Facebook is going away from its traditional zero cost marketing efforts to boost membership to its social network and counter its upcoming rival Google+. Historically Facebook relayed on viral marketing to push current members to invite their friends.

But recently several Facebook ads has been popping in the Arab world at Google’s AdWords on its partnership program with third party websites “Adsense.”

for example one facebook ad, titled: “chat with friends Facebook: lookup for your friends on Facebook and chat with them signup for Facebook today. The text ad link leads to Facebook front-page.”

Yahoo! is also using Adwords, recent ads spotted on Adwords entice users to signup to the new Arabic Yahoo Mail leading to this landing page: http://xa.overview.mail.yahoo.com/

This is an interesting step to see that Facebook appetite for new users in the Arab world extends to use advertising off its website. The same would apply to Yahoo!.

What is interesting too to that both Yahoo and Facebook are using the product of their rival to advertise and reach new users.

Noqoush a Jordanian mobile advertising startup which announced in August that it raised 3 million USD in funding, has announced today launching its mobile advertising network for the Arab region called “AdFalcon”.

AdFalcon enables marketers and advertisers to reach their targeted audience based on so many factors like location, interest, device type and model, operators …etc. Furthermore, it also has a dashboard and reporting engine would help track the campaign performance and provide statistical results.

Noqoush has also revealed the launch of its developers fund and publishers program, where developers and publishers can sign up to start generating revenues by serving mobile Ads on their registered applications. Publishers and developers can get from 60% to 78% of mobile ads revenues generated by their mobile app or mobile website, Noqoush says it supports all mobile platforms.

The company said on its website that it is starting with 90,000,000 monthly impressions.

It is worth noting that the number of cell phones users in most Arab countries exceeds 80% of the total population, whereas it exceeds 100% in the GCC countries. Also, the number of mobile internet users is exceeding 25 million users in the Middle East and northern African countries based on a study published recently by spot on PR and effective measure.

#Press Release.

Two-thirds of consumers in the Middle East use the internet to research products and services, according to new research published by Econsultancy and Real Opinions.
The Middle East and North Africa Digital Consumer Report shows that 66% of consumers in MENA are using the internet to look for products or items to buy prior to purchase. Of these respondents, 48% use the internet occasionally and 18% use the web regularly to research products.
The report, which is based on a survey of more than 2,000 consumers across different regions in the Middle East, also shows that a third of consumers are currently purchasing products online, and this includes 27% who purchase occasionally and 6% who regularly buy online.
Online consumers are paying for a wide variety of products. Flights are widely bought on the internet in the Middle East, but other things paid for online include hotel reservations, utility bills and books.

Some 39% of respondents currently do not buy online but report they intend to, indicating that consumer interest in e-commerce is set to grow in the region. Some of the barriers to buying online include a lack of trust in payment systems, unsuitable payment options and the lack of online retailers.
Econsultancy’s Research Manager, Aliya Zaidi said: “The good news is that consumers want to purchase online and interest in e-commerce is rapidly growing, spelling out a clear opportunity for companies investing in digital channels. As more companies launch transactional online sites, consumers will become increasingly familiar with internet shopping.”

Zaidi continued: “Consumers also cited poor website design, unreliable delivery and inability to process customer orders, so a focus on best practice can help to remove some of the barriers to buying online.”

The report also examines in detail how consumers use a wide range of online channels, including mobile, social media, search and email.  Consumers are using the internet on their mobiles with 77% of respondents carrying out social networking, and 70% using email on their smartphone. Other activities carried out using smartphones include instant messaging, watching video clips and playing games.
Real Opinions’ CEO, Dan Healy, said, “Investigating the results by country reveals how diversified Internet usage is across the Middle East. An interesting difference is where respondents access the internet, with 34% accessing via internet cafés in Yemen while only 8% use them in Bahrain as 18% use free public Wi-Fi networks.  There clearly is a challenge for some countries to catch-up with others in the region. ”

Key survey findings:
• The lack of trust in payment is cited as a barrier to buying online by 43% of respondents. The second most cited issue is unsuitable payment options, mentioned by over a third (36%) of respondents.
• Social networking is the most popular online activity across the Middle East with 88% of consumers reporting they use the internet for this daily.
• Facebook is overwhelmingly the most popular social media site in the Middle East, with some 98% of respondents stating they use the site.

About this report
The Middle East and North Africa Digital Consumer Report is based on a survey (commissioned by Econsultancy and conducted by Real Opinions) of more than 2,000 consumers across North Africa, the Levant and the GCC. Respondents came from the Real Opinions online panel across the Middle East from a pool of over 100,000 internet users.
The 55-page report looks at internet usage in the MENA region, including the types of products and services purchased by consumers online. The report also examines in detail how consumers use a wide range of online channels, including mobile, social media, search and email.
The survey results are broken down for North Africa, the Levant and the Gulf states. Certain questions are split out further for Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The results show that cultural, demographic and population differences between countries can have far-reaching consequences for marketers in this region.
Report URL
http://econsultancy.com/reports/middle-east-digital-consumer-report

Many startups specially Arab ones underestimate the importance of public relations in branding their products and in marketing them. Take a look at startup weekends events in recent Arab countries, does anyone remember them or what they do? does anyone use them? where are they now?

Public relations is a cheapest way to market your products or startup and entice people to use it, if people do not know about you they will not use you.

In nut shell you need to develop media contacts and write a well written press release about your product and services, and pitch your story to the media and journalists from the angle that interest them and their readers not yours, meaning if you have a cooking website you can target women life style magazines by pitching your story in a way that your startups saves time when looking for a recipe to cook something.

I am not going to go through how to write a press release and how to develop media relations, I am going to ask entrepreneurs and specially Arab startups to do the minimal which is having a blog for the company and email relevant media sites like us, with your news.

In your blog you need to keep your users updated with what is new at your company, example: new features, new millstones, new partnership deals and so on. And this is not enough you need to email the media.

Main stream media in many cases won’t understand your startup and the possibility of having an article about you is low. We do encourage to target them but here at ArabCrunch, because we cover Arab startups and the Arab tech sector, your news is important to us and our readers, so go ahead and start sending us your news and we will cover you “inshallah” in ArabCrunch English and ArabCrunch Arabic. You do not have to send a press release, just the basic news of what, when, why, and where. This effort does not need a team or a special PR agency, a startup of 1 or 2 people can handle a small job like that.

