AreebaAreeba a business social network geared towards residents of the Arab world has reported reaching 650 thousand registered users from 110 countries, in less than a year since its launch.

The Dubai based AreebaAreeba offers smiler functionality to Linkedin, users can post status update where other users can comment on them, start and join groups, blogs and events and discuss topics on forums. However looking at the site you see there is not much activity and user generated content.

Update: facebook responded by saying that the new translation button is powered by Bing translation engin, meaning it supports all the languages the bing supports (about 50) For now, the button is visible only to people who have installed the translations app. If a human translation is also available, they show that, instead. The way it works is that the button shows below user generated content that is in a language that facebook thinks you don’t understand. For example, if you don’t know Chinese, facebook will show the button. In some cases, facebook does not necessarily know 100% if you actually do or don’t know the language. That depends on what language you’re viewing the site in, as well as a few other parameters. facebook is still working on additional things that it’ll implement as it assess the results. Also facebook is not launching this as a response to Google Translate for Google+ it has been on works for a while.

Facebook wants to make sure it does not become myspace and google+ the new facebook. Following Google move to launch a Chrome extention that translate users update and comments on Google+, The largest social network in the world has rolled out a new feature that enables users to translate updates in other languages. The following screen shot is of a user’s news feed who logged in using facebook english interface, facebook is offering to translate an Arabic update into English. (like Google translate the translation from Arabic to English is not so accurate.)

2 days ago Google launched an Chrome extension Google Translate for Google+, that using Google Translate, can automatically translate any post or comment into more than 50 languages. So Facebook is fast to respond.
We do not know what Facebook is using as a translation engine at the back end and to how many languages the feature is available, we will contact facebook and update you here.

Folks at Yahoo are raising the white banner and surrendering their social networking site in the Arab world “As7ab”.

In an email sent to Yahoo Maktoob’s Arabic social network Asa7b members, Yahoo is saying that they will shut down the service as of 18/9/2011 and deleting everything, the email urges members to download their voice and video clips and their photos. It also asks them to look at other Yahoo services: Maktoob Blogs, Maktoob Forums, Yahoo! groups and Yahoo! Puls.

This is no surprise, Facebook has taken over the world by storm and is estimated to have 30 million members from the Arab world according to facebook ad creator ( this number excludes Syria and Sudan as advertisers can not target them on facebook due to U.S government sanctions on these 2 countries.) and Google Plus is growing on momentum with an estimated 20 million members from around the world. Though numbers about Arab members are not yet available I see many common Arab tweeps on google plus and the platform is offered in Arabic from day 1.

Why is As7ab closing? I bet its low traction as the sites says 600,000 members who most likely are active on facebook not As7ab. And why As7ab has not become at the size of facebook? It is lack of social innovation. As7ab was developed by Maktoob before Yahoo acquired the company in 2009. It was something that cross between Facebook and myspace of that time. As members can customize their profile with HTML and is meant to find new friends, rather than connect with real friends with privacy as facebook model is built upon.

Google+ on the other hand is built around studying social behavior and how people interconnect. As people have multiple friends groups. Google+ make it easy to share stuff with those groups without exposing too much to other groups of friends when needed, and share with-everyone when a user things it is appropriate.

Google+ has proven that the battle for social networking dominance is not yet done. The winner is not the one who propose state-of-the-art technology but the one who can use technology to mimic real life social behavior.

Saudi based National Net Ventures or (N2V) is one of the largest Internet holding companies in the Arab world, it invests “venture funds” in Arab Internet and mobile startups and owns and develops its own ventures. The Company owns a number of popular websites including: HawaaWorld an Arab women destination site, N2V Development House a software and web out sourcing company, SNSEO social media and SEO company, and Net Advantage: the first specialized Internet media house in the Arab world.

While N2V’s investment program breaks into, Seed program: which uses a startup accelerator model, offering capital, mentorship and office space for 3 to 6 month, this program is aimed at startups that did not launch their products yet. Early startups: focus on web and mobile ventures, and specifically, consumer web, the program invests cash on startups that already launched and are operational. Joint Startups a program to work with international companies to develop join venture to penetrate the Arab market and N2VLabs: is N2V’s own produced startups with the leadership of their Entrepreneurs-in-Residence.

All these programs have been launched relativity recently by N2V, the company is expanding massively and hiring top talent in the Arab world. Among them is Nagi Salloum ex-marketing manager for Google MENA was recruited N2V head of marketing.

Under Nagi direction the company marketing efforts are directed at making N2V one of the most recognized Internet brands in the Arab world, or Google of the Arab world as Nagi puts it: “we at N2V are focused on disrupting digital Arabia” To do so, the company has been sponsoring tech and entreprunership events across the Arab world.

