The Acquisition of Afrigator: Advice for Nigerian Web Entrepreneurs
When the news came last week that South Africa’s blog aggregator, Afrigator has been acquired by MIH/Nasper group, I wasn’t surprised at all. When Afrigator turned one, earlier this year, I wrote a positive review about the site which got the attention of one of its founders, Justin Hartman.
Personally, I find the site’s name very unique that after I discovered Afrigator, I was thinking of developing a site called CareerGator (an online career aggregator that captures job listings, career news and info around Africa).
In case you don’t know, Afrigator is a social media and blogs aggregator that allows you to index your blog, podcast, videocast or news site (i.e. any site that publishes an RSS feed) and market it to the rest of Africa and the world. For instance, you can filter audio content of a business theme originating from Nigeria. You can also use it to discover new sites in the African webspace. That’s why I call Afrigator - the African version of StumbleUpon.
I was reading a recent review about the acquisition of Afrigator at ReadWriteWeb that says the Afrigator interface, algorithm and user experience were key in driving the kind of growth that made it an interesting acquisition target. Little wonder, MIH/Nasper group decided to acquire Afrigator.
With Afrigator, we now know that Africa is talking…and the world is listening.
Advice for Nigerian Web Entrepreneurs and Startup Founders
- Develop an idea or startup that offers a unique experience for a wider audience.
- Choose a unique name that people would love to hear and share (I suggest that you avoid names that start or end with naija or naira).
- Build your startup on its own platform or web application (e.g Sturvs).
- Create a cool web interface and design with appropriate colour that makes users relaxed when they visit.
- Use great web tools and technologies that promote your startup online (e.g blogs, wikis, social media).
- Adopt promotional methods that will help market your startup both offline and online.
- Launch an online community or even a web application on Facebook or Myspace to attract more users.
- Create web advertising tools such as badges, banners, etc that can help promote your startup or site.
- Build relationships with social media sites as well as the mainstream media (i.e local newspapers, magazines, etc).
- Promote other startups and sites in Nigeria and around Africa by encouraging link-building.
My hope is to see a Nigerian startup impact the world’s web space and get the attention of Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
Are there any more lessons that Nigerian web entrepreneurs can learn?
I think you said it all in this article. Most importantly, we need to support each other. As we all know, attention, positive criticism and support drives the mind of the people behind any internet startup. Make and receive link exchange requests, try to get actively involved in your little way and see how you can apply a pal’s model to yours to strengthen each other. We that grew up in our part of the world kind of got on this exposure a bit late but with each other’s support and constructive criticism, we can make an impact in the world concerning our reputation as a country and develop startups that can compete internationally.
You have some great advice here. I will definitely use this advice moving forward
Keep up the great site!
@IncorporateNigeria - Your suggestions are well in line with my thoughts. For me, starting this blog - StartupsNigeria.com, is my own little way of giving support to Internet startups from Nigeria and around Africa.
@Justin - Thanks, man! We’re proud of Afrigator! We’ll be watching the news for more developments;-)
Aquisition of Afrigator is a great news for other African startups, even though i dont think any Nigerian enterprneur has used their brains to develope their you own application (like Nairaland - smf, Naijahotjobs - smf, Sturvs - pligg, Sturvs search - Simple google API and an array of others) - i think founders should think more of business aspect of their startups, even though am yet to see a very serious startup, most of the statups in Nigeria are just trials and lucks to see if its works out. Although am still impressed with efforts of sites like Afriville.com and the new Naijapals they are potential big bangers if well manage.
[...] The site could aggregate job announcements from other sites. This may seem like providing links to other sites, but is that not what Web 2.0 means? Sharing information? I’ve thought about developing a site called Careergator, after the success of Afrigator. [...]