One note, we read every email that is sent to us but we can not respond to every email, however if your news is interesting to our readers we promise to do our best and cover it.

Remember in many cases startups die not because the startup idea is horrible, but because their founders did not do the minimal marketing and PR effort. And for those startupweekendrs please stop being lazy and do the minimal and email us

PS: here is 12 Ways to Market Your Startup With Zero Ad Spending.

#image credit.

Are you a college student or recent grad who has passion for online marketing and wants to get some solid experience from a well known tech media brand?

Do you like to help startups?

If the answer is yes, then we would like to welcome you to join our growing team and help you in your career path.

What we will require from you is 2 to 3 hours of work a day to carry some marketing and business development tasks, including forming partnerships with tech events around the world and in social media marketing.

Requirements:

- Student or recent grad in marketing or computer related field.
- Passion for technology and startups.
- Passion for social media, marketing and an active user on Twitter.
- Fast learner.
- Excellent English in speaking and writing as it will be your primary language in work.
- Disciplined and honest.
‫-‬ Does not work and never worked with any spying agency or with the freeMason underground network. As these organizations try to infiltrate media sites.
- You do not have to be an Arab, nationality does not matter, however candidates from recently freed countries like: Egypt, Tunis, Libya and for sure Gaza will have priority.
- We do not differentiate between male and females, both are welcomed.
- This is unpaid internship and you will work from home and you should have your own computer.
- Send your CV to jobsATarabcrunch.com and tell us why you want this internship.
- If you prove to be good in your work we will consider you for a full time position if you have the necessarily resources.

Amman, Jordan based Noqoush Mobile Media Group, the Arab company specialized in mobile advertising and mobile media monetization, reported that it has closed first 3 million US dollar investment round.

In a press release the company stated that a group of Arab and Foreign angel investors lead the round but did not disclose who ( we will try to get their names.)

The company said that the round will be used to help Noqoush with developing its mobile advertising technology “AdFalcon”, what it describes “the region’s first specialized advertising platform developed to link mobile applications developers, mobile website owners with advertisers to provide them with the a chance to achieve financial returns.” Something that sounds similar to US based Admob which was founded by Syrian entrepreneur Omar Hamoui and was acquired by Google in 2009 for 750 million dollars.
We have little information about Noqoush, it said in the press release that it was founded in 2010. A linkedin profile for Mahmoud Iswaid from Jordan stats that he is a cofounder in the company, he previously worked with Yahoo and Maktoob before its acquisition by Yahoo. We will try to get more information and update you here.

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.

Jabbar’s CashU Competitor OneCard, one of N2V’s subsidiaries has announced that OneCard users can now buy Facebook Credit directly using their OneCard balance.

OneCard is a prepaid card located at more than 75000 point of stores across 20 countries, its users can top up their OneCard accounts using many local payments like Knet in Kuwait and UAEexchange in UAE.

Facebook Credits can be used to buy games gifts and points and to pay for advertising campaigns..

END

mediaME.com, the news community for advertising and media professionals in the Middle East has launched a free Classifieds service .

mediaME Classifieds listings categories cover all aspects of the jobs and freelance markets, featuring Job Postings, Job Seekers, Freelancers and Professional Service Providers with sub-categories for every advertising and media specialization. Also, the listings aim to serve the needs of sellers with categories for Media Opportunities, Sponsorship Opportunities, Events & Activities and Business Equipment & Software.

In a press release Zeid Nasser, Founder & CEO of mediaME.com said that launching the classified section in mediaME signals a shift towards mediaME.com becoming a marketplace for buyers and sellers.

mediaME owner is Jordan based MediaScope has received in Feb, 2009 investment from IV Holdings

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:

During his speech at google’s first organized event in Egypt coined G Days Ari Kesisoglu – Regional Manager, Middle East North Africa said that online ad spending in the MENA region is between 110 to 130 Million USD annually. Although there is no real projections of online ad spending, last year it was estimated below 100 million USD, thus annual growth rate is estimated between 20-40 %.

I wanted to ask Ari how he got this number, and where is this money being spent? is it on adwords and the rest of major knowns websites such as sarmady’s and maktoob, jeeran, Jabbar, ameinfo and so on?

We hope he will answer so we update you.

On his part Wael Ghonim – Marketing Manager, Middle East and North Africa said during his Internet trends session that 100 million Arabs will be online in 2015 which is about 30% of the Arab world population. Mr. Ghonaim added that most users are young as this is good because this segment consumes more, and that this is the time to be online and invest online.

Wael also talked about what people are searching for in the Arab world where he said that news is #1 search category for egyptians, then images, music & audio clips.

As for  YouTube and other stats Wael said that region has:

• The highest number of playbacks compared to quiries
• 24 hours of videos in every minute are being uploaded to YouTube
• 10% of search are coming from Mobile devices
• Symbion OS is leading Mobile handsets in the region
• 200$ growth in mobile search quires in mean in 2009.
• Saudi Arabia leads growth in the region followed by egypt.

Anther important stats, Wael revealed that Arabic users speak Arabic as less than 20% of MENA users communicate in English. He suggested that if you target the Arabic market develop the arabic UI first.

Government body Jordan’s National Information center has opened registration to its Arabic domain .الاردنThe domain name registration is open to local and international companies, NGOs, government agencies via this site http://idn.jo/.

The fees are 100 Jordanian Diners (JD) ( 1 JD = 1.41 USD)  for the first 2 years and then 24 JD for every month.

It is another day and we are still alive and free the news today Group-buying startup GoNabit has launched its Lebanese version, now offering special deals the first one for women.

GoNabit works by offering offering time limited deals with dissents that can go to 60-70%, and its uses your social graph to leverage group buying, if enough people sign for the deal it gets sold, so the more people you invite from facebook the more probability you get the deal. meaning you are a viral marketer for the site.

With this launch GoNabit is one city ahead of Jabbar’s gout buying Cobone. GoNabit is majority owned by Bayt. Tiger Global Management is one of the major investor on Bayt and Jabbar.

You can read AC’s interview with GoNabit founder Dan Stuart

http://arabcrunch.com/2010/07/cobone-a-new-group-buying-startup-from-jabbar-to-compete-with-gonabit.html

We were about to close several long term advertising campaigns from several advertisers from Jordan and the region. The money that to be made from these deals were planned to be used to cover our cost, hire new talent to help us accelerate our growth rate and in achieving our mission of helping build the ecosystem in the Muslim world along with helping entrepreneurs, geeks and tech professionals of any nationality or religion in Africa, USA EU and anywhere in the world.

