BY TAYE OBATERU

A 22-year old Nigerian student has created a new social networking service, Ploggin.com. Its creator, Nnoduka Eruchalu, is a student at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where he is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering.

Ploggin is an online platform that encourages networking sites Facebook and Twitter, the site supports micro-blogging and live-feeds.

However, there are a few distinguishing features. Users have the option of posting comments anonymously and a user can upload a media stream containing a maximum of seven audio, picture or video files.

“I noticed that on other sites, people usually post a lot of unnecessary pictures and information. Again, the posting format I have created allows users to be more authentic, honest and less self-censoring”, explained Eruchalu.

“It took me about three months to write code, programme and set up the website. During this time, I was also working as a Teaching Assistant at school and interning at Microsoft”, he said.

Asked about plans for the future, Eruchalu said, “I hope that Ploggin grows but I am already working on my next idea. There is a lot of speculation about what the next major platform will be and when it comes, I want to be a part of it.”

Since its launch in November, Ploggin has attracted 146 users and a growing number of visitors.