Websites We Love: nairaland.com

Websites We Love: Nairaland.com In a time when online networking was crucial for Nigerians, an online community was created called nairaland.com. If you are a regular user of the internet, you must have come across this website at least on one or two occasions. Nairaland.com is an online platform where news, information and advice on various fields are shared – romance, politics, religion, business and so on.

Oluwaseun Osewa

Nairaland was founded by Oluwaseun Osewa, a programmer and business man. Oluwaseun took a keen interest in programming while growing up. He dropped out of school in 1998 to pursue a career in programming while studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Ile Ife. After experiencing the web-hosting world first-hand and venturing into an online business which failed due to low capital, Seun decided to create an online web forum using Python Programming Language. With the assistance of some friends, Seun created three forums (a forum for University students, another for IT discussions and one more to cover the then emerging GSM Industry which was called mobilenigeria.com). When he discovered that mobilenigeria.com was gathering much traffic despite the fact that it was geared towards one thing, telecommunications, he decided to open a forum that will cater to topics outside telecommunications and that was how Nairaland.com came to be.

Interesting Facts about Nairaland.com

• In 2005, Nairaland.com was launched by Oluwaseun Osewa.
• Seun initially planned to be making ₦60,000 per month but as time went on, Nairaland.com gathered more traffic than expected making his monthly salary much higher than expected
• As at January 2018, Nairaland had over 1,943,105 registered accounts and is ranked the 10^th most visited site in Nigeria and the most visited indigenous site according, to Alexa.com
• Nairaland reportedly has over 55 million internet users (including Nigerians in the Diaspora). It is also visited by a considerable amount of unregistered users as registration is only necessary for posting.
• Before Nairaland.com was created, most of the Nigerian sites were owned by Nigerians in the United States and United Kingdom and they catered to mainly to the interests of Nigerians abroad.
• Nairaland came on board to cater to the interests of Nigerians living in Nigeira You can start or join a thread on Nairaland.com as long as it is relatable to Nigerians and does not violate the rules of the community
• On June 22 2014, Nairaland.com went offline after losing most of its content to malicious spammers
• Three days after the hacking attempt, Nairaland.com recovered some of its content and was back online. However, data from January 10 2013 through to the date of the hacking was lost.
• Seun Osewa does not view Nairaland.com as another international site like Facebook. According to him, “For Nairaland to expand outside Nigeria, we’d have to change the essence of what Nairaland is about”. He wants it to keep being valuable and relatable to primarily Nigerians.

What can you do on Nairaland.com?

• You have access to daily news and happening in the country.
• There are many “How Tos” on Nairaland.com. All you have to do is search for the solution to a problem on Nairalnd.com and the chances are high that you will see what you are looking for.
• On Nairaland.com, you have the opportunity to build a community of your own relating to any topic you are interested in and share ideas and knowledge on this topic.
• Nairaland gives you the chance to communicate and connect with other users who share similar interest and values with you.

  Through this website, Nigerians both in Diaspora and at home have the ability to acquire knowledge, disseminate information, share ideas and promote networking. Nairaland.com continues to prove to be valuable. You can visit the website here.