The Scoop: Innovate or Die!
What is “The Scoop”? It’s a non-traditional means of divulging top stories and news highlights to you. Our editorial team has taken this more conversational approach over the stereotypical way of breaking news to eliminate newsroom fatigue or boredom to our readers. We’re glad to launch the first scoop of The Scoop here on smepeaks.com; indulge and enjoy.
MTN vs “Power Bank”
If you’re an MTN subscriber, something happened during the Easter break. Did you notice the little feud between MTN and Banks? It explains why you were unable to recharge your MTN line using USSD. Apparently, Nigerian banks boycotted the MTN because it slashed the transaction rate to banks by 1.5%; Banks didn’t welcome that development.
Anyway, thanks to the government’s and NCC’s intervention, the situation has been cushioned. More about the story on Premium Times.
But it leaves a big worry on how much power Banks wield to alter the operations of a gigantic telecoms provider. The question is, should banks remain major call card vendors or should we go back to buying scratch cards from the street?
You remember the good old days of yellow scratch cards right? How scary did it feel to mistakenly scratch off a number from the 16-digit pin? 😬
Clubhouse to Android
Meanwhile, Clubhouse is finally extending the “party” to Android users! Aha, they’re finally listening. 🥳💃
What’s more interesting is, the audio chat app has hired a Nigerian Android Engineer, Mopewa Ogundipe to sail this boat. Reportedly, she’s the only African on the team, for now.
What can I say, a Nigerian blazing the trail again? Modupe herself broke the news on Twitter:
Yahoo… Yahoo!
How vividly do you remember the era of Yahoo.com?
The platform has announced that it’s shutting down another of its products come May 4th. That’s the Yahoo Answers, which bears some semblance to Quora. We know the popular story of Yahoo’s struggles in recent years, no thanks to Google. Even the Ex-CEO of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer was happy to ditch her Yahoo mail for a Gmail account as seen on the Verge.
How ironic!
Well, as Yahoo puts it “While Yahoo Answers was once a key part of Yahoo’s products and services, it has become less popular over the years as the needs of our members have changed…”
There’s something we always say in tech “Innovate or Die”. It’s that SIMPLE, yet quite DIFFICULT.
Google has hugely displaced Yahoo in a short time span due to its ability to innovate.
FFT: How fast are you thinking innovation for your business? 🧐 Think about it!
Shutdowns
Speaking of shutdowns, Facebook is also planning to shut down its Facebook Analytics come June.
And LG says it will stop producing smartphones by July. This reminds me of Blackberry. But I believe LG has plans to sustain its market relevance, thanks to its market share as a manufacturer of other electronic products, unlike Blackberry. See full scoop on CNN.
NIN-SIM Linkage Again
Finally, the deadline for NIN-SIM card registration has been extended by one month from April 6th to May 6th. If you’re yet to register, you still have some time.
And if you’ve gotten your NIN and linked your SIM cards, how easy was the process?
That’ll be all for this morning.
Thanks for reading and do have a great day.
Ps: FFT = Food For Thought
This is the very first edition of The Scoop on smepeaks. Activate your Push Notification for more interesting daily scoops.
