Famous Nigerian gossip blogger, Linda Ikeji has gone Zuckerberg and launched a new social network called Linda Ikeji Social dot com. The social network went live live yesterday and is currently accepting signups through mail or one’s Facebook profile.
Linda Ikeji dot com joins the gossip queen’s stable that includes her popular blog and an online media network covering music, TV and radio.
The website is a serious departure from conventional social networks since it is integrated with e-commerce tools right out of the box (classifieds, buy/sell extensions and rewards), even without a standing community as of this writing besides news and its blogging roots.
While it took other social giants time to introduce such features to their audiences, after a considerable time mining their data et cetera, Linda Ikeji dot com is bold enough to launch with them.
Over the years many social networks have launched and vanished after being outmatched by the blue social giant Facebook. Just here home we had ebbz world, campuser, wolox and now Muwado. The one’s that have stood the test of time have since revised their approach, others shut down since they can’t out maneuver the might of Western based social giants like Facebook & Twitter. These enjoy economies of scale, have a big talent pool and big cash reserves at their disposal, something that their African equivalents have failed to attract.
However, let us extend a benefit of doubt to lindaikejisocial.com since its masterminder, Linda Ikeji can ride along her celebrity status in Nigerian social circles to push her social network. Nigeria already has an active telecom subscriber base of 152.28 million with a teledensity of 109.14% and an internet penetration rate of 47.44%, according to official quoted figures from its communication minister Adebayo Shittu.
These figures suggest that Nigerians are active on the internet with more room for growth and how better scale than first capture your home audience? The social network’s website is currently down either explaining the keen interest taken by netizens to sign up, attracting traffic than it can handle or something else. Do you remember Twitter downtimes?
