Prominent Nigerian Social Network Signs Million Naira Deal With Blackberry Nigeria
Prominent Nigerian social networking website, Ladies And Gentlemen book, popularly known as LAGbook, on 18th June, 2012, signed an 8 weeks sponsorship deal with Research in Motion (Blackberry) Nigeria, valued at N1.2million.
- (1888PressRelease) July 08, 2012 - Prominent Nigerian social networking website, Ladies And Gentlemen book, popularly known as LAGbook, on 18th June, 2012, signed an 8 weeks sponsorship deal with Research in Motion (Blackberry) Nigeria, valued at N1.2million. Before the deal, LAGbook had over 75,000 registered members with international media attention from Webrazzi and TechCrunch, the world's foremost technology news portal on the Internet. LAGbook was created initially as an exclusive social network for students of University of Lagos on 17th April, 2010 by Chidi and Chika Nwaogu, Nigerian computer programmers, internet entrepreneurs and twin brothers. Less than 2 months after inception, the social network with 3,000 registered students expanded to the Nigerian population at large. After recording over 20,000 members, the social network expanded its reach to the 21 African English-speaking countries (including Nigeria). With over 60,000 members on Jan 2012, LAGbook expanded, targeting the youth demographic (18-30) around the world. In the past, LAGbook has partnered with Etisalat Nigeria as a social earning network where Etisalat subscribers around the world unwind, mix-up, connect with one another and share their daily Etisalat experience.
Recently, LAGbook started massive promotional campaigns for Blackberry as official Blackberry artworks "Don't Wait, Activate!" replaces the backdrop of the Login/Sign-up page of LAGbook.com, the cover photo of 5 LAGbook fan-pages on Facebook with over 20,000 fans and the backdrop of LAGbook's twitter handle with over 1,200 followers. The young Nigerian social network also sends periodic messages to its over 130,000 members about Blackberry. The sponsorship deal is expected to end on 11th August, 2012, if there is no roll on. Since 13th June, 2012, LAGbook's growth curve peaked, attracting over 3,000 new members daily with popularity in India, Turkey, Canada, United States, Malaysia, Philippines and most especially Nigeria in the city of Yaba, Lagos, where the social network was incepted and currently ranks #3 in traffic, right after Facebook (#1) and Google (#2). With LAGbook's recent growth curve, the social network is expected to become Africa's #1 largest social networking website with about 500,000 members by year end. According to Chika Nwaogu, the 22 year old co-founder of LAGbook, "The deal was initiated by Tunji Ademiluyi, RIM's Carrier Marketing Manager. It was miraculous. My phone rings and guess who's calling me? Blackberry!"
"The deal was handled by Blackberry's Ad agency in Nigeria, Yellow Brick Road Ltd." says Chidi Nwaogu, CEO at LAGbook and nominee of the 2011 Nigeria Youth Merit Award for ICT. "We worked closely with Ayisola Iroche and Caroline Daniels of Yellow Brick Road Ltd." Chidi continued "and maybe there might be a roll on, which is solely RIM's decision". According to Wikipedia, LAGbook is "a social network focused on expanding the social experience of people and giving them an incentive to do what they love doing the most - making new friends." LAGbook doesn't limit their members to connecting and sharing with the people in their life or the people they already know, thus they go by the name; "social discovery network", a social network for meeting new people everyday. When speaking to Chika Nwaogu, LAGbook's Chairman, on LAGbook's next step, he said "We have started a massive viral campaign and the results reflect on our current user-size and rapid growth rate. We're working to better our services and double bandwidth. We ought to be 500,000 members strong before the last week of 2012, thus we're making foundation steps toward becoming Africa's largest social networking website before 2013. I'm excited!
LAGbook on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAGbook
LAGbook on Crunchbase: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/lagbook