Sunday, January 14, 2007

Innovation goes west: Benin the new Nigeria?



It seems that Benin, a West African country that I was not particularly acquainted with before, is in fact a hot bed of 2.0 social networking innovation. Just got a friend request on the real-world bookmarking site Flagr from a polite sounding gentleman who is urgently waiting my contact details for profitable business. I wonder if friend requests are a new communications medium of choice? So many questions. Is there a higher takeup rate as people assume we're all 'inside the beltway'. And why Flagr? Surely MySpace and YouTube would provide richer pickings than its savvy geeks...

"Dr. Mark James, the newly appointed Director for Foreign Operations at
Financial Bank of Benin (FBB.). I am urgently waiting for your message, I have
very good and profitable business for you just email me with your full address
and phone number ok."

2 comments:

pumba said...

Be careful with those initations. You might just be the next victim of a scam from Nigeria or some other country if you think you are too smart for that, please take a look at this video from ABC news http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2717348

You might want to take the innovation thought with a pinch of salt

Unknown said...

Hey thanks for that Prosper, and the email following up...
On rereading my post, I guess my sarcastic humour was a probably little subtle - I'd clocked this for a scam. There's always something in the language which gives them away.
Anyway, thanks again.
Cheers,
Stephen
PS - Nigeria rocks! :)