There are many cooking resources online, but what distinguish Zaytouneh is that it provides short quick and professionally done tutorial cooking videos.

Founded by Jordanian female entrepreneur Fida Taher Alawieh, the site is currently available in Arabic but plans an english version in a couple of months according to Fida’s tweet. Fida says over Twitter that she plans 200 videos in 2 months and 1000 over a year time.

This service comes handy for people who want short and fast cooking recipes specially bachelors like me.

Here is a video in how to prepare “Taboula” Salad:




(PS: we will update this post with more info once we get them)

The interest in learning Arabic in the world has increased in the last decade, specially in in USA. There many reasons behind “why” many are learning or interested in learning the language. Some are Muslim reverts who do not know Arabic and want to learn it in order to better understand Quran and Hadith. Some are CIA/FBI agents who want to learn it for their spying, interrogation job, or when coordinating with other tyrant Arab secret police agents. Some work with the US army and want to learn it to deal with Arabs in occupied areas such as Iraq. Others are Middle East university stream students and want to learn it as it is part of their studies. and there are others who are not Muslims and who just want to learn it because they are fascinated with Arabic and the Arab world.

Whatever was the reason, Arabic Coach provides the platform to connect anyone who wants to learn Arabic from around the world with native Arab teachers from the Arab world.

The site offers those who want to study Arabic the option to browse teachers see their profile, video intro and ratting, then they can schedule virtual teaching sessions with the desired teachers, conducted via Skype or Yahoo messenger.

Each teacher can determine his own hourly rate. in which the student has to pay, Arabic Coach takes 20% fee from each teacher. Teachers are provided with a suggested curriculum, lesson plans, and assessment tools, but they have the freedom to use their own methods. All teachers go through a screening session before their profile goes live.

HawaaWorld, one of N2V’s companies, announced that it has acquired “entertainment world” http://www.tt5.com, one of the largest entertainment websites in the Arab world, to serve its goal of enriching its content. Amount of the deal and its terms were not announced.

tt5.com offers entertainment content on a daily basis covering fields such as images, videos, games, stories, funny situations, stories from our culture, and news from all over the world.

HawaaWorld, the largest female website, provides its members with useful content and the latest services. Recently, female members have been able to post their classified advertisements free of charge. HawaaWorld website is one of the ten most visited websites in Saudi Arabia; it receives 12 million visitors a month, and has more than one million members from 170 countries.

Update: Zaid Tillawi from Jeeran Marketing told AC that Jeeran is not planning to shut down its blogging platform and that you can create a new blog when you sign up on Jeeran Places.

Amman, Jordan based Jeeran is in route to shut down its blogging platform, it has ended new registration ( registration did not work at our end, Update, you can create a new blog when you sign up on Jeeran Places.) and expected to shut down its blogging platform all together soon later. It has moved its Music site to bandoora. The site has redefined it self as a site for local reviews and discussions.

Now when going to Jeeran you can go to local communities in Amman the capital of Jordan, Riyadh , jeddah , Damam and Khubar in Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Dubai in UAE and Kuwait city in Kuwait .

Each city site includes a directory of places in services, restaurants, electronics and so on. Users can review each place and join discussions about their local communities. All current Jeeran cities are in Arabic except Dubai and Abu Dhabi as foreign expats are the majority in these 2 cities.

Jeeran places competes with Saudi Startup Qaym in terms that it provides a section for restaurants reviews, Kuwaiti restaurant review site Yallawain and fast restaurants numbers finder Tasree3.

Jeeran is backed by investments from Intel Capital and Jordan based VC IV Holdings. To read about Jeeran’s history you can go here.

Is it a smart move for jeeran to end its blogging, video and photo sharing platform?

During her visit to the region Yahoo’s CEO Carl Bartz shared How Yahoo sees huge opportunity in the Arab region. in a press releases sent to us, Yahoos says that Maktoob homepage is the fifth most popular home page on Yahoo with around 50 million unique users compared 30 million unique users when Yahoo acquired Maktoob for around 200 million USD. In terms of revenues in the press release Yahoo said that Yahoo captures 40% of online display advertising around 40 million USD.

