I love the idea of Foursquare. I am also a great admirer of their founder/CEO, Dens and their lead investor Fred Wilson. However, my love can be questioned as I have not used Foursquare in 3 years.

I previously assumed that my shortage of usage stemmed from the unpopularity of 4sq in Nigeria. However, when I visited San Francisco earlier this year, I got a better understanding of why Foursquare does not deliver for me.

In a few words, I hope to explain my position and suggest profitable way in which 4sq can become useful to me and perhaps make some money too. (once 4sq can make money from Oo, they should go ahead and write their IPO prospectus).

The problem

If you take a look at their original pitch deck, 4sq’s goal was focused primarily on finding your buddies in the context of their location. They gave you  badges. when you checked-in. The badges were a way to motivate people to state their positions so that their buddies would know where they were – and for 4sq to get useful data. After doing it three billion times, people got to the stage of “Now what?”.

Foursquare focused a lot on documenting places people visited and not enough on helping people  find places to visit.

In the first quarter of this year, I was fortunate to visit 5 major American cities. On more than one occasion in each of the cities, I was at a loss of where to go. One clear example was when I sought  for a place  to watch a football match between Manchester United and Real Madrid.

On opening up Foursquare, I had no idea what next to do. The next best solution I could think of was to ask my question on FB, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Where in San Francisco can I watch live Football? (the real one). Does anyone know a pub that would show Man U beating Real Madrid tonight?

— Oo Nwoye (@OoTheNigerian) March 5, 2013

Guess where I got my answer?

You guessed wrong, LinkedIn was where I got my answer from.

I ended up watching the match at a place called Mad Dog In The Fog. I went with a friend and we both spent about $50. Foursquare played no role in that (And Klout did not ‘measure the influence’ of my friend that made the recommendation’)

The Solution

Focus on visitors. Foursquare should focus on influencing where people visit (read: and spend money)

Foursquare’s early life focused on rewarding ‘regulars’ making them Mayors. While it may be cool, I do not need Foursquare to visit a place I already like or visit regularly.  Foursquare needs its users to need it.

According to MasterCard’s Index of Global Destination Cities, in 2011, 7.6 million international visitors landed in New York and spent $20 billion. If the report  had considered local visitors, the numbers would have been crazier than the estimated $20 billion mentioned.  I’d posit that a vast majority of those people needed help in deciding where to spend that money even if they had an idea of what they wanted to do, like in my example above.

If you have used OKCupids blind date app (don’t ask me how I know about it), you would see the potential of Foursquare playing a role in deciding where people visit.

Foursquare needs to map interests, activities and events to venues. For example, Mad Dog is cool, but much cooler to me when the great Manchester United is playing. Of course same goes for the 49ers fans when their team is playing.  You can extrapolate that to concert venues etc. The greatness of a venue is contextual to what is going on there.

Now to the money

Foursquare as a matter of necessity, should have given a debit-cum-loyalty card to every user a long time ago. Even if 5% of their one million merchants see the potential, it would be really massive I presume. If implemented properly, users would be motivated to use Foursquare to determine the location of their activities and check-in with a swipe. Co-pete with Square perhaps?

Merchants would be happy to spare a few pennies per transaction for real measurable foot traffic

Foursquare will make money and would work harder to make it work better for the users and merchants.

It’s going to be a win-win-win lovefest!

Thanks Cristina for helping to proofread this for me

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GBEDU.FM as a product is far from dead. Moving servers just took longer than planned. It was down but not out. As a startup though, GBEDU.FM was in zombie mode.

When GBEDU.FM launched early last year, albeit arrogantly, I had plans that did not end up materializing. Unfortunately, for the music business and most consumer startup plays, you need quite a bit of runway before you can self sustain as a business. Sadly, I never got that runway, which meant that I could not focus on GBEDU.FM. December came, things happened and I decided to reevaluate.

There are two parts to building a successful technology startup. First, you have to build a bit of the product, then you need the market that can sustain it. You then keep improving both sides.  Whereas, if you are say, selling generators, the product is already built. You just need to find your market. With a startup, you are juggling both. One begets the other. Kinda delicate. I salute those that juggle it successfully.

