In 2012 Facebook acquired Instagram in a deal which was its biggest acquisition yet at $1bn! Now the social network giant has acquired the popular messaging app, WhatsApp for a whopping $19 billion in cash and stock.

WhatsApp currently has over 450 million monthly users and growing and is poplar mostly with teenagers and/or anyone looking to avoid text message charges.  It allows users to send messages over internet connections hence avoiding text messaging fees. The company claims it is currently registering one million new users a day.

The acquisition by Facebook includes $4bn in cash and approximately $12 billion worth of Facebook shares, plus an additional $3 billion in stock to WhatsApp’s founders and employees at a later date. WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum will also join the board of directors at Facebook.

What do you think about this acquisition? was it worth it? How do you think Facebook would integrate WhatsApp into its social network services? Leave your comments below.

Source: BBC

The sheer randomness is so much so that currently there is a chat battle between participants typing the word “anarchy” and participants typing the word “democracy” to control the game. Twitch saw that and placed a bar depicting the battle in the video stream. Basically, there are now two modes to Twitch Plays Pokemon, anarchy and democracy. Anarchy is the mode we’re all familiar with — all inputs in the chat are taken and immediately applied. Democracy on the other hand uses a “vote” system — the system takes the most popular input every few seconds and only applies that one. Players can vote to switch between modes at any moment. If Democracy mode gets voted in, Red’s movement is then collectively determined by the players.

“The mode that isn’t active needs 75% of votes as indicated by the dotted line, the current percentage of votes is indicated by the black line,” the FAQ on the stream’s chat states.

The channel’s creator said that TwitchPlaysPokemon will run indefinitely in the hopes that the crowd-sourced game will see it’s Elite Four defeated. There’s a huge lag between a chat message and the resultant input, so even if all 75,000 players are agreed on what needs to be done, a combination of lag and duplication may not help players achieve that goal anytime soon.

The stream has accrued 13 million views and the participant numbers rise drastically at peak hours, even reaching 80,000 simultaneous players at one point. In an article about TwitchPlaysPokemon Kotaku outlines how it’s possible that any progress is being made in the game with so many participants and technical difficulties, it’s worth a read if you are curious.

Paper allows you to navigate through your news feed item-by-item with the swipe of a finger. Images appear full-screen with accompanying captions  and you can pan from left to right simply by tilting your device. To put things in a better context, the app poses as a radical change in  how users view status updates, photographs and videos posted by friends.

Videos in your news feed also appear in full-screen and play with captions overlaid in a similar way to images. At the bottom of each page are “like”, “comment” and “share” icons.

In all, the app takes away all the clutter that comes with Facebook (That clutter which also includes the ability to view events) and just gives you those features you use most of the time and can possibly drive some users to never open the Facebook app ever again.

Source: The Verge

“The team were really interested in how Konga has been able to stamp its footprint in Nigeria in such a short time with plenty of positive feedback coming from users on Facebook.” As stated from their official blog.

Mendelsohn emphasized their admiration and satisfaction for the successful execution of Konga’s past campaigns while expressing their desire to further strengthen Facebook’s relationship with the Konga brand with mutually beneficial partnerships that would help the brand and Nigerians using Facebook as a whole.

Among the pundits, it has been pointed out that Facebook does not have a Nigerian office. As such it raises a few questions. Like “Why would Facebook send a delegation to Nigeria?”, “Who else will the delegation visit? Seeing as the team is led by an important officer in Facebook.”, “Is Facebook about to set-up shop in Nigeria?” Of course any answers to those questions without an official statement is speculation, but who says that’s a bad thing?

This is largely due to the hope that it will go viral. Most content and products don’t go viral, they are marketed and sold to specific audiences. This post is a shameful shameful sell.

Here are 7 marketing tips for Nigerian startups

1. Nomenclature

A generic name will hurt you in search engines. If you search for your proposed company name and someone else has the domain/name you want, think up another name.

After selecting a name, acquire as many public web properties related to that name as possible. Set up a Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr account with the exact name of the company. Link all of them back to your website. Create a Google Place.

2. Targeting

I was speaking to a client a few weeks ago and it turned out they were running an online campaign targeted at the whole of Nigeria while their service was only available to Lagos residents. They had wasted thousands of naira.

If your company has products for teenagers, target users between the age of 13 and 21. Not all 10 million Facebook users.