And most recently N2V aimed at its facebook page, the page 1 month ago had around 75 fans in then N2V launched a logo contest last month, which changed everything.

The facebook contest asks participants to submit a design of N2V logo made from any physical material ( photoshop made logos are not accepted) to win iPhones, iPods and Samsung Galaxy tab and Galaxy S II.

The winners are determined by calculating the most voted photos, so this step has increased the viral growth of the app, as participants rush to ask their friends to vote for their logo. And in order to participate, you have to like N2V page on facebook page first. Other viral elements of the app are voting and commenting on photos which shows up on the users facebook stream, which in turn would bring more users.

N2V did spend on facebook ads to promote the contest but as Nagi says “We consciously decided to have very limited ad spending, and instead design a very viral Facebook photo contest app to grow our fan base by. This proved a right strategy and eventually helped us reach thousands of new users very quickly.”

He also said “We launched the N2V page and competition 21 June, 2011 in order to build awareness of N2V brand, and connecting with users in a fun and engaging way. ”

The contests has been an instant success in less than a month the contests generated over 100,000 fans for N2V facebook page (now it is 109,272 fans), over 2300 photos submitted and 40,000 votes.

Several companies connected N2V and started using the app “including big brands such as LIVE MENA, and we are finalizing discussions now with several other local and global companies. We are also excited to release a site just for this application to allow companies and users from around the world to use it.” said Nagi.

Nagi attributes the contests success to “very close attention to every detail when designing the application, from user experience, user behavior, 24 hours moderation and monitoring, promptly answering user queries.”
The contests ends on 30 July 2011, you can view submited logos and submit your own here.

What can brands, marketers and entrepreneurs learn from this success: do not just start a facebook fan page and promote it with FB ads, innovate and bring new ideas to drive engagement and fans.”We like to believe that we created one of the most intuitive and engaging photo voting application, with such high quality that easily competes with similar global apps.” concludes Nagi.

Scapehouse is a new social media site that might a little bet late to the Google+ game. the startup comes with a new vision for online discussion,

On facebook people share stuff with their friends only, on Twitter the game is different, people share with their followers who do not have to be their friends.

Scapehouse brings both: users can share stuff with their friends only or with friends and followers, something that is close to the idea of Google+ main feature: circles. The site brings full news feed page, where users activities of commenting or liking an update is visible.

Unlike Twitter, updating a post is not limited to 140 characters, and users can comment on each update in a chronicle order and can like or dislike it. Resharing an update is also available on Scapehouse and can be shared with friends only or with both friends and followers, with the option to add comment of the shared content.

Abdullah Khan cofounder of site who is the from Karachi Pakistan and currently lives in UAE told AC that they have been working on the site 6 months now and have launched in beta around 2 months ago, before Google+. ( the other cofounder is Ali Razzouk : From Aleppo Syria, Living in Dubai UAE.)

Now that Google+ has gained 10 million users in 2 weeks since its launch, Scapehouse has a challenging time to compete, But it was a nice idea nevertheless. Would you use it?

Last year a young American girl started the shameful page “draw Mohammad Day” competition on Facebook, that event brought backlash against Facebook in Pakistan as the site was ordered blocked to reopen later.
And Pakistan’s Deputy Attorney General has launched a criminal investigation against the CEO of facebook Mark Zuckerberg, which might lead  to Mark being sentenced the death Penalty.

TGDaily reports that the blasphemy case in Pakistan which has been hanging over Mark’s head since last summer appears to have quietly been dropped.

Though, a Pakistani court has essentially ordered the government to police Facebook for ‘objectionable’ content, meaning there’s a high chance the site will be shut down in the country.

Facebook has been playing a biased side against Muslims by shutting the Third Palestinian Intifada Page and We Are All Osama Page while keeping pages that mocks the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH.)

#Mark Pic via his FB page.

After reaching more than 10,000 members in few hours in light of his assassination by American forces in Pakistan Facebook deleted we are “All Osama Bin Ladin” page.

We do not know what is the excuse this time for deleting this page, is it call for violence? we did not notice any. And this excuse that any page that calls for violence should be banned is nonsense, because if that was the case, then Obama’s page on Facebook should be banned because it contains calls for violence. The case here is not whether Obama’s call for violence against US enemies is right or not. And that is not of Facebook to decide if it wants to be for all nationalities, neutral.  The case here that if we follow the standard that anypage that contains violence on Facebook should be banned then Facebook should delete Barack Obama’s page.