Here is the remaining of the press release:

“When we look around the world, the Middle East and North Africa is one of the most exciting markets for us at Yahoo!, with a combination of rapid user growth and a very attractive advertising market with incredible potential,” said Bartz.

“Arabic is also one of the fastest growing languages on the Internet, yet only 1% of online content is in Arabic today,” Bartz added.  “Part of Yahoo!’s investment in MENA is to facilitate the growth of the Arabic language online.”

During her remarks to media assembled at Yahoo!’s offices in Dubai, Bartz discussed four topic areas: Yahoo!’s local teams and commitment to the region; the company’s commitment to growing Arabic content online; new products the company has planned for the region; and the growing online advertising opportunity.

During her remarks to media assembled at Yahoo!’s offices in Dubai, Bartz discussed four topic areas: Yahoo!’s local teams and commitment to the region; the company’s commitment to growing Arabic content online; new products the company has planned for the region; and the growing online advertising opportunity.

Local Teams and Investment

Yahoo! acquired Maktoob in November 2009, and since this point the company has invested in fully staffed offices across Dubai, Amman, Cairo, Riyadh and Casablanca.  The offices are home to nearly 300 employees who work in editorial, engineering, sales, marketing and customer care.

“Because our teams are local, we understand what people need and in turn develop our products accordingly to serve up the right content. This is a big differentiator for us. We are not just a technology company, we create deeply personal digital experiences,” said Bartz.

“You can’t deliver ‘deeply personal’ unless you are deeply local. We combine that expertise with a global scale, global content, and the best from around the world.”

Growing Arabic Content Online

Bartz cited that the thirst for high quality and relevant content in Arabic can be seen in the company’s engagement on its properties.

In the past year and a half since Yahoo! acquired Maktoob, the combined reach of the company has grown from 30 million unique users to 50 million. The Arabic Yahoo! Maktoob homepage launched last November and it is already the fifth most popular Yahoo! homepage in the world today.  Only the U.S., Taiwan, India and Indonesia have more readers.

Six months after the launch of the homepage, Yahoo! Maktoob has become the second biggest news destination in the region after Al Jazeera, and has established leadership in a number of content areas. For example, the company is number one in the region’s online Entertainment with omg Arabic.

The women’s property, Helwa, is the region’s favourite lifestyle destination for women’s news, health and family tips, as well as fashion reviews.

Yahoo! Maktoob has also established content deals with the likes of Al Jazeera, BBC, Reuters and the Saudi Publishing & Research Company, and continues to look for more Arabic language content partners. The company continues to recruit writers, bloggers and editors to make its original content in Arabic broader and richer.

“We are making our content mobile, since mobile penetration for this region is growing at an incredible rate,” said Bartz.  “This month we will introduce our Yahoo! Maktoob homepage for mobile in both Arabic and English. Also look for mobile versions of our media properties, like news and sports.”

Video is also an important area for Yahoo! as broadband penetration continues to rise in the Middle East. Bartz said that Yahoo! has plans to invest more in Video On Demand service to deliver content from popular Arabic TV series, movies and music videos.

New Products

Bartz also shared details of Yahoo!’s new Ramadan product. Under the theme “Ramadan Around the World, Ramadan Where You Are”, Yahoo!’s Middle East editorial team will personally select lifestyle and religious content from its News, Women, Video and omg properties, and popular forums.

“No one else has the ability to draw from such a rich selection of content, and make it so personally relevant to users,” Bartz said about the upcoming Ramadan site.

Growth in Online Advertising

Bartz emphasized the opportunity these new Yahoo! experiences – along with the growth of the Internet in the region – create to extend the company’s lead in online advertising.

Already, Yahoo! Maktoob is the number one in the Middle East and North Africa for display advertising, with 40% market share.

Online ad spend for the region is currently only 2% of total advertising spend for the entire region.  By way of comparison, online spend in France is around 15% and in the UK it’s 25%.

However, Bartz noted that the region is host to the fastest growing advertising market in the world, with average year-on-year growth in digital spending around 25-30%.

“We envision the online ad market in MENA to reach at least 5-7% of the total ad market by 2015,” said Bartz.  “And with our strong agency and client relationships – along with our leadership in Science, Art, and Scale – I am confident we’ll be there to deliver the benefits.”

