The social media world has thrived under the dominance of Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Their influence is so loud that you wonder if there will ever be a chance for any other social media startup. But there is a new breed of startups scaling through the domineering wind of the giants by doing things differently. The four of them have figured out what is missing in the dominant social media platforms and leveraged on them to pull a surprise.

TTYL

TTYL, founded by Alex Ma and Austen M, with a startup capital of $2 million, invested by Floodgate Fund, SV Angel, Weekend Fund and Shrug Capital.

TTYL makes an iphone app that aims to change how people talk to each other on the phone. The idea came when Alex Ma graduated from the university and felt he had lost touch with his friends. Although they still talked often, but there was something missing.

“I started to feel like I was losing touch with my friends, even though we were texting every day.” He told The Information that he started calling them randomly, and realized that “how we get into phone calls just hasn’t changed since the landline.”

So Alex teamed up with his brother Austen to build a place where people can feel present with their friends and family when they’re physically apart. And so came the birth of TTYL.

TTYL uses Snapchat’s nascent developer platform to authenticate new users and allow them to add custom Bitmoji avatars to their profiles. Ma said the technique makes more sense given the user overlap between TTYL’s younger target demographic and Snapchat’s. Moreover, he has no intention of selling ads so there is no need to collect people’s information: A reason why he chose Snapchat because it collects little user data. Ma said revenue will eventually be generated through optional in-app purchases or through the sales of physical merchandise.

Squad 

Another startup with a potential to scale the hurdle is Squad. Founded by Esther Crawford and Ethan Sutin, the company has raised $5 million through investors like First Round, Alpha Bridge, Y Combinator and BBG Ventures.

The idea of Squad came when Esther Crawford’s 13 year old daughter complained that she couldn’t see what her friend was doing on her phone’s screen while the two of them were talking on the phone.

So Crawford and Ethan Sutin, set out to create Squad, which lets users see what is happening on their iphone screen in real time while they’re video chatting. Squad is using apple’s software for iphone which gives developers the ability to easily capture what is happening on a user’s screen.

Squad relies on scanning user’s contacts list to suggest new friends while it’s working on developing a new functionality to discover new friends.

Over 200 million minutes have been spent on calls inside the app in 10 months of availability. The company commands a large number of young people who are between the ages of 13 and 22, most of them are based outside the U.S.

Squad also uses Snapchat’s developer platform for quick user authentication and because it has no intention to collect user data or serve ads. Crawford said:

“We’re not interested in an ad-based model. We think that the gaming model is much more interesting, where you have micro-transactions and micro-subscriptions. It aligns users with product development in a much better way. Because we want to build little things that you will actually pay for.”

YOLO

Another one is YOLO, founded by Gregoire Henrion and Clement Raffenoux with an investment capital of $2.5 million by A Capital, Bridgewater Capital, SV Angel and Weekend Fund.

The startup is an anonymous social network for young people where they can pose anonymous questions through their Snapchat stories. About five months ago, the app went up to number 1 on apps chart list, beating the odds where similar apps like YikYak have failed.

Like TTYL and Squad, YOLO leveraged Snapchat to pull a crowd of users in a very short time. The app is planning to add a new feature that includes anonymous, interest-based group chats for users who have a common interest: For instance, a workplace or a high school; using Snapchat’s Bitmoji avatars so that users can be identified by their digital avatar instead of their real names.

But there is a challenge! Due to the anonymous style of the app, content moderation becomes a top priority and the company is taking at it aggressively using artificial intelligence. About 10 percent of the messages sent fail to deliver because they are scanned and found to be offensive or hateful. Henrion said it’s a challenge that anonymity has presented.

“The challenge with anonymity is to create a healthy community, and we are doing that.”

Cocoon

Cocoon is the fourth app on the list, founded by Sachin Monga and Alex Cornell with an investment capital of $3 million funded by Y Combinator, Lerer Hippeau, Susa and Norwest.

Sachin Monga and Alex Cornell were two former employees of Facebook who sought to do things differently. Instead of allowing users to connect to as many people as possible, Cocoon narrowed the connections to closest relationships.