3. Marketing Budgets

As you budget for your Internet plan, diesel and salaries, don’t forget to put some money aside for marketing. $5(N8750) a month on Facebook goes a long way when you do it right.

4. Engagement

10,000 Facebook fans but your website doesn’t get up to 100 visitors a day.

Firstly, people need to stop the habit of acquiring followers/fans for the sake of numbers. I’ve realised that these numbers only matter when you’re in constant engagement with your fans/followers.

Publish content that you think your fans would like to relevant social networks and include a link to your website occasionally. Be funny. Remember that people don’t live in a world that’s closed to your industry. Ask what they feel about Ronaldo’s win of the Ballon D’or.

Don’t tell me you’re selling an iPad and link me to your homepage. I’ll never click any link you post again.

5. Search Engine Optimisation

People need to be able to find your T-shirt selling website if they’re looking for T-shirts to buy. The title of each webpage should contain words you think a person would search for if they were looking for your product.

Make a list of 10 or more keywords you want to show up for every month and insert them in the title tag when you’re linking to the page. If you’re not sure what keywords you want to show up for, Google one keyword or phrase and scroll to the bottom to see related terms.

Something like this works

<a href=”http://www.konga.com/men-s-wear/darcy-mens-long-sleeve-shirt” title=”Men’s wear: Darcy Men’s Long Sleeve Shirt in Nigeria”>Darcy Men’s Long Sleeve Shirt</a>.

Konga and Jumia do this very well. No wonder they show up for almost anything you want in Nigeria. Asos shows up for almost any clothing term you search for.

Create a Google+ page  and link to all your top-level categories with the keywords and phrases you want in the about section. Submit a sitemap  to Google Webmaster tools.

6. Start A Blog

Share pro tips around your service. Blog about your industry’s successes and challenges. Blog about experiences in Lagos traffic.

7. Start A Newsletter

Newsletters are great because they bring users back to your website. When you start blogging, add a banner to every page on your website asking people to sign up. Send a newsletter that links back to your website at least once a week. Mailchimp and CreateSend are great tools.

In today’s world of selfies, lategrams and #ThrowbackThursday, your filter choice on Instagram can say a lot about you. Are you the type to go au naturale because you see no need? Or do you overdo the filters and even add HDR to give it a boost because you can never have too much colour?

Whatever your filter choice is from ‘#nofilter’ to Hefe, this infographic tells you what your filter choice says about you. Do you think it’s accurate? Let us know!

Source: Marketo

YouTube Nigeria has released a list of the most watched videos in the country.

A look at Nigerian favorite music videos in 2013, reveals that songs like Ada Ada by Flavour, Caro by Starboy feat L.A.X & Wizkid, Personally by P-Square, Jaiye Jaiye by Wizkid ft Femi Kuti and Eminado by Tiwa Savage ft Don jazzy were some of the most watched music videos in NIgeria in 2013.

Comedy videos continue to top the charts with videos like The Interview by NdaniTV and Lagos Big Girl’s Game by VideoHitsShow’s featuring as two of the most watched videos in 2013.

Globally, the world watched the The Fox more than 265 million times, making it the top trending video of 2013. Viewers also made it a top searched Halloween costume. The global public turned out in record-setting numbers to see Psy’s post-Gangnam Style performance on his latest video – Gentleman. And YouTube users made more “Harlem Shake” videos than there are people in Manhattan.

Here are the Top 10 Videos For Nigeria In 2013(excluding music).

1. Last Flight To Abuja – The full movie (Nollywood Movies 2013)
2. Civil Defence Commandant Can’t Tell His Organisation’s Web Address
3. EDIDI-(The Bond) – Latest Yoruba Movie 2013 Starring Iyabo Ojo
4. Stella Damasus and Senator Yerima on Al-Jazeera Network THE STREAM
5. The Leaked Video Of Gen. Diya Oladipo Pleading With Gen. Sanni Abacha – Oputa Panel
6. THE LAGOS BIG GIRL’S GAME ( Reanne Opia)
7. Bling!
8. How to get married; “Naija” style by Toke Makinwa
9. The Interview – A tale of Frank Donga
10. Nigeria – Burkina Faso | CAN Orange 2013 | 21.01.2013

The Top 10 YouTube Channels show that Nigerians are finally beginning to stream movies. 5 out of the channels are nollywood channels. The top channels are:

1. AYTVAYTV
2. channelsweb
3. yorubamagic
4. mynaijalove
5. TVnolly
6. nollywod5star
7. ndaniTV
8. DavidoHKNTV
9. Nollywood5ive
10. Officialiyanya