So Facebook is implementing double standards when it comes Anything related to Palestine or Islam. If someone calls for the freedom of Palestine like the third Palestinian intifada, the page is banned. But as many people call him terrorist, Obama has the right to spread his hate and call for violence against Muslims on facebook.

You might dislike Osama Bin Ladin, you have that right, we are not defending him, but also people have the right to express themselves and clarify what they believe even if you dislike it.

People who liked “we are all Osama bin laden” page think of him as a hero, as a freedom fighter who fought the head of international tyranny and the head of International terror: USA.

To them USA has committed many crimes against Muslims and non-muslims a like, even before Alqaeda was founded. From 1991 tell 2000 USA killed 1 million children in Iraq via its sanctions against that country, the depleted uranium used by its forces in the first gulf war caused countless of disease among innocent Iraqi civilians . To people who liked his page USA supports Israel with all its might, to them Israel is at error state that steals the land and kills people in Palestine. Israel kicked millions of Palestinian out from their land and homes in to excel in Jordan, Syria and lebanon. To them Israel is America and America is Israel.

To Them USA supports dictatorships regimes in the Muslim world, depriving them from their freedom and the well to have non corrupt socities, these people who do not want you to be deceived by the calls of state department that USA supports democracy in the Arab world, to them this is what PR is for the criminals at the US government. “Kill em and then tell them we love you.”

To them USA  killed 2 million Iraqis from 2003 to 2008 according to International humanitarian agencies. To them the Zionist regime in America  is at war against Islam and Muslims and Osama was the hero who had 100s of millions of Dollars instead of spending them in the goodies of  life he spend them to help oppressors fight back the head of international terror :USA .

The people who liked Osama remembers that he was a hero who destroyed the soviet union and shaken the ground behind the heads of International tyranny.

To others, Osama is a terrorist who is behind killing US civilians as such he deserve to die, but the people who support Osama think differently that America has killed before and after 911 millions of Muslims. Lets note that there are some people who support Osama in his fight against US government and Arab governments but differentiate between US government and the American people.

Which side do you think is right?

In response to act of closing the pages of the Palestinian uprising or the third Palestinian Intifada from Facebook under the request of the Israel media minister, activists organized a boycotting day yesterday via facebook events app. The call came from a page called the Arab National Army and other pages and has achieved 256,931 participants.

The organizers say the boycotting is a first step before using AdBlock to deprive Facebook from money it makes from Muslim users, as long as facebook continues its double standard practice.

why to boycotting facebook for one day ? the organizers posted the following statement:

We consider this attitude as conspired to commit war crimes against our nation , and against the issue of people struggling For their freedom and enjoyment of the right to self-determination and establish their independent state like the peoples of the earth .
we want them to know that we are majority of Muslims users who Love Face book & use it daily , but we are against this new direction of facebook on supporting such issues ,, we want it to be neutral space wide enough for every one or otherwise we will quite to find another respectable reasonable neutral network.

Between 2009 and 2010 Twitter users from the Arab world were estimated to be around 15,000 to 40,000 but these figures were not official and not very accurate. But after the revolution on Tunisia and Egypt, as Twitter has been used as a tool to fuel the revolution,Twitter become a house hold name in the Arab world just like Facebook. An infographic about Digital Marketing Trends in the Middle East from socialbakers and IQPC estimated the number of Twitter users in the Arab region to be around 5.5 Million users, that is 136.5 % growth rate! The infographic goes to reveal that 40% of them are from UAE.
Other interesting figures from the report is that there is 15 million Facebook users, that number however might not be accurate as in Q1 2010 our sources inside Facebook estimated the number around 16-18 million users.
The complete inforgraghic is below, we have another two reservations, e-marketing budgets from the Arab world does not include banners ads spending as it focus on email marketing, smart phone apps, SMS marketing, social media marketing and google adwords. Another one it does not mention the source of the numbers for Twitter users!
Ari Kesisoglu – Regional Manager, Middle East North Africa said that online ad spending in the MENA region is between 110 to 130 Million, thus the report should include banner ad spending to offer a complete picture. USD annually.

Here us the infographics:

It seems the message sent by Israeli Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ( who belongs to the Jewish religion) to remove a page that called for a third palestinian intifada has resonated at the ears of Mark as today Facebook removed citing that it violated its terms as it called for violence. The page managed to get 313,343 members (likes).

The truth is that we have been following the page and did not find any calls to violence and that the page admin affirmed several times that his page does not call for violence and said that if Facebook removes the page all Muslims will boycott Facebook forever, as the “true face of Facebook will uncover.”