All of those long terms advertisers canceled their partnership plans or “postponed them”, with excuses that we do not have “budgets now” (knowing that they do) or “our marketing agency advised us to postpone for later!!!!”

However 2 of the main advertisers were out spoken to pin point the main reason behind the cancelation.

The first one involves an Arab CEO of a major non tech company that is relevant with …… he said “we do not deal with people who deal with politics” he also told ArabCrunch founder “You started ArabCrunch with 2 dollars you will end living off 2 dollars.” he also said there is no CIA after you!”

This represent pure blackmail, because that person has been involved in meeting many high level US administration officials including attending the US presidential summit on entrepreneurship. Dealing with the US government is dealing with politics. So how come he comes and say we do not deal with people who deal with politics?? At ArabCrunch we did not deal with politics and never dealt with it, we have no political affiliation of what so over. Our focus is on tech and entrepreneurship.

But again politics came to us, represented by the current US administration with its State department competing project with AC. As we said before our sources with relevance to US Department of Defense informed us with the US administrations intentions ” with us or against us” not with us meaning we will destroy you.

This is real threats and the public needs to know about this type of blackmail. We can not be bombed and say “all is well!” it is complete hypocrisy from that person in telling us not to deal with politics and mention to us there is no CIA after ArabCrunch and its founder. Does that person work with the CIA to know if they are against us or not? if the answer is no, then he is not in position to say so.

We intentionally at this stage did not reveal the identity of that person, some call him chief Arab Entrepreneurs Officers, while others call him chief blackmail Officer. That person who is also an angel investor in several tech companies. We were told he was involved in blackmailing some startups to gain more “equity.” Hint: he lives or stay in “Jordan.” for several months a year.

For that person, we have recorded his threats, But some “parties” have infiltrated “certain hardware” and wiped of the recording along with other data. Why would they care about him to wipe of his recording? that makes you sure who he really works for!!!

We do not rollout the possibility we had backup for the conversation stored somewhere not in Jordan or Egypt.

As for the other party, he is a business developer with a certain Arab Venture Capital firm (VC), The party spent around more than half an hour convincing one of our staff that “the Hillary’s post is wrong and that there is no one against AC and AC’s founder Gaith Saqer.” His conversation nature were the type of conversation designed to extract information from one of our staff including the sources names and identity. AC, its staff and its founder will never reveal under any situation.

After the conversation the other party informed  one of our staff that the long term partnership deal is canceled and no advertising spent on AC, and said oh it is not relevant to Hillary’s post!

We called the second party’s boss and informed him about what the second party did to us. The boss said that we are committed to support startups site in the region such as ArabCrunch and startupArabia. We advice his boss to fire-him, because after experience such people real loyalty is not to the company they work for but to the “agency” they work with. When orders are given, he/she is ready to go against any business interest including plotting to destroy it.

We know that the 2 parties are reading this post right now. We tell this this unjust, but they do not know what does the word “justice” means in the first place.

Updated.

There is no doubt at least to me that for any person wedding and getting married is one of the greatest blessing’s in life. Yebab help brides in United Arab Emirates (UAE) find various suppliers and services needed for the wedding, from caterers to dressmakers, artists, photographers and traditional musicians.

Yebab is now entering its next face as it got the first investment round from National Net ventures N2V, the Saudi holding and investment company we wrote about back in June 2010. N2V investment in Yabab is the company’s first.

The investment round was made in both cash and inkind, and will be used to expand Yebab in other Arab countries in the region and launch a new enhanced version of the site. N2V will also use its woman portal HawaaWorld.com to cross market Yabab’s services.

Yebab makes money from advertising the site is already cash positives.

Yebab is founded by serial Emirate entrepreneur Murshed Mohamed. Murashed’s other ventures are eMapia a location based marketplace  and Darrb a crowed sourced delivery marketplace that seems offline now.

Update: In the press release site Murshed said the site has 200,000 users.

After Yahoo acquired  Maktoob last year, many of Maktoob group companies were merged under one independent brand called Jabbar. Somehow similar precedence happened with Orascom Telecom’s LinkDotNet 150 million USD buyout to Mobinil, but at a larger scale.

Orascom Telecom which is one of the largest tech and telecom groups in the Arab world, has been facing legal disputes with France Telecom as the 2 are biggest shareholders of Egyptian Mobile operator Cairo-based Egyptian Co., which operates under the brand Mobinil.

So on July 3rd 2010 Mobinil agreed to pay 130 Million USD to  acquire the ISP unit of Orascom’s LINKDotNet SAE and Link Egypt SAE as part of an agreement that settled the legal dispute between Orascom and France Telecom SA.

However,  the non-ISP business unites were not part of the deal, so OTVENTURES was born as a new addition to the Orascom Telecom group.

The birth of OTVentures was announced on July 6th but overlooked by the mainsteam media, so here is quick profile of the new company which seems to be the largest indigenous Arab Internet play in terms of reach:

- OTVentures CEO is Hanan Abdel Meguid who is former CEO of Link Development.

- OTVentures says it hires 700 team members operating across over 17 countries.

The holding companies:

LinkOnlLine:

Founded  in 2002, now one of the largest, if not the largest Arab Internet company with the following Portals:

MSN Arabia:

MSN Arabia is the result of LinkOnLine partnership writhe Microsoft, MSN Arabia is available in English and Arabic. It covers Windows live services and the MSN Arabia Portal.

MSN arabia portal offers wide range of content such as: news, business and financial guides, technology, health, fitness and diet tips, entertainment games, and celebrity gossip games. The site is also integrated with other LinkOnLine products such as Otlob.

MSN Arabia uses MS bing as the default search engine after it abandoned LinkOnLine’s own search Engine Onkush. As a Portal MSN Arabia main competitor is Yahoo Maktoob and as Bing is available in Arabic, Google is the main search competitor. However Aljazeera and other news and vertical sites might also be considered as competitors.