The Top 10 Music Videos Watched By Nigerians

1. Ada Ada [Official Video] by Flavour
2. PULL OVER (OFFICIAL VIDEO) by KCEE Ft. Wizkid
3. Personally by P-Square
4. CARO – (Official Video) by Starboy Ft. L.A.X & Wizkid
5. Jaiye Jaiye (Official Video) by WizKid Ft. Femi Kuti
6. Sexy Mama [Official Video] by Iyanya Ft. Wizkid
7. Eminado [Official Video] by Tiwa Savage Ft. Don Jazzy
8. Stupid love by Olamide
9. Skelewu (Official Video) by Davido
10. Emi ni baller (Official Video) by Chidinma Ft. Tha Suspect & IllBliss

What’s your favorite YouTube video this year? Tell us in the comments!

WhatsApp, the mobile messaging platform, just reported that it hit 400 million monthly active users. This represents an increase of 100 million users over the last 3 months. This represents a third of the 1.2 billion strong Facebook network.

The company has only 50 employees, of which most are engineers. This rounds off a remarkable year which has seen WhatsApp become the premier  mobile messaging app in the world and seen it handle over 27 billion messages  daily.

Going into 2014, WhatsApp faces new threats from Asia in the form of Line and KakaoTalk – which have more users and features.

Source: WhatsApp

This new service lets you share photos and videos with up to 15 friends. Think Snapchat meets Instagram (also think Snapchat competitor, like the way they gave Vine a run for their money back in June by adding video)

With this feature, you can share your photo or video with selected friends in the ‘Share To’ section of the app. There, you can select up to 15 of your friends to share your post with.

Every “moment” you share this way will be put in an inbox so they you see them on a separate feed. Of course, you can only send these to people you follow. If you don’t follow a user, they’ll get a request from you. Also, you can choose to receive direct moments from people without following them (not sure why you’d want to do that), and if you just don’t want to receive anything from there, the request will be left pending. When a user has seen your photo or video, you’ll see a check mark next to it. Users can also like each other’s moments. One thing to note is you can’t send these moments with just text. However, the you can send your photo or video with text like regular posts.

It all sounds pretty neat! I am concerned about privacy though, so I’ll definitely be looking out for updates to the Privacy Policy. What do you think about this new feature? Let us know!

To get the feature, simply update your app on iOS or Android.

Source: Engadget

As international access goes, you can target select large groups of people online. These are your potential consumers with whom you can interact directly through chat features or email and meet their demands with your supply. It’s so easy that brand promotion online becomes fun to do. Your brand is sure to have a marketing message attached to it, which will reach a much wider audience online through social media promotion methods.

Step 1 – Creating A Plan

Know who your target customers are. For instance, if you’re selling furniture then office execs and housewives will be one of the target denominations to approach. Once you know the ‘who’, involve yourself in social media sites and domains that have a lot of these kinds of people.

Age group is yet another factor to consider. For instance, there will be more 25-35 year olds on YouTube than on other less well known social sites. It’s been one of the best places to learn and practice how to make money on YouTube by creating a fan base and joining the site’s Partner Program.

Facebook is a more extensive all-rounder when it comes to having a diverse age group and Twitter and Google+ come next for quick and brief approaches to marketing.

The next plan on your conference table should be crafting an ideal social marketing strategy. This phase of planning should target your audience’s interests and needs, what they’ll like and how they will like to see it.

Step 2 – Content Creation

Written content of all sorts go up online (just like this article you’re reading) and they serve to promote your brand in incredible ways. Sharing content, which you have had written using keywords and attractive phrases that will appeal to your target audience, is a good idea.

Share it through social media sites and you basically widen your net to catch more and more potential customers. This content needn’t just take the form of articles or blog entries but can also be images and videos. As long as your message is useful to your customers and is something fresh for them to see and read they will help take it to the next level.

Step 3 – Keeping Your Image Up

This is an often overlooked concept. After all, you’re promoting you’re brand on several different social media sites and are aiming to attract several different customer types. You need to keep your brand image consistent.

The design, picture, colors, logo, size and other factors used to represent your brand has to be easy to remember and recognize. Changing it too often can be a mistake. Enhancing it occasionally is alright, but you must consider that what’s familiar to you is not yet familiar with your potential audience. Keeping your image up with them will take some maintaining.