A statement from Facebook to CNN said “The page… began as a call for peaceful protest, even though it used a term that has been associated with violence in the past. In addition, the administrators initially removed comments that promoted violence,” ,…. “However, after the publicity of the page, more comments deteriorated to direct calls for violence. Eventually, the administrators also participated in these calls. After administrators of the page received repeated warnings about posts that violated our policies, we removed the page.”

Again We do not believe Facebook claims and here is the google cashe of the page and you will see if you know Arabic there are no calls for violence  as for comments since when the page admin is responsible to monitor comments specially if the page has 313,343 members with thousand of comments on each update?

On the other hand if calls to violence in any Facebook page means that Facebook will impose it ban, Barack Obams’ page should be deleted because in his latest speech he called for violence against on his facebook page the army of the dictator Gaddafi, not saying that Gaddafi is a good man, but this is call to violence.

After thanking Facebook for restoring free palestine page in the last post we at ArabCrunch condemn Facebook decision it is very clear a racists one, and have no bases unless Facebook restores the page and deletes Barack Obama’s Page because he called for violence using on it.

Wondering why the CIA attacked MillatFacebook? Now you know why.

We reported on March 21 that Facebook has deleted free palestine page, back then we connected Facebook asked them for explanation and urged them to bring the page back.

Few days ago Facebook reported the page, it originally said that all the page admins’ accounts were deactivated in different periods for different reasons. however we checked with one admin who dismissed that his account was deactivated but said another admin account was disabled for no reason.

What ever was the exsuce for Facebook to take down the page, now that it is back we would like at ArabCrunch to thank Facebook for resorting the page and not in falling into Israeli pressure to close the Third intifada page because free speech should be respected online as well as offline.

Free Palestine page has now 234,003 members.

Israeli Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg ( who belongs to the Jewish religion) to remove a page that called for a third palestinian intifada. The page has so far 319,270 members.

Yuli said that the page includes calls for violence, though by looking at the page we did not find any, the page admin also affirmed that his page does not call for violence and said that if Facebook removes the page all Muslims will boycott Facebook forever, as the “true face of Facebook will uncover.”

The page called for massive demonstrations on April 15th in occupied Palestine, neighboring Arab countries and across the world, demanding the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem from Israeli occupation.

It seems that Facebook will not close the page. It closed last week free palestine page citing that the accounts of all admins of the page have been deactivated for different reasons thus caused the closer of the page.

We connected free palestine page admin and said his account was not deactivated but another admin account was deactivated for no reason to later activate again, we are still waiting for Facebook to bring the page back.

(Via Alquds Al Arabia.)

Update: end of the post.

Facebook has deleted Free Palestine page which was calling for Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The fan page managed in few days to collect more than 216,000 members. This is the second time that Facebook deletes this page according to the page admin.

Look at Google cash here.

It is worth mentioning that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is Jewish. This moves shows contradiction from Facebook, while they talk free speech as an excuse to keep the pages that insults the prophet of Islam they delete any page that expose the Israeli crimes against humanity in Palestine. Where is free speech?

Facebook is angering its Muslim population who make now a big portion of its members.

We at ArabCrunch condemns this move by Facebook and call it a racist one, unless they bring the page back and provide a good explanation why this page was deleted.

We will contact Facebook for explanation and hope they will bring this page back.

Update:

Facebook replied to us by saying that the page became unpublished since all the admins got deactivated or disabled for different reasons and at different occasions. and that It’ll be published again if one of them reactivates his account or pushes back to facebook.

Update 2:

We connectd the page admin and said his account was not deactivated but another admin account was deactivated for no reason to later activate again, we are still waiting for Facebook to bring the page back.

In a bid to stop the revolution from spreading  Egyptian authorities shut down the internet all together along with cell phone services according to Aljazeera Arabic channel.

Today is Friday and 100s of thousands are expected to join demonstrations after the Muslim pray of friday.

#image via RNN.

Early today, Egyptian authorities unblocked Facebook and Twitter, but they went into blocking it again according to ArabCrunch sources in Egypt.

The blocking is an attempt to stifle the Friday of Anger demonstrations tomorrow against dictatorship and tyranny, as Facebook and Twitter are used by activists to inform the world about the Egyptian revolution, rally support to bring more Egyptians  to join the efforts to topple Husni Mubarak regime and coordinate demonstration places and paths .

However there are several ways to bypass blocking: using a proxy server, Tor project and Opera browser with Turbo enabled.

To follow the events in Egypt follow hashtag #jan25 #25Jan. on Facebook we are all khaled Saed Page and RNN (arabic and sometimes English headlines)

#image via RNN.