Although the app is yet to go public, Sachin described what they are working on as a digital space for close friends and family. The founders have been researching on a couple of things, from how people use apps to physical spaces like the living rooms, and how people interact in those spaces.

The idea is to create a method quite different from what is common in popular social media platforms that can keep family and close friends in a circle. Sachin said:

“We have a lot of latent desires that I think just, given the way everything shook out over the last 10 years, has sort of been left behind a little bit.”

Business is difficult no matter where you are. It is the same thing in China as it is in Germany. In Nigeria, business is just as difficult as it is everywhere else. However, every local area has its own culture and ways of conducting business. Some businesses will be better run than others and the rules will be different depending on what business you are in and the location. When it comes to doing business in Africa, it can be a lot more difficult because corruption is higher. When it comes to the stock market in that area, it is probably worthwhile to get a finviz stock screener. Something like this will help you immensely and will be responsible for a lot of your success in business.

In Nigeria, stock markets are just like in other places, with a few differences. The most important thing to consider is that Nigeria is a country on the growth path. Having found a lot of oil, Nigeria has taken off and is consistently growing. It is one of the leading growth engines of the continent of Africa and as time goes on there will be a lot more people doing business there. The benefit of this is growth has led to a stock market boom. As the stock market rises and gets better, people are finding that their lives are also coming easy to conduct and they are able to have fulfilling and meaningful things happen to them. As time goes on, this will only get better and better.

Nigerian Business Leaders

Business leaders in the country are also finding out that it is possible to get more money by creating value in the local community and finding people who want to buy their goods and services. The best part about this is eventually things will get to a stage where business leaders and normal everyday people will be able to have a first-world lifestyle. However, the biggest impediment to growth is the freedom to do business in that country. There are 110 countries where it is easier to do business in than Nigeria. As long as this continues, you will be seeing a lot of growth problems as the country struggles with crippling regulation and eventually a recession.

The key challenges for leaders in Nigeria are how to tackle growth while also creating a free economy that can survive and strive. It is still to be seen how they will do this. One thing is certain, they can look to their neighbors to see how they have done and figure out what they can do to achieve the same results.

Oil Industry in the Area

Another factor that has led to Nigeria growing tremendously is oil. Oil has caused a lot of things to go right for Nigerians and will help them in the future. The oil boom has made Nigeria one of the largest producers of oil in the world and things aren’t slowing down. This new wealth is contributing tremendously to how the country grows and how people can live their lives in peace and prosperity. Another huge benefit of what is it has led to an energy boom where people can live more cheaply.

Oil is also something that makes up the modern world. Almost everything we use is synthesized from oil. From the plastics we use to make our products to the energy that powers our home, oil is in everything we do. Even when you have an electric car, it is still made and powered with oil. As the oil economy gets stronger, we will be seeing a lot more out of the country of Nigeria.

What Are the Future Trends

The future is bright for this country as demographically there are a lot of young people and this will lead to a consumption boom. The oil wealth will only grow and eventually it will become enough the power more education and better results. Another aspect to look at is the oil wealth will also lead to many more technical developments in this same area as Nigerians learn how to work and develop their natural resources. All of these things act as a feedback loop making the country stronger for business. The stock market will grow as a result, helping generate even more wealth.

It is estimated that as at 2017, there are about 9,220 nuclear weapons in the world.

That led me to wonder what happens to the human race in case someone gets crazy enough to press the first nuclear weapon button.

Call me crazy, tell me I’m a pessimist …whatever, but you really can’t deny the irrefutable validity of that thought.

So what is a nuclear weapon? A nuclear weapon is an explosive that has such an intense power behind it such that the form of weaponry can cause massive amounts of damage in faraway places. A single nuclear device can devastate an entire city by blast, fire and radiation.

There are nine countries that currently possess nuclear weapons in varying quantities:

• Russia with 6,850 nuclear warheads
• United States of America with 6550 warheads
• France with 300 warheads
• China with 280 warheads
• The United Kingdom has 215 nuclear warheads
• Pakistan has 145 warheads
• India has 135 warheads
• Israel has 80 warheads
• North Korea has 15 warheads

There is this treaty that gives 5 countries the legitimate right to have nuclear weapons. The treaty is known as the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT). The five countries with this legitimate right are the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom.

