If some of us think SMS is dead in the US, Twitter do not. The social media startup just announced launching Fast Follow SMS feature, which allows anyone in the US to receive Tweets on their mobile phones even if they have not signed up for Twitter. For example juts type follow ArabCrunch to 40404 in the US and now you start receiving Tweets from ArabCrunch.

Fast Following is currently available in the US but Twitter  said it is working on more countries to add.

This feature is a smart move by Twitter as its adoption rates in the US is not close to Facebook’s 500 million members, now non Twitter users can start experiencing Twitter instantly even if they did not have an account as this cuts many steps of going online, signup and then figure out how Twitter works.  I think this feature will bring a great amount of  new Twitter users.

( You can Follow ArabCrunch on Twitter @ArabCrunch .)

Updated: below.

In August 2008 Twitter shut down SMS for the most of the world to save the hefty SMS cost, we  exclusively   reported back August 2009 back that Twitter is in talks with one of the largest mobile operators in the Arab world Zain to enable 2 way SMS in the Arab countries it has operations in.

Now that post seems to news have become true as now Twitter mobile page shows SMS option avalibe to Jordan only with Zain, Kuwait with Zain only and Saudi Arabia with STC only.

I have not tested Twitter SMS in Jordan yet since I do not have a Zain number but if you live in one of these 3 countries  and have Zain or STS  STC numbers do please let us know via comment if it works.

Zain Jordan has also another SMS deal with Jordanian Startup WatWet Twitter’s Arabic clone. This news for sure is not good news for Watwet, as the only advantage watwet had over Twitter is its SMS service and now Twitter has it!

We are big fans of Twitter in ArabCrunch since day 1 of its launch and happy to see this good news.

Twitter SMS commands:

• FOLLOW username
• Start following a user
• UNFOLLOW username
• Stop following a user
• ON/OFF
• Turn all Tweet notifications on or off
• ON/OFF username
• Set Tweet notifications for a user on or off (you’ll still be following them even if you set it to off)
• GET username
• Shows you the latest tweet from any user
• RT username
• Retweet a user’s latest tweet
• FAV username
• Favorite a user’s latest tweet
• D username your-message
• Send a direct message to a user

Update 1:

Seems like no one managed to get SMS activated here is a screenshot from AC friend Mohammad Khawaja using a Zain number in Jordan, if anyone managed to activate please let us know via a comment:

As we update the news about Google offering Palestine free SMS chat via gmail with info from a trusted source that Google also offers this feature to the African country Ghana and “Israel”, Google spokesman just confirmed officially that update, here is the list of mobile operators list of operators Google Free SMS chat currently support:

• Ghana: MTN, Zain, Tigo, Kasapa.
• Israel: Pelephone and Orange.
• Palestinian Territories: Jawwal.
• United States: All operators.

It is worth mentioning that in Palestine and Arab countries the person who sends the SMS is the one who gets charged unlike USA where the receiver (update: and the sender ) hold the burden.

Google spokesman commented on the subject by saying:

“SMS in Gmail Chat is a feature that allows Gmail users to send SMS messages to their contacts? mobile phones using Gmail Chat. We believe SMS in Gmail Chat bridges online and mobile communications, bringing a new level of flexibility and mobility to Gmail Chat. We hope to extend this to additional countries and additional carriers in the future, but have nothing to announce at this time.”

Google’s CEO Eric Emerson Schmidt is present right now in United Arab Emirates where he attended Abu Dhabi Media Summit.

Welcome Eric

Update: as per our suspicion it turned out that “Israel” and Ghana have the service too.

Google has a neat gmail feature that lets user to send free text messages (SMS) to their friends directly from your Gmail account that works the same way gtalk works. Gmail SMS service was originally launched only for US mobile numbers in 2008. But now it has been available in Palestine for free via the palestinian mobile operator Jawwal (now owned by Zain) . Google verifies Palestine as the “Palestinian territories” which to them is West Bank and Gaza.

