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If you are running a Facebook Page on daily basis, you definitely know that Facebook Insights data is always outdated. Today, the launch of new campaign “Why Is Facebook Insights Not Working” is your unprecedented placate.

The movement started by founders of renown analytics application, PageLevel, whose all their work is about data, information, and insights. The movement launched a dedicated website that aims to deliver the voice of Online Community Managers, Social Media Managers, and Digital Consultant to Facebook Developer Team. The message is: Facebook, stop delaying data.

Experts know that data is worthless unless you put some context to it in order to become rational information. Moreover, any type of information is worthless unless it’s up-to-date and relevant to the current activities. However, Facebook Insights data wasn’t instantaneous in the first place and the situation is getting worse by widening the gap of information with continuous delays.

This additional delay of information is provoking frustration and un-satisfaction among Page Administrators and Brand Managers worldwide but its consequences are even more critical and imperative at a regional level, why?

There are thousands of local and regional Facebook Pages that were created and managed for a specific campaign or daily engagement in 2011 and early 2012 in the Arab World. While the region was late to hop on social media wagon, they managed to get a specific marketing budget to devote to this medium. Now, whether they have done proper strategy or just social media madness that got them going, decision makers and brand managers are accountable to the results of their investments. Eventually, whether you have a proper strategy or not, quick insights are essential to maintain campaigns or tune  trends and if that was not possible because Facebook Insights keep on delaying data day after day the whole social media paper bridge will fall and the social media spending in the region will lose interest, hype and justification.

Therefore, we hereby support  “Why Is Facebook Insights Not Working” campaign.

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You might need to read this article we published earlier today before you judge us Writing on #Women2Drive.

Today, June 17, 2011 is a big day for Saudi women in history’s time, the rest of the world is anxiously watching. This day is importantly marked by Saudi Arabia as the day where Saudi women will challenge police, culture, and tradition and rally for driving by actually driving personally and not sitting behind anymore.

According to our editorial board policy, we don’t judge or provide opinion related to religion. Some westerns who are reading this may say what’s the religious part of it, I can tell y0u that there is a debate among Saudi claimed sheikhs that driving women are violating Saudi Arabia’s law, and this law was extracted from the Qur’an and Sunnah. Other Sheikhs (in all Arab and Islamic countries) that “women driving cars” is not innovation in Islam (bed^a) that’s why women drive countries like: Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Libya, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc…

While we always have our opinion on events related to the interactive and social media industry, we act like observers only at least because it’s what’s claimed to be a violation of a law of a country.

We will focus on our writing on a pure and solo social media campaign did reach to rally or not.

We’re watching you, Saudi women, everywhere.

P.S. The comments on this article will be published.

Since RIM unveiled their new tablet product “Playbook” back in September last year which we covered here and we’ve been excited to see the launch and cover it on our website, yet there is something killing this hype today through continuous criticism everywhere that started couple of days back but it didn’t turn head, until today, the day of launch (April 19th, 2010).

Bloomberg TV today interviewed a very renown analyst on technology, Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros., about the outlook for Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry PlayBook and Apple Inc.’s iPad 2. Here is the interview:

Enthusiasts about new technology and Google products can now have a thrilling new opportunity to be one of Google’s Student Ambassadors on their campus.

Through the Students Ambassador Program, you become a liaison between Google and your university. Ambassadors plan and host several events during the school year, introduce students to new Google products and features and act as a campus contact for Google teams.

The registration is open until the end of April to apply to become a Google Ambassador on your campus.

Google stated in their blog that selected ambassadors will receive an intensive and fun training about how to be a super-star ambassador, learn about Google technologies and latest products to start off a great academic year prepared and ready to rock the campus.

Register here

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Our friends at Wamda released today a new episode of the “Mini-Entrepreneur” featuring 3antar-preneur chasing payment after gettting his first job for his venture. While the client has agreed to pay, check out now how long will it take him to receive the payment?