“Advertisers in the region – just like anywhere else – want to tell their stories in beautiful, immersive and personal ways,” Bartz added.  “And it’s a big reason why Yahoo! has great partnerships with some of the leading local and global brands, from P&G, Unilever, Etihad and Emirates airlines, and GM, through to Chanel, Dior and more.”

It seems every hacker in the world is pointing his keyboard at sony, as hack number 13 has been targeted at Sony Europe by a lebanese hacker.

The hacker known as Idahc got anther users database at Sony Europe that contains around 120 users name, passwords, mobile phone numbers, work emails and websites addresses.

According to Naked Security the attacker claims that he used SQL injection to get the database.

This is clearly another embarrassment to Sony after millions of accounts in PSN got exposed by a hackers around last month.

Whether an applications’ developer, a techie genius or just a student or an employee with a good idea for a new mobile application and a flair for technology, LINK Development and ArpuPlus will help make it happen through “Bananas Factory”, a virtual community that they launched and that allows them to see their idea come to life .

Both LINK Development and ArpuPlus have pledged to draw on their own domain expertise, business and marketing capabilities to support Arab mobile application developers as well as creative minds, in their quest to populate the mobile applications world with innovative, informative, useful and fun applications targeted at users in the region and around the world.

Developers will get the technical tools and assistance to create new applications, market and monetize them. They will be supported by a downloadable Software Development Kit (SDK) that contains a powerful drag-and-drop, cross-platform application creation tools as well as a “Developers’ Community,” a discussion platform for knowledge exchange.

Already have an application posted on another store and would like it to have wider reach? The Bananas Factory stores will also host these mobile applications, to expand the reach of these applications.

Not a developer? No problem. If someone has the idea but does not have enough technical skills to develop it, all that needs to be done is to submit the idea to www.BananasFactory.com . The engineers from LINK Development will take it from there and develop it for them, while ArpuPlus will help them market the application on stores and different platforms. This will be done on a revenue-sharing basis.

This new venture is being announced to the world of applications developers and innovative thinkers on the second day of Planet of the Apps Arabia, which discusses future trends in mobile applications and the opportunities and challenges they present to businesses.

Both LINK Development and ArpuPlus are part of OT Ventures Group.

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

National Net Ventures (N2V), the Internet Holding company, unveiled a new investment in Qaym.com, the Arab portal specialized in rating restaurants.

Investing in qaym.com is the third investment N2V announces during this month, and it aims at diversifying the company’s investments in the Arab website, especially ones that offer new, add-value services.

The website had previously received early stage investments from two angel investors: Abdulrahman Tarabzouni and Nichola Eliovits.

Over the last several months, Al Jazeera news network (AJ) said that it has been given access to the largest-ever leak of confidential documents related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A1,700 files, thousands of pages of diplomatic correspondence detailing the inner workings of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. These documents include – memos, e-mails, maps, minutes from private meetings, accounts of high level exchanges, strategy papers and even power point presentations – date from 1999 to 2010.

Aljazeera said these papers gives an eye on how negotiations commenced and they involve high-level American, Israeli,and Palestinian authority officials
Aljazeera said that these papers will reveal new details about:
”

• the Palestinian Authority’s willingness to concede illegal Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, and to be “creative” about the status of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount;

• the compromises the Palestinian Authority was prepared to make on refugees and the right of return;
• details of the PA’s security cooperation with Israel;
• and private exchanges between Palestinian and American negotiators in late 2009, when the Goldstone Report was being discussed at the United Nations.
“

AJ said that it will release the documents between January 23-26th, 2011. the site of the releases is located at
http://www.ajtransparency.com/ has already some documents being released each document can be downloaded in PDF version, it includes date, location, parties invalided and attendees.

Aljazeera is opening Aljazeera Al Jazeera Transparency Unit (AJTU) where users can submit leaks and so on. saying that when submitting leaks they are encrypted and that AJ does not save users data such as IP. Aljazeera uses HTTPS connection and asks leakers to use PGP encryption  with AJ public key.

Some times having something in Arabic that is close to an English website is of benefit to the average Arabic user, with Elcinema this case is true.

Elcinema provides a comprehensive users generated database about movies and TV shows unlike Jordanian startup shoofeetv which focus more on Middle East satellite channels and TV shows.

