The expansion of the Nigerian e-commerce received a boost recently with the introduction of a new app that will encourage online connection between people. It is known as Spotself designed specially to suit Nigerians by Jens Mathiasson, a Swedish, who recently came to Nigeria to promote e-commerce. Spotself is an android app (and web app) for sharing and rating photos, like cool outfits, selfies and fun pictures. You can also match with people you find interesting.
The features in Spotself include dating functionality which really comes to life. Here you get to view pictures of people who are single and interested in meeting new people as well and once there is a match between two people they will be notified and they can get ahead with communication. It also explore which means focusing on the photo sharing part of the functions of the app. Pictures of the people in the community are placed here according to cities and different categories and you can comment on the picture and also rate them.
Apart from commenting and rating people’s pictures and vice versa, there is also the feature of connecting with people through personal messaging on the app. This is private and between the two users that are involved the communication process.
There is also the category of posting pictures and also searching for pictures. This allows you to filter what you see and also allows you to give a particular tag to the pictures you upload on the app.
Because the app focuses on rating pictures rather than just liking them, there would be picture with the highest rates in the community and these are the pictures that go on the TOPLIST for the day or the week. This feature is also really good for competitions because it makes it easier to pick winners as there is already a feature of rating.
Narrating how he conceived the idea of the App, Mathiasson said from his interaction with Nigerian friends living in Nigeria, he noticed that everyone was taken by the idea of taking pictures, and ‘Selfies’ had actually become a Pop Culture. Since the mobile usage is booming in the country and Internet business is growing, it is clearly an interesting place to develop digital products. “The idea behind Spotself is that Nigerians like to have fun, meet new people and loves to take photos. The app which is designed for the Nigerian youth in particular and we believe Spotself can be a major destination for meeting and interacting with people online,” he said.
By Pita Ochai
[divider]