Back to GBEDU.FM.

If it is neither dead, nor a zombie, what is it?

I would call it hibernating. Just there, not trying to move but not dead. It exists for my personal pleasure and that of the few hundred people that love it. Although the code has not been touched in a year, I still believe it is a great place to listen to Nigerian music online.

iRoking, Spinlet, TruSpot and co are spending quite a bit of money, trying to solve the problem of creating the best way to discover, listen to and share music from the African continent. Presently, you are better off downloading from the gazillion music blogs out there and playing your music locally. That is until Deezer launches in Nigeria fully.

For the future of music, especially in Africa, I strongly believe in the following.

1. Most music will remain free

2. Like on YouTube, the breakout of a song or artist should be democratic. Power would not be centralized with a few OAPs and radio DJs

3. Discovery of new acts and songs is really important.

4. There are several unpiratable business models  that will reward the artists (e.g call back tunes, merchandising, concerts) that are yet to be be executed well

5. The best music service and not the best funded will get the users. For now, downloading from music blogs is the best. (Note that Hulkshare, 4shared, et al get their references from the music bloggers)

6. Africa has the best chance of innovating a new business model for music. 95% of songs are indie made, therefore, the unfortunate supplier power stranglehold that exists in the west is absent.

This philosophy encapsulates my thinking about the music startup business

“Music startup” is a misnomer, most music startups are actually music file startups.  If you want to actually create a music startup you have to combine cultural understanding of music + identification of new acts/trends that haven’t been picked up by existing labels & media, with a deep understanding of new media technologies.  Basically, think of the Web 2.0 equivalent of a Suge Knight.  Nobody has ACTUALLY started a music startup yet — probably because it is hard to have both cultural and technical sophistication.

If someone creates a really authentic new digital space with authentic new artists, and uses the new digital medium to deliver the close personal relationship today’s music fans / etc want out of their bands and personalities, they are likely to make a fortune.  Redistribution of existing content owned/controlled by labels and (equally evil) rights agencies is an epic failure of a business model, and does very little to address the massive thirst in the marketplace for new, interesting, authentic culture

- Numair Faraz on why it is difficult to build a music startup

Until someone executes this, this music business will still be at the back of my mind. Yes, back.

Thank you to all of you that have relentlessly supported me no matter how ridiculous my idea may have  been. From the depths of my heart, I am grateful.

So what’s next for me?

Onwards.

Thanks to Nmachi for feedback on a draft of this post

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This Easter holiday, while munching a turkey lap and guzzling down beer, I will ensure all members of my nuclear and a few of my extended family enable 2 factor authentication for all their email (Google, Yahoo) and Facebook accounts.

You should too.

Here’s the long story.

Yesterday, for 1 hour, I struggled to gain control of my Mum’s Facebook and email accounts.

It all started when I receive a Facebook message ‘from my mum’.  I got the “Hello,  how are you?”,  and replied accordingly. Then as with any son who has an outstanding task for the parent, I went on the offensive. “The thing you asked me to do is quite hard. I am still on it”. She replied “Ok. no problem”

I responded “You are rather calm these days. It is good.” I was still puzzled my mum was quite gentle.

Then the giveaway happened next.

“Can you send me MTN recharge card (Airtime)?”

Immediately, I knew what had happened. While I was replying in the affirmative, I was on the phone to my mum asking for her password. As I logged into her Facebook, I saw a notice saying that her password was recently changed and last accessed in Tunisia.

As I was telling the person illegally chatting with me through my mum’s Facebook account to send me a number to text the recharge card to, I was trying to change her password.

I succeeded by sending a new link to her email and changing her password.

Yaaay!? Nay.

As I checked her sent messages to start letting the people that had been contacted that there was an intrusion, her Facebook logged out automatically.

The person had reset the password again!!!

