Social Media Marketing: Twitter "follow suggestion" best thing yet!

I believe the only reason Twitter has not surpassed Facebook is due to its poor early user retention. (strictly my own personal opinion).

Well, another personal opinion too, in the long term, Twitter is by far more engaging than Facebook! So if Twitter will find a way to keep new users and keep them engaged so they come back more and more once they've signed up, then Twitter will be on its way to becoming bigger than Facebook.

The new suggestions for people to follow, which now twitter shows you has put the short messaging service on that road to becoming the next biggest web service, and guess what... If and when Twitter reaches the #1 status, its going to stay up there for long just for its nature and how engaging it can be to users in the long term.

So what's in it to gain for marketers and businesses as long as this new development is concerned?

Twitter is going to help Marketers engage consumers much more than Facebook. I believe the only reason users would leave Twitter is if they are not following the people they should follow. I mean the right people who reflect the users interest. Consumers will be engaged by twitters feature that allows users to quote, re-tweet and @replies. Brands that know what they are doing are already making great use of twitter.

By the new suggestion feature, if the site will be smart enough to suggest to users the right people to follow, then Twitter is going to grow more rapidly in the coming months. And as more of our friends from Facebook and in real life get on Twitter, we will begin to use the service more and stay longer.

Conclusively, Twitter is the future.. No seriously it is!

Google Discontinues Nexus One, Android May Now Lack Hardware Rythm!

This is not a blog about gadgets, phones and the likes. But it is a startup blog and today I am focusing my post on user experience around hand-held gadgets! Specifically Smartphones.

User experience or user interface design is a must learn for any startup in a consumer market.

I am talking about android, nexus one and the user experience around the combination here. Many users reported the nexus one (users that have other smartphones, like Iphone or Blackberry) as the best smartphone they've ever used, and Google stopped the nexus phone. Is android going to end up an orphan in the mobile OS market? Not at all. Android has got Motorolla, HTC and even a tablet called Inye soon to be unveiled in Abuja Nigeria.

Google's main problem is being massively out-sold by Apple's Iphone. The Iphone 4 sales where heading for the million mark while Google had only sold a little above a hundred thousand phones. But is the Nexus one really a better phone than the Iphone? Well. a lot of users that have used both phones say so!

The Nexus one gave android the hardware match it needed. If you doubt this, here is an example for the Blackberry user who use their phone to tweet. Before the Blackberry had its own Twitter app, there was UberTwitter. And when RIM launched its official twitter app, those that switched to the app, would certainly witness a change in performance and experience when the use their blackberry phones to tweet.

For some reasons, I wont say on this blog if the change the Blackberry users witnessed is positive or negative. Nonetheless, it's a good example of software/app and hardware rythm or fit! Same goes with OS and the hand-held device.

The Nexus one is the phone that users had the best experience running android on. Now that its gone, where does the android stand against othe mobile OS!

The facts show surprisingly, android is even gaining ground by beating all the rest smartphone operating systems. Including RIM and Iphone OS who make their own hardware for their OS exclusively!

Android is number one selling mobile OS in the US for the second quater of this year reports the NPD Group. I still believe, Android would have done better with the Nexus, which I believe brings out the best of the OS. I guess its still all good for Google's mobile OS.

Startup Advice: Get Ready To Go Big Or Go Home Early!

Right from the beginning of the commercial web, you have to be super ambitious as a startup in other to stay longer than the next code innovation!

You have to be ambitious and focused on a market for a start. But you have to keep your eye on the big picture by following market shifts and new products or new startups launching. You have to think how you are going to gain more n more market share over time.

Your team also needs to be obsessed with innovation if you don't wanna be the next Myspace. You have to try new things, new ways and new code to improve your products performance. If elese, someone will get inspired by your idea and move to your market and beat you.

Come to think of it, Google came up with the "don't be evil" slogan and from the search engine that they started with, now they have a blogging platform which I am now writing this article on, an architectural design software (Google sketch), an operating system, a smartphone OS, a mobile phone brand, Google Earth, a mobile ad platform, the list goes on and on.

The point I am trying to make here is that, to be a big success, you have to think of dominating the World atleast a few times before you go to sleep! :). No... Seriously.. You have to dream of ruling the market you are in and you have to try to see that it comes true! Just trying to be a player in the market isn't healthy for an aspiring startup to dream.

Now Lets take a look at Facebook. You think Mark Zuckerberg only wanted to build a social network for college students? Well may be you buy that, but I don't. I don't know how true the stories in the book "accidental Billionaires by Ben Mizrich" is, but Mark is really an ambitious person. You can check out the book here http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Billionaires-Founding-Facebook-Betrayal/dp/0385529376

You really need to hope to be big when you are just starting and work towards that. If not, you may not even get to start. Did I confuse you? Well, I'm sure the ones that really have the startup DNA in them know what I'm talking about!

Nigerian Version of Twitter is a Total Waste of Time! Why is Everyone Doing it?

The truth is, we cannot really handle or consume properly the amount of information that is sent flowing our way all the time. With new services, it's only getting worse and we are becoming less productive by the day.

We are trying to stay updated with the latest news, Global and local, at the same time we are trying to keep up with latest trends, stay up-to-date with friends and family on facebook, follow what our friends and role models are tweeting, talk to contacts on blackberry messenger, we have blog posts to read and more........

So with all this information we are following, do we have room in our heads or time for another twitter like app specifically for Nigeria?

For a sec, let us take a look at what happened to FriendFeed. I am not saying they failed, so don't get me wrong. The guys didn't fail, the got a nice exit and sold to Facebook. But recently, FriendFeed has become nothing more than a platform for tweets, a secondary tweet platform. The activity is on Twitter so don't go against the tide by trying to build your own twitter (thats like re-inventing the wheel when they already have airplanes). Instead, find a way to tap twitters content!

This is just a short reminder for my fellow Naija Internet entrepreneurs.

Correction from last article. Nairaland was started in 2005!

Thanks to Seun Osewa for making the facts clearer from our last blog post! Nairaland was started in 2005 and not 2001 as we earlier wrote (seems like its been around for a decade).

That means Nairaland grew even at a faster rate that we thought. Getting to 500,000 members in just 5 years in the Nigerian webspace is truly remarkable!