We do not know why Palestine from all the world’s countries? we will ask google now and let you know. Update: it turned out that “Israel” and Ghana have the service too, but palestine is the only Arab country that has the service

Google recognized Palestinian people in west bank, when it launched last year google.PS special domain for Palestine as ArabCrunch broke.

#Thanks to Ibrahem Eljabour for the tip.

Hichame Assi, an Arab Australian from Syrian origins, an e-marketing expert and an ArabCrunch Arabic contributor, has launched recently his first startup for the region: SyrianTenders.( ArabCrunch.NET Profile.)  in partnership with Mohanad Ghashim and Mohammed NourAllah from Syria.

SyrianTenders offers classified information about tenders taking place across all Syria. The site lists tenders according to cities and categories, moreover it provides premium features such as SMS and email notifications of new tenders. though Hichame and his partners have plans for more features in the near feature.

The idea was born as Hichame describes it, “from the desire of one of the co-founders to make information about tenders and RFPs in Syria more accessible.” As until now the majority of businesses in Syria have been relying on daily newspapers or the main government tenders site.

The site business model is based on small monthly subscription fee to view the tenders -first month is free though- and another small monthly fee for access to tenders notifications via Email and SMS Alerts. Syrian Tenders also provides additional service for users to order Tender Condition Booklets (which provide detailed level specifications for suppliers to bid appropriately), which is can benefit companies that are not physically present in Syria.

Hichame told ArabCrunch that in early 2010 they will be publishing Private tenders from large and international organizations and companies in Syria. And extend the service and site into English to provide access to foreign suppliers looking to do business in Syria. He also plans for a more efficient Payment Mechanisms for the site subscribers. As at the moment, payments are limited to bank transfers (within Syria) but soon PayPal will be integrated for payments by non-syrian
companies.

Being an expert in e-marketing, Hichame does not stop there as he also plans for a corporate blog as part of SyrianTenders, where he plans to offer tips on how-tos  for tenders and bidding.

At my end, what I would like to see is a way to apply for tenders online all together, where business men and companies can bid directly via Syrian Tenders with no need to do any paper work or attend tenders in any physical location.

Update: Kzalek was on private beta, the download link has expired, sorry for late update it was  a miss communication with its founder.

Last month, I nagged and was wondering why the current Twitter AIR based Desktop apps such as TweetDeck and Seesmic do not support Arabic text on Mac or Linux? But now I can breathe the sigh of relief. ( Arabic is written from right to left. Arabic letters are connected to each other unlike the Latin words).

Few hours ago, Kzalek, founded by Mustafa Farghay from Egypt, launched in beta. Kzalek did not only solve the problem for Mac and Linux users but has a complete Arabic Interface for both platforms, Windows and any platform that can run by Adobe AIR.

Whats more wonderful, I think that this app has the best Arabic right-to-left (RTL) support. Usually on the other Twitter desktop apps, when you tweet something in Arabic and add some English word(s) to your tweet, the tweet text gets scrambled as the English letters go South. But with Kzalek app, the tweet stays clean and organized. The same way you would write an Arabic document in MS Word when you add some English text to it. ( Even though I am currently a Mac user, I did not see any other office suite that is better than MS office).

Currently Kzalek, offers many Twitter basic functions with some more new features:

1. Complete Arabic UI.

2. You can see the tweeted pics in thumb view.

3. You can see the original Tweeted long URL without having to leave the app. Since Kzalek uses the popular Untiny service from Saleh Al Zaid from KSA. (LINK)

4. You can tweet pics and shorten urls directly from the app using bit.ly, Twitpic and yfrog APIs.

6. Kazlek can translate tweets into Arabic. It uses google language API (Although Google translation is funny in most occasions).

7. Favorite tweets get replies and DMs and you can reply, Retweet and DM.

8. Search feature.

As a twitter user with multi Twitter accounts, and since the app is still in beta,it does not meet my current needs. Although it might help me manage my ArabCrunch Arabic Edition on Twitter.

