@Muda
(I thought he was
MUDAcris or something – along the lines of the name of the rap star Ludacris, ko?). Anyhow, Waziri is right -- time is the main factor. There are many reasons why we simply could not be compared to what obtains in other Social Networking Services (SNS).
In the first instance, all these SNSs are full-time corporate organizations, complete with CEO, MD, stocks, shares, offices, secretaries and megabucks from advertising clicks. Kano Online is a
part-time almost hobbyist activity. We do what we can when we have time – and our time is basically put into almajirci, like Salisu always says, “neman taro na abinci”. Most of the time we put the site on autopilot – and when we check in and see something unsavory, we remove it. We have been operating like this for almost nine years.
Remember, also that SNS are created to share interests in
personal life styles, not to engage in sustained debates about issues (or drag skeletons out of dark closets where they usually belong – get the hint?). Early social networking services started out similar to the way we are starting. I remember subscribing to The Well in early 1990s through an American friend in Oakland where I stayed.
Secondly, and I repeat this, we are
not competing with any other site. When we started in 2001 (meaning we started earlier than Friendster, MySpace, Bebo and Linkedln; and it was only in 2005 that Facebook became international ), many people don’t even know what the Internet is, let alone where to access it. We even started earlier than the vast majority of the SNSs. In all these years, we only changed our skin (interfaces) only about twice or so; not out of conservatism, but out of the philosophical injunction of “it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Take at look at Gamji.com – and you’ll understand what I mean; Isma’ila has been running that site in virtually that format since the beginning of time – and has not lost subscribers or visitors.
Along the years, snazzier sites came up, more young bloods jumped on the Internet bandwagon, Internet cafes mushroomed, and the next you know, emails addresses became status symbols, along with flash drives that hang around young necks to download music and term papers. Something on this site has just gotta give.
I use two of my own children as a meter (one is 21, the other is 18, and both female, both in university). They were crazy about Hi5 when it came along (they could not be seen dead coming to Kano Online – too boring; sigh). Then they shifted to Badoo, then Flickr, then Netlog, then Facebook; now it’s Twitter. Even the young one (11, male) and who is absolutely hooked on Grand Theft Auto (has every single mod) now is online playing with online friends on Avatars United. He took one look at Kano Online and bolted away! And lest we forget, most of these SNSs are bots – farming away your email and those of friends you link them with,and selling the emails to spammers (remember the trouble Facebook got into recently about online privacy?). At least here we don’t advertise anything – except goodness of Kano, “ko da mai ka zo, tabbas an fi ka”!
Yes, here on Kano Online, we have remained the sam, even though everyday some zany and weird SNS will crop up, and we will all be deluged with invitations from our “friends” to join what claims to be the best in connecting friends together. Not only do I ignore these invitations, but also block anyone sending them to me.
Then the Naijarians came along. Actually they have been there all along. But democracy and living abroad gave them more voices – and then the sudden deluge of “Naija” sites that seem to focus attention principally on vituperations of anything Nigerian, Islamic, northern Nigerian or political –
everytin wrong, everytin scatter, na wow for Nigeria, oo. Enough to make you as brain dead as the trailer-trash redneck (or is it blacknecks?) owners of the sites.
Then blogging came along – and suddenly everyone is a writer, complete with self-conscious pictures and ramblings. So instead of boring a few people on your favorite forum with your inanities, it’s better to create a whole web space to do it (did it myself, too, though I literally abandoned it!) – that way you spread the boring tirades across the Internet and make everyone suffer.
All these are enough to take people away from a text-based site like Kano Online. But we are not being too conservative when we don’t go the way the SNSs do. We are being practical.
We have different focus from the SNSs. Also quite simply we don’t have the energy, resources and time to create a full-time SNS along the lines we are suggesting. Salisu pays for
everything on this site with his own funds – funds which are desperately needed elsewhere; but as a social service to our people, we feel no sacrifice is too great to enable us have a voice. We are happily proud of what we have achieved so far – the only fallout is the falling out of Waziri and Nuruddeen, and even then, I know it is only temporary – they simply can’t stay away from each other! Two peas in a pod, that’s what they are!
I therefore urge us once again to become as lively as we can be (burning our skeletons along the line); get more involved if a topic interests you. For instance, I did not notice the Pilgrimage topic until recently, and suddenly I did remember my experiences 10 years ago and shared some of it.
Abdalla
