Nigeria, and indeed the tech space has been very eventful in the past few weeks, especially with the Twitter ban, the switch by many Nigerians to the use of VPN to access Twitter, and the call for a Nigerian-made product to replace Twitter.

My focus for today will be on the call for a Nigerian social media app to replace Twitter.

Let’s dive in by taking a look at the following:

1. Identifying market opportunities:

Identifying the opportunities within a market simply means creating solutions for problems within the market. For example, a person who recently moved into a new home in a new area discovers that it takes 15 to 20 minutes to get to a supermarket/grocery store. The problem in this neighborhood is that access to a store is not convenient, this creates a market for a nearby store that can provide the most needed household items. A market could be a local market for a small city, an entire state, a country, or across borders. The word “market” itself is now beyond geography, many thanks to the internet. A market refers to individuals or organizations who have specific problems to solve and they’re willing to exchange money for a solution in the form of a product or service. Also, as market opportunities are identified, it is very important to define the market size, as this will help guide other decisions along the way.

Without identifying the market size and demography, it becomes difficult to brand the solution (products/services) to appeal to the end-users. Also, pricing, marketing, and everything in between become difficult. For example, following the analogy of the neighborhood store above, identifying the market size and demography will help the store owner know how to price goods, the type and size of products that are best suited for the market, and how best to attract the entire neighborhood.

Also, knowing the market size and demography will further help in forecasting how much you’re likely to make, how the business can/will grow, and the possibility of finding success and maybe even expanding into other markets.

2. Social media and its business model:

A social media platform is like a neighborhood park, mall, or garden (for Abuja people), etc, where everyone within the neighborhood gets to meet and connect with little privacy compared to meeting in their homes. What makes social media unique is that the “neighborhood” is beyond geography, thereby providing opportunities across languages and borders. This is one of the beauties of the internet! As you know, when people come together, amazing things happen. People fall in love, do business, play games, organize events. Practically, everything is possible on social media and the internet.

However, for the owner of such platforms, things are a little bit different. Social media platform founders have to think through a lot of things. To get users to keep using the platform, they must think through design and architecture. As daunting as this is, it seems to be the easiest part of it all. Remember that the social media platform is free for the users to access, no payment whatsoever is required of the user to register or connect with other people. It is free!

How will the founder/managers pay for the servers, developers, and computers that will enable all the interactions on this platform? How will they hire extra hands and pay them to support all the activities that will happen on this platform? How will they make money in return for all their efforts? These are some of the thoughts that happen behind the scenes when building a social media product.

Founders simply look for investors who believe in their dreams and plans and are willing to throw in some of their money in exchange for a slice of success in the future, the success that is often not guaranteed. I must point out that those who invest in social media platforms at their early stages are very rare. And this is understandable because a social media platform starts without any mention of payment or revenue.

With a lot of hard work and some luck on the side of the users, investments may be secured and the platform then finds some stability. It may take years before this platform will ever be able to make money.

How will this platform make money eventually? Let’s take a quick look.

If you are on any free platform, where you’re not required to pay any fee to enjoy all the benefits, you, the user of the platform, will become the product being sold in exchange for money or other benefits. This is especially so with social media platforms.

So after all the hard work to build the platform, attract users, and secure investments that will keep the platform running, the end game is to, someday, charge the users of the platform money to display their advertisements on the platform so that other users can see and patronize them.
I should add that it can take many years to get to this point, but this is always the end game for social media platforms.

Outside charging for advertisements, it’s also possible to build new products and functionality and then charge users a small fee to access such premium services. For a social media platform to have a chance of survival in this era, it needs a lot of users, by a lot, I mean millions of active users. The emphasis here is on the word “Active”. It is one thing to set up an account on a social media platform, it is another thing to use the platform once in a while, it is a totally different thing to create content and connect with people daily on the platform.

3. Twitter Ban and Nigeria’s global perception: 

I’ve read and heard different opinions about this, as always, Nigerians are always divided along sentimental lines when it comes to issues that shouldn’t be handled with sentiments.

