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Fintech, or Financial technology, is changing the way we move money as we know it, forever. Now more than ever, financial institutions are prioritising digital innovation in making.

Why Fintech startups are important

Fintech is many things, from loans, to fundraising, asset management, money transfer, and in summary, how we move or keep our money. When we change the way money moves, it has the power to change the way entire businesses operate, considering that the fundamental part of every business is to get money moving, quickly.

It is the bedrock of digital businesses. It is also the bedrock of the digital lifestyle. So for example, why do I need to worry about my saving discipline, when I can get Piggybank to help me save better, conveniently?

Fintech is putting power in the hands of the consumer.

The Financial system of older legacy institutions are traditionally sluggish, enjoying privileges that come with monopolistic methods. The size of these companies also mean innovation is slow.

Now, fintech startups are taking a shot at these financial institutions, and bringing these services closer to the most important factor; the consumer.

What ways are Fintech startups changing the game?

In more ways than one, these startups are making the movement of money better, faster, and painless.

Paylater, for example, will give you loans of up to 1 million naira, without a collateral (Terms and conditions apply, though), when some financial institutions still ask for an arm when issuing a loan.

And Piggybank is kinging the savings space. And they invested all of their resources in making it super convenient to put money aside, whether small or large, whether daily or monthly. This flexibilility is what helps them thrive.

And remember when investments seemed like a elite thing to do? <a href="" id="c0ff809b-5eec-5741-a54c-472b03a8a6ab">Farmcrowdy</a> wants to change that. They’re basically making it possible to invest little money in farmers, while you get returns on your investment after a set period, mostly short term.

And the payments heavyweights, <a href="" id="e1c5e37a-b2f6-5e65-bde4-3b7aa8483e01">Paystack</a> and <a href="" id="40d79748-3276-5eae-9796-50b30541eae9">Flutterwave</a>, are making it ridiculously easy for businesses, small and large, to receive payments everywhere.

Minus Paylater, none of these companies existed three years ago. Something is happening.

Another very interesting company is <a href="" id="12ad923e-a9b9-5fc5-af99-fc11f9a7fbfd">ALAT</a>, which is pretty much an app-only bank.

The real win for Nigerian Fintech.

The thing about disruption is that it gets everyone back on their feet. In the end, most of these startups will have even bigger wins when they work with already established financial institutions, and it’s already happening.

Piggybank for example, secures all its funds with UBA. Flutterwave already helps banks like Access Bank power payments. ALAT, as we know, is <a href="" id="cef8fdd8-eac7-56e1-be08-1b044b4f4b39">Wema Bank’s baby</a>.

What Bank-Fintech collabos will do in Nigeria.

What will Fintech give Nigerians in 2018?

We expect that much older financial institutions will adopt more innovation, as more entries will find their way into the Nigerian ecosystem. There are speculations that Opera will be entering the Nigerian fintech space.

More business too, will be adopting these innovations to make payments easier and faster.

In the end, competition makes the technology better, and eventually, the consumer wins.

Fintech startups grabbed the most wins this year, by miles, and here's why.

Fintech companies are the big winners of the year, here’s why

When people or things die, the first question everyone asks is “how did this happen? It was here just yesterday”.

But the truth is, Efritin died a long time ago. Since January 2017, when it was announced that the company was shutting down. What followed, according to reports, was an auctioning of company property at the Efritin Office. While most of the team was laid off, the website was kept up. Just the way you’ll put an almost dead person on life support.

An old Uncle Steve once said, “ “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.”

In 2015, Efritin began operations in Nigeria, putting in a lot of work (and marketing spend) to find their place in the tightly contested e-commerce space in Nigeria. Just like everyone who touches down in Nigeria with a big pocket, they found their footing quickly, hiring massively. By the end of 2015, they bought Ringier’s ady.ng, mostly for the data.

They crowned it with a badass office in with cool room names like Balogun Market (The Main Office), and Computer Village (The Server Room).

One office name you couldn’t find anywhere in the Efritin building was Murtala Muhammed Airport. That’s the busiest airport for people exiting Nigeria.

