LIB, the same cannot be said for forums

I remember the project.

It was a clone with black background and green colored fonts.

There have been hundreds of new Nairalands springing up every time someone completes his HTML and CSS trainings. Many have even bought domain names and launched but they all fail.

The failure reasons are many but i have identified some few:

First, you need promotions to push the new site to the potential users. This cost money and many dont have. “Organic growth “ is a long gone possibility for new projects except something viral happens to it. You have to pay to play. Ask PayDay and Kuda wassap.

Second, the founder should not be greedy. Look at seun, despite the traffic, advertising is minimal. This makes using nairaland enjoyable. If the founder cannot survive without ads, he can’t overthrow nairaland.

Third is the unique offering deficit. If you are not bringing something new to the table, why would new users sign in. Mastodon, BlueSky vs Twitter. Signal vs WhatsApp. If you don’t come with gifts, users will leave.

There are many others but..

airsaylongcome:


Why did you shut it down? Also was it Nairaland clone (copying the “outdated” NL look) or was it a more modern forum software like Discourse aor Reddit?

@OP,
I’m also intrigued why there aren’t many more successful Nigerian forums. NL and LIB were the vanguard respectively for forum and blog. And while many other successful blogs have sprung up after LIB, the same cannot be said for forums

It had a dark theme and had more features than nairaland. I had to shut it down due to time management issue

truthCoder:


I remember the project.

It was a clone with black background and green colored fonts.

There have been hundreds of new Nairalands springing up every time someone completes his HTML and CSS trainings. Many have even bought domain names and launched but they all fail.

The failure reasons are many but i have identified some few:

First, you need promotions to push the new site to the potential users. This cost money and many dont have. “Organic growth “ is a long gone possibility for new projects except something viral happens to it. You have to pay to play. Ask PayDay and Kuda wassap.

Second, the founder should not be greedy. Look at seun, despite the traffic, advertising is minimal. This makes using nairaland enjoyable. If the founder cannot survive without ads, he can’t overthrow nairaland.

Third is the unique offering deficit. If you are not bringing something new to the table, why would new users sign in. Mastodon, BlueSky vs Twitter. Signal vs WhatsApp. If you don’t come with gifts, users will leave.

There are many others but..

So I totally agree with your first point. The only way to break in these days is via a marketing blitz. Meaning big money.

The Mastodon v Twitter and Signal v WhatsApp comparison I don’t totally agree with. I’m very active on Mastodon and actually prefer it to Twitter as it’s more sane and less “commercial”. Granted most Nigerians will know next to nothing about Mastodon but it is successful, it’s not yet mainstream but is good enough to be mentioned.

Signal on the other hand are a bunch of idiots. Compare Telegram and WhatsApp for a fair comparison. Even as successful as it is, WhatsApp, has very limited penetration in the US. I can’t remember where, but somewhere in Asia, Viber is king.
But yeah, very valid points you made. I’ve toyed with the idea of a forum using lemmy or the now archived open source Reddit codebase. Even looked at Discourse and Flarum. But to go against NL, you need that marketing budget. Loads of it

airsaylongcome:


So I totally agree with your first point. The only way to break in these days is via a marketing blitz. Meaning big money.

The Mastodon v Twitter and Signal v WhatsApp comparison I don’t totally agree with. I’m very active on Mastodon and actually prefer it to Twitter as it’s more sane and less “commercial”. Granted most Nigerians will know next to nothing about Mastodon but it is successful, it’s not yet mainstream but is good enough to be mentioned.

Signal on the other hand are a bunch of idiots. Compare Telegram and WhatsApp for a fair comparison. Even as successful as it is, WhatsApp, has very limited penetration in the US. I can’t remember where, but somewhere in Asia, Viber is king.
But yeah, very valid points you made. I’ve toyed with the idea of a forum using lemmy or the now archived open source Reddit codebase. Even looked at Discourse and Flarum. But to go against NL, you need that marketing budget. Loads of it

To add to the marketing bulaba, a cost vs benefit analysis of devoting a kuda kind of marketing budget to a business like Nairaland would need serious review. How much can such a business return both in the long and short run before the costs turn into a permanent drain.

Nairaland can afford to be overly flat as it is because it has a very minimal cost to revenue ratio. Nairaland does zero adverts, doesn’t have a customer care center and doesn’t even run a proper office. These costs would have to be borne by the new competition.

The disruptive idea must offer what Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Nairaland combined does not currently offer. It must be free to use. It must not have annoying adverts and the average dumb nairaland user must be able use it without asking for help. It must also load fast, consume less data, be able to work seamlessly on the crappy itel and tecno phones of most users and must retain at least a little sense of user privacy.

truthCoder:


To add to the marketing bulaba, a cost vs benefit analysis of devoting a kuda kind of marketing budget to a business like Nairaland would need serious review. How much can such a business return both in the long and short run before the costs turn into a permanent drain.

Nairaland can afford to be overly flat as it is because it has a very minimal cost to revenue ratio. Nairaland does zero adverts, doesn’t have a customer care center and doesn’t even run a proper office. These costs would have to be borne by the new competition.

