gdp's Comments

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Play

Thu, 1 Sep 2011 14:48:05 +0000

Thanks a whole lot.

Oladejo Fabolude
http://www.digital-crossings.com

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Play

Thu, 1 Sep 2011 14:46:04 +0000

Ese o!

Oladejo Fabolude
http://www.digital-crossings.com

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Play

Thu, 1 Sep 2011 14:07:05 +0000

Actually, it was on the 31st of August, 2011 that I announced a hiatus, and I also promised occasional posts after that. Hence the 2 or 3 posts after August 2010. With my return to blogging, expect to read regular posts rather than the few and far between I've been doing. Thanks for the welcome back.

Dejo.

Oladejo Fabolude
http://www.digital-crossings.com

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : March of the Androids

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 09:13:55 +0000

Thanks for the thoughts.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Elections 2011: Now that we have all this data, what do we do with it all?

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 09:11:14 +0000

Well... I insist I am only on hiatus, while I decide the direction to go.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : A Second Digital Crossings Christmas.

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 09:06:32 +0000

Thank you Ezekiel.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : 2011: Rise of the Nigerian Internet

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 09:05:11 +0000

Absolutely. Do you know of any Nigerian startups already doing things like this? Please let me know.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : 2011: Rise of the Nigerian Internet

Tue, 11 Jan 2011 09:04:07 +0000

Thank you. Any other thoughts?

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Pause

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:55:31 +0000

I don't want to make a grown man cry.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Pause

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:54:34 +0000

Thank you Rosemary, I don't intend to be silent for too long.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Clone Wars Part 4: The Advert Trap.

Fri, 9 Jul 2010 17:26:08 +0000

Thanks for pointing me at that link. It certainly puts things in perspective. However, that number is an average spread across the world. Countries like the US where purchases are easier to complete would definitely be earning more per ad than Nigeria. Maybe my point would have better expressed as a desire to find out what Nigerians make from adsense on average.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Clone Wars Part 3: Platforms.

Tue, 6 Jul 2010 22:20:47 +0000

Thanks Gbenga. Good point. Generalities help no one. I ended the series this week, but I'll do a postscript next week listing at least 3 specific problem domains and speculating on possible solutions.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Clone Wars Part 3: Platforms.

Tue, 6 Jul 2010 17:55:53 +0000

Thanks, Wizard of Oz!

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Clone Wars Interlude: Impress Me.

Tue, 6 Jul 2010 17:54:40 +0000

I'm looking for stuff that will make sense to ordinary Nigerians. Send what you run into my way.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Clone Wars Interlude: Impress Me.

Tue, 6 Jul 2010 17:53:08 +0000

I am very much waiting. Send stuff my way to look at.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Clone Wars Interlude: Impress Me.

Tue, 6 Jul 2010 17:52:27 +0000

Thanks Loy, Trying my best.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Clone Wars – The Prelude.

Thu, 13 May 2010 18:14:09 +0000

You have to win the prize for the most comments in the history of this blog! Let me make my responses short this time and use some quotes: "I don't expect a Nigerian site to be able to challenge Facebook head on in terms of size and feature set on day one. I do expect them to give me a compelling reason to use their service." It's not about size or popularity - it's about what you have to offer. Furthermore, we all have our incentives. To me, being limited to Nigerians is a disincentive, to another person, being able to yarn with Nigerians on a Nigerian site is the incentive. I would not have you, a Cameroonian, as an online friend if not for the international nature of facebook and twitter. My wife on the other hand was seriously into the stock market discussions on Nairaland. We each found our perceived value. That is what I preach. Whatever you build let it have something a customer wants that isn't in the product that already has their attention. Every product should have differentiator. That is the heart of competition. Because you are bigger or smaller, or faster or brighter or simpler or cheaper or more exclusive or touch-enabled or multi-lingual or in my native language or use pictures or have no pictures or have sms or help me get better prices or protect my privacy better is what makes me choose you over something someone else built. There has to be that value differentiator. I do not "down cast" Nigerian or African startups. Please take what I have written in context. I really urge you to read: "Take a Bow" (http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/2010/04/take-bow.html) which describes my heartfelt perspective of the African Tech Entrepreneur.

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Debating the African Internet Industry with Kachwanya

Thu, 13 May 2010 17:32:27 +0000

Hello Mambe, Thanks for the feedback. This conversation wasn't ever really about quality or lack thereof of local players. It was always about letting your choices be driven by whether a product meets your needs and is of reasonably good quality.I stood against the idea of choosing a product just so as to give a local player "a chance". As I said, quality is not in feature set nor is the potential of the tool in the number of things it does. Think about it - Twitter does only 2 or 3 very limited things, but what it does has empowered so many uses. Yarnable has forums which twitter doesn't have, but the hash tag system enables you to very flexibly virtualise forums. Do you need the ease of use of pre-set forums or the flexibility of hash tags? See? The choices are purely about what you can do with the thing. One more thing I never actually mentioned in my writing. I'm already used to and comfortable with a particular product, so for anyone to draw me away from it, it has to have a something more attractive. I installed chrome just to see what it can do. Now it is my primary browser - drawing me away from IE and Opera. I hear you about positive criticism, but I think through my posts and I have to say that 9 times out of 10 I praise one feature or the other of the African products I mention, and 9 times out of 10, when I criticise, I do so in generalities rather than singling out an individual product for criticism. Even then, articles like "Elevating the Internet Industry" proffer concrete solutions to identified issues. What is positive criticism in any case? It is criticism with the desire to make something better, but it is still critical. It is the intent that makes it positive, but by being criticism, it still talks about a negative. So when I talked about yrn.me's down time, it was in the context of I wanted to try it out, but it wasn't there - this was after praising his providing APIs. I can't imagine Ahmad Mukoshy being intimidated by that or wanting to give up. Instead I picture him thinking up a way to more gracefully deal with down time when it does happen or reviewing his product's code base or his hosting arrangement to reduce the chances for down time. An African tech innovator like him would take such observations and build even better things (or build things better as the case may be).

Loy Okezie : DokitaSays - Ask Real Health Questions. Answers By Real Doctors

Mon, 10 May 2010 21:42:50 +0000

Brilliant idea. Simple premise. Powerful potential. This is what we need in Nigeria. By the way there's a site, sitonomy,com, that let's you get an idea of the technologies used on a site. You don't always get much info, but it can be useful. The link for DokitaSays ishttp://www.sitonomy.com/?url=http://dokitasays.co...

http://digitalcrossings.blogspot.com/ : Clone Wars – The Prelude.

Sun, 9 May 2010 20:12:45 +0000

Hello, Thanks for continuing the debate over here. I respect and admire your passion for the African continent and African technology. I share this passion, we merely have different perspectives on how its growth can be realised. I had typed a response to your comment, and was going to paste it as a reply, but the commenting system said it was too long. In order not to lose the essence of my reply, I am going to do what I did the first time - post it as a blog post. All this is in a bid to have African tech enthusiasts thinking and debating on ways to move us forward. look out for the post on Tuesday.