COULD YOOKOS BE AFRICA’S NEXT FACEBOOK?

Facebook is growing at an exponential rate, along with the likes of Twitter. However, a new social media platform has arisen, and has set its sights on Africa. Yookos is a social networking site that allows users to meet friends online, play online games and keep up to date with the latest news from around the world.

The African-based social media platform recently reached over 10 million registered users, and it is steadily growing. Starting out in Nigeria, Yookos was essentially a Christian-focused site, which was used to communicate spiritual messages between members of the church. The original platform began becoming so popular that it eventually outgrew its ability to sustain the current members.

With the new platform running at full speed, users from across the world can create profiles, post status updates, write blog posts and engage with users in extended networks. The platform also offers a chat function and the ability to share content on other social media platforms.

After branching out and building an entirely new platform, the team at Yookos took the mobile space by storm by offering apps for smartphone devices. According to Olga Sikhwivhilu, Yookos representative: “More than 50% of its user base is from Nigeria, with the rest mainly from Zimbabwe, South Africa, the UK and the US.”

With the social platform growing at a steady rate, it could possibly be Africa’s next Facebook. The site launched as a commercial entity in January 2011 and, within 3 short months, gained more than 6m registered users.

Tomisin Fashina, Yookos’ CEO says: “With the swift upgrade of site from http to https, users can now socialise under a safer environment. Additionally, we are constantly working on other ways to make the site a lot more safer. This upgrade certainly contributes to enhanced user-security and building user-trust on site.”

IT NEWS AFRICA