The disruptive idea must offer what Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Nairaland combined does not currently offer. It must be free to use. It must not have annoying adverts and the average dumb nairaland user must be able use it without asking for help. It must also load fast, consume less data, be able to work seamlessly on the crappy itel and tecno phones of most users and must retain at least a little sense of user privacy.

That means NO NEED na. Cos to cater for tecno and item segment and provide all of that for free for a niche with very doubtful revenue means throw good money into a bottomless pit.

How does Reddit, Quora, and the likes stay profitable?. I’m on Reddit a lot and while they have a subscription model, the free model has very covert looking ads peppered all over the Home feed

truthCoder:


I remember the project.

It was a clone with black background and green colored fonts.

There have been hundreds of new Nairalands springing up every time someone completes his HTML and CSS trainings. Many have even bought domain names and launched but they all fail.

The failure reasons are many but i have identified some few:

First, you need promotions to push the new site to the potential users. This cost money and many dont have. “Organic growth “ is a long gone possibility for new projects except something viral happens to it. You have to pay to play. Ask PayDay and Kuda wassap.

Second, the founder should not be greedy. Look at seun, despite the traffic, advertising is minimal. This makes using nairaland enjoyable. If the founder cannot survive without ads, he can’t overthrow nairaland.

Third is the unique offering deficit. If you are not bringing something new to the table, why would new users sign in. Mastodon, BlueSky vs Twitter. Signal vs WhatsApp. If you don’t come with gifts, users will leave.

There are many others but..

Yeah, it was a temporal design, the main features were actually distinct. Seun blocked me on nairaland when I posted the link under his tweet, he later unblocked me though. Aside that, the new horizontal line added in between the featured links on nairaland frontpage currently was inspired by the new nairaland clone I built. Nairaland even copied android emoji's from my project guy.

I don't think someone who just completed html and css training, can build both the frontend and backend alone like I did, you seem to be forgetting nairaland has a backend ?

I have built a theme of the same nairaland clone and a featured links mod for the simple machine forum software and sold in the past years, I later built the last one from scratch just to have total control over the underlying API.

I'm currently building something else, maybe I'll get to share it here when I'm done hahaha

YoungCabal:
Yeah, it was a temporal design, the main features were actually distinct. Seun blocked me on nairaland when I posted the link under his tweet, he later unblocked me though. Aside that, the new horizontal line added in between the featured links on nairaland frontpage was inspired by the new nairaland clone I built.

I don't think someone who just completed html and css training, can build both the frontend and backend alone like I did, you seem to be forgetting nairaland has a backend ?

I have built a theme of the same nairaland clone and a featured links mod for the simple machine forum software and sold in the past years, I later built the last one from scratch just to have total control over the underlying API.

I'm currently building something else, maybe I'll get to share it here when I'm done hahaha

What i meant was that a lot of nairalanders who just learnt HTML have tried to replicate Nairaland in the past. Many of their site ashes are still littered in different posts here and there.

My feedback on your project was on the colors. I liked the black background and not the neon green fonts.

Looking forward to the new project.

airsaylongcome:


That means NO NEED na. Cos to cater for tecno and item segment and provide all of that for free for a niche with very doubtful revenue means throw good money into a bottomless pit.

How does Reddit, Quora, and the likes stay profitable?. I’m on Reddit a lot and while they have a subscription model, the free model has very covert looking ads peppered all over the Home feed

There is a YouTube video i would recommend. It is by Moon and it is titled “Discord: The most evil business in the world”.

It is a good watch and answers a lot of these questions and more.

It will also reveal why Elon Musk bought Twitter at such an over valued amount.

Thats the real game.

truthCoder:


What i meant was that a lot of nairalanders who just learnt HTML have tried to replicate Nairaland in the past. Many of their site ashes are still littered in different posts here and there.

My feedback on your project was on the colors. I liked the black background and not the neon green fonts.

Looking forward to the new project.

Sure, I will share it here when I'm done. Thanks for the feedback

dokibo:
Tokfora
https://tokfora.com

I think this one got the vibes

Nice

@OP,
I’m also intrigued why there aren’t many more successful Nigerian forums. NL and LIB were the vanguard respectively for forum and blog. And while many other successful blogs have sprung up after LIB, the same cannot be said for forums[/quote]

I think it's hard to build forum or it's not profitable

truthCoder:


To add to the marketing bulaba, a cost vs benefit analysis of devoting a kuda kind of marketing budget to a business like Nairaland would need serious review. How much can such a business return both in the long and short run before the costs turn into a permanent drain.

Nairaland can afford to be overly flat as it is because it has a very minimal cost to revenue ratio. Nairaland does zero adverts, doesn’t have a customer care center and doesn’t even run a proper office. These costs would have to be borne by the new competition.

The disruptive idea must offer what Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Nairaland combined does not currently offer. It must be free to use. It must not have annoying adverts and the average dumb nairaland user must be able use it without asking for help. It must also load fast, consume less data, be able to work seamlessly on the crappy itel and tecno phones of most users and must retain at least a little sense of user privacy.

You have a point