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Before popular apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat took the front row seat in digital messaging, they had to unseat another major player – 2go. Famed amongst secondary school students, teenagers and well, adults, 2go was the rave of the late 2000’s. How exactly the app got so popular, no one can tell, but in a short while, everyone had 2go installed on their phone and began the long journey traversing the 2go stars ladder.

The app was first available on Nokia’s Symbian platform both on S40 and S60 devices. Later on, it expanded to the Blackberry OS and Android. 2go came with many interesting features that somehow helped it garner so many users in a short while. People would leave their 2go apps running all day just so they could keep increasing their 2go star rank. It was heavily addictive, even more than Candy Crush. 2go rooms was another nice feature. It provided several chat rooms categorized in different topics (sports, romance, etc) and people of different countries were also lodged in such places.

People were steady competing to get to the highest 2go star which was Master. This was before the addition of Ultimate by the creators. People would hide their online presence just so they won’t have to chat with anyone. You could also purchase 2go credits which gave you access to some in-app functionality. Things eventually got really messy on the app; indecency and immorality became the major subject of conversations held on the app.

Even though 2go was very popular, it still had to deal with messaging giants like Blackberry messenger and Twitter.  But not everyone could afford a Blackberry then; even the Blackberry internet subscription (BIS) was quite pricey too. Luckily for everyone, that was also when Nokia was dominating the mobile phone market with their very affordable XpressMusic phones that didn’t require gigabytes of internet data to keep one online. With just 10mb of data, one could access 2go all day.

2go thrived pretty well in the pre-Android era. But somehow, as Blackberry and Android devices got more affordable and consequently took over the mobile device scene in the country, both 2go and Nokia seemed to be taking a French leave. 2go may be finally gone now, but we can all agree that the fun and drama we experienced on the app brought color to our teenage years.

Feature image: answersafrica.com

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This article was first published on 3rd August 2018

tobenna-ezike

Tobenna is a writer, programmer and musician who is passionate about God, tech, and music. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook by clicking the icons below.

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