The site showcase latest Arabic and English movies with a video trial, users can rate the movie, add a review and even add basic info that pertain the movie. the site also maintains a news section about Movies and Cinemas. It has a video only section where you can see the latest trials of episodes, movies , their songs and Making.

Elcinema is developed by Egyptian startup Damlag and is mostly geared to the Egyptian viewer as it only features movies showtime for Egyptian cinemas.

The site’s recent addition is Arabic satellite channels guide.

AljazeeraTalk is  one of the first citizen journalism  based websites in Arabic, as it was founded in since 2006, the site publishes interesting reports you do not often find in main stream media.

Today they launched the English version. The English site which seems is not fully launched as some links are broken, has some videos promoting its reporters around the world and along with other text based reports. AljazeeraTalk in English has 2 sections interviews and reports.

The site design looks nice. We do not know how is AljazeeraTalk is related but most likely it is. We will update you on that once we have an answer.

When ArabCrunch founder Gaith Saqer started ArabCrunch he made his best to stay away from politics as he was advised that in this part of the world it will bring him and AC problems.

At ArabCrunch we never accused “Israel” of anything, we never opened the books of the Zionist movement intentionally because we know how strong they are at least in USA. We understood the consequences of such events that it would create problems to us inside USA at least. But that was not enough they wanted Gaith to “become a spy or die.”

When the DDoS attack against ArabCrunch happened we intentionally refused to point the finger against anyone, Why? because we hopped we can survive it and that there wont be more plots that can bring us down to the ground.

But today we can not shut up in the face of growing conspiracies against us. We have been doing investigation (before or immediately or after the DDoS attack, this information can not be provided now) and the investigation lead us to know the parties behind the terrorist DDos attacks, the criminal defemation and hacks of ArabCrunch blog that insulated Islam and all other criminal plots against AC and its founder, designed to bring ArabCrunch down or we have to work for the Zionist agendas.

The CIA, Mossad and the global Zionist movement are the ones behind these attacks all other parties are just tails. The DDoS attack and the subsequent hack attacks against ArabCrunch and all other criminal plots against AC and its founder.

The DDos attacks where not just a diversion of AC’s resources to be on the defense but to make AC move its servers to be hosted outside USA with a certain company in a Banana republic whose “laws” will ensure AC can be brought to legal troubles.

Another revelation we make today is that the father of ArabCrunch founder (Gaith) is Dr. Mohammad Saqer who holds PHD from Harvard. Dr. Mohammad is a senior Muslim Brother Hood leader, and was an ex-president of Islamic university of Gaza.

in the 1980s and during Dr. Mohammad presidential period of Islamic University in Gaza he was a target for several assignation attempts. When he visited Jordan back at one occasion the Israeli occupation of Gaza refused to give him permission to go back to the strip. Dr. Mohammad is a Jordanian citizen since the 1960s. He then kept the presidential position He currently lives in Amman with his wife after 2 divorces with his son and doughtier of AC founder. AC’s founder lives down satires of Dr. Saqer house. AC’s founder is not a member of Muslim brotherhood or Hamas or any political parties. AC’s founder is not involved in any politics. But as his job requires to meet people from different walks of life. that does not mean he agree with anyone point of view or believes.

The Mossad often targets not just Hamas members or people who might be in some relation with them ( As Hamas has originated from Muslim brotherhood) for recruitment also their immediate families such as this spy. Other intelligence agencies too monitor and do its best to recruit Hamas family members.

ArabCrunch founder Gaith Saqer’s mother is Zulikha Abu Risha, she is an opinion writer at a local newspaper -alghad- and a poet. Most of Zulika’s writings are in social issues. essentially she attacks Islam and works in changing the public precipitin about Islam under the pretext of such posts as the Athan voice is too load!

Obama and hillary are liars in being against burning the Quran!

ArabCrunch was not the only Muslim website targeted by DDoS attack and other plots from the CIA and Zionism , Millatfacebook too experienced that.

MORE TO COME…

ContactCars.com a car listing and buying portal in Egypt has launched its Arabic iPhone app offering users the latest car prices in the Egyptian market.

