by Lanre Olagunju

Tunde Olabenjo, CTO of Stack Arena juggled his memory and narrated thus, “At first we decided that we were just going to build a native app that would connect to an API. That was just the idea initially. We decided that we’d allow people post jokes, something like an eHow for jokes, where users can submit jokes and have their jokes published onto the app and the site.”

The software company, Stack Arena launched out in May 2012, by a group comprising of young and enterprising Nigerians who basically write codes and develop appealing applications. They develop some apps on demand and so many others as a result of cheer curiosity. These young developers don’t just develop apps for a living; the bulk of their time virtually revolves round contributing to open source development.

They presently run an online tutorial on tuts.stackarena.com, where developers around the globe dash in to learn useful tips on design and development.

If anything at all about you is Nigerian, you definitely at one point or the other must have gotten your ribs cracked by the popular but unknown Akpos.

Akpos Jokes was developed by StackArena in November 2012.

“We have in time past developed a couple of apps like PIN Broadcast, Sound Meter, and a few others, but officially we launched out in May 2012.” Said Niyi Adekoya, the Chief Solutions Architect of Stack Arena

“For the Akpos Jokes app, the idea started one evening. One of us read a funny joke that was woven into the popular Akpos personality. And like we most times do, we impulsively registered the domain akposjokes.com in a couple of minutes, then we created a host account, just like that the journey began.” Niyi remembered.

Tunde Olabenjo, CTO of Stack Arena juggled his memory and narrated thus, “At first we decided that we were just going to build a native app that would connect to an API. That was just the idea initially. We decided that we’d allow people post jokes, something like an eHow for jokes, where users can submit jokes and have their jokes published onto the app and the site.”

In December 2012, these computer geeks at Stack Arena had their native blackberry app completed. It was designed to be simple, in fact it was less than 50kb at that time, yet beautiful, unique and fast! Little wonder why the app got a quick approval on blackberry app world in January 2013, a month after the app was developed.

That was how the app started getting huge attention and large amounts of downloads like there is no tomorrow.

“Due to the success and positive feedback the app enjoyed, we were encouraged to keep adding features. So we shifted our gaze to android and Nokia users too.”  Said Niyi

In January, the Android version of the app was launched on Google play store and Java app in the Nokia ovi store. “At the end of the same month” Tunde starts to narrate, “we already had about 55,000+ downloads majorly from blackberry users and the reactions from users were really encouraging. By February 2013, Akpos Jokes got approved on the Playstore. And it was around that time that we were approached by Nokia Nigeria after we published the s40 java app. At this point the download was already 6000+ so they decided to feature our app on ovi store. Right now we have over 300,000 installations across their Asha range and other s40 phones.” The calm yet enthusiastic developer boasted.

But even at that, just like Oliver Twist, Tunde exclaimed our users always want more!

“See business is all about satisfying consumer’s demands to keep them happy, so we had to do more work on the site. We had to upgrade both the site and the app, creating more features for users. And that’s why we tell young developers that it’s important to always improve on their work. It’s not all about creating an app and then you turn a deaf ear to users. At the moment we have over a million (1,000,0000)  downloads and counting. All in a space of eight months! 600,000+ on Blackberry Appworld, 300,000+ on Nokia Ovi store, 90,000+ on Google play store and 30,000+ on other app stores like Opera and GetJar.” Tunde further explained with a boastful smile.

Considering this huge success, the question now is why launch the Ad network?

Niyi took his time explaining that “The fact that we have over 500,000 downloads on blackberry, and four screens on our android app, there was a challenge for advertisers, as getting to place their ads on a platform such as blackberry, basically because it lacks the appropriate SDKs from the giant Admob or AdSense.  On the other end, publishers cannot realize any reasonable profit from ad requests and subsequent impressions, because international advertisers won’t place adverts on a dwindling market such as BlackBerry. Not even on Nokia! As a result of these unfavourable realities, companies like MillenialMedia who have SDK for blackberry serve the least ads on BlackBerry and Nokia, which means little or no profit, no matter the amount of pageviews the app attracts.”

Answering the question of if the case is actually the same with the Nigerian market, Tunde eschew joy as he explained that “the case is actually much different in Nigeria, Blackberry and feature phones (Nokia s40) are the largest and growing platforms. Here many folks are still glued to their blackberries. And that has created an opportunity for us to step up to the challenge, so we created an advertisement platform. “

If you are wondering who their clients are, Kunle Fadiora, CFO of Stack Arena eagerly mentioned that “We have had notable clients such as Jobberman and Quickteller amongst others. Our clients are so pleased because the AkposJokes platform boosts their own app downloads considering that we currently attract over 150,000+ impressions daily across all our platforms. Clients who choose to advertise on our platform can choose how many impressions they actually want and on which of our platform they intend to appear, since we are available on mobile, desktop, BlackBerry, android…and the rest.”

 

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Lanre Olagunju tweets from @Lanre_Olagunju

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija