There are several websites today, sharing the “Naija” brand. Naijaborn.com is one of such websites. Naija is the funky word Nigerians and friends of Nigerians use to replace “Nigeria”, out of affection for the country or more for the sake of brevity, in speech.
Naijaborn.com is more than your average website. It is a platform for people of Nigerian origin and friends of Nigerians to connect in a social network. Though still in beta mode, the website is already making waves among Nigerians on the Internet. From the words of its creators:
Our goal is to create a playground that connects the world to Nigerian people on a global scale. With this platform, people would connect,interact and share their best experiences. We hope to create a virtual Nigeria through our Naijaborn brand.
The website loads pretty fast and sign-up is quick and easy as one is requested to enter only a few personal details. A few other details can be added after sign-up. Members can share their own content by uploading photos, music, video and text.
I noted though that there is no CAPTCHA on the sign-up page and wonder how long it would take before spamming bots gain access to the network. Also, I am a bit uncomfortable with the “tribe” field in the personal details. The platform currently has no connectivity with other popular social networks like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter etc so users would still have to manually duplicate their content on the other platforms.
Naijaborn.com is backed by a team of young and formidable people:
- CEO/Founder: Francis Omokhape Oghuma is of Nigerian origin and founded Qubestreet in 2005 to contribute his own quota to the emerging digital and online landscape in Africa.
- Mambe Churchill Nanje is a Cameroonian IT Entrepreneur, with expertise in web development, computer systems and networking. He runs AfroVisioN Group. and serves as as Chief Techical Officer at Naijaborn.
- Others include: Adekunle Samuel Owolabi of Kstunt Media, Ahmad Mukoshy of AIMTECH NG, and Ann Daramola of Radiant Matter Media.
Naijaborn is still new and one can expect it to get better quickly, to make a meaningful impact. For now, I entreat you to follow the tagline of Naijaborn: show ya self!
In the course of writing this brief review, I conducted an interview with CEO of Naijaborn, for your reading pleasure.
Are you already on Naijaborn? What are your views about the new social network?
Naijaborn.com is backed by a team of young and formidable people:
- CEO/Founder: Francis Omokhape Oghuma is of Nigerian origin and founded Qubestreet in 2005 to contribute his own quota to the emerging digital and online landscape in Africa.
- Mambe Churchill Nanje is a Cameroonian IT Entrepreneur, with expertise in web development, computer systems and networking. He runs AfroVisioN Group. He serves as as Chief Techical Officer at Naijaborn.
- Others include: Adekunle Samuel Owolabi of Kstunt Media, Ahmad Mukoshy of AIMTECH NG, and Ann Daramola of Radiant Matter Media.
Francis Omokhape Oghuma (CEO of Naijaborn.com) speaks…
Francis Omokhape Oghuma is the CEO of Naijaborn. In this interview, he shares the vision behind Naijaborn as well as the future plans of the new Nigerian social network. Enjoy and remember to share your thoughts as well.
Oluniyi: Please introduce your…
Ok i must confess that i agree Naijaborn has a number of issues that it should clearly address before it switches from Beta testing to Live broadcast.
But to be candid,the team of naijaborn has clearly started on very good note and worthy of note.The future is indeed bright.I never imagined that i would be joining another social networking website apart from facebook, not to talk of it being a Nigerian oriented social network.
Its good that we web developers can come up with things from scratch such as this.Soon we too will be going live with our online startup venture called stayinabuja.com a hospitality,travel & lifestyle web portal offering premium content in the area of hotels directory listing in Abuja,FCT.
I know its about time we took our rightful place in the cyber space.
I wish the owners of Naijaborn the very best!
I’m jumping on the train, just that I can seem to locate my exact profession..so that I can adequately show ma sef!(on a lighter note).
I think this is a site we really need for more social networking among Nigerians and I pray they achieve their aim.
Great post.
Your views are highly respected.
we would work around it.
we appreciate balanced feedback’s and this is one
God bless Nigerians globally
We thank God Nigeria is doing good now.
Thanks for the encouragment and the issues pointed out. For Captcha, we are trying to make it secure without Captcha. But if our current security fails, we will fall on captcha. We have gone for 3months without the captcha and I guess alot of bots have been stopped. SECURITY BY OBSCURITY.
I will personally work on the TRIBE to something like ETHNIC GROUP, but socially some people will connect more with people form their ETHNIC GROUP, we are not promoting, we just give them what they like.
@Tunde I like your support and if you need me in anyway to code, to engineer or to advice. I am 100% ready
@Ife the profession drop down is a tough war between, having good search engine system for naijaborns and given them all their professions. we wanted to let any body write his or her own profession but then, the search will not work if I write webdesigner and another person writes web designer. So we made it selectable. the next step, we will make it auto suggest. thanks for pointing. Please just try to see the one thats most related to you for now. when we update that feature, we will notify on our blog
Thanks David
and thank you all
Please SHOW YA SEF!!
I just set up an account in less than two minute and i agree there are security concerns. One that got my attention was the fact that i didn’t have to confirm my username thru a link sent to my email. They need a security and privacy policy that is consistent with other popular social networks.
Thanks Bright…well noted
we will put this in our wishlist
regards
Africa is really picking up now on IT.
i’ll like to comment on the ongoing voters registration in Nigeria. i’ll love the encourage all big boys and girls in the country to register. my next comment goes to those registering people, please don’t register underage nigerians for this exercise. i was registered during the last voters registration and i was under age, still in secondary school (SS3) my Principal threatened that if i dont register, i will not gain admission into the unversity, since i wanted to go to university, i had to register only sixteen. i was not the only underage student registered. Hundreds in my school were registered. i love Nigeria