We are always excited whenever we see young Nigeria’s breaking barriers in technology and innovation. Terkura Unongo may be only 14 but he has just launched a social networking website, www.theimongo.com, which may well become the next Facebook. This milestone achievement by Terkura is not surprising; he has been exposed to the use of the internet since he was 8. His parents were there to encourage him to explore his talents in the digital world and they provided him all the gadgets he needed to nurture his talents
While his classmates were playing games, Terkura was busy opening his first email address. He joined Facebook when he was 10 and soon enough he registered with other social networking sites. According to him, he had been IT-savvy from the first day he started using a computer. He honed his skills in IT further when his computer teacher was teaching the basics of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). After the class, Tekura was challenged to deepen his knowledge about the programming language. His fascination with HTML led him to learn Cascading Style Script and other languages, including JavaScript, Java, and VB. He was able to use his knowledge to create various websites for school projects, and also created websites just because he could, although he never published them.
On how he was able to create his social networking site, Terkura says, he had been fascinated with how social networking sites worked. Now armed with the knowledge of HTML, he believed he could create his own social network. “I felt I could do something positive, and then I decided to create something that would impact the lives of potential members from all over the world. So I went on to work on Imongo, and I am still working on it to take the online social experience to a whole new level”, Terkura says.
Terkura began work on the Imongo site in May 2012. Just in case you are wondering where the name came from, Imongo which means gathering is taken from the Tiv native dialect. Terkura picked the name because he felt it accurately portrayed his main objective of connecting people and creating a platform for them to meet other people. Imongo went public in early April and in less than three months, it had over 300 members.
Imongo is not just a site for making friends; members can stay up to date with the latest entertainment news both locally and internationally. The site also has music, videos and picture features. Terkura built the Video Chat feature in Imongo himself, using a partner called TokBox. He has no official guidance. He simply used his knowledge of scripting and the internet to guide him.
Now that Terkura has launched Imongo, he is not resting on his oars. The teenager whose role model is Bill Gates would like to master Java, C++, PHP and other programming languages that would enable him take on future projects. By 2014, he hopes that Imongo would have 1 million members,
What can we say; Terkura is simply awesome!