The app features tens of car models complete with photos and specifications. A long with a loan calculator which allows you to calculate the monthly installment for the car of your choice though Contact Company.

ConactCars is a partnership between Vodafone Egypt owned company Sarmaddy and car insurance & funding company in Egypt Contact. The sites offers listing of new and old car molds in egypt along with prices and specs, car funding and insurance applications, automative news, and car video and photo sharing.

The launch of facebook locations has taken lots of buzz, the service allows users to check in using their touch phones into different location, know where their friends are and get information about places and discover new ones. Facebook places competes head to head with startups such as NY based Foursquare, texas based Gowalla and Face2face ( our review of Face2face here.), Even though Foursquare and Gowala were appeased by beiing invited to show up at facebook launch event of facebook places and even though Foursquare , Gowalla, loopt, Face2Face and other social based localtion startups still preserve some differentiations such as badges and rewards while face2face focus is on privacy, But the entrance of a 500 pound gorilla into the locations business might killer to all of them as the facebook boost over 500 million active users.

Indeed, most experts agree that facebook locations might be a killer to Gowalla and Foursquare, but having a 500 pound gorilla competitor such as facebook is one thing, when compared to the gigantic new competitor to ArabCrunch represented by the US state department, least to mention facebook has no CIA agents, but the US federal government do have over a million, who could be “or already put” into “good use.”

Unlike the US market, Foursquare and gowalla adoption rate in the Arab world is somehow limited to a bunch of geeks and early adaptor but who seems to be in the rise, specially that Gowalla iPhone app is available in Arabic. which seems the reason behind Jordan based Internet company Jeeran decision to venture into the location market at the local level. As the site launched few days ago local Arabic social portal for the capital of Jordan Amman calling it: Jeeran Amman.

Jeeran Amman, has 2 features right now: Amman Places and discussions. Amman discussions provides a forum for users to discuss city wide issues, but Unlike facebook Locations, Gowalla and foursquare. Amman places does not depend on users checking-in online or via smart phones, there is no checkin but rather user can add review of the location and “like” it or “dislike” it. However the value of the Amman Places is providing information about the place and see what people think of it. Something that facebook has now with its location services but plus check-ins.  Also unlike facebook locations, Gowalla and foursquare. On Jeeran  Amman Places users can not add a new location, but are already added by Jeeran staff. and users can not share photos on that location or leave tips or gain points and badges, or see who of their friends are around them.

Jeeran places also competes also with Saudi Startup Qaym in terms that it provides a section for restaurants reviews.

We called Omar Kudsi, Jeeran’s cofounder 2 times to get more information about Amman Places and whether they will also launch iPhone app with check-ins and launch places in other Arab cities, But Omar did not answer our calls.

Jeeran’s venture into local sites comes after a series of new product launches: Jeeran Channels: news about cars, sports and so on. Jeeran improved it UI including a much better user profile, entered the Music business with Jeeran Music .

Jeeran was started in 2000 with an Arabic clone of Yahoo’s closed geocities then ventured into blogs, introduced social networking aspect: profiles, the ability for users to share photos and videos, launched a poetry social site sejaal.com along with an Arabic digg clone called Khabbr.
In an unpublished ArabCrunch video interview with Feroz Sanaulla Investment Director at Intel Capital which was made few month ago he said that Jeeran is the best performing company in his portfolio and wants them to over spend to gain more users. Intel Capital is the second investor in Jeeran.

But can Jeeran local social sites make a stand to Facebook Places which has around 16 million Internet users in the Arab world?

( Disclosure: Jeeran is also venture backed by Jordanian Internet venture Capital firm IV Holdings, IV Holdings mother company Accelerator Technology Holdings was approved a 25 Million USD fund from the US federal government, The US State Department to enter into competition with ArabCrunch)

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.

We wrote 2 times before about the floods in Pakistan that killed an estimated 1,600 people, made 4 millions homeless and affected  about 20 million human-beings.

Yahoo! has joined the effort and added a link to its logo on its website to Pakistan Floods how to help Page on yahoo that offers a guide in how to help a long with a list of Organization that you can donate to and news and vidoes.

Thank you Yahoo !

