A 19 Year Old UNILAG Student Builds Hipingg, A New Photo Sharing Social Network

 At just 19, Prudence Okoilu, a Physics and Electronics student at University of Lagos (UNILAG) is the CEO of Hipingg , a photo sharing social network  he founded in December 2011 now with over 4000 users and several corporate partnerships in hand.

And he has his books to read too!

Okoilu says Hipingg is a place one creates a community through sharing and commenting on photos.

TechMoran caught up with him and here is the story of his dream, with 50,000 sign ups top on his to do list in a few months time!

What is Hipingg?

Hipingg is a free online social networking platform that enables its users to upload photo status updates, which are called “pinggs”.

Users can post pinggs to the Hipingg website using a webcam or via the Hipingg mobile for Blackberry, Nokia, Android [10] and iPhone. With 40 daily sign ups and over 4000 users in Ghana, USA, Canada, China, France and Demark and especially in Nigeria, where it is the fastest growing social platform to share daily experiences through photos.

 

Who Are The Founders?

Hipingg was founded by Prudence Okoilu, an internet entrepreneur and the Team that include Ruth Okoilu, and special help from internet entrepreneurs Chidi and Chika Nwaogu of LAGbook.

 

Target Users?
Hipingg is targeting primarily the African community to promote photo sharing amongst people between ages 13-45.

 

What is Your Business Model?

(1) Our atomic unit of communication on Hipingg is photos and advertisers all around the world speak through images and Hipingg will be the best platform for advertisers. Plus what’s really cool about this is, it doesn’t feel like advertising but more like photo sharing.

(2) As the company starts to arrange photos into collections based on locations and events, it also can start to create opportunity to inject sponsored photos (sponsored storied if I may) and start to think about revenues.

 

How is it Unique?

Hipingg is different from other social networks in that the youth of today clearly want to use photo for both communication and entertainment. Hipingg is a place where people can interact and build communities through photo dialogue which is more informative and fun than traditional social networking.

Challenges Hipingg is facing is publicity, we have noticed that most users don’t have information on how our platform operates and we are currently working on awareness programs and press releases.

Plus we’re talking on what our service offers on our twitter page @Hipingg_Inc.

Hipingg have been able to secure a third party integration partnership with Africa’s largest social network LAGbook, and more coming soon with dropbox and rest. We won’t want to let the cat out of the bag for now.

At the moment, Hipingg has over 4000 active users and in the near future hope to be the Largest photo shaing platform in Africa and beyond.

Facebook has been a major inspiration to Hipingg and the team with the way the social networking site has been able to connect the world through the service it offers and we believe that Hipingg will be able to achieve more than that through photo sharing. Plus we are looking forward to working with great minds out there.