Mustafa Farghay told ArabCrunch about his future plans to add more features that would make Kazlek even more useful to any level of Twitter users. These features will include adding multi accounts, sending DMS to many users, friendship methods (add, block…etc), support for Twitter native users lists, Twitter trends, audio embedding, saved search Farsi interface and increased performance to make the app consumes less RAM. Although Mustafa assured us that currently Kzalek consumes less RAM than any other AIR clients. He also added that he might offer SMS support for replies and DMS in many Arab countries.

As for the web, Arabic Twitter is available via ArTwitter.

I told Mustafa about the most popular video sharing service on Twitter, TwitVid which is cofounded by Mohammad Al Adham from Jordan and Adil Lalani from Pakistan, and he said that he never knew about them but he will start reading their API to see if he can add TwitVid to the list of twitter services supported by him.

I also asked Mustafa if he is willing to support Twitter’s regional clone from Jordan, WatWet, but it turned out that he hasn’t heard about them either. He added that he will read their API and consider the idea.

With this Launch, Twitter will become even more popular in the Arab world, especially as AC broke Twitter talks to strike SMS deals with major operators in the Arab region. In addition, Twitter did another recent SMS deal in India. Not so good of a news for WatWet!

I do not understand why some people clone something famous, well this is somehow the case of WeziWezi, the new twitter like microblogging, 1 to 1 and group messaging project that was just launched in Beta stage from Amman, Jordan.

Right now, WeziWezi has the same features you already find on Twitter and its other regional clone WatWet but with less user friendly Interface: You can follow and unfollow, @messages, direct message and favorites. Also on WeziWezi, you can upload photos to your timeline; which is available on WatWet, as for Twitter photo upload is available via third party apps like Twitpic and Flikcr.

WeziWezi differs in the following:

1- Right now WeziWezi has worldwide SMS notifications you will get free 10 or 20 messages per month but you you have to buy credit for more and it works with all operators worldwide (I have not tested this feature) , but you cannot update your status via SMS (planned within 3 months.) Twitter on the other hand has no Free SMS notifications in the Arab world yet, though this might to be coming soon. As for WatWet, SMS notifications is limited in Jordan to one operator: Zain,  Jawwal in Palestine, MTC Touch Lebanon, STC and Zain KSA in Saudi Arabia.
2- Location Based social media (LBS)is not functioning right now, Ameer Omari the founder of WeziWezi told ArabCrunch, that he is going to launch this feature within a week, where people can know where their friends are right now on the map (using Google maps API) At the first stage he will do this via tracking your IP, later it can be done manually and as well as via Mobile apps . He also said that there will be location privacy settings, where users can show their location to their friends only.
This Sounds like Brightkite, right? Close to Google Latitude?!

3- IM support: this feature is what Twitter had , which later was canceled because of the high costs of server hosting that are associated with providing the service. WeziWezi , according to Amir will have this feature within 3 or 6 month. The IMs notifications he said will include: @s and direct messages, and all the updates of the people you follow.

4- Groups: Twitter has no groups the same for WatWet, which is a killing point to many users, though it is available via third party apps which is not provide friendly solution because you need to setup a new group and add users , every time you use a new app, plus there is an API update limit, so the more groups you add the more you consume your limits. WeziWezi groups on the other hand, will be public and can be followed and joined by anyone and anyone can start one.
5- Threaded replies: one of the beauties of FriendFeed is threaded replies. Twitter does not have this feature nor WatWet. WeziWezi is planning to add this feature within 1 to 2 weeks.

6- Native Mobile apps: Ameer told me that WeziWezi will launch 2 Mobile applications: one based on Flash light and the other based on Symbion S60 third and second edition. Users will be able to use all WeziWezi features on them plus they will be used for location tracking ( he can use WeNear API for help in this regard). Twitter does not have an official mobile app, however 10s or more apps are available in virtually all mobile devices via third party developers. WatWet has plans to launch mobile apps with no clear launch date.

Finally, WeziWezi has a public API (both Twitter and WatWet have this too