As for Google it has setup a special web section for Disaster Relief in Pakistan, offering donations options and tools to help in the disaster such as look for someone, find someone, also Disaster Relief in Pakistan. Resource Finder is a tool to help disseminate updated information about health facilities and services

This is the second time that Google failed with Muslims this month, before Bing beat them by featuring Ramadan images on its homepage. Google did not offer a Ramadan Doodle but a number of Chrome themes.

After Nokia’s launch of mobile  Ramadan 2010 specific  applications, Yahoo Maktoob announced today launching a new Ramadan website, the micro site includes three main sections “spiritualities”, “ramadan and People” and “entertainment.” The Muslims month of Ramadan is expected to start this week.

The new site will introduce a number of features including downloads for Ramadan-specifc screen sever and wallpapers, ramadan news feed via the web and desktop gadgets and a new Ramadan contest and a TV guide. Also Yahoo’s recently announced Video On Demand Channel (VOD) will be available for users to use for free on the TV guide. Yahoo said on a press release that VOD has Ramadan “related” videos and shows.

Ramadan site also includes a section to the Quran with full interpretation, where users can mark when the stopped so they can sign-in next tome to continue where they stopped. The Quran sections also comes with “tajweed” which helps people read Quran verses according the Islam’s rules of reading the Quran.

The site also has something for women and family with content such as health and beauty, fatwa related to women issues and cooking tips.

Yahoo Maktoob is also offering free SMS services that allows users to send free SMS messages to congratulate their family and friends on Ramadan and Eid.

Ahmed Nassef VP and Managing Director of Yahoo Middle East said that the Ramdan website is part of Yahoo’s effort to be at the center of people’s online lives.

The site is in Arabic and can be accessed from here.

Yahoo! announced today that it will start running its customer base operation for 9 languages via IBM service delivery center in Cairo, Egypt.

These languages are: Arabic Spanish, German, French, Italian, Turkish, Polish, Romanian, and Russian.

After Yahoo’s acquisition of Maktoob late last year there was fear many employees would be laid off and that the development center would be relocated outside the region.

Since the acquisition insiders have informed us that 60 employees have been fired while Maktoob development center remains in Amman, Jordan. Yahoo’s decision to bring the customer support operation of these languages to Egypt will certainly provide jobs for the region although our hope is to see them hire more engineering jobs. Ideally, we want Yahoo to open an R&D center somewhere in the region which would help develop more technical human capital.

This announcement also could suggest that Yahoo may soon launch Arabic versions of their websites and apps especially since Yahoo! has shut down around 27 Maktoob owned sites. Some of these were duplicates to those from Yahoo(USA). Yahoo has emphasized Yahoo brand and logo over the Maktoob brand.

On events that Yahoo sponsored the brand name “Yahoo Middle East” was used. On Maktoob’s website the word Yahoo! is  much larger than the word Maktoob, indicating emphasis.

We reported last month that Yahoo is shutting down around 27 sites, since then the NASDAQ listed company has been doing a number of cleanups and introducing further integration between Maktoob sites and Yahoo services and Yahoo’s corporate look and feel.

The 27 sites  that Yahoo Maktoob will shutdown were all in Arabic, but today while hitting Zinza I also found out that this site will be closing in 9 days.

Zinza was launched by Maktoob before the acquisition sometimes last year as far as I remember, it some how works as a news aggregator like google news for the region, but with some more interesting features, such as filtering news into companies, people, sectors and places. It highlights how many times a person or a company has been mentioned in the news across the web.

The site now seems to be out of order as we see many old stories, some old as last year.

We will contact Yahoo Middle East to know which other sites they will also  close.

Yahoo made several steps today starting with de-emphasizing the Maktoob brand, giving the homepage of Maktoob a Yahoo look and feel and releasing single sign-in via Yahoo ID to Maktoob sites.

As there are only 25 days remains for the first world cup 2010 to take place in South Africa, Yahoo Maktoob team launched a new Arabic microsite for football fans so they can follow the biggest football event that takes place every 4 years, under what is called now “Yahoo Maktoob sports, The word “Maktoob is smaller than Yahoo.”

Yahoo Maktoob sports worldcup site provides news coverage for worldcup matches results and information about important dates, worldcup related photos and information about Auditoriums.

Yahoo Maktoob Arabic site for worldcup looks almost the same as Yahoo International English site but has no fantasy game section.