I tried to reset the password again and lo and behold, I could not get into my mum’s email. The person also had access to that and had changed her email password. Luckily, my mum added a phone number to her account a long time ago.

THIS was the only reason I could get access to her email.

Going backwards and forward changing Facebook passwords with the intruder ended with my mum’s Facebook account being blocked.

In her Yahoo email outbox were sent messages to my sister with the attachment “pics”. Luckily, I contacted my sister before she accessed her email.

Of course, if my sister had opened that attachment, it would have continued spreading.

So even if you are protected, your loved ones are not. Meaning you are exposed in a way. All it takes is for that distant cousin to send an attachment “new family pics” to someone close for the virus to start crawling.

I’d advise everyone who is the “tech guy/gal” in their family to use this Easter holiday to help protect them by

1. Setting up 2 factor authentication for their emails (Google https://accounts.google.com/SmsAuthConfig; *Yahoo: https://edit.yahoo.com/commchannel/manage?  and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=security&section=devices&view )

2. Installing Firefox or Chrome and letting them know it is the new “Internet”

3. Teaching them NEVER to open unsolicited attachments. If it is too tempting, they should forward it to you.

With the popular 2 Factor Authentication, you are sent a text with a one time password anytime your web account is accessed from an unrecognised browser or device. So for your email to be “hacked”, the person would need to have your phone too.

Quite hard if the idiot is in far away Tunisia.

Happy Easter holidays!

*Yahoo does not technically have 2 Factor authentication. But having your phone to receive reset information is a good idea.

PS: The time security questions protected us have long gone.

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Mind you, I did not say should be but ‘has to be’ from the view of the political class. I certainly do not want the Internet censored or more regulated.

A few thousand years ago, when the first structures of society where being put in place, the deal struck to prevent a physical society with anarchy was to centralize ‘power’ with the state (largest independent political unit) and then have representatives of the people run the state.

Fast forward a few centuries, a couple of wars, commerce, etc and the state became bigger, much bigger. Nations were born. The centralized power became greater. The chance to represent the Nation became smaller and the stakes became higher.

A bigger state meant a massive population which would be harder to control therefore it became necessary to control what they knew and how they could operate. Books, TV, Telephone, Radio, International travel etc came along and tried to scuttle the status quo. But the political class was smart enough to take advantage of it early and used it as a tool to control on a larger scale.

Then the Internet ‘happened’.

It was ignored, then ridiculed and before anyone could say “facebook”, societies of 1 Billion (the third largest in the world, certainly the most diverse) got formed. Information began moving overground (Twitter) and underground (BBM,WhatsApp). Internet companies started knowing more about citizens that the nations who gave them their passports. Transactions and currencies that could not be monitored started springing up. 

It is ‘obvious’ this new power and control is too dangerous/important to be left to ‘ordinary’ people. The political class have to take it back.

So they’ve come first by passing the laws that will enable them covertly take back power. Countries like North Korea, Iran, China are being straightforward about it. America is  trying to be smarter, they’re waving the copyright flag, child porn flag, the terrorism flag, then they will raise the victory flag.
Shall we let them win?

PS:
I know my post might sound incongruous. you may do yourself a favour and read The Fundamentals of Political Philosophy then watch The century of Self

Random prediction: In the next decade, the political structure of society will start changing fundamentally. Corporations will own the state and the national ‘borders’ will become more digital, dynamic and I dare say, collapse. Currency will become much more deregulated

This Internet thing has really fucked things up.

I’m happy

Please forgive typos…

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So when I heard their recent innovation in the billing space, I was pleasantly surprised. However, what surprised me more was the absence of coverage in the ‘mainstream’ startup news space. (from previous understanding, such news does not ‘pay the bills’). But I digress…

So what is this ‘big deal’ innovation?

Shared mobile Internet subscription.

How it works it simple, you can give anyone on the GLO network access to your Internet bundle. You know, just like you can make your phone a hotspot and ‘share internet”, but this time, NATIONWIDE!

Think about that for a moment.

There are many ramifications of this type of pricing/sharing feature.

