Obviously not everything that comes from Jos, Plateau state is tears blood and sorrow. It seemed so on account of several crises that have erupted from the ancient city in the past few years.
In fact, popular Nigerian Rap artist, Mr Incredible, MI in one of his hit albums, described the present city of Jos as a wild-wild West where only cursed people live: “… better get your gun, better get your vest, cause J town is a wild-wild west. No one blessed but everyone cursed, ‘cause J town is a wild, wild west……”
But just a few months after that hit song, armed with the transformational power of technology, a 15 year old secondary school student, Terkura Ephraim Unongo, has changed the story. Now the whole wide world is beaming the search light on the supposed wild, wild west where a replica of the social media platforms transforming world information today like facebook, twitter, Instagram among others is sprouting from. Call it history in the making; one may not be far from the truth because IMONGO social network, created by the 15 year old student of Hillcrest School Jos, is taking J town by storm.
Why Imongo
The Imongo, (www.theimongo.com), is a social discovery, social entertainment, and social informative network that enables people from all walks of life to come together in one online community, discover new friends, connect with the people in their life, share, discover music, videos & movies, pictures, and keep in touch with what’s happening locally and internationally.
Currently the social site has attracted over 2900 members. According to Unongo, “Imongo is my first step in the realisation of my dream to make a change that will bring about positive developments towards my nation Nigeria
Experience
I have always played around on the Internet, building websites for people and using social media to market them. But one night while watching CNN I thought over a lot of things watching the white man do wonders in this digital age, such wonders which include, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and others, then I convinced myself that I will build a social network and take it one step at a time to eventually make it worthy of competition with Facebook and others.
Due to my knowledge of HTML, CSS and a bit of JavaScript I built the Imongo on the GROU.PS Platform so I could be realising a part of my dream while advancing in Java, PHp, jQuery, and others in order to truly prepare to build a world class social network.
Desire
I had always desired to see myself in the history books as that African, that Nigerian who made great impact in the digital age by creating a social utility that will become worthy of competition with digital age wonders.
Features of Imongo
Imongo like other social sites has specific features, including:
Profiles – where each member of Imongo has own Profile to identify where he or she can choose what to share, and how to share it.
Feed – The feed is a feature that is similar to a Newsfeed allowing members to view what’s going on with others online. Imongo’s original newsfeed allows its members to choose if they want to see what the whole of Imongo is up to, or what their friends are doing. Users are also allowed to use the, “@” symbol to mention others in their posts, or use the “#” symbol to tag their posts.
Activity Points – a simple way for members to be ranked in points according to their various activities carried out on Imongo, this also enables users to gain more popularity on the “People” page giving them an opportunity to get noticed by other members. Activity Points are also used as a rewarding system during times when competitions are run on Imongo.
Blogs – the easy way for members to stay informed about various topics or write on subjects that interest them.
Wiki – The interactive learning section of Imongo where members can view and create informative pages relating to different topics. This feature also allows members to choose whether they want to leave their pages open for editing, or if they want to lock it down from editing.
Pics – Section for photo albums, members can view various galleries on different places, people, or just everyday life. Members can also choose to share pictures of their own.
Vids – A free place to watch movies, music videos, comedy, etc. The Video page enables members to add, share and/or watch videos from other sites just by simply putting in the link of the video in spaces provided, members can also share their own videos by uploading directly from their computers.
Chat – This feature allows everyone online at that moment on Imongo to come together in one chat room where to chat with people that are their friends. This feature also enables users who want to go one-on-one to chat privately.
Culled from vanguardngr.com