So the remaining countries on the list (Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea) can be said to be illegitimately in possession of nuclear weapons. But hey! Who dares punish them for having something that a treaty doesn’t allow them to have. They’ve got something scary enough that the world doesn’t want to mess with.

In the events leading to the 2nd World War which lasted from 1939 to 1945, one man got crazy enough to think he can dominate the world and wipe out a whole race of humans.

With weapons like pistols, rifles, sub-machine guns, hand grenades, artillery, tanks, mines, etc used in the 2nd World War, an estimated 45 to 60 million people were killed within the space of 6 years. If Adolf Hitler had access to nuclear weapons back then, most part of planet earth would be lifeless by now.

Even in the 1st world war (august 1914 to November 1918) where the weapons used were of lesser sophistication compared to the 2nd World War, an estimated 9.5 million people were killed equivalent to 6000 deaths per day.

The first nuclear bomb was detonated by the US in war against Japan on the city of Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people. Tens of thousands more died later from radiation exposure.

3 days later, a plutonium bomb was detonated over the city of Nagasaki in Japan leading to the loss of 200,000 lives along with increased rate of cancer and chronic disease among the survivors.

90 percent of physicians and nurses who entered the cities to provide assistance died from radiation. The incidence of leukemia among survivors increased noticeably five to six years after the bombing. A decade later, survivors began suffering from thyroid, breast, lung and other cancers at an abnormal rate. Even unborn children exposed to radiation in their mother’s womb were medically proven to more likely have intellectual disabilities and impaired growths, as well as increased rate of developing cancer.

Think about what 9,220 nuclear weapons can do to planet earth if activated. The possible destruction cannot be accurately comprehended even in the wildest imaginations.

It is more than 7 decades since the 2nd world war ended and nuclear weapons production has grown in sophistication and destructive force. Those weapons are lying in secret warehouses in different parts of the world waiting for a Hitler-like a mad man to get hold of power in any of the nukes-capable countries and unleash them on the world.

God forbid, if any of those nukes gets livened from their current inert state, the world will be nothing like we presently know it to be.

The recent nukes threat spat between Donald Trump of the United States and Kim Jong Un of North Korea is a reminder of the sleeping destruction that could be awakened by uncouth leadership. Both leaders sits at the helm of power of two nuke capable nations and threatened to wipe each other out of existence.

On the 14th of September 2019, drones were used to attack the state-owned Saudi Aramco oil processing facilities. This attack was alleged to have been orchestrated by Iran, thereby creating global tension.

Russia with the highest reserve of nuclear weapons in the world is under a dictatorial government headed by Vladimir Putin. Same goes for China and North Korea. These countries have a governmental system that could make allowance for a single man at the helms of power to unilaterally initiate a war. That is a big red flag!

Israel, a nukes-capable nation, exists within a geographical location surrounded by hostile Arab neighbors. One of those neighbors is Pakistan, which is also a nukes-capable nation. Another big red flag for a potential global war!

The United Nations created after the 2nd world war to ensure that conflicts among nations does not degenerate to a 3rd World War has been doing a great job at that. However, its capability to ensure nations does not actually go to war is very limited as a lot of global tensions has shown.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was created to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and to discourage its use for military purpose. Still, IAEA was unable to stop North Korea from producing nuclear weapons just as it is unable to stop Iran from making progress in its quest to create nuclear weapons.

The only way the world can be truly safe for most of us, if not everyone (especially if a global war occurred again), is if all forms of nuclear weapons were completely wiped out. But that’s never going to happen!

The endless desire of countries to dominate each other, the fear of being vulnerable to attacks from known and perceived enemies and the strong bargaining chips for economic and political gains that being a nukes-capable nation provides will always ensure that nuclear weapons only increase in number and sophistication rather than decrease.

So the only valid question is – when will it happen?

Who is that person with the recklessly inhumane mentality of Adolf Hitler, who would find his way into power in one of the nukes capable nations? Kim Jong Un came close but not close enough.

May I not be alive when that time comes. May every peace-loving human not be alive when that time comes.

It will be nothing like the wars and holocaust that has ever been recorded in the history of mankind. Nobody, no country, no continent would be safe.