Yesterday night Internet users in Egypt told ArabCrunch that Twitter and Facebook are unblocked in Egypt and they can access normally both social networks.

Egyptian authorities blocked both social networks to prevent activists from using them in order to prevent them form informing the public about the revolution that started in Egypt on Jan 25 the and prevent users from using both platforms in coordinating demonstrations and so forth.

In Suez province users reported to ArabCrunch that the authorities has blocked everything there: internet access and cell phone connections.

Suez is witnessing riots as protestors are fighting anti riot police on the streets and a number of casualties has been reported.

This 25th of January, the day Egyptian activists rallied Egyptians to demonstrate across Egypt against the rule of Egypt’s President Hussni Mubarak and harsh economic conditions.

10s Thousands of rallied across Egypt in a bid to emulate the Tunisian revolution that toppled its dictator Zien Al Abden Ben Ali.

Egyptians were creative in using social media, with Khaled Saed anti torture  page about to reach 400,000 followers, the page was instrumental in organizing activists – Khaled Saed is an Egyptian man beaten to death by 2 Egyptian police men because he posted a video on Youtube about Police corruption-

Now, Egyptian activists went more creative, live streaming demonstration, thus documenting live any attempt of police brutally, hence preventing that from happing.

Here is a link to the the live stream at Al Masyer Alyoum Egyptian Arabic newspaper:
and here is the stream it self:




On the other hand, activists  are tweeting live from demonstration under hashtag #Jan25 with images of what is happing.

Seems the Arab world is going under wave of change that can not be stopped, in Jordan last week thousands of Jordanians rallied to topple Samer Alrifai’s government, the same in Algeria and Yemen.

Update: Rased News Network  (RNN) page on facebook is offering Minute by Minute updates about the events in (Arabic.)

#images via @TravellerW

Mohamed Bouazizi, an unemployed 26-year-old university graduate (correction he did not finish a BA degree as per Tunisian Arabic newspaper Sabah who interviewed his sister) sold groceries illegally in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid to survive as he could not find a job. When police confiscated his produce because he didn’t have a permit he became so sad that he set himself on fire in protest.

His action along with a Tunisia’s High employment rate, corruption and inflation sparked unusual popular demonstrations in Tunisian town Sidi Bouzid. Quickly demonstration crossed over to other cities and reached the capital, Tunis.

With over 55 Tunisian died the Tunisian revolution lasted for about 4 weeks and led to the ousting of American and French backed Tunisian President Zian El Deen Ben Ali who fled to Saudi Arabia after several countries including France it self refused to host him, emulating the fait of Iran’s Shah Mohammad Ridah Bahlawi.

Facebook, Twitter, Wikileaks U.S Cables about Bin Ali corruption, blog and online activist played an important role in the uprising, here is Mohammad Bouazizi last Facebook update :

“I will be traveling my mom, forgive me, Reproach is not helpful, i am lost in my way it is not in my hand, for give me if disobeyed words of my mom, blame our times and do not blame me, i am going and not coming back, look i did not cry and tears did not fall from my eyes, Reproach is not helpful in time of Treachery in the land of people, i am sick and not in my mind all what happened, i am traveling and i am asking who leads the travel to forget.”

‎‫مسافر يا أمي، سامحيني، ما يفيد ملام، ضايع في طريق ماهو بإيديا، سامحيني إن كان عصيت كلام لأمي، لومي على الزمان ما تلومي عليّ، رايح من غير رجوع, يزي ما بكيت و ما سالت من عيني دموع، ما عاد يفيد ملام على زمان غدّار في بلاد الناس، أنا عييت و مشى من بالي كل اللي راح، مسافر و نسأل زعمة السفر باش ينسّي‬ ‎‫محمد بو عزيزي‬

On its part according to Egyptian Arabic newspaper Yuom7, Israel felt sorry for the ousting of Bin Ali calling him one of the most supporters to Israel among Arab presidents and kings. # via Elshaeehd facebook page, images via Bouazizi page.

Again we come to the area of location based services, Foursquare and Gowalla offers users to check-in at locations, add tips and so on. There are some differences between both in terms of the game playing elements and other features at Gowala where users can share pics and so on about a certain venue.

Yallawain from Kuwait revolves around the same concept which also the recent Jeeran places and what Yelp for the Arab world Qaym revolves around. But unlike Jeeran and Qaym yallawain is in english: you add a restaurant location, share your tips about the dishes a particular restaurant serve or add a review about your experience. And Yes, you can vote locations up or down follow users activities and so on.

