Scalability, Interface Offer 2go’s Uniqueness- Herson

Marc was previously an Executive in Residence at Softbank Capital in Boston; and a Partner at Hasso Plattner Ventures Africa.

Prior to that Marc was with SONY BMG and Bertelsmann AG in New York and Munich as Senior Vice President of Strategy and New Ventures. Marc began his career as a corporate lawyer at Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs in Johannesburg. He holds a BA, LLB and a MBA from INSEAD.

Marc has certifications in coaching and in mediation from Harvard Law School. Marc is a CPD faculty coach at Harvard Business School.


Overview of 2go
2go, a mobile social network and chat messenger that allows the users to communicate for free with friends and meet new people, is set to launch on the Android platform in the next weeks.

Today 2go is the largest social network in Nigeria with over nine million active users and is one of Africa’s largest mobile social networks, said Marc Herson, a director at the social network with offices in Cape Town, South Africa.

According to him, 2go is a fast trending network that users, primarily between the ages of 18 and 30, have become loyal users of. The median age of a 2go user is 23, many of which are university graduates or still at university. Herson adds that according to recent statistics the Nigerian population has remarkably a median age of 18, so the 2go user actually skews quite a bit older than the median age of Nigeria.

2go users hop on to the app to check in and chat with familyand friends for free, play games and meet people in chat rooms and discuss topics like football and music. 2go is a also cross-platform and allows users to chat with friends on Facebook and Google.

2go Success is Driven by the Users
2go’s success is due to a variety of factors.

First of all, it is about the product and the technology. Herson notes that “everything we do is focused around the product and the scalability of the platform.” 
We have minimal downtime, which with three million active users each day is absolutely critical. We are an app that scales.

Secondly, the app has a simple but beautiful user interface. The app is simple and easy to user, which is critical for users of feature phones. Far more than desktop-based users, users tend to be looking for an immediate hit of social connection ­ so interfaces need to be fast and intuitive.

Thirdly, we are also focused on price sensitive users. The app is lightweight and offers users minimal use of data, thus providing savings on data costs. For instance, images are dramatically compressed, which enables users to share photographs a lot.

Mobile Ads    

2go has a very powerful adverting platform and works with brands that include McDonalds, Stanbic IBTC, Guinness and host of others.

We have what we call ‘full-screen splash screen ads’. When someone logs on he views a full-screen ad for five seconds. The user can click on it to go to the brand’s own mobisite. 
Amazingly, up to 20 to 30% of the users click on the ads.

2go is a premium advertising platform and enables targeting of its audience by age, gender, location and other demographic characteristics. 
With 2go’s analytics platform brands can log on to track how their campaign is performing. 



Free Music for 2go Users  

When someone gets signed on to 2go there are various and interesting things that will keep him or her there.
In February this year, 2go entered into a partnership with iROKING to bring free music from the likes of Timaya, Flavour and 2Face to the phones of the millions of 2go users who use the mobile networking site to chat, make friends and share the things they love.

From Feature Phones to Smartphones
“Since inception, the success of 2go has been very much around feature phones which still make up about 90% of the market in Nigeria out of over 100 million mobile connections, said Herson, adding that, “The other ten percent are on smartphones, with 50% of those being on Blackberry.”

Feature phones still give people what they want, especially those who cannot afford smartphones.

“However, we are now also focusing on smartphones which is growing rapidly. In Nigeria it will grow from 10% to approximately 25% to 30% in 2016. Thus, we are moving fast. We are on Blackberry already; we now have hundreds of thousands of users of users on smartphones. Blackberry is important, but Android has even more promise,” he noted.

In a recent poll we ran to test smartphone purchase intend, 80% of our users said they intend to buy a phone in the next 12 months, and they said almost 90% of those new phones will be smart phones.

The director maintained that the team of 2go engineers have been working tirelessly, “We have developed a new Android application, which we are going to launch in matter of weeks.

We will first launch our Android app in Google’s Play Store and then Samsung’s App Store. Very shortly, you will see promotions with and 2go bundled data plan with some of the leading mobile networks and handset manufacturers.

2go gives more than 9 million Nigerians an honest, fun and expressive form of communication. “Watch this space” Herson says. “There is much more to come!”

The 2go platform is open to brands, marketers and others who wish to drive brand awareness and engagement to a mass market of Nigerians.

Generally, 2go is the platform to be on!