Back to the shutdown of operations at the Efritin office. Nils Hammer, the CEO of Efritin’s Swedish Parent company, Saltside Technologies, said after the January downsize:

“We have a long list of KPIs to evaluate how things are performing. Compared to other markets, we didn’t see the same progress in Nigeria.”

Tonaton is one of Saltside’s products in emerging markets, alongside Bikroy.com in Bangladesh, and Ikman.lk in Sri Lanka.

Clearly, the numbers weren’t adding up. For a country of over 180 million people, they felt they’d given much, but were in fact getting very little.

If you throw a stone in the Nigerian Internet startup space, it’s going to land on a company saying they are “building X that will change the way Y works for 180 million Nigerians.”

But the Internet market, as we’ve come to understand, is way smaller. For context, Konga, which is one of the biggest e-marketplaces in Nigeria has just over 187 thousand active users, according to Techcabal.

A quick math shows you that online stores are still a “one percent” affair. More context, Konga launched in 2012, 5 years ago.

Even with the 2017 Mobile Trend Report saying internet penetration is at 47% of Nigerians, it still doesn’t put into account another important factor; spending power. The culprits here, are a weaker currency, and inflation.

Konga and Efritin are quite different (Konga is B2C, a company selling to a consumer, while Efritin was mostly C2C, a company creating a place for customers to do business together). But it is still in competition for the same thing; attention.

This leads us to the bigger e-commerce scene. Layoffs aren’t a new thing in Nigeria’s e-commerce space. In 2015, Jumia laid off 300 workers, about 30% of its workforce. Dealdey? 60% of its workforce. Even Konga laid off 10% of its workforce in January 2016, about 80 people. Then Konga rounded off the year with <a href="" id="6e817008-112a-5635-991c-dc5bb65731cf">another layoff of 60%</a> of its workforce.

Sim Shagaya himself, former CEO of Konga and Founder of Dealdey, said in an interview:

“These headwinds will likely last through 2016. Consumption growth has slowed for a number of reasons and I believe this is the reason for the layoffs you are seeing not just in e-commerce but in many sectors across the economy. The larger, savvy, global investors understand that e-commerce is a marathon and I’d be surprised if the short term bumps we are experiencing deter continued investment,”

He was right, and Efritin’s death is itself a validation.

Death by a thousand cuts. From mismanagement of funds, to bad timing in the Nigerian economy, the final cut that sealed their fate, was most likely the moment where someone thought;

“Damn, we’re putting in so much and we’re getting so little”

We spoke to a former employee of Efritin who asked for anonymity:

“The major problem we had was that the funds weren’t going to the right places. Some people got kicked out for mismanagement of funds. And I think the final nail was that, the people at Sweden kept comparing us to the Ghanaian sister company, Tonaton.com. Their argument was that they were spending less in Ghana and getting more returns than in Nigeria.”

The cardiac arrest followed. And they tried to make it as gradual as possible, first laying off staff. Then keeping the website alive, scaling down operations. Then pulling the plug so quietly, eventually, that very few people noticed.

Moral of the story: E-commerce in Nigeria is still very hard, and no one appears to has figured this thing out. But the Nigerian e-commerce space is still quite underdeveloped, young, and clearly in the difficult formative years.

Perhaps one day, it will find its footing, get up, and stand tall.

Efritin made a grand entry into the market in 2015, but it breathed its last in September of 2017.

Efritin.com came with everything, and left with nothing

Primate Labs, a company that built and app for measuring the speed of an iPhone’s processor, released data a few days ago, showing that the performance of the iPhone 6s and 7 models dipped as they aged.

Apple admitted it on Wednesday December 20.

They said they reduce power demands on the phone, which in turn slows down the processor. In the statement released by Apple, the problem is due to the fact that all Lithium-ion batteries degrade and have problems supplying as much juice as the grow older and accumulating charging cycles.

“Last year we released a feature for iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE to smooth out the instantaneous peaks only when needed to prevent the device from unexpectedly shutting down during these conditions. We’ve now extended that feature to iPhone 7 with iOS 11.2, and plan to add support for other products in the future.”