When compared to Jeeran places or facebook places Yallawain has a better design and a greater usability and empashsais on the menu it self where you can vote dishes up or down, but we do not know if it can live long or gain traction in the face of facebook high adoption rate in the Arab world and Kuwait in particular where yallawain is focusing on. For now they have locations and tips around them, which helps in the time being users to find a place to eat.

And oh, the site is still in private beta, you need an invite.

Update: some users reported not seeing the censorship.

We received a tip from one of our readers saying that Apple has censored the word Osama adding *** after the “O” and before the “a” in its new music social network Ping with iTunes.

We have not tested Ping yet, but if this is true it sounds very racists as there are millions of people who hold the name Osama and they do not work with Osama Bin Ladin!

In the technology world, the name Osama which means “lion” is being held by some of  silicon valley executives from Arab origins:
Osama Bedir Vice President Product Development PayPal
Osama Fiyad Former Vice President Yahoo.
Osama General Partner with Global Technology Innovation Partners (GTIP) & TechWadi Chairman.

We will email Apple asking for clarifications.
#Thanks Osama Othman for the tip.

The future of search is here and it is based on social graph.

Facebook has officially entered into Google territory, it is now showing search results from around the web ranked by likes from users’ facebook friends.

This means that facebook social search based on users like is up and running at least with me and other users, this is a major threat to Google’s main business which is search.

Google on the other hand have smilier services called search” Results from people in your social circle for facebook ” in beta, which is based on your google accounts connections that shows search results from people in your social circle but not ranked into how much they were searched, but facebook like is almost embedded everywhere in the web, now facebook is leveraging its users base to act as robots to get web data and as a source of links ranking by liking links. Meaning that the dream of human powered search engine is now real with Facebook. Again, this is a major threat to Google and explains why Google waked up recently to enter the social networking market very seriously.

Inside Facebook released few days ago its Inside Facebook Gold report, with data about membership and usage across the number 1 social networking site in the world Facebook.

The report reveals the shift of Facebook population of more than 500 million users, from being dominated by US citizens and English speaking people to more of an international play ground.

According to the report Arabic had the highest growth rate in August with around 18%  followed Portuguese by around 11%, this is due to the increasing number of Brazilian coverts from Google’s social network Orkut to Facebook, as Facebook is showing strong growth in Brazil.

As for Arabic, despite that its high growth rate it is still the smallest of the top 10 languages, holding around 1%. Our source inside Facebook informed us few months ago that Facebook users from the Arab world stands at around 16-18 million users ( we will update you soon with the latest numbers.)

English has dipped from holding 50% of languages on Facebook to 47.95%. The second language was spanish with 14.43%, then French with 5.26%, Turkish makes the 4th largest language on Facebook with 4.66%, while the largest Muslim country in terms of population Indonesia holds the 5th rank with 4.44%.

That also means that  3 languages moslty spoken by Muslims ( Turkish, Indonesian and Arabic) make around 11% of facebook users holding the 3rd place ahead of French, which implies that facebook has to be more concerned about Muslims feelings with provocative stuff such as (draw Mohammad -peace be upon him- day on facebook) as someone like Millatfacebook might eat the lunch.

This shift in Facebook population, also means that facebook is eating users from Google and Yahoo at the international level, which is a good news for Facebook and International social marketers alike, as ads on Facebook now can be targets to specific languages not just English.

#via insidefacebook.

Seems Facebook is not stopping in being the number 1 destination of all things social. As blogs are considered part of the social media universe, looks like Facebook wants to have a strong stand in that arena too. leveraging the social graph it has.

After launching facebook Live, today Facebook just announced upgrading Facebook notes with the following features:

• Text editor:  for formatting notes no need for HTML tags.
• Tags: “tags of Pages will appear in a box on the note’s page. When viewing Notes from a Facebook Page, you can browse notes in which that Page has been tagged by one of your friends or by people who shared their note with “everyone.”
• cleaner layout: now notes takes a bigger screen size, left-hand menu includes links to your note, notes about yourself.

Update: the editor does not provide WYSIWYG option to create a text link, not really a full blogging experience.

more info on Facebook blog post.

Will facebook notes become a threat to blogging platforms such as wordpress, blogger and tumbler?

The time was around 10:00-11:00 pm, the day Thursday April 19th 2010, the first ArabCrunchStart meetup has just concluded in Amman, Jordan. The meetup was planned as a starting point for a series local meetups in Jordan  as a preparation to launch ArabCrunchStart as monthly event in Jordan. I went to check ArabCrunch.com’s current visits, it was zero! so I went to arabcrunch.com to make sure if the site is down or not, and yes it was down. Shortly we found out we are under DDoS attack, the DDoS attack brought arabcrunch.com site down for around 4 days, and it is still ongoing but thanks to Spirula Systems and its defense techniques, our server load is healthy and we are serving you here!

