Attack of the clones: Group buying websites in the MENA region

Group buying websites have been gaining a lot of grounds in the past year worldwide and in the MENA region. You may have heard recently that Groupon raised, like, A Billion dollars and they have already started expanding their worldwide reach purchasing clone sites in South Africa, Israel and India which was only 3 months old at the time of purchase. That made me wonder if Groupon... Read More

6 Essential Free Mac Applications for better productivity

If you have a MAC you must be excited about the MAC application store which had recently launched, I have been downloading random applications since, most of them I never use but I found a couple which have been very useful especially if your busy with a million and one things to do throughout your day. Below is a list of 6 Apps which can help you get through all your daily errands... Read More

Social gaming in the MENA

2010 was a very successful year for Zynga the developers of the hit social games such as Farmville and Mafia wars they utilized Facebook to get users playing and competing with each other, Zynga is now well worth in the billions of dollars. But the question is can any social game from the MENA region achieve the success of Zynga? Can there be a Zynga of the MENA region in 2011? If... Read More

Digitizing The Koran of Kansuh al-Ghuri

Ok so this is not your typical post about Social Media however I feel it is relevant for the region. The Koran of Kansuh al-Ghuri a huge 500 year old hand written copy of the Koran is being digitized by the The John Rylands Library at the University of Manchester in England and funded by the Islamic Manuscript Association. The reason for digitizing it is simply because the Koran... Read More

Online and Social Marketing tips for the MENA region in 2011

2011 should be a better year in the market (we hope it turns out to be!) however things are still slow economically and businesses whether old or new have to be thinking carefully about how to market themselves, which makes every decision critical since every coin matters. But there are a great number of exciting opportunities that should consider applying to your marketing strategies... Read More

Facebook accounts in Tunisia hacked?

A bizarre story reported on allfacebook recently that claims that the a number of Facebook accounts in Tunisia have been hacked. Whats more is that the hackers were hired by the government! In an effort to  squash the protests that have been occurring in the Tunisia the government has teamed up with hackers to break into specific “trouble maker” accounts to change and... Read More

Going Mobile

Ok  so I have been visiting the Du Kiosk’s here in Dubai, UAE for quite some time now and on many occasions I could never find the new iPhone 4 in stock, it was always sold out. It was the same with Etisalat. That got me seriously thinking  about the future of this site, with a great number of people online who are consuming content and information online having a blog is... Read More

Browser battles in the MENA region

As you may have read recently Firefox has overtaken Internet Explorer as the most used browser in Europe, according to statcounter a free web analytics company. “This appears to be happening because Google’s Chrome is stealing share from Internet Explorer while Firefox is mainly maintaining its existing share,” - Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter chief executive. Google... Read More

Mattjar.com: Arabic/English online marketplace

Another new startup from Jordan has recently launched in beta Mattjar.com, (which means store in Arabic) is an online marketplace for the region with full supply chain services from secure payments to fast delivery and aims to provide suppliers and buyers the opportunity to commence trading operations. It is currently available in Arabic and English. It also has easy steps for... Read More

New portal for Arab Freelancers

A new startup from Jordan Mustaqil has partially launched aiming to be the region’s main pool of talent and Arab freelancers. At the moment freelancers and interested providers can only register on the site. However we  expect the site to become more interactive and people can communicate/connect with each other to go on about with their business. The site is strictly in... Read More

Google Days event in Jordan

In an effort to push the online industry in the Middle East, Google are  holding their Google Day event in Jordan for the first time between December 12th – 14th. Google are planning on exposing students, professors, developers and aspiring entrepreneurs to the latest Google products through demonstrations and they even will host a VC/Entrepreneur panel who will share their... Read More

Dubizzle redesign

Dubizzle has done it again, they are re-desinging the site in hope of making it even easier for users to buy and sell their items. The new design which is to go live on the 26th has a clear change to the homepage where all the categories and sub categories are listed clearly with the exact number of live ads in each of them. This should hopefully make searching for items quicker. Also... Read More

Cobone.com: “No other ecommerce model has ever sold a coupon every 2 seconds in the region”

As most of you are aware Jabbar has recently launched their much anticipated group purchasing website, Cobone with Paul Kenny as the CEO. I recently got in touch with the Cobone team to find out how they are planning to tackle the region especially with competition from GoNoabit. So I decided to send them some questions to get a better idea of how they felt about the progress the... Read More

ikoo to revolutionize Arabic online advertising

ikoo (member of Jabbar Internet Group) the Middle East’s leading online advertising network is looking to make their text-based ads more relevant to users, and thus providing a smarter and more efficient advertising network. After the recent merger with Kalimat, ikoo has quickly moved to develop a new service that targets users through keywords and places the most relevant... Read More

Ask the Iraqi Governtment with Al Arabiya and Youtube

Given the withdrawal of the United States from Iraq their future no doubt is on shaky grounds and does propose serious issues about how they will tackle the challenges coming up.  Thats why Al Arabiya and Youtube are teaming up to serve questions to the Iraqi leaders, at Iraq Looks Forward from users worldwide. People can submit their questions and vote for their favorite questions... Read More

Zoofs.com a fresh idea from the Middle East

Who is Zoofs? Zoofs is the latest product from TootCorp, for those of you who are not familiar with TootCorp they are the people responsible for the very succesful ikbis, Watwet and Toot web startups. What is Zoofs? Zoofs is a new way to discover YouTube videos that people are talking about on Twitter. Zoofs orbits around the Twitter sphere, eating through piles of tweets everyday,... Read More

High gaining Arabic application on Facebook

AppData which is an independent application traffic tracking for the Facebook Platform, have released interesting numbers on the highest gainers among applications that have under 1 million monthly active users (MAU). And in that list was an Arabic application that sends season greetings to your friends so that you don’t have worry about forgetting any of your friends. It... Read More

Carrefour entering e-commerce in the UAE

If you live in Dubai and recently drove down the Sheikh Zayed Road (SZR), you probably noticed a big blinding (especially at night!) digital screen hung on the pedestrian tunnel that crosses the SZR near the Mall of the Emirates, now I’m not adding this post to bash the big colorful screen I think its a neat new addition but they could tone down the brightness at night because... Read More

Top Apps in the iTunes store: MENA Edition

So after much thought I decided to look up what Applications on the iTunes store are being bought for the iPhone, I was interested in seeing how people in the MENA region are using their iPhones and what type of applications they are willing to spend their money on. So I logged onto the iTunes store and dug up the following on the top 10 PAID applications from each country: There... Read More

Can I get my GoogleVoice now please?

After successfully launching Google Voice in the U.S., where users can place phone calls from their gmail account to any phone number in the world, Google has announced that they don’t have any plans of launching this service in the MENA region. (Even if they did some countries do not allow VoIP services). However gmail users in the U.S. can call friends and family in the... Read More