When the iPhone processor makes a big current draw from a flagging battery, according to Apple, the battery can deliver the current in spikes that can potentially damage the phone’s electronics.

All you have to do is replace the old battery for $79. And guess what doesn’t have a warranty? The battery. lol. That’s besides the fact that repair advocates have complained over and over that Apple makes it difficult for users to replace batteries on their own.

The older the phone gets, the poorer the performance gets.

This company is intentionally slowing down your iPhone, here’s why

The site does the basic stuff. You visit, post a free ad where you leave contact details, and hope a potential buyers reaches out.

What exactly does Offers.ng have to offer?

Efritin came at it with everything, and left with nothing. OLX works hard to make sure what happened with the maid doesn’t repeat itself. Jiji, on the other hand spends a ton of money on advertising to make sure we never forget them. How does a product like Offers plan to survive this space?

“We do believe that though there are many existing classifieds platforms, the market is still big enough for everyone. We don’t see competition, we see opportunities.”

He believes they have the ginger to speed up innovation;

“To put our strategy in perspective, we already took a leap in redefining the space by being the first e-commerce site to implement the WhatsApp Seller option in Nigeria (which we introduced some weeks before Konga), and there are more where that came from.”

One important question remains unanswered.

Security. It has proven to be one of the biggest problems classifieds, and generally e-commerce, suffers in Nigeria.

“Before we launched a beta version of the platform in September, we conducted a market survey to determine currently what are the challenges of users who use classifieds in Nigeria. The findings have really shaped the development of our platform as we found that security issues really ranks high on the list.”

“We have worked on and developed proprietary security measures that we hope will flag too good to be true ads and spams, with machine learning to improve its efficiency over time. We spend a lot of time plugging in security lapses and building a platform where users can trade with some measure of trust.”

“In the early part of 2018, we will roll out some additional features that will redefine how people use classifieds site, introducing extra added layers of security.”

Asides this, they have also been in touch with Eddy from Safetrade to see how they could integrate their API and are also on the lookout for other platforms to ensure user security and prevent fraud.

About challenges, Anjola believes conversion is one of the biggest;

“Not only of the crowd already online but of those currently offline. Whilst the potential is certainly really huge, we do believe that even the heavyweights in the sector have not fully tapped the opportunities in the sector. When people say success online is offline, it is particularly true of this sector.”

And it’s because as it is, Offers is not particularly offering anything groundbreaking. Even bigger a problem is the lack of the marketing end of things. 10 years ago, this might have been beautiful and exciting even with a lean marketing budget. The market today on the other end, is big on marketing spend and will spend 100s of thousands of dollars on marketing monthly.

The real asset here is not Offers.ng

The real asset here is the team, Anjola, and the the people he works with to build this. According to Anjola, there’s three of them. Perhaps, they’d do well with some mentorship with more experienced people, and even if Offers fails, they’d still have the learnings and be better of.

Asked about his recipe for success, he said:

“At 19, I have been a college drop out and only just returned to school. Ask me this question in 5 years.”

While we wait, we wish him all the best.

Anjola founded a classifieds website, Offers.ng, a marketplace for the sales and purchases of goods in November.

What it means when a 19-year-old builds an e-commerce site

Everyone loves when a company releases data from the past year. It helps us all understand users better, and gives great learnings for everyone.

So when Truecaller decided to share data for calling in 2017, we knew it was a good day.

Some interesting Truecaller numbers.

10 billion calls were made using Truecaller’s dialer. The country that took the lion share of these calls was Somalia. This country made the most calls per person in 2017, with the average person making about 19 calls while receiving 14, daily.

The SMS king though, is Tanzania. The average user sends 10 SMSes per day and receives 16 per day.

The Spam count shot up this year.

They was a spike in the amount of spam calls this year, all over the world. Over 40 million unique spam numbers were detected this year by Truecaller. Bringing it back home, one number connected with a Telco in Nigeria made 38 million calls in a year!

At second position is our Southeast Asian cousin, India, and 31 million calls.

Why do these Telcos make spam calls?

Marketing. Very very annoying marketing. It would be interesting to one day see numbers of how many people actually listen to those calls.

These numbers are clearly based on Truecaller stats alone. The Swedish company is simply a telephone directory on steroids, but not the ultimate directory of the entire world, at least not yet. And while we don't know exactly what Telco Truecaller is talking about, we have guesses.

But first, we'd like to hear yours;

<a href="internal:/article/7757142" id="48cad803-6b10-5161-bcfb-b41506d70d6d">[No available link text]</a>

According to Truecaller, a Nigerian telco makes the most spam calls in the whole world.

Nigeria is home to the spam king of the world

According to the UN, poverty is both a cause and consequence of disability, and this makes it an important part of the United Nations’Sustainable Development Goals.

<a href="internal:/article/7757099" id="0b894f2c-13c4-5fce-8126-6cd8e715a459">[No available link text]</a>

We live in a world where ICT drives innovation and development. It has been a way for us to learn, connect and access opportunities. It’s why this project is building a platform where everyone is equal, and the only thing that matters is what they can get done, and not their disabilities.

Hence, it has become imperative that all stakeholders — private, public and civil society organisations — work together to remove every form of barriers to accessing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) by persons with disabilities. Promoting access to ICT skills and opportunities is important in empowering persons with disability and reducing poverty and gender violence while improving access to education and decent work.

To reduce the barrier of the community of persons with disabilities in Lagos to ICT, Project Enable Africa has set-up a Disability-friendly Digital Hub at the Lagos State Secretariat of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities, JONAPWD.

It’s supported by the United States Government through the Alumni Engagement Innovation Funds and the US Consulate Small Grant.

At its core, the hub will promote access to ICT skills and opportunities for young person with disabilities. The hub which is located at New Oko Oba, Lagos will be declared opened by Darcy Zotter, the Acting Consular General of the United States Consulate, Lagos on Tuesday, December 19, 2017.

To kickstart the Disability-friendly Digital Hub, Project Enable Africa has selected 20 young people with disabilities as Fellows who will be the first beneficiaries of the training opportunities at the Hub. They will make up the first class of the Project Enable Fellowship program.

The executive members and leaders of the various disability cluster groups will also be trained by Project Enable in an Organisational Development Workshop to provide institutional strengthening for the Lagos disability community.

All the people making this happen

Joining Darcy Zotter to open the Disability-friendly Digital Hub is a Director at the Lagos State Office for Disability Affairs, LASODA, Dr. Adebukola Adebayo, the Chairman of the Joint National Association of Persons with Disabilities, Lagos, Mrs. Adedoyin Beyioku-Alase and leadership of Project Enable Africa: Olusola Owonikoko (founder and Project Director), Dr. Olusoji Adebisi and Mr. Olusegun Mcmedal (both members of the Advisory Board of Project Enable Africa). Other partners that have contributed to the setting up of the hub are HACEY Health Initiative and Access Bank Plc.

As the Disability-friendly Digital Hub is launched, the founder of Project Enable Africa and alumni of the Mandela Washington Fellowship, Olusola Owonikoko believes that the driving principle of the organisation is that the rights of everyone, irrespective of their disability deserves to be protected, and one an important one is equal access to ICT education and opportunities. The organisation also appeals to the Nigeria senate to pass the disability bill so as to provide a national framework for the protection of disability rights and social inclusion.

According to the the World Bank, the disability community is the largest minority and vulnerable group in the world.

Group launches Disability-friendly Digital hub

According to Facebook, this move is because people have complained that they “dislike spammy posts on Facebook that goad them into interacting with likes, shares, comments, and other actions.”

“LIKE this if you think…” and other Facebook casualties.

Facebook is categorising engagement bait into three; there’s the vote bait, the react baits, and the share baits.

Now, Facebook has identified and categorised hundreds of thousands of posts, and they’ll be carrying this measure using a machine learning model that can detect the categorised parts.

In the coming weeks. Facebook is planning to roll out this feature gradually, and at the same time give publishers time to adjust and get their acts together. The consequence of this, when the roll out takes full effect, is that posts still found wanting will experience a significant drop in reach, and thus, engagement.

Moral of the story here: Authenticity is king, and now even Facebook is making sure to enforce that.

