2GOTHE CHAT ROOM · NIA-02

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Specimen2008–2016
NOKIA
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No phone number, no email. A name and a level, and that was your whole identity.

To operatePick a room and start typing. The regulars are already talking and will not stop.

2008–2016

Emptied out. Support ended around 2020.

Twelve million Nigerians in a room, on phones with no data plan.

Built in South Africa for Java feature phones, 2go landed in Nigeria in 2008 and did something Facebook could not: it ran on anything, cost almost nothing, and let strangers find each other in numbered public rooms. At its peak it had more Nigerian users than Facebook did.

On the record

  • Launched 2007; reached Nigeria in 2008 and became its largest market.
  • By 2012 it had over 12 million Nigerian users against Facebook's roughly 6.5 million.
  • Around 21 million registered users by 2014, some 12.5 million of them Nigerian.
  • Ran on Java ME, so it worked on phones with no browser worth the name.

What people said

ASL?Room 5*waves*GoCreditsSend ur number

The Nigerian Internet ArchiveNIA-02