The History of social media in Nigeria

Asphalt

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The History of social media in Nigeria
Posted on: December 22, 2018, 12:19:01 AM
Nigeria as a highly populated country has among it's citizens that urge to communicate. Before the advent of technology in the country, people only communicated on physical contact with friends and loved ones.




This wasn't that effective as this old form of communication was not flexible as one might think of. Later interaction always do take longer time as chances of meeting with the person again soon was low.


This form of interaction was no doubt pleasing but ineffective as more and more people lost contact due to long distance relocations.

During the popular Obasanjo regime as president, the country witnessed it's first step into technologically driven communication. As years flew by, internet communication emerged and this brought in features like the social media.








Social media is an electronic means of communication, sharing information and private messages. It could be in the form of words, pictures, or videos.



Important information are shared via popular social sites and one can't deny the absence of fun in there aswell.



History Of Social Media In Nigeria And The World?





It would be ambiguous to begin the history of social media in the country without routing that of the world.


One might say the first unique step into social media communication was in 1971 when Ray Tomlinson successfully exchanged a message between two computers set close to each other. Virtual community communication started with the invention of the Bulletin Board System (BBS). That was in 1978 by Randy Suess and Ward Christensen.



Social medias are powered by hosts and in 1994, Geocities, the first service for web hosting began operation. It was made by John Rezner and David Bohnett allowing users to create their websites. Later in 1995, TheGlobe.com and Classmates were created to serve the private purpose of communication with friends. In 1999, LiveJournal and Blogger joined. Remember social media includes micro-blogs that ensures the possibility of communication with friends and sharing of information. These services effected this.



In 2002,  Friendster was created as a means of communication with people around the world. LinkedIn, MySpace, and WordPress came in 2002. In 2004 Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook, which has grown to be the giant of all social medias in the world today.


Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim in 2005 made YouTube. In 2006, we saw Twitter. In 2012, Pinterest started. It allows users to create and share albums with your pictures. 



Internet infrastructure is very much weak in the country and this has hampered the growth of this sector. The Internet penetrated Nigeria in 1996 after the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) agreed to give license to 38 internet services.



Many blogs and other social media platforms have been created since then. There are some like eskimi which is still popular to a certain extent today. South Africa's owned 2go did make a good social media although it is very unpopular in the country as of today.



Besides all these, Nigerians prefer using social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, etc. And the history of these social medias shapes the social media history as a whole in Nigeria. Social medias could be identified as those internet medias that allows for user interactions like comments, review or even gaming.



This is opposite to online newspapers and other media functions that sends out information only at their end.


The top social media platforms based on the amount of users are: Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, WeChat, Instagram, QQ, QZone, Tik Tok, Sina Weibo, Twitter, Reddit, Baidu Tiba, Skype, LinkedIn, Viber, Snapchat, Line, Pinterest, Telegram, Tinder.
 

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