A rule of thumb with issues like this is to observe the international community. This is even more important because Twitter is a global tech product that has gone beyond geography.
A country with such a vibrant tech space such as Nigeria should never ignore the international community, that’s where most of the tech funding comes from.

In the startup world, especially in tech, perception is a global currency, and it should never be toyed with! Tech investments in Nigeria for the year 2021 will likely slow down because of this decision. Only a few months ago, Twitter announced its African HQ location and the reasons for choosing that location. Even though Nigeria has the best tech ecosystem, and the best tech talents in Africa, Twitter chose Ghana, Nigeria’s close neighbor.

One of the reasons stated by Twitter for choosing Ghana is freedom of speech. At the time of the announcement, this created a lot of debate, especially around the lack of free speech in Nigeria (I had something to say about this, please click here to watch the interview).

With this suspension, Twitter’s decision to go to Ghana is justified and there is nothing left to the imagination of Nigerians as it concerns freedom of speech.

As a Nigerian, I think I understand the Nigerian government. Because of our culture of absolute respect for our elders, ideally, we wouldn’t tell our elders to shut up. So when Twitter deleted a post by Nigeria’s president, a post that violated Twitter’s policies, it was seen by the government as telling an elder to keep quiet. While this may be a valid point based on our cultural values, it is the same elders who say that you don’t cure a headache by cutting off the head. I think that a better alternative to banning Twitter would have been to engage Twitter based on its actions and make the government’s side very clear.

A country suffering from acute unemployment and under-employment shouldn’t ban a tool used by its citizens to make a living across borders, it should rather engage such a platform in a dialog. This grievance is from the government of Nigeria towards Twitter and should be handled the same way. It should not affect Nigerian citizens who have built their livelihood around Twitter.

I understand that the use of force is also a cultural thing in Nigeria, but we need to begin to draw a line, especially in global spaces. Therefore, calling on Nigerian tech talents to build a product to replace Twitter is a naive call, and this is me putting it nicely. While a product created in response to Twitter’s ban may gain some acceptance within Nigeria, especially with the Nigerian government, it may be seen negatively in the global space, and from the points I’ve raised thus far, it’s easy to see the end of it before it begins.

4. Innovation, Timing, Luck: 

As with startups and tech, there are 3 constant variables:

a. Innovation –

How does your innovation fit well into solving the problems the users are dealing with? What separates your solution and makes it different or better than other alternatives? And if there are no alternatives at the moment, how do you intend to convince people that this is the solution they need?

Founders who fail to answer these questions appropriately before registering their business or writing a single line of code have already failed. They just need to run a million miles down the road before realizing it.

b. Timing –

Even the best innovations require either the perfect timing or the patience to wait for time to catch up. The patience to wait, because there are products that are well ahead of their time in the market.
Sometimes, entering the market early is a problem, other times, entering the market late is the reason for failure.

c. Luck –

The popular saying is to “Build what people want”. The goal is not to build products and then look for people to buy, the principle is to look for people who need something or have specific problems, and enough market size to make it worth the time and effort, then provide whatever it is they need.
In the startup world, especially the tech space, those who do this are generally said to be lucky.

Another important question to answer is, “Is your product a need or a want?”.
It takes a lot to convince anyone that your product is much better than the many other alternatives available in the same market. This is why a lot of organizations, especially young founders spend so much money on advertising.

If your product cannot find traction with little or no advertising, you might be missing something crucial about the market you’re in. Having a product or service that people want, and advertising for awareness is one thing, trying to force a product that doesn’t fit into your target market, by doing more advertising is something different. Another popular mistake is forcing the sale of a product that is already saturated in the target market by doing more advertising.

You cannot drive a business or product to success on emotions or sentiments. Building a product is hard, and a product soon becomes a company, making it even harder. Holding on to time-tested principles, and learning from those who have come before you while taking calculated risks strengthens the possibility of finding success and helps you avoid failing where others have failed.

O.O