Masraway:

One the most popular Arabic portal geared towards egyptians, Masrway offers a wide array of content and services:

News, Classified, Jokes, Video sharing, Games (single and Multi player ), SMS ( 1-Egyptian and Saudi user subscribe can get news at the of cost 4 EP per month, 2- online paid service to send SMS to other mobile phones), TV Guide, E-Gov Services (links to e-gov services) Jobs ( integrated with Linkonline careermdieast job portal), Women channel, Thanaweya Amma ( high school results), Anti Women Harassment ( good job ), Music, Travel, Food Delivery (via LinkOnLine’s otolb) Ketabat ( user generated Arabic content and news -citizen journalism), greeting cards, Hosting and Domains and webmail.

Yallakora:

In operations since 2002 providing Arabic English, news and content for football leagues in the Arab region especially in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia & Morocco and most of the European and other regional tournaments in the world. The site also offers an Arabic fantasy Football competition and iPhone app.

YallaKora key competitors are: kooora.com, Filgoal (from Sarmady a Vodafone company in Egypt), Goal.com and Yahoo Maktoob Sports. Yallakora English version still has Onkush as a default search engine, seems the developing team forgot to add bing instead.
MSN Maghreb:

MSN Maghreb is a French version of MSN Arabia targeting French speaking users in countries like Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria.

Mazika:

Arabic Music Portal offering legal Music Audio and Video streaming and Islamic Nasheed with the option to buy via “Credit Card”, the site also provides online Audio & Video streaming and celebrity news.

On the entertainment front Saramady Vodafone company has Filfan a portal with content related to Music and cinema.

On Mobile, Nokia X6 Comes with Music offers free Music download for one year.

Otlob:

An online food ordering site through which orders can be placed to many restaurants in Egypt, UAE, KSA and Bahrin. And otlobmall.com a mall shopping site.

Yallabina:

Entertainment and city guide for Cairo, covering major events, concerts, and cultural events.

CareerMideast:

Job recruitment site for the Arab world, according to the about page the site has 500,000 CVs which is 25% of Bayt’s claimed CVs  number. Careermideast currently offering free job posting for employers.

LinkonLine ID: is linkdotnet single login to all its sites.

El3ab:

Online bilingual gaming offering  flash based single player & multiplayer games. The site says they will add Game Reviews Channel for reviewing the newest games worldwide. And a Fan Shop, for buying different elements “which will enhance gaming experience on el3ab.” The site offers traditional Middle Eastern games such Tarneeb and chess.

Other regional players in the Arab Gaming include: Tahdi from Jabbar, Tarneeb.com, kammelna popular baloot game from Saudi based remal IT and Wizard productions ( merged with Go3Media, it has recently received funding from Ossama Fiyad former Data Chief Office Yahoo and Chairman of D1G and Oasis 500.) and Yallagamescafe.

Baraca Arabia:

News and content for FC Barcelona Arabic fans.

Shofha:

The first Arabic legal video service, or the HULU of the Arab world. Shofha is made possible with strategic partnership with Rotana the leading Arabic entertainment company. The site offers users to: buy: download and view for a life time, renting: download and view for 48 hours and online streaming. Payment is via credit card or Linkdotnet cards.

Shofha uses unforunityly Microsoft’s Silverlight platform instead of HTML 5.

Yahoo Maktoob on the other hand has formed recently a partnership with Rotana to use and stream Rotana’s wide range of multimedia content, including music, videos, movies, concerts, TV channels and radio, through its upcoming Video Network channel for the Arabic speaking world.

Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Tala who owns Rotana is planning to launch a new Arabic television news channel in partnership with the Fox network. The Prince  is also an investor in Rubert Murdoch’s News Corp who in his part made recently a $70m investment for 9.1% of Rotana.

Arab Finance:

Arab Finance Provides online trading for the Egyptian stock market, financial news, tools and analysis. It also has “Isharet el Borsa” desktop app offering real time stock quotes info, charts and other technical info.

Arab Finance also has free iPhone application for the Egyptian Stock market, providing real-time access to the Egyptian Stock Market.

Other indepandant players in the Stock segment include the following:
-Awarmer: from Suadi based Remal IT offers online trading for the Saudi Stock Market.

-Argaam: UAE based Gulf-focused financial news portal.

-Saudi Based N2V’s Mubasher.info offers comprehensive financial news and analysis tools for Saudi Stock Exchange, Dubai Financial Market, Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, Egyptian Stock Exchange, Amman Stock Exchange, Kuwait Stock Exchange, Muscat Securities Market, Doha Securities Market, Bahrain Stock Exchange, and Palestine Securities Exchange

-From National Technology Group the mother company of N2V, Mubasher Trade offers trading for Egyptian stock market and UAE stocks. And Mubasher NET for retail investors, offering market data desktop app.

-From Jordan Tickerchart: Stock analysis software for Arab  stock exchanges.

Link Data Center:

Offers a range of hosting solutions for enterprise and small and mid size business, notably: Managed Dedicated Hosting ,which offers firewalls and load-balancing devices. However we do not know which environment is supported, like the different Linux distributions, as all Otvenutres is based on Microsoft .NET technologies.

The other regional Data center we know of in the region is Bahrain based Kulacom data center in Jordan

Link Development

Is one of the largest  regional ISV, software developer and out-sourcing companies in the region. Link Development is a key regional partner to Microsoft and its products such as MS Dynamics. Link Development most notable in-house developed product is: Tempo, an Enterprise 2.0 product which is based on Microsoft Sharepoint, offering corporate blogging, employees profile, document sharing, forums, HR forums and so on.

Link Development competitors are widespread from other Microsoft ISVs to small website development companies to Oracle and its partners to open source software that offer free alternative to MS products such as Sharepoint and Dynamics.

ARPU +:

Launched in October 2003, specialized in providing Value Added Services (VAS) and platform solution in the Mobile in the telecom field. Competitors are  in many of the verticals  the company operates in. This include: Eskandenia and Globitel from Jordan and info2cell.

ConnectAds:

Is the online adverting arm of O2Ventures, it represents many sites of o2ventures and is the official representative of Facebook in the Arab world.

Other advertising networks in the Arab world include: Sarmady, iKoo which resulted from Jabbar buying e-marketing MENA and N2V’s Net Advantage . More regional online advertising companies can be found here.

If we missed anything please let us know.

Former regional marketing manager for Google in MENA Nagi Salloum who launched yesterday dead simple sharing tool loomn.it is launching today his new startup loomni.

Lo0mni is trying to solve the problem of education and knowledge. As after university most people tend not to learn and take new courses as most traning courses are geared towards executive and sneior managment due to the expensive rates they are offered at (1000+ USD.)