Few days after the DDoS arabcrunch.com faced a new type of attacks, this time the target is ArabCrunch brand, ArabCrunch honor and ArabCrunch EN traffic that is coming from search engines. A Hacker/s installed a script inside our wordpress (We use wordpress for blogging at ArabCrunch.com, ArabCrunch.NET is sound and safe from this hacks) that was sending google and other search engine wrong titles and snippet about our posts. The result of that was changing ArabCrunch.com listed results under certain keywords with miss-leading titles that include sexual content with words such as Viagra ex:

These were not intended to redirect traffic to certain viagra website who would in-turn gain from ArabCrunch strong SEO and search engine rank, No, as when clicking on ArabCrunch infected search results  on google the user went directly to the original post on ArabCrunch.com not to another website.

The attacker/s who did hack our wordpress, have also no respect for Islam, as the following Eid Maburak post on google was targeted with a special message that insulted Islam ( no other infected link had the same content):

( there is no text in the original post that had the following (in other words we never wrote this): “… and do whats right in order to make it, in the life after death, as surly Islam is truth and only religion of Allah… buy Viagra Online No prescription . buying Cialis Online)

We managed to find the malicious code and thanks to Google’s help we managed to white-list most of our search results. But our Google rank is down to 4 from on 5!

This attacks and others have diverted our efforts from developing useful stuff and apps on ArabCurnch.NET, from investing more time and effort on organizing great events to drive entrepreneurship and tech innovation in Jordan and across the world to waisting our time and our limited resources into defense and in chasing spammers over night!. However ArabCrunchStart went ahead and our first event was concluded by ArabCrunch great US ambassadors in Seattle, USA: Amir and Rony. (Thank you Amir and Rony and everyone who attended, more to come.)

The people who did these attacks are a bunch of criminals who have no ethics what so ever and no conscious, they use the same methods of hide and kill that a certain well known group of criminals use: hide using a cover, try to look innocent, talk nice and promise great promises, only to fool you and deliver their deadly spears aimed at your heart to kill you or rape you, or to blackmail you in order to achieve their unethical and evil objectives. They use a wrong justification that says “the objective justifies the means”, but they fool themselves only, as their end objective is also evil as their means!

We did not post any “terrorist items” on ArabCrunch, and for sure we are not “terrorist!” The Attackers Are! We do not have any political agenda our focus is on tech, startups, social media and mobile. But does anyone consider post like this as terrorists content ? I hope not.

Are these attackers part of a bigger hidden multi-layer plot to destroy ArabCrunch?!!

However these attacks just made us stronger, not just because we are working hard but because of God Almighty first and then You, Yes, YOU the ArabCrunch reader and user, not just the Arab and Muslims users, but You as everyone from every nationality and from different religious backgrounds from almost every country of this world. You the ArabCrunch reader has proven to these criminals that they wrongly calculated their attempts as our visits and pageviews have increased by more than 40%.

Because of God and then you, In the last 2 month ArabCrunch sites has broke the 100,000 pageviews milestone per month, ArabCrunch achieved that milestone without even spending one cent on advertising. (Only 100$ Twitter giveaway of useful books was given to #ArabCrunch24 contest winner Noha congrats to her support) Again all credits goes to God first then you the reader, then to ArabCrunch ambassadors and team.

100,000 pageviews is not that massive number compared to other main stream sites, but its an achievements since we did not spend any Advertising dollars, and since we are a very small team.

It took ArabCrunch around 2 years since its inception to reach 100,000 pageveiws/month with zero ad spending. While it took 4 years of hard word  for our friends  ( that we respect) at the #2 blog in the world, Mashable to achieve the same milestone in early 2009.

In the blog ranking, out of more than 200 million blogs in the world, our blog engagement rank on PostRank before the attack increased from #24 to around #11-13 as the most engaged startup blog in the world, but after the DDoS attacks it went down below 100, not because AC’s readers (you) are less engaged with ArabCrunch but because postrank can not access our engagement due to the techniques we are using to prevent and block the ongoing DDoS attack. However on our Invesp rank we are still holding number 6 worldwide in the innovation category, advanced our  e-commerce rank from 7th to 6th and advanced our startups rank from 13th t0 10th worldwide also ahead of icons such as WSJ and Financial Times blogs about Entrepreneurship (note that Invesp does not calculate our Feedoor RSS readers which we mainly use). In any rank ArabCrunch EN is still #1 English tech blog in the Arab world and arabcrunch.net is #1 startups and geeks social network in Arabia. Again all thanks to God almighty and then to You.