1. Multiple devices become activated. Before now, except you had a device with hotspot ability, the economics of enabling internet on all your devices made no sense. Paying for anything less than 7 GB per SIM card would mean you would be paying an unfairly ridiculous rate for internet access.

So for instance, if you had an iPad and a phone, you obviously consumed less internet on your phone. Therefore you would buy say 7GB at about $50 ($7/GB) for your iPad and another $20 for 1.5 GB ($13/GB). Look at the rates and see that it made it painful for people to have more than one connected device especially when you did not need all of the 7GB bandwidth for the iPad.

Now, with this feature, you buy at the better rate (the 7GB package) and share on all your devices without feeling ‘cheated’.

2. Nuclear family: The bad economics of buying internet access also affected internet socialism at home. Now spouse and kids do not need to wait for Daddy or Mummy to return before they can use the internet. Buy at the best rate and share for everyone. 

3. Far-flung family: To me, this is the most impactful. The other scenarios has at least an alternative. you could use your phone as a hotspot (if it had one) or buy the $150 MiFi device. But for the sibling or family member in another state, there was no alternative.  Right now, I can ignore momsie’s insistence on “no need for internet on the phone” and give her access so we can use one of the numerous IMs to communicate.

The economics of having a family/company internet account is AMAZING. approx. $110 for 30GB ($3.5/GB)

Of course there are limitations presently as this can only work if everyone is using a GLO device. Not a problem for data devices (iPad and Laptop).

Another limitation is that you can pair only about 5 devices. I’m sure that can be sorted out in the future. I am imagining what this would do for internet penetration when one account can be use to service a school.

In general, what this means is that there will be more internet consumption and more importantly, deeper penetration. People that had a good reason not to use the net now have less reason not to.

I think that is a pretty big deal.

Disclaimer: This is NOT a sponsored post. Blogging does not pay ANY bill of mine. I have not used this service yet. I currently use Etisalat which is blazing fast but finishes quickly.  Previously, I was also positive about Mobitel until they became ‘not too good’

Please pardon typos, I just don’t see them.

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I took this picture of the Lekki toll gate using the panorama feature in Prosper Onogberie’s SONY Xperia phone.  I then realized it was a pun in itself. So I named it “Traffic Taking Its Toll”.

Click on it to see it in full size.

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He asks several important questions which I thought I should  answer in a blogpost rather than as a comment (ironically, his post was as result of finding it difficult to comment in the original post)

So here are some questions Victor asked:

1. Are there no mentors and investors in Africa that these startups should “head to Silicon Valley”?
2. These are African startups solving African problems and meeting African needs so why do they have to travel to Silicon Valley?

So let me help answer from my own point of view.

First of all there are extremely few mentors and almost no investors for web based businesses in Nigeria. No, I do not categorize people that want to effectively buy startups for the price of a business class trip to UK as investors.

The answer to the second question is simple is hinted from the first. Money.

First let us go back to that article from the Economist.

“Indeed a plethora of online platforms have emerged in recent years: Jobberman helps you find a job; Dealdey gets you group deals; Pagatech deals in mobile payments; Wakanow brings you travel offers. Iroko, which offers online films and music, boasts half a million registered users and more than 5,000 paying subscribers.”

Then I would throw in Eskimi, Jumia, MIH – (DealFish/OLX), Mocality, Kuluya, Spinlet, VConnect, Naij.com etc.

Let us play a little quiz.  Do you know what ties all our ‘biggest’ Internet tech players together?

Foreign money.

Before you shout Spinlet, know that the company was founded in 2006. They are more or less Silicon Valley. As for Jobberman, it was foreign money that gave them the leverage they needed.

So here is the sad truth, there is no local money here for internet based startups. The only serious incubator CCHUB, is possible only because of foreign money.

The REALITY: if your business relies on raising money, get prepared to “shaki shaki bum bum” where you will be sprayed.

Now let us move to the most comprehensive database of Angel investors I know.  You know what is a common theme/thread? They all have done startups. Quite successful ones at that.