International sports website Goal.com has launched in its Arabic version of the site a special section for worldcup, the same step was also made by Kooora.com, the most popular Arabic sports website. Even though Kooora’s world cup site look and feel is old school, it some how has more detailed information.

Sine it acquired Maktoob, Yahoo announced  in many occasions its plans to integrate its websites and services with those of Maktoob , in this front the last post today was about Yahoo Maktoob’s website redesign and logo remake.

But further digging unveiled more information: When I tried login into Maktoob Mail I saw Yahoo announcing that now users can link their Yahoo accounts with their Maktoob account but not the other way around.

More to come.. stay tuned.

UPDATE: Ahmed Nassef, VP and managing director of Yahoo! Middle East told ArabCrunch that there will be No dropping of brand name ‘Maktoob’,” hence the naming of the brand Yahoo! Maktoob. The new brand will be the integration of both.”

Following Yahoo’s announcement of shuting down around 26 Maktoob websites, Yahoo! Middle East has today made another Integration step between Yahoo! and Maktoob, as it unveiled the new brand ‘Yahoo! Maktoob’. Previously known as Maktoob from Yahoo!, the new brand, which is showcased throughout the website further emphasizes the Yahoo! brand name adding more integration to Yahoo! USA own services such Yahoo! Mail.

The Yahoo! Maktoob main website has been redesigned and incorporates the Yahoo! USA look and feel with more streamlined navigation bar on the right and left for the English version with links to Yahoo Mail and Messenger however, a link to Maktoob Mail the first Arabic mail which was launched Maktoob around 2000, still exists. Center boxes emphases political and entertainment news.

The announcement of the new brand ‘Yahoo! Maktoob’ is a significant point for Yahoo! in the Middle East, as it prepares to implement new Yahoo! features, such as Y! search on Maktoob.com channels and additional global Arabic channels, Yahoo said in a press release ArabCrunch just received.

In the press release Ahmed Nassef, Vice President and Managing Director of Yahoo! Middle East commented:

“For the first time, the Yahoo! Maktoob page will integrate the English versions of popular Yahoo! products such as Mail and Messenger, with localised versions to be announced in due time….The new homepage is just the beginning for us, we will continue to innovate and present updated information and relevant content throughout this year.”

I do not know if Yahoo has plans to delete the Maktoob brand, but in the last event Yahoo! Maktoob sponsored they used Yahoo Middle East not Yahoo Maktoob! I will update you shortly with more info stay tuned.

What appears to be the biggest exit in the Internet industry for this year, Dice Holdings, Inc.,a NYSE Listed specialized career websites for select professional communities has acquired United Arab Emirates (UAE) based Energy job sites WorldwideWorker.

In a press release Dice Holdings announced on May 10th that the purchase price consists of initial consideration of $6.0 million in cash.  Additional consideration to a maximum of $3.0 million in cash is payable upon the achievement of certain operating and financial goals over the next two years.

WorldwideWorker according to the press release has more than 400,000 energy professionals have registered with WorldwideWorker and two-thirds of those are based in Asia, Africa or the Middle East.

This is an interesting news to the Industry and will for sure push more investors to venture into funding startups as Yahoo Maktoob deal did.

We will followup with more info about this news soon.

Launched in November last year, SafqaOnline which means in Arabic “deal online” is a new startup from Ramallah, Palestine,  that is  similar to craiglist but provides better user interface and is geared towards the Arab world.

SafqaOnline caters to both merchants and individuals, for merchants it provides easy way to establish a web presence and create a virtual store online with contact information, services provided.

It also provides both merchants and individuals, free advertisements spaces that categorized in 5 Main Categories which are: Automotive, Real estate, Stores, Marketplace and Professions (Jobs).

As the founder of SafqaOnline George Halabi puts it:”there here are plenty of classifieds websites on the internet. the classifieds idea is old, craigslist was online in 1996, what we did is concentrated on the user experience and came up with a friendly user interface that makes finding information easy and straight forward.”

SafqaOnline is currently available in Arabic and English interfaces, It automatically converts posted ads into other languages. French and other languages will be added in the near future. The startup self funded and aims to generate revenues from ads. Its regional competitors include Asuaq.