Yarnable: Nigeria's very own twitter clone?

May 22, 2010 by I. Njoku

The proof that an idea is good shows when its copied or cloned several times. It happened with facebook. Its happening with twitter. www.yarnable.com is another of the hundreds of microblogging websites attempting a repeat of the twitter success story. Whether thunder strikes the same spot twice remains to be seen. Anyhow, the website looks clean and well designed. As for delivery and sustainability, only time will tell.

Created by Ahmad Mukoshy early this year, yarnable.com has got a lot of similarities to twitter. Messages are 140 character long. Am not aware if users can post messages via their phones yet. The competition is definitely larger than life for this baby startup. Would people leave twitter for it? Do we really need another twitter? What about monetisation? Twitter had problems working out a good revenue model that would not scare away their users.

Coming closer home, www.gistcaster.com, another microblog is already popular and having more users. They are available on mobile (as stated on their website). Started by another young Nigerian, Ademola Morebise, the system allows geotagged content sharing. Every system worth its onions these days take geotagging seriously.

Most developers have resorted to building systems running on the twitter API instead of building clones headed for a head to head collision course with a larger than life twitter. I think its better to work with twitter instead of trying to clone it.

A lot can be done with the twitter API as has been demostrated in the hundreds of services that have grown around twitter. You name them: tweetmeme, tweetdeck, tweetphoto, tweetpic etc. These are all profitable ventures built using the twitter API. We could do with several twitter dependent apps in Nigeria too though one bottleneck would be the cost of texting. I believe in time to come tweeting via the phone would eventually become free like on most mobile phone networks abroad.

Who knows, yarnable.com may still come up with an angle no one thought of before. They are still in BETA mode meaning there is more to come. I wish them all the best.','The proof that an idea is good shows when its copied or cloned several times. It happened with facebook. Its happening with twitter. www.yarnable.com is another of the hundreds of microblogging websites attempting a repeat of the twitter success story. Whether thunder strikes the same spot twice remains to be seen. Anyhow, the website looks clean and well designed. As for delivery and sustainability, only time will tell.