Yup I nearly forgot, there is a database for African investors. I have met the awesome chaps behind it and they helped organize that DEMO event in Nairobi. You know what is common between them?

Foreign.

I do not mean foreign in a bad way at all. All I am saying is that while “there is money on the continent”, we need foreigners to bring a foreign event to help our tech entrepreneurs. Thanks guys!

The way forward?

For me , I do not see any way forward as regards to getting local (African) financial support anytime soon, especially at the seed stage, which is the MOST IMPORTANT and fragile period. We do not have enough of the people that understand and are willing to take the financial risk on early stage internet startups.

Buying land in Ajah and erecting a building to ‘decking level’ will double your money. Confirmed. So why do you tell someone that has not done stuff to take that risk?

Here’s what I think will happen, for the next few years. Foreign money (not exclusively I hope) will be behind the first set of African based entrepreneurs that will make it big after their first exist. After then, those entrepreneurs would then invest in the next set of startups.

So until then my dear African entrepreneur, any time you get the chance to go dance konko below on Sand Hill road, celebrate it.

Note:

1. Reblogging Linda Ikeji’ blogposts and plastering it with ads is not a startup.
2. Grant and competition money is not really seed funding. Na dash.
3. Not every startup needs to raise money

PS: forgive typos and let me know if you come across any. I just don’t see them.

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“Battery too low for radio use”

Actually, that is not entirely true. My good friend Sir Diddles showed me a bad ass trick. Once that message comes up, simply dial 911 and watch your battery come back to life for another 5 mins or so.

Yeah yeah.. thank me later.

Do you know any other interesting phone hacks? Don’t tell me *#06# o!

PS: You would notice that I could have explained all that in a Tweet and did not need 3 paragraphs. However I did so for 3 reasons.

1. To use style and let everyone know once and forall I am using a BB. Yes, I am ashamed of myself.
2. To jump-start my blogging again
3. Because I can

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Almost every weekend for as long as I remember, definitely since I got to UK, my weekends especially Fridays have always been depressing (except when I was going for one tech event to anther). I get depressed because I have not become what I planned to be and yet another week was passing by.

But as I woke up this night/morning (it’s 12:30 am here), I thought, I might just be trying too hard while pissing away the prime of my life. Of course, I had been told this before. severally. My oldest buddy actually visited me a couple of weeks ago and scolded me severely. “you do not even know how to be social anymore”. But it is totally different when you realize it.

The greatest fulfillment and ‘assets’ you can have when old are the experiences you garner with family and friends while young. A career is just to provide funds and make the journey more interesting, not replace it.

While, money and career may come and go, youth and time only go.

So enough of trying too hard. And I hope to learn to have fun. I’ll start tonight.

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What got me thinking about writing this was that for the second time in as many weeks, my man Kehers (Ope) influenced my downloading an app. He tweeted this below and I went to download the app. The previous one was an Android game called Mayhem.

Loving the new hotot interface twitter.com/kehers/status/…

— Opeyemi Obembe (@kehers) September 13, 2012

Now how on earth is Klout to know that Ope influenced my decision when Ope himself had no idea (well, now he does ).

Direct Influence is rather really complicated because it depends on so many factors many of which are very subtle (proximity, timing, mood etc) .  Most times, only the influenced will know about what influenced him or her.

Indirect influence is more on the subconscious level and that is where the manipulation of advertising comes into play. At that level, even the influenced will have no idea about it. So how does Klout expect to know what even I do not know what influence my action?

Not to confuse referral with influence, I take influence as a subset of referral. Referral is more like “how did you get here?”, Influence is more like “why did you get here? or, choose this?”. Google for instance is by far the most important referrer on the web. Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter are important referrers too.

As for influence, that is still down to humans. It is known that the reviews on Amazon influence purchases but whose review influenced which buyer? And why?

That’s a really tough one.

Anyone that can crack it would open a Diamond mine.  I doubt that Klout and its peer, PeerIndex (great pun huh?) can, especially with the approach I am seeing. Influence much more than measuring likes, retweets and comments.

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