This is one move in the direction of Facebook's 'sanitisation' efforts of its social network. This year, Facebook has made efforts to curtail many of the problems plaguing the social network, like fake news. One of the ways it is doing this, is by taking strong measures, sometimes against publishers on its platform.

It'd be interesting to see how this new measure pans out in the long run, and how publishers evolve and create new ways to beat Facebook's algorithm. Because while Facebook wants content driven by creativity, Publishers on the other hand just want to grow, by any means necessary.

Now, share this post with post with 30 of your friends and expect good luck in 30 days. Don’t ignore this.

“How many likes will this post get?” is Facebook's new war against lack of creativity.

This social network will soon punish you for engagement baits

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<h1>The Nigerian tech ecosystem has had a very good year with important moments. And that is just putting it lightly.</h1>

2017 to a large extent, has been the year of even more validation for the space here, even more than in 2016. And here’s why;

1. Sundar Pachai came to town.

Not like he’s the first, but when two Silicon Valley heavyweights show up in Lagos within an interval of about a year, it’s a really good sign. The Google CEO was in Lagos for the “Google For Nigeria” event, where Google not only announced new products, but promised $3 million in funding through it’s Launchpad Accelerator Programme.

2. Talking about Accelerators.

We’ll also have to talk about incubators. Not only did Google kickoff an Accelerator Programme, MEST launched an incubation centre in Lagos, with an obvious plan to support entrepreneurs and startups. Facebook also announced that it’s launching an initiative, with all of Nigeria in mind.

One of the biggest<a href="http://www.pulse.ng/news/tech/pulse-list-2016-the-5-biggest-moments-in-nigerian-tech-id5897660.html" id="d6b11484-1b4d-5c9b-ba7d-5f42843f675a"> </a> was Paystack securing<a href="http://www.pulse.ng/news/tech/pulse-list-2016-the-5-biggest-moments-in-nigerian-tech-id5897660.html" id="d6b11484-1b4d-5c9b-ba7d-5f42843f675a"> </a>. But it appears YC has even more faith in the Nigerian ecosystem. 5 Nigerian startups made it into its Winter Batch this year; Kudi, Aella Credit, Kangpe,<a href="http://www.pulse.ng/news/tech/tizeti-using-facebook-express-wi-fi-gives-nigerians-cheap-data-id7569636.html" id="fab5c997-e2bc-5411-bea2-8315125c0186"> Tizeti</a>, and Buypower.

What does this mean: The times might be hard economically, but the ecosystem will not stoop. Nigeria might really be on track to outdo Kenya afterall.

3. Flutterwave is on a wavy level.

They’ve been on that level since the very beginning last year. When Iyin Aboyeji left Andela last year to build Flutterwave, many people wondered why he left such a promising company to build another. Well, they shall wonder no more. In August, Flutterwave raised $10 million in a Series A funding. Even more impressive is that at the time, they’d already powered 14 million transactions, valued at about $12.5 billion. Imagine what 2018 will look like.

4. Andela’s big buck.

Andela is the probably MVP of Nigeria’s startup scene in many ways. Mark Zuckerberg loves them enough for him to make them a big deal. But it appears he’s not alone in that love business. In November, Andela raised upwards of 12 billion naira in seed funding. That is a big deal.

What does this mean: It means that Andela is doing something right, and valuable. Andela is not only building a business, they are building talent.

5. Here come the Hotels.ng Interns.

Still on building talent, Hotels.ng recruits interns in large numbers, who mostly work remotely, crushing tasks assigned, amongst other things. This model wasn’t quite easy to sustain, and so Hotels found a formula to make it more sustainable; partnering with the government. Their first partner? The Akwa Ibom State Government. They have huge plans to do this in as many states as possible. Awesome. Over 100 people have graduated from their internship program so far.

2017 has had some really great moments this year, so we decided to put together our favourite.

