I’ve been playing around the latest social networking site in town which happens to be the only functional social site by any telecoms operator in Nigeria. Launched by Zain Nigeria, the second largest telecoms operator (in terms of subscriber base), Central Station is a social networking site that allows users to connect with other people.

With similar features of other social networks such as blogs, groups, videos, chat, forums, etc, the community is gradually becoming one of the most popular desinations for entertainment & fun lovers in Nigeria (not just for Zain subscribers).

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We are pleased to announce that StartupsNigeria.com, the leading technology blog about web startups, innovations and entrepreneurship in Nigeria is sponsoring the 1st BarCamp in Nigeria, along with Afrigator and Sturvs.

BarCamp Nigeria will bring technology enthusiasts, IT specialists and social media players from Nigeria and around the world together to exchange ideas, build connections, re-frame perceptions and catalyze action of realizing the potentials of technology in Nigeria.

In case you don’t know, BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.

The event will be held at the Tom Associates Training Centre and Conference Hall, Lagos, Nigeria on Saturday, April 25, 2009.

You can find keep up with the event updates via @barcampnigeria

While I’m still shocked at the sudden increase in Egypt’s Internet usage, which has surpassed that of Nigeria, I’m also skeptical of the recent statistics from the Internet World Stats. From the recent statistics, Egypt has overtaken Nigeria in Internet usage as at December 2008.

The new stats shows Egypt on top with 10.5 million internet users, while Nigeria slipped to No. 2 position, but maintained the internet user base of 10 million, which it has held for the last one year. On the other hand, Morrocco is still 3rd, but slipped from 7.3million in June 2008 to 6.6 million internet users in December 2008. And South Africa maintains their 4th position, but slipped from 5.1 million in June 2008 to 4.6 million in December 2008.

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Silicon-Valley based free website building startup, SynthaSite has just announced that they are changing their name to Yola. It just so happens that Yola is the capital city of Adamawa State in Northern Nigeria.

According to SynthaSite CEO, Vinny Lingham,

Yola is derived from the Hindi word “jhola,” which means hatch – and hatching big ideas is exactly what you do at Yola.

It’s quite interesting to see startups adopt traditional names that reflect the goal or concept of their companies. In Nigeria, there are quite a few startups that have adopted traditional names from the yoruba, igbo and hausa languages.

However, my concern is to see more interesting startup ideas, concepts, strategy, design, features, solutions etc from the Nigerian startup scene than just names.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Yinka Olaito at The Branding Gravel, a blog about personal and corporate branding with an international focus on Nigeria.

About two months ago, I started a series on marketing and web 2.0 on my weblog with regards to how web 2.0 conversations have changed the face of marketing and by extension public relations, branding etc for good. The response I got propelled this article. Some called to say that discussion is out of context in Nigeria.

Even though some may argue that Internet is not part of us yet, but it is knocking hard on our door. This may be true to an extent, but the mobile marketing that is today becoming a threat was not part of us until the entrant and changes we witnessed when Telecoms companies were licensed in Nigeria: the lesson is that what works today may not work tomorrow. As a result, this has placed a demand on marketing activities that will be relevant in the next seven years to embrace Marketing 2.0.

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