With so much love for Twitter, yet another Twitter-clone has been launched on the micro-blogging space. This time, YarnPad! has emerged from Nigeria and lets you “see wetin people they yarn about“, that is, what people are talking about.
Founded by Deji Kadri and Victor Sylva, Yarnpad! is a real-time information network powered by people all around the world that lets you share and discover what’s happening now.
Launched in private beta in April 2010, and in public beta in May 2010, YarnPad! wants to help create a vibrant community of entrepreneurs, where people can bounce ideas, get feedback, and meet like- minded business people.
The site keeps you informed about what matters most to you from breaking news to a local traffic jam to a deal at your favorite shop or even a funny pick-me-up from a friend.
Language and Connections
Yarnpad can be accessed through more than 50,000 third-party Internet and mobile applications. You can find and invite friends from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Gmail, etc. Also, you can connect your Twitter account with your Yarnpad account.
Yarnpad currently comes in English, but would be in other languages soon, so users can change their language preferences.
SMS Features
Yarnpad would be launching cool features and value added services in the future. Yarnpad on your phone will keep you informed about happenings around you and the world and let you share 160-character messages from your mobile phone via SMS.
Yarnpad is tieing up deals with the biggest telecom operators in the world to allow users to send and receive Yarnpad messages over SMS and MMS at no additional cost. Yarnpad’s simplicity can give a voice to even the weakest signals. So if you’re using a weak connection in rural areas, you can access the service via SMS on a simple mobile phone.
Device integration
Yarnpad is working closely with all of the major mobile phone manufacturers and platform providers to integrate Yarnpad throughout their devices. These partners believe that it makes their product more appealing if they include a pre-loaded Yarnpad application and give users the ability to yarn from the camera, maps, browser, media player and other contexts of the device.
Developer API
Yarnpad provides developers with a powerful set of API endpoints for searching, reading, and updating post content. This allows desktop, mobile, and web application developers to integrate with Yarnpad, and gives the user control of their own data so that they can freely share it with other sites and services as they see fit.
URL Shortening
When you paste a long URL on Yarnpad, the service automatically changes it into an is.gd short url. I’m wondering why Yarnpad is not using a local url shortening service such as Yrn.me
My thoughts
With an impressive amount of Nigerians and Nigerian brands already using Twitter, there is good reason to believe that real-time information is gradually going mainstream.
Already, Nigerian celebrities such as Wande Coal, Banky W as well as government officials such as President Jonathan and Governor Fashola have taken to Twitter to build fans and followers.
The question is: will Yarnpad get the same traction?
Dejo Fabolude, a technology blogger at Digital-Crossings.com suggested that “what we need is Nigerians using APIs to build new services on top of the well-known platforms.” While I agree with Dejo, my concern is whether or not these Twitter clones are solving any need or local problem?
Again, what business models would they likely be adopting considering the fact that Twitter just launched their first revenue model called ‘Promoted Tweets’ after 4 years of launching the service.
Perhaps if Yarnpad offers something unique, solves a need, grow their user base, goes mainstream, and possibly gets funding, they might soon become a replacement for Twitter and other micro-blogging platforms out there.
Whether you like it or not, real-time information is the biggest buzz of the decade, and Nigerian web entrepreneurs are busy making their own mark in this space.
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