The 5 brightest things in Nigerian tech this year

Have you truly understood a people if find the things they watch the most? Maybe not, but you’d be quite close. The Youtube popular videos lists contain a diverse range of videos, more than last year,

1. Deaf and Dumb Emmanuella vs Akin and Pawpaw:

<a href="" id="808401a8-1b43-5da0-bdc3-0242ad989811">Emmanuella</a> is the King of Nigerian Youtube, and in typical clickbait fashion, the account that published this full-length movie with Emmanuella in its title. I imagine a lot of the people who clicked through to give them their over 3.2 million views had her in mind, were largely disappointed.

The video was renamed “LATEST COMEDY VS AKIN AND PAWPAW-DEAF AND DUMB — NIGERIAN NOLLYWOOD MOVIES 2017”

2. Welcome Back President Buhari: See how the President Landed after Medical Trip in UK

Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari was away for longer than expected on his medical trip, leading to rumours and speculations that he might have died in the United Kingdom. No better way to clear doubts than to watch a video of him touching down, right? At 1.4 million views, a lot of doubts were cleared. Also, it hurt a little that we didn't see videos of the <a href="" id="31268d5e-1f4f-5750-a833-fc913db0ab19">Famous Aso Rodents</a>.

3. Maths Teacher (Mark Angel Comedy) (Episode 118):

Emmanuella finally makes her on the list at over 7 million views. Can we all agree once again, that this little kid is not anyone’s mate on Youtube?

4. Biafra: Kanu I Want Binta To See This:

In this video, members of Nnamdi Kanu’s IPOB confront Nigerian security forces when they were trying to prevent some sort of movement. IPOB vs The Nigerian Government is easily one of the biggest stories of 2017. At the moment, Nnamdi Kanu is believed to have fled, and his whereabouts, unknown.

5. NAIJ.com visits Evans the kidnapper’s house, how should he be punished?

Remember Evans, the Escobar of kidnapping? NAIJ paid a visit to his house, or the gate of the house at least, where they asked people in the area questions on what they think should be done about Evans. It garnered over 500 thousand views.

6. Channels Television: Boko Haram Special Documentary:

Channels literally just gave a crash course on Boko Haram, and as long as this group exists, there’ll always be people curious to know their motives and the things that drive them. This video has already racked up about 1.5 million views.

7. Wo — Olamide | Ikorodu Street Kids Dance (dream catchers dance):

When <a href="" id="642e7f15-6736-5eb6-bb2e-dafbc362cc69">Olamide dropped his biggest song</a> of 2017, Wo, what followed was a #WoChallenge; the goal was to find who could create the best dance video, and this 6 kids put in a solid entry. They didn’t win, but they racked up 647k views while they were at it.

8. Longer Throat (Mark Angel Comedy) (Episode 101):

Ha. It’s Emmanuella again. One appearance is never enough on the list for her, especially since she brings twice the drama. This one crossed 4 million views.

9. Our President is Back — Pete Edochie 2017

Someone thought it’d be a great idea to make a Nollywood movie with this name in a time where Nigerians the President leaving or coming back was almost always news. That someone, did a smart thing, and earned over 1 million views for it.

10. Akpos And Beaty 1 — (Nollywood Romantic Movies)

Nollywood snatched one more slot here, and still managed to grab 1.6 million views while at it.

1. Nigerians didn’t turn up their funny side this year as much as we did last year. Only 4 videos on this list being remotely funny, compared to 9 last year.

2. This year appears to be more politically charged than last year. And we have Buhari and parts of the country trying to break off to hold responsible for that.

3. Nollywood movies on Youtube are actually a thing. It appears that Youtube is now becoming a legit distribution channel for Nigerian film makers.

We might have loved these videos or hated them, but one thing they all did was grab our attention.

10 most popular Youtube videos for Nigerians this year

It’s not hard to see what plans Instagram has for this new standalone product; towing the path that birthed Facebook Messenger. It’s also not hard to see that eventually, Instagram is going to remove the direct messaging feature from the core Instagram app.

The app is currently being tested in six countries, Chile, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Turkey, and Uruguay (does Nigeria ever test these things). It’s also available on Android and iOS.

First, some context. When Instagram was first created, it was built as an app to help people share moments with the public. But the world has changed since then. And now, Instagram believes the messaging feature, which has become a means to share everything privately, deserves a shot at going solo.

