An internet forum is a website developed to hold people's discussions and user generated content. It can also be described as a community of internet users that share ideas or opinions about various topics and discuss them on a bulletin board system hosted on the internet. Internet forums have grown to be a great resource for individuals, companies, celebrities and interest groups. They are popular because of their ability to keep members of a discussion actively involved in the discussion process.

Nairaland has been a household name for frequent internet users in Nigeria and Nigerians in diaspora. Various topics ranging from the present prices of properties in Nigeria, religion, romance, information technology, support requests to entertainment are being discussed and various people have seen Nairaland as a useful resource to achieve various purposes in relation to Nigeria. For instance, Nigerians in diaspora ask for assistance in terms of the way things presently work in Nigeria and how they can achieve various things from their present location. They also ask questions and receive advice of the condition of various issues such as investment and employment in order for them to make a concrete decision on whether to invest in Nigeria, relocate to Nigeria or not. Also, I've seen situations on Nairaland where businessmen and professionals pitch their services to people who ask for assistance or support on issues related to the services they render. Nairaland is also a haven for trivial and controversial discussions where people from various phases of life air their ideas about various topics raised by fellow forum members. For instance, recently, I came across a post where a lady claimed she had met her husband on Nairaland. That was a pretty controversial issue but thats just a bit of possible discussions on the Nairaland forum.

The creator, Seun Osewa is an ambitious, goal-oriented young man based in Ogun State, Nigeria. He is the webmaster behind the Nairaland forum and has been maintaining it since its conception. He used to maintain the now defunct Mobile Nigeria Forum and a satire blog called Naijarita News. Seun has done a good job on Nairaland and still has a lot of potential for growth. Nairaland is also another good medium of advertisement for any entity servicing Nigerians. It is easy to turn the targeted audience they receive to conversions** for business or advertisement. Various ways to make use of this audience include being actively involved in the discussions and pitching your business in relevant discussions or contacting the administrator for possible advertisement opportunities. Nairaland has a large audience which if optimized for corporate Nigeria, will be a great source of conversions** and revenue for the businesses involved.

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*The Internet Archive is available at www.archive.org where you can see the history of a website and how it looked in the past.

**Conversions on the internet refers to goals or actions which a company or webmaster decides a visitor makes in order to consider that visitor a profitable visitor. Possible conversions include an account signup, the purchase of a product or the viewing of a particular page. It depends on the purpose of the said website.