Loomin is able to offer affordable cousres at the rate of 50$ with a new conecpt to attract instructors: “marketing by teaching”:

“here experts can share their knowledge, educate people about topics they are expert in, and with extensive practical experience. ex: as a social media company, market your services by teaching people about social media stuff. If they are interested and understand the benefits of social media they will contact you for professional advice and services. Instructors are incentivized to deliver high quality course as the delivery will impact their reputation in the market. “ Said Nagi

Nagi is also introducing Loomni vouchers, prepaid codes charged with a certain monetary value (typically 200 AED, avg price of a course). This allows businesses to provide the Loomni courses to their staff by purchasing these vouchers and distributing them to their employees. Employees would then book courses on Loomni without any cash transaction.

“With this, companies can now fund education as part of their corporate social responsibility in a new way, by purchasing Loomni vouchers and distributing them to non-profits to educate disadvantaged people, Government can now easily support the Emiratis continuous education by providing them with Loomni vouchers.” Nagi added.

Quick Questions and Answers:

The elevator pitch in 140-characters?

Loomni is a knowledge sharing platform organizing a variety of short,attractive,in-venue courses, delivered by experts at unbeatable prices.

• Who is the target audience?

Loomni is aimed at university students, small and medium businesses and general audience. The website has been designed with a very user friendly and simple interface, creating a fun and nice branding.

• What is the story behind choosing “Loomni” as your start-up’s name?

Loomni is a blend between illumination (illuminate people’s minds) and alumni (I used to pronounce it Alumnee). i wanted a simple fun easy to spell/pronounce word, and available as a domain name

• What is the monetization model ?

the business is designed on a revenue share model between Loomni and the instructors, share varies based on course, instructor, frequency of course, audience…

• why you decided to leave Google?

Prior to moving to Dubai as the regional marketing manager in Google, I worked in Procter & Gamble, as a regional brand manager for Near East markets, based out of Beirut, Lebanon but decided to quit Procter & Gamble in 2008 to launch a start-up aimed at fixing the scattered private tutoring market. Only few months after launch, due to harsh political instabilities in Beirut, I decided to leave Lebanon and settle in Dubai, which offers a solid infrastructure for businesses to prosper. I took the time while at Google to fine the business model I had launched, and when the time was ready, decided to relaunch it in Dubai. So in short, yes, these 2 situations are related

#Loomni at ArabCrunch.NET.

Update: Google spokesman  said “Yes, filtering is up to 11 categories (limit of 5 doesn’t apply anymore).”

AdSense is  the advertising platform from Google that any website publisher can use to monitaize part of his traffic via ads coming from Google’s self service  online ad solution for advertisers: adwords.

However, publishers did not have control on the type of ads that pops up on their sites, and many of these ads caused embarrassments for many serious publishers specially in the Arabic region.

I have communicated before to Google team about this problem, and I am happy that yesterday Google announced that adsense publishers can now filter and ban ads in the following categories “under category filtering beta feature”:

Cosmetic Procedures & Body Modification

Dating

Drugs & Supplements

Get Rich Quick

Politics

References to Sex & Sexuality

Religion

Ringtones & Downloadables

Sexual & Reproductive Health

Video Games (Casual & Online)

Weight Loss

According to Google Arabia’s blog post, the new feature is available in beta to publishers in a number of English-speaking countries including, but not limited to, Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S.A.

The feature is also available in many Arab and African countries:

Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Chad, Djibouti, Arteria, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mauritania.

Google’s English blog post announcing this service, says that category filtering lets you prevent ads from up to 5 specific categories, but the Arabic posts talks about 11 categories. When I tested AdSense ( we do not use adsense here at AC) adSense accepted filtering all 11 categories, my location is Amman, Jordan.

So I wonder if only publishers from Arab countries can filter all 11 categories all together while other parts of the world can filter only 5!

I will ask Google and update you here if category filtering is limited to 5 in non Arab countries.

For more info you can go to Google help center here.

ArabCrunch opens guest posting to entrepreneurs and  industry professionals- todays post is by Omar Aloyoun, he is Technology, Marketing & Product Management specialist and a Business Strategist in EVERNET. He was one of the entrepreneurs who pitched at Arabnet conference. He is looking forward to bringing new Customer-driven & Market-driven e-products to the world. You can reach him at his ArabCrunch.NET profile here. ( if you want to be a contributor or post a guest post email me at EditorATarabcrucnchDOTcom, Guest posts does not represent AC’s point of view.)

The majority of conversations and web-storming sessions that took place during and after the successful ArabNet conference were all focused on the importance of an organized follow up to the conference. It’s a call for an Industry CRM and a measurable call-to-action plan between the region’s proactive users, Venture Capitalists, Social Media Moguls (e.g. Google, Yahoo) and entrepreneurs.

ArabNet event was an important step that has helped accelerate, predict and shape a roadmap of the Web industry in our region. A zone rich with money, skilled human resources and a unifying language landscape but still lacks the momentum to innovate and achieve due to many factors that have been discussed extensively during the conference eight panels.

One of the most compelling experiences that made the scene at ArabNet is the Live Tweeting which proved how social media are shaping today’s conversations and events. The instant ArabNet attendees were actually front channeling the conference panels discussions; an exciting back channel conversation (#ArabNetMe) was winding up on the twitter-sphere.

Both the region’s competencies and weaknesses were clearly described by many leaders. Many hot discussions were insisting on overriding organizational and governmental Paradox to ignite Arab Innovation. This was clear in Fadi Ghandour speech at the conference laying a big responsibility on all industry players including Governments, Private Sector, VCs and Entrepreneurs. He also stressed out the importance of true utilization of youth talents, creating new jobs, commercializing ideas and stopping talent immigration.

During Google Arabia event in Dubai, Google has characterized year 2009 as the Internet tipping point for MENA and the year in which the Internet has graduated in the region.

Mohammad Gawdat (Google’s Managing Director, EMEA) adds that a total of 3224 patents filed from MENA region in last 13 years, with Jordan leading with more than 150 comparing to 233,000 patents for Japan. Gawdat adds that optimism is on the horizon and that the region has the chance to ‘leapfrog’ over Western region; it’s the responsibility of all online players including users, agencies and web moguls.

So what makes an Innovative nation?

As per Steve Jobs CEO of Apple  “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower”, so where shall we locate innovation in MENA knowing that Web industry in the region is a me-too adopter of others technologies for products that were created for different cultures and segments.