Hemal Shah, an Instagram product manager, told The Verge:

“We want Instagram to be a place for all of your moments, and private sharing with close friends is an important part of that. Direct has grown within Instagram over the past four years, but we can make it even better if it stands on its own. We can push the boundaries to create the fastest and most creative space for private sharing when Direct is a camera-first, standalone app.”

This might also be another one of Mark’s grand plans to take all the eyeballs from Snapchat. The app consists of just three screens. The camera is what pops up when you open the app. Like Snapchat, the goal is to let you share more, but you don’t have to. There’s also the option to type.The screen to the left is the profile screen where you get to do all the settings and stuff. To the right, inbox messages. And that’s all.

Do we really really need another app?

That’s the question everyone will be asking, but Instagram believes we do. And they might be right. When <a href="" id="3e7fa135-0e5b-5b53-90cd-fc26aee5b8e9">Facebook</a> shut out messaging from the app in 2014, it was met with serious backlash. Fast forward to now, Facebook Messenger now has 1.3 billion users, up from 500 million in 2014. Instagram's messaging feature has 375 million monthly users. So there are doubts that Instagram will even be going back on this. One thing we hope is that Instagram stays true to simplicity, and not try to be that app that tries to be everything (Hello Messenger).

We don’t know, and Instagram currently has no timeline for when this will happen. But one thing we do know is that it’s potentially going to be one of the most popular apps in Facebook’s library.

The days of the single instagram app may be numbered.

Instagram is currently testing a standalone messaging app

Datally is this badass brand new app Google announced on the 30th of November, that will help Nigerians save data usage on their phones. In fact, it can help users save up to 30% of their data, in fact.

The Datally app is going to be able to run on any version of Android later than Android 5.0. and it will only be available for Android users on the Play Store. globally, today. This app was built, first with emerging markets like Nigeria in mind, and might perhaps be eventually useful for foreign markets.

When you ask the majority of internet users in Nigeria about their biggest problem with connectivity, you’ll probably hear stuff like “Oh it’s so confusing”; “I seriously don’t know how to control data usage properly”; “ït’s too expensive’; “to be honest, it’s never enough”.

This problem of data usage for Nigerians, and many people all over the world, is what inspired this app that has been two years in the making.

Google, like Facebook and many other tech companies, believe that the next one billion users are in these regions with Internet challenges. It’s why they all try to find ways to make internet connectivity cheaper and faster.

This app, Datally, is Google’s way of saying let’s put data in the hands of you, the user. This app has four features that make it powerful:

One thing many people don’t know is that a lot of apps use data in the background, whether it’s the weather report app or the Twitter app, constantly updating content and information. With the Data Saver option, you can choose which app you want to connect to the Internet or not. All you need is a simple lock and unlock button.

You can see this like a speedometer feature, orlike to call this the ultimate guilt tripper or conscience feature. Whenever a user opens an app, a small bubble appears in a corner of the screen, keeping a tally of how much data the app is consuming, in real time. Data-Tally.

This app can also alert users of the app when they start consuming a lot of data, even allowing them see how much data they’ve used on a daily, weekly, and even monthly basis.

Because life is about opportunities and how we take them, this app lets you find Wi-Fis in your vicinity. In fact, you can actually rate a connection on whether it’s good or trash, so you can save the next person trying to connect all the trouble. So it’s like how Google lets you rate locations on the Maps, but this time for Data.

This is Juliet Ehimuan-Chiazor, she’s Google Nigeria’ Country Director and she had this to say at the launch:“For the last few years, our Next Billion Users team has been doing a lot of research on the ground in fast growing Internet countries like Nigeria, We have found that data is a major constraint for the the next billion users. Introducing Datally into the Nigerian smartphone market will help users understand how to control their mobile data better”.She also shared some insights about how this app was tested.

“Google tested Datally in the Philippines for most of 2017, and the insights from the product tests thereshaped the final app. The user research showed that people testing the app saved up to 30% of theirmobile data, depending on the way they used Datally.” she concluded.

What are the likelihoods of success for this app?

fuad lawal

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