Wamda is a newly established Entrepreneurial Support platform by Abraaj Capital and its subsidiary Riyada Enterprise Development, aims at inspiring, empowering and connecting the entrepreneurial ecosystem across the MENA region –the platform was launched in a mega “Celebration of Entrepreneurship” event in November 2010.

You can watch the video here since they didn’t upload it as yet to Youtube.

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Oasis 500, a premier Jordan-based early stage and seed investment program, which includes entrepreneurship training, mentorship, incubation, and follow-on and seed investment funds, has announced today over facebook the release of  “Fareed Dairies” campaign.

“Fareed Dairies” is one of a series episode that will be talk about “A daily life of an entrepreneur”.  This teaser campaign is aimed to attract aspiring entrepreneurs to join Oasis500 with their innovative ideas.

Oasis500 has committed to fund 500 start-up companies in the next 5 years and it’s currently chaired by Usama Fayyad, former Sr. Vice President at Yahoo Inc, with a broad support from local and regional expertise.

Watch the video below and keep checking their new episodes on Oasis500 Youtube channel.

Just few minutes ago, our colleague Habib Haddad, founder of Yamli, shared a link on twitter about new fresh informative document that is much needed in the MENA region. This document was named: “A Guide to Venture Capital in the MENA Region” which could answer a lot of questions and turn down a lot of controversial wisdom.

This report is a collaborative effort between the MENA Private Equity Association, the VC Task-force Team (team members mentioned in the report) and industry professionals.

Just by reading the table of contents you’d understand that it’s a groundbreaking guide:

• What is the Veeceepreneur Report?
• Introduction
• What is Venture Capital?
• MENA VC Challenges & Opportunities
• MENA VC Investment Process
• Advice from MENA Veeceepreneurs
• Stories & Examples
• Snapshot of MENA VC Firms, Funding Opportunities & Support
• Directory of MENA VC Firms
• Useful Resources
• Supporters

Guide to Venture Capital in the Middle East and North Africa

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Haven’t you noticed that High Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and Prime Minister of UAE, has stopped using social media?

HH Shiekh Mohammed has around 450,000 fans on facebook and around 380,000 on twitter and suddenly, boom, both pages stopped updating fans and it has been since January 20th, 2011. Previously the accounts were very active and used to share updates, news articles, and photos of the meetings, so what happened?

According to the Protocol, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid is like many Prime Ministers, Presidents, Kings, or Emirs where a news media pool is embedded with his core/advisers team to take care of all communications- and media-related work. Each country or office has it’s own name and we believe HH Sheikh Mohammad calls it “The Media Office”. This news media pool always follow HH Shiekh Mohammed into meetings that are public and private which require media coverage or not; that’s because publicity is not always good publicity, it could be bad one and needs to be controlled.

Then, I was thinking if there is an answer for that: did he get busy with all the social media tools? but he wasn’t updating it personally anyways. Did his media team got busy with all the social media tools? but it’s their job anyways. Does anyone doubt anymore about the power of social media? Well, not anymore.

So I ended up with no answer and would like to know what’s your answer on that would be.

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In support of the Lebanese campaign towards a country with fast internet and part of the responsibility to disseminate the demands or needs of the crowd, we unanimously decided to join, help in demonstrations, and promote better policy reform for this issue.

Lebanon has two internet service providers of little competitiveness and unbelievable prices. It’s even said that both ISPs have agreed “under the table” on joint price list in order to avoid killer promotions. In our last report on internet speed in the region, Lebanon was ranking last among the Mid-level income countries with very low internet speed of 0.59 Mb/s.

We invite you to support these campaigns that are uprising on social networks:

1. Lebanese wants fast internet (Facebook page with +27,000 fans)
2. Ontornet (Facebook page with +450 fans)
3. Flip the Swith (Facebook group with +1,100 members)

This is just the announcement, we’ll be running a report on internet speed in the region again and we’ll be writing in-depth analysis on the situation and any new developments.

The situation is literally unbearable.

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