ArabCrunch is resilient and as an emotional geek who see injustice in many places and fronts around the world, who loves what I am doing with ArabCrunch, I promise you to keep the course and even double the efforts in the coming days, weeks and months and to never surrender and never give-up!

Until this moment ArabCrunch is the only independent entity from the private sector in the world that is dedicated full-time to empower entrepreneurs, startup, tech professional and geeks in the Arab and emerging world via its network of sites and events, as such in supporting ArabCrunch you are also supporting building the tech ecosystem that is much needed to grow innovation and tech advancement in emerging markets specially in the Arab and Muslim world. The more startups we have, more jobs are created and more people can enjoy a higher level of income.

One hand can not do everything, ArabCrunch needs your support with whatever you can, please prove to the criminals and the gangsters who are still attacking AC until this moment, that they will be defeated and the liberty to innovate and blog freely about tech and innovation and the freedom to help entrepreneurs and geeks to excel in the Arab and all over the world (without any political agendas) is preserved by doing one or all of the following:

15 ways to help ArabCrunch:

1- if you work or own a tech company you can support us by advertising on ArabCrunch, it is not a donation, you are getting an awesome ROI from running campaigns on a social site which is followed by thousands of tech led community from Amman to San Francisco.

2- If you did not signup to ArabCrunch.NET please do now and make sure your profile filled and up-to-date.

3- Pleas take a moment on ArabCrunch.NET and invite your friends and contacts via email, Facebook and Twitter this will grow ArabCrunch.NET community and be a benefit for everyone.

4- If you find your self able to provide mentoring please fill the mentorship app here in order to empower the community and help grow the tech and startup industry in Arabia and beyond.

5- If you are a developer or with business or entrepreneurial skills, you can help the community by answering open and other questions  on Developers Q&A or Startups Q&A, make sure to add relevant tags to your profile in order to get questions ans answers matches.

6- On ArabCrunch.com the English blog you can help us drive more traffic by Following us on Twitter (if you are not already) and also by ReTweeting our future posts. Keep coming here back every day

7- You can help ArabCrunch.com and let more people know about our posts on facebook by hitting “like” button or sharing AC posts on Facebook. If you do not follow us on facebook you can do so and hit “like”. Also Remember to Suggest ArabCrunch page on facebook to your friends there.

8- Share our posts on ArabCrunch EN via email with your friends and you can start now by emailing all your contacts telling them about ArabCrunch.

9- You can help us leverage massive amount of traffic by submitting or voting our posts on Digg, Reddit or Ycombintator news.

10- If you are a geek, slashdotting our posts might provide thousands of new visitors in less than a day.

11- If you are not subscribed to our RSS feed, please do now, and If you are using Google reader make sure to Hit “like” or “share” AC’s posts.

12- Add ArabCrunch icon as a signature to your profile if you are using a Forum and link to your profile on http://ArabCrunch.NET or to http://arabcrunch.com or http://arabcrunch.com/ar .

13- You can also add the above banner to your website or blog with links back to http://arabcrunch.com  and http://arabcrunch.net

14- If you  have a blog you can write a blog post about ArabCrunch, anything from why you read it and where you think we need improvements,  this will help more people know about us and the startups we cover.

15- if you have hot news or a tip please share it with us, we will never mention your name if you ask us to, but please make sure to tell us that in the email.

Lastly, thank you all for your support, please stay tuned for great stuff coming from ArabCrunch soon – by the will of God- And to those who have sympathy with the attackers, please spare us your negative comments

PS: we have no intention what so ever in attacking anyone, we will just continue working hard to serve the community.

Octavia Nassar CNN’s Sr. Editor of Mideast Affairs Tweeted few days ago about the passing of Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah who is considered one of the most important Lebanon’s Shia Muslim leader. She Tweeted:

“Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah… One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

She deleted her Tweet and later on, she went to CNN blog to explain her Tweet by saying:

“Reaction to my tweet was immediate, overwhelming and a provides a good lesson on why 140 characters should not be used to comment on controversial or sensitive issues, especially those dealing with the Middle East.”

Here full blog post is here as we are not concerned with politics .

However that tweet has caused her 20 years long job with CNN as NY TIMES and mediaite reported . It also seems many of her fans over Twitter are angry as some of them setup a tweetbon in support of her. However some other tweets seems from Israeli sympathizers being supportive to CNN’s decision.