TechNigeria: A weekly digest of what went down in Nigeria’s tech space this week

Clubhouse, Reddit, Pinterest, Meta, Entre, Kakao Pay, Payday, JICA, KYC, Twitter were some of the names that made the headlines in the tech ecosystem this week.

KYC compliance and ID verification partner, Smile Identity, during the week, acquired Appruve, a Ghanaian developer of identity verification software to strengthen ID verification services.

Also, American image-sharing and social media service, Pinterest, has disclosed its multiyear strategic ad partnership with Amazon.

Let’s get into details.

Social audio platform, Clubhouse, has laid off half of its total workforce to cope with new demanding challenges.

The development was contained in a joint statement by the company’s co-founders, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth seen by Ripples Nigeria on Friday.

The once-trending app, which grew quickly during the pandemic, has struggled to stay relevant as economies recover and people resume their daily routines from before the virus.

American social news aggregation, and content rating platform, Reddit, has announced its intentions to test Discord-like chat channels with select subreddits.

This was contained in the social channel’s post on Friday.

Ripples Nigeria understands that with this change, the social network hopes to provide community members with additional ways to communicate with one another than just the standard asynchronous commenting system.

American image-sharing and social media service, Pinterest, has disclosed its multiyear strategic ad partnership with Amazon.

The company announced the partnership on its blog seen by Ripples Nigeria on Friday.

According to the post, the partnership is aimed at bringing more brands and relevant products to its platform.

Meta founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has confirmed that the time spent on Instagram grew by 24% with TikTok-style AI Reel recommendations.

Meta CFO Susan Li also confirmed the development in a statement seen by Ripples Nigeria on Thursday. The CFO credited the increment to its AI-powered content recommendations.

According to Zuckerberg, the AI used is a kind of non-connection recommended videos that TikTok built its entire brand upon.

A Texas-based startup, Entre, has unveiled new communities management tool to rival Slack and Discord. This was contained in a press release by the startup on Thursday.

According to the release, Entre’s innovative Communities function will allow users to find and join groups of like-minded people in their field or build their special communities.

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The company was founded by Juan Carlos del Valle, and Michael Marra in 2019.

South Korean fintech company, Kakao Pay, has acquired a majority stake in Siebert Financial, a brokerage firm based in New York.

Gloria Gebbia, Siebert’s controlling shareholder and board member, confirmed the development in a statement on Thursday.

Ripples Nigeria gathered that Kakao invested $17 million in this deal, and as a result, the business now controls 19.9% of Siebert.

African fintech company, Payday, has announced a partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink in Rwanda.

Payday’s CEO Favour Ori confirmed the development in a statement seen by Ripples Nigeria on Wednesday.

The African Neobank, which provides distant workers and professionals on the continent with access to digital banking, enables users access to a quick and dependable internet connection.

To finance the Bank’s support for private sector operations in Africa, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) have agreed to a $350 million loan.

This was contained in an official release from Dr Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group seen by Ripples Nigeria on Wednesday.

Ripples Nigeria understands that the loan is a part of Japan’s Official Development Assistance to Africa (ODA) program’s Enhanced Private Sector Assistance (EPSA) project.

KYC compliance and ID verification partner, Smile Identity, has acquired Appruve, a Ghanaian developer of identity verification software to strengthen ID verification services.

Appruve founder and CEO Paul Damalie confirmed the acquisition in a statement on Wednesday.

Smile Identity is a player in the ID verification and KYC compliance market in Africa founded in 2017 by Mark Straub and William Bares.

Twitter has reversed course on its verification policy, returning the “blue tick” without charging the social network’s famous users.

Several popular accounts (with more than 1 million followers) received their verification marks over the weekend.

Many of them, including Davido, Wizkid, Tony Elumelu, Burna Boy, author Neil Gaiman, athlete Riyad Maharez, rapper Lil Nas X, actress Janel Parrish Long, and British TV host Richard Osman, said they weren’t responsible for the cost of the blue badge.

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