As I write this, Facebook users from Nigeria is over 340, 000 and keeps surging everyday. In January, when the number of active Facebook users from Nigeria was slightly over 200, 000, we predicted approximately 600,000 Nigerian Facebook active users by end of June 2009.

At the rate at which Facebook is growing in Nigeria, it becks the question: Can any Nigerian social networking site break the Facebook flow?

Granted, with over 10 million Nigerians on the Internet, that figure is just a fraction. So is there a way Nigerian social networks can capitalise on this internet population? Can they offer a service that Facebook is not offering?

Again, if Nairaland was a real social networking site (now with over 320, 000 members), could it out-Facebook Facebook? Can Naijapals or Legwork beat Facebook (in terms of Nigerian users)? While I’m skeptical about the possibilities, I think there’s probably something they need to do to achieve this.

Could they leverage on the over 63 million mobile subscribers in Nigeria to provide great social networking features second to none? I think this is possible!

Given the fact that more and more people in Nigeria are accessing the Internet via their mobile phones, social networking sites could take advantage and offer great mobile social networking tools, products and services that would get people to perhaps move away from the Facebook frenzy.

What are your thoughts?

Stats Via CheckFacebook

Whether you like it or not, Facebook has come to stay! If you’re a smart web entrepreneur, you need to start using Facebook to reach out to millions of Nigerian and African Facebook users who are actively involved with the most popular site for the year 2008.

In case you don’t know, Facebook is a social utility that connects people from all over the world (about 150 million). When the site was created, most people didn’t recognise Facebook’s business potentials. But today, most popular and successful sites such as CNN are using the Facebook’s utilities such as applications, etc to build their brands.

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Last week, I discussed with some software and web developers from the University of Lagos, Nigeria who indicated their strong interests in a hands-on workshop that would allow Nigerian developers to learn how to use the Facebook Platform and APIs to develop widgets and applications for businesses.

After the success of the Facebook Developers Garage in Kenya, Ghana and Uganda, I thought it’d be great to host one of such events in Lagos, Nigeria. The event will provide a forum for students and professional software developers in Nigeria to learn about the Facebook Platform and APIs, participate in application demonstrations, seek technical support from experts, share ideas and build collaborations.

Interestingly, Facebook has attracted a lot of Nigerians (over 200,000 active users), but few software developers and web entrepreneurs have actually used the Facebook Platform to develop applications. An example of such is Sturvs Facebook Application. This means that a great number of Nigerian web developers out there are yet to use their skills to build applications on the Facebook Platform.

So if you’re interested in a Facebook Developers Garage in Nigeria, you can join the Facebook group and participate in the discussions. You can also leave your thoughts, opinion, ideas and suggestions in the comments section below.

Perhaps the most important question for 2008 is: How many Nigerians Are on Facebook? Personally, I’ve been puzzled with news reports about Facebook scams that link to Nigeria. While this is a critical issue (and equally debatable), my concern here is tracking Facebook’s statictics as it relates to Nigerians.

Acoording to recent Facebook statistics, Facebook has more than 140 million active users as at 17th December 2008 with a growth rate of over 600,000 daily. The site has grown more than 130% from January 2008 which makes it the world’s largest social networking website.

Update

Today, we reached another milestone: 150 million people around the world are now actively using Facebook and almost half of them are using Facebook every day. This includes people in every continent—even Antarctica. If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia and Nigeria.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook

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