MENA region has a low Tech Startups Density Index comparing to neighboring countries, USA, and Europe. This index reflects how much these startups can attract venture capital dollars per person. Entrepreneurs and Youth are the bricks of our new economy, and talent and technology plays a major role in keeping these startups on the cutting edge whatever challenges they face. An Innovative nation calls to invest in brains not bricks and needs to transform any challenges it faces into assets and to leverage the business talents of young people.

Real innovation is about adding value for both the business and its consumers. An Innovative culture nurtures entrepreneurship spirit even within inside companies by having an Internal Marketing Tactics (B2E/Business-To-Employee) through initiating a wide brainstorming sessions with creative employees, allowing promoted ideas to see the light of day by developing an efficient value chain.

Companies also need to engage in ideas conversations with external customers to capture ideas on their offerings. This will help shape future products roadmaps, formulating a dynamic forum to capture and act on customers’ best ideas, and taking these innovative ideas to markets.

An innovative nation utilizes untapped resources and assets to achieve unmet needs by filling a gap in the market. We need creators’ entrepreneurs who can make real difference and we don’t need more imitators. We want startups that build and establish value before preplanning monetization and money will follow.

Many startups need to reinvent themselves and more serious angel investors are needed to empower more startups out of the life cycle funnel. Many investments are gaining market share with a continuous market growth (The Stars as Per BCG Matrix); these can be converted to cash cows by providing them with all resources they need.

What applies to startups, also applies to commercialization of ideas. Fadi Ghandour said: “In order for innovation to really occur, we need to stop launching new ideas and focus on a few whether they succeed or fail”. Another approach is to uncover great ideas, generate a large quantity of them; a few may break even and many may become rewarding and pay back the costs of the broken down ideas.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless, Mary Kay Ash.
Measuring innovation in MENA Advertising Ecosystem

MENA crowd should change the way they look to Advertising pinnacle. Whether it is Holistic Social Media Advertising, Contextual Text Based advertising (e.g. Google AdSense), Display Advertising or Keyword Search based CPC Advertising. According to Google, “Users need advertisers because they provide valuable additional information”.

The ArabNet advertising panel has missed a crucial point of why we have few advertisers?

Advertising platform resides in a two sided market where advertisers make up for one side and media publishers make up the other site.

The problem resides in the lack of advertisers’ landing pages readiness. Many potential advertisers are Brick & Mortar businesses that do not have a significant online presence or online business strategy. Brand’s online presence lack real value, does not engage with its audience, neither have a direct sales channel and have a bad design. Offline businesses without an online strategy underestimate the rewards coming from starting their new digital channels.

Brands should gain better ROI by adding Analytics, capturing customer insights, starting a professional blog, writing whitepapers and having an online customer acquisition strategy that enable building customers database. Any systematic marketing or re-marketing efforts will fade without profiling customers.

By communicating these values through the marketplace, the first building block for a real MENA based Affiliate Network (Performance Based Marketing) can be setup. A business or retailer will recruit affiliate publishers who can match an industry segment with their targeted audience. By cultivating the advertisers’ performance, we will encourage more publishers to enter the market.

The total outcome will transparently encourage and promote more quality Arabic content. Although MENA region have 56 million online users in Arabia region, we contribute for 1% of world’s online content.

Social Media Innovation

I  was impressed during ArabNet Online Advertising panel when Khaled Jabasini (Founder, E-marketing MENA) partially stripped to make a buzz, as a symbol of social media true utilization and how originating a positive word of mouth will support brand’s products more than any well written brand’s own sales pitch because it’s a trusted experience message originating from customers to the customer, and as Jabasini said: “advertising with zero dime cost” by allowing a brand to engage positively with audience and build a mutual experience. This is aligned with the new myth (via @umairh) “Advertising is the price a business pays for not being creative”. And as per Nielsen, “Winning online is about Serving Audience and not creating impressions!”
MENA region demand is for more collaborative business in the cloud, more service-oriented customer-centric dynamic platforms than static webs.

According to Yahoo!’s Alexa top 500 global websites, only 6 MENA based sites are in the list, including Google’s KSA and AE regional search page. (Maktoob #162, Kooora.net #251, Traidnt.net #400 and MyEgy.com #440).

Final Opinion

Innovative institutes do exist in the region; however their activities and influence are limited to the country or the region they are in. They need to expand beyond to include more areas in the MENA region. One example is Microsoft Innovation Lab in Cairo (MILC).

Going back to the Web industry CRM, I can say that ArabNet has triggered a new collaborative network between industry experts (Look @ ArabNet Twitter Lists), never seen before in the region. Experts are fragmented in each country and if we invite a Silicon Valley Investor to Jordan for example, there is no centralized database, or no mean of reaching talents, and the same matter applies to the whole region. For this ArabCrunch.net was created as the first Arabian web Industry hub that enables collaboration and technical Q&A Web-Storming sessions between experts and entrepreneurs and as brands and experts’ database.

Final advice to startups: focus on current trends and era that can be summarized by “The Internet is reaching into the phone” and “Browsing is out; engaging experiences are in”. One example utilized by many brands and agencies is mobile targeting and advertising. The users are sent to the mobile version of their websites when a mobile browser is detected.
Let us carry forward the innovation cycle in the region. Let us embrace the endless possibilities.

If you are familiar with web advertising, google has an advertising platform for website publishers called “adsense”, which enables them to serve ads on their websites coming from Google’s advertisers via Google self service advertising platform “adwords.”

Google shares part of the revenues it acclimates from google adsense customers but does not disclose the actual percentage. Adsense is available on per click and on impressions bases in many ad formats: text , images and flash and can be added to any website , it is  also available  to RSS feeds only to Google Feedburner websites/blogs users.

Google sends check payment to adsense users after reaching around 50 USD every month and has been running a program to allow users to get payed via  the popular money transfer medium “Western Union” in a number of countries.

4 days ago Google announced expanding  the number of countries where individual web publishers can get their adsense payments via Western Union. The new countries google added are: Saudi Arabia, Croatia, Iceland, United Arab Emirates, Latvia, Lebanon, Slovenia, Tunisia, Moldova and Malta.

Google’s Western Union payments will be dispatched in according to the account payment schedule and will be available in US dollars at any western union local store in the above countries. (more info here.)

In another google Arabia news, google Rich Snippets is now available internationally with Arabic search is being supported. Rich Snippets which allows users see additional facts and data from web site in search results.

Social media marketing is the most effective marketing approach because it is viral and much cheaper than other forms of marketing, as social media or PR 2.0 can provide brands explosive growth that would require millions of USD spending in other forms of marketing.

The process of socialmedia marketing starts with identifying your target audience, and then see which community they are using the most, then be there, engage them and then monitor your progress to re-align your social media strategy.

In USA social media marketing has become a big buzz word as many organizations rush to capitalize on social media platform either via offering services or tools to other companies or via Do-It-Your-self.

However in the Arab world social media marketing is still in its baby steps as most traditional PR companies and marketers in the region, did not yet get it. As they are not tech savvy at all and still thinking in the 1970 PR and advertising mentality. ( They use the Internet to check news, read email, and nudge someone over facebook and someone them asks us to see a draft of our post before publishing, something they can only dream about!)

Educating the public that millions of Arab Internet users actually turn to social media everyday might change the backward thinking of traditional marketer: There are around 7 million members from the Arab world on facebook, 100s of thousands of blogs coming from users from this region, and around 40% traffic from Arab ISPs is going to Youtube as the major telecom operators reveled so during last year Arab Advisor Conference. Let alone the ever growing users who are joining Google Buzz, Twitter and other social media platforms such as ArabCrunch.NET and Netlog.

Another factor that would help regional marketers turn into social media is the availability of tools that can help them monitor and manage their campaigns that are regional specific, in which Arabic is the keyword.

Yesterday, help seems has arrived as Media Watch a traditional and online media mentoring company launched SocialEyez , which they call the first dedicated social media monitoring service designed to capture and analyze Arabic content online.

SocialEyez currently provides 3 types of services (According to their website):

1- Do It your Self: Online subscription service where you setup & manage your own account using a web interface.
SocialEyez will help organizations better understand and manage their online reputations, react to customer feedback and interact with customers using social media platforms.

2- co-managed account:
Socialeyes will dedicate on person to help clients setup and manage their account.. This service includes helping you filter results, add/delete keywords, identify most important sources to monitor, etc.

3- Managed account:
SocialEyes will monitor on the clients behalf and send a customized daily, weekly, or monthly round-up reports.

We do not know which social platforms SocialEyez actually monitors, facebook? Twitter? YouTube? as we did not test their service yet, but we know from experience that google alerts is not helpful. Though SocialEyez launch is not successful as our email to socialeyez contacts us email info@socialeyez.ae returned with �Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:�

#Thanks SpotOnPR to the tip. You can also read Hicham post in Arabic about online brand management -

#Image modified from Anne Helmond’s image.

As you might know we achieved unprecedented Arab rank in the blogs scene, as ArabCrunch earned the first rank in the Arab World and the 24th rank worldwide, beating both The Wall Street Journal and Forbes Blogs in the startup category.

We also have ArabCrunch.NET the first and largest social platform to empower Arab entrepreneurs and techies. And we organized last year the largest DEMO event in the region: ArabCrunch DEMO.

We have 10s of thousands of impressions across all our sites every month, so we need someone who can drive and close ad campaigns from key advertisers ( classical and social media ads) and close partnership deals with others. In order of us to cover our costs and continue serve our loyal readers and members.

This is a full time job and the location is Amman, Jordan but we are open for Dubai applicants.

If you love what we do at ArabCrunch and believe in our values this is your life time career, you close deals and meet monthly targets we will love you and you will grow with as we grow.

Here are more details about this job ( to view other all ArabCrunch jobs go here.)

Job Description:
• Selling online ads (Classic and Social Media) with the ability to meet sales targets every month.

• Continually identifying leads and new potential customers from external sources.

• Handling all in coming leads.

• Handling and growing leads. Face to Face, Telephone and online presentations and sales.

• Creating creative online marketing and social media plans for our clients.

• Working with both agencies and direct clients.

* Generate sponsorship deals for our event.

• Implement and track each client online campaign using OpenX ad server.

• Study our visitors and social media stats to propose offers to our advertisers.

* Administer all sales support systems in line with internal requirements.

Skills:
*Demonstrate a very strong background in online advertising sales if not, then you must have strong offline advertising sales track record.

* Existing relationship with both advertisers and ad agencies .

* Skilled negotiator who is target-driven.

* Natural interest in startups/technology / Internet/ social media/gadgets/PCs as our work and many of your potential clients work in these areas.

* Ideal person is someone who has drive, and enthusiasm, and passion.

* BA/BS degree in any relevant field.

This role would suit a determined person. Who enjoys a fast paced, creative and fun working environment whose input will have a direct contribution towards the company’s success.
To apply send your CV to jobsATarabcrunch.DOTcom with the title: Online Ad Sales/Business Development Executive.

About ArabCrunch Group:

ArabCrunch Group’s mission is to inform, impact, inspire and create an Arab centric technology ecosystem that delivers information, and connects Arab entrepreneurs and technology professionals, both in the region and throughout the world via its properties, ArabCrunch En http://arabcrunch.com, ArabCrunch.NET http://ArabCrunch.NET, ArabCrunch Arabic and via its events. ArabCrunch blog is ranked as one of the top 25 blogs in the world.

After many days of hard work, after over a year of full time dedication to help startups and techies like you, today AC reached a major milestone: ArabCrunch.NET First Online Social Platform in the Arab World focused on Startups & The Technology Industry. With this announcement, the social platform, was what you the passionate startup and tech community wanted AC to develop for you  and as I mentioned back on April that AC will do it! when I wrote about the ecosystem that we need to have in order to help grow the tech industry in this region and turn our economies into knowledge based economy. Today Our promise is delivered, Here is the ecosystem in one place

ArabCrunch.NET, Helping The Arab World Innovate

ArabCrunch Group Extends Technological Reach with First Social Network in the Arab World focused on the technology industry

Amman, Jordan and Silicon Valley, CA – Tuesday, November 10, 2009 – ArabCrunch Group announced today closing a round of funding and the launch of ArabCrunch.NET, the first social network dedicated to creating an environment that fosters innovation, entrepreneurship and mentorship for Arab entrepreneurs throughout the world. ArabCrunch.NET offers a dynamic platform for collaboration amongst the various stakeholders within the technological ecosystem from Berkeley to Bahrain.

The launch came during a press conference held by Arab Crunch in cooperation with Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship at the headquarters of the Royal Scientific Society.

