Facebook and the MENA region
I haven’t written about facebook for a while now so I think an article is overdue. There were some very interesting news about facebook and the MENA region last week mainly the biggest gaining countries on facebook for the month of April. According to Inside Facebook Egypt is the 7th biggest gainer on Facebook in April gaining about 0.5 M users which translates into a rise of 8.3% which comes as part of a 3-month growth rate of 38%. Which actually... Read More
The Domino’s effect (Part 2): Social media use the MENA region can learn from
Earlier this week I wrote an article about Domino’s Pizza success with using social media to handle and manage a crisis that threatened to damage their brand. In this continuation we will see how they managed to turn around the brand and use customer’s negative feedback to their advantage leveraging the power of social media. After dealing with the video of the employees preparing the tainted sandwiches, Domino’s had to now bring... Read More
The rise of the social customer in the MENA region!!
Social media has changed the way customers interact with brands, forever! Customers have evolved with the growth of social media, one-way-messages through traditional media channels and the interruptive method is at its lowest point in history. Customers now are engaging with different social platforms every day that are constantly influencing their behaviors and decisions, people are not putting their trust neither conviction on the so glamorous... Read More
Egypt is the 22nd biggest country on Facebook
A report released by Inside Facebook analyzes the growth of Facebook globally in 12 months from April 1st 2010 – April 1st 2011. According to the report Facebook has reached 661+ Million users worldwide a 54.8% increase from April 2010 that is just incredible for a network of that size, its a different story when a smaller portal to double or even quadruple their traffic but when your in the hundred’s of millions and still manage... Read More
Twitter vs. Facebook traffic
I was taking a look earlier today at our Google Analytics report to see how we’re doing in terms of visitors and traffic sources and I think it is safe to say that if you’re running a blog focus on Facebook rather than twitter. Our referrals from Facebook are more than double the referrals from Twitter even though we have over 1,400 followers on twitter and only 137 fans on our Facebook page. Now here are some reasons as to why (in my... Read More
Fast Lebanon or Furious Battle
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... Read More
ictQatar: Taking the lead on online engagement in Qatar
ictQatar, the supreme council of Information and Communication Technology and the most active government body responsible for setting ICT policy and regulation in the region, has released a comprehensive case study on their social media efforts. This paper showcase ictQatar brand engagement with various online stakeholders since 2008. The paper unveils ictQatar thought leadership among Qatar corporations and government bodies. There is a case study... Read More
Q&A with Aranim Media Factory
Not too long ago I published a post about social gaming in the MENA region and mentioned how Aranim Media Factory among other companies who are working on providing the region with relevant social games mostly on Facebook. So I decided to get in touch with the Aranim team and get a little more information about them and the story behind the name. Unfortunately as you can see from the answers below, they didn’t tell us what the name meant, however... Read More
Avenue Social: new social media player in the MENA region
Everybody by now knows the power of social media especially with the recent uprisings and demonstrations being organized on social media networks in the MENA region. However not all social media usage is political, brands are increasingly getting on the social media networks to engage with their consumers and create a new channel of communication with them. That’s why the US-based mobile app developer AvenueSocial has decided to expand into... Read More
Syria uprising on Facebook
The Middle East is in turmoil seeing what happened in Tunisia and what is going on in Egypt, seems like some fractions of the Syrian people want to bring the uprising to Damascus. A Facebook page called the Syrian Revolution 2011 with over 11 thousand “Likes” is requesting people to demonstrate in front of the Syrian embassy’s around the world namely: USA, Canada, Sweden, England and Denmark. Social media is providing people with... Read More
Internet TV in the MENA region
Techstorm Middle East the Dubai based technology company dealing in New media technology helps create custom solutions for broadband internet, specifically in the field of video and audio services. Has teamed up with Silicon Valley based Verismo to provide the MENA region with the internet TV through a product called VuMax utilizing the feature rich platform VuNow developed by Verismo VuMax will allow users to view internet content whether videos,... Read More
Why aren’t more companies using social media in the MENA region?
With the new year here and with new marketing budgets and strategies being placed for 2011, we hope to see more integrated marketing campaigns with the “social” element. However I’m not very optimistic, I think we might see more Facebook pages popping up and some more tweets tweeted in cyber space, it’s a good start, but I don’t necessarily think that is entirely social. The problem in the region is that there is a high... 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 is a pretty neat idea, and in the past month it has gained – get... Read More
Facebook still growing in the region
Inside Facebook Gold has reported that Facebook is still enjoying a growth in the Arab world, especially in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco. The chart below shows the number of users in the past 3 months for the 3 countries: While the article published by Inside Facebook Gold discusses more the politics in the region and whether or not Facebook may be blocked in the future by the religious folks or an upset government (which is an important point... Read More
Facebook marketing: Honda and Car Town case
A while back I read an article about how Honda is advertising on Facebook, and they weren’t just setting up fan pages for each of their models (although they do have pages for each of their models!). They went a step further and partnered up with Cie Games to utilize, and for the first time, social media gaming as an advertising platform. Introducing Car Town which is kind of like farmville for car lovers, its a Facebook application that lets... Read More
Facebook in Arabic grows 17% in August 2010
According to an article released by Inside Facebook Gold, Facebook in Arabic has set a new milestone getting over 17% growth in the month of August. A close second is Portuguese with just over 11%. However the data released does not mention any country specific growth due to the wide geographical location that Arab speaking people reside in. (over 280 million people in over 25 countries and territories.) However this should be a good sign for marketers... Read More
Arabic Facebook App gaining popularity
Numbers released by Appdata earlier this week show that a number of non-English applications have been emerging on the Facebook Platform. Below is a list of the top 20 apps on Facebook that gained users, and surprisingly in #3 an Arabic application that predicts your emotional mood for the day. A gain of this kind is significant considering the number of people who access Facebook in Arabic. (Although that shouldn’t be a true metric indicating... Read More
Saudi Arabia: A Firehose of users are joining Facebook [Based on Report]
Do I have to link to Facebook homepage for you to know it? of course not. According to the Arab youth survey, visiting social networks comes the 3rd most important activity after emailing. Saudi Arabia showed unprecedented increase in the number of registrants on Facebook for the month of March according to the paid report Facebook Global Monitor. While registration from Saudi Arabia had achieved only 5.8 percent growth in February, the report interestingly... Read More
Facebook: Engage don’t intrude (Part 2)
In part 1 of this article we covered user’s mindset while on Facebook, in this second part we will dive into understanding what users are doing on Facebook and how marketers can benefit their brands by engaging with the users. Understanding what users are doing on Facebook There are different types of users on Facebook however the bulk of the users are logged in mainly to stay connected and share with their friends, but what happens after the conversation... Read More
Are you a start-up in the Middle East? Then please help yourself
I have been among internet start-ups in the Middle East for around 9 years, yet recently I started hearing this stereotype from people that twitter is their main place for start-up in these days so they start spending so much time on it and building hope around it; and my question always follow by: Is it an effective platform, is it giving you the latest news of your industry peers, can you submit your news that can help reach to many people in the... Read More