“ArabCrunch.NET will facilitate knowledge transfer and enable veterans from Silicon Valley to work with and mentor young talent from the MENA region,” said Bassel Yassine Ojjeh, a former Senior Vice President of Yahoo!, Inc. USA, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member of ArabCrunch Group, who led the round of funding. “We’ve built ArabCrunch.NET to fuel innovation, create a knowledge based society and an environment for job creation in the region that will serve high tech professionals throughout the 22 Arab countries and the western hemisphere.”

“We’re thrilled at the opportunity to be the first dedicated group that focuses on accelerating the innovation cycle both here in Amman and throughout the Arab world,” said Gaith Saqer, Founder of ArabCrunch Group. “Ever since we launched ArabCrunch.com in 2008, we have been committed to finding the most compelling technological innovations that impact the Arab world – this next chapter allows us to help foster collaboration on a scale never seen before in our region. We have built a social platform that connects participants and helps them find crucial resources, build strategic partnerships and promote services.”

Since it’s unveiling in 2008, ArabCrunch.com has grown to one of the most widely read technology blogs in the Arab world with over 30,000 monthly visits. Founded on the principle of “professional blogging,” ArabCrunch.com has become the primary source of information about the latest technological advancements relevant to the Arabic world. An Arabic version based on “citizen journalism” was launched last month and has met with great success.

- END-

About ArabCrunch Group:
ArabCrunch Group’s mission is to inform, impact, inspire and create an Arab centric technology ecosystem that delivers information, and connects Arab entrepreneurs both in the region and throughout the world via its properties, ArabCrunch.com, ArabCrunch.NET and ArabCrunch.com/ar. About

Arab Crunch.NET:

The mission of ArabCrunch.NET is to help accelerate entrepreneurship and technology innovation in the Arab world by delivering an online social platform that connects participants of the technology ecosystem.
ArabCrunch.NET is the first online social platform dedicated to connect and support technology companies, entrepreneurs, techies, scientists, academia and investors in the Arab world. ArabCrunch.NET is a project from ArabCrunch, the publisher of arabcrunch.com and ArabCrunch Arabic Edition.

About Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship:
The QRCE is a non-profit, non-governmental organization established in October 2004 and is now a complement of El Hassan Science City. The center’s mission is to support economic development through offering a package of services to promote excellence and market technology. The centre particularly targets college students, researchers, inventors and initiators to enhance and build their personal capacities. QRCE offers this group consultation and works to develop their sense of excellence and initiative through a set of programs including Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Excellence Competition, Technology Commercialization Program, Connect Jordan and Princess Sumaya University for Technology’s Entrepreneurship Society (DART).

Updated: see below.

The realtime Web tracking and analytics startup Woopra that was founded by 2 Lebanese off their homes (and reviewed by ArabCrunch here and here) announced that in the coming weeks it will remove the beta label and introduce paid accounts.

Soon, Woopra will be open to anyone to register for paid accounts thus eliminating the current waiting list, however users registering for the free version will need to obtain an invitation code.

Another milestone change is that the 10,000 page views per day limit will disappear and be replaced by a monthly page views limit.

Under Woopra’s new drafted paid account plan, for websites with 30,000 monthly page views and are only for personal and non-commercial use the service will be free but with limited set of features. (Update: Woopra’s free accounts will remain offering realtime tracking and all the current features will stay the same, as Eli Khoury told ArabCrunch, just the extra features for paid accounts wont be available for the free accounts.)

As for accounts with up to 100,000 monthly page views a $4.95 fee rate would apply and for sites with 3 million page views per month the fee will be $99.95. ( look at the chart below for the full drafted new price plan.)

What does this news means? As after 2 years of starting Woopra from home then opening an offices in USA and Lebanon, the startup that is about to reach the 100,000 members mark will start achieving monetization. Though, I am not sure what will be the reaction of Woopra’s community, as everyone until now was using the service for free and taking into account that there are other analytics sites offering realtime stats like GetClicky at a lower price range (Update: GetClicky has very limited set of features for the free accounts and no realtime tracking. On the other hand  Woopra’s free accounts will remain offering realtime tracking and all the current features will stay the same, as Elie Khoury Woopra’s cofounder told ArabCrunch.) However Woopra’s main advantage over getliclicky and others is its desktop application that offers RealTime tracking on Windows, Mac and Linux which I tested on all 3 platforms.

It is worth mentioning that I am almost a daily user of Woopra at ArabCrunch and feels happy with it.

ArabCrunch broke the news at the global level, that Yahoo has acquired Maktoob and I updated the acquisition post and wrote with the completion of the deal, the remaining Maktoob Group companies – including Souq.com an e-commerce and auction website, cashU.com online payment card , Araby.com an Arabic search engine, and Tahadi.com an MMO games provider – will operate under a new entity called the Jabbar Internet Group , managed by Samih Toukan cofounder of Maktoob.

E-Marketing MENA which we profiled here, was recently completely acquired by Jabbar and rebranded to iKoo, sources told ArabCrunch it was at a market valuation of 20 million USD.
E-Marketing MENA (now iKoo) which was founded by Khaled Jabasini using only$15,000 USD of investments  has become the largest online advertising network in the Arab world. Now serving 1.4 billion impressions, with a reach to 39 million unique users in the Arab world, according to Khaled Jabasini. That is around a 50% increase of last February  stats of 780 million monthly banner impressions and over 19 million unique users.

Khaled Jabasini was a speaker at ARABCRUNCH DEMO and eMarketing MENA was a platinum sponsor to our event.

According to sources, Maktoob Group (now JABBAR) was an unannounced investor in E-Marketing MENA with majority shares of 75% since 2006, but now they had acquired the remaining share of Khaled, that makes Khaled the first self-made Internet millionaire from the Arab world. Former Maktoob Chief Product Officer, Isam Bayazidi is appointed as General Manager of iKoo.

AlKhaleejiah Online which is part Saudi Research and Marketing Group that has a network of websites that includes the online editions of more than 25 of the most well known regional multilingual newspapers and magazines is part of ikoo’s network of 120 plus publishers.

Seems like  iKoo is an acquisition target for Google, which some say might not be too long to happen.

According to Maktoob Business, as part of the acquisition deal, Yahoo! and the Jabbar Internet Group will continue to have a strong commercial relationship going forward, which will include the promotion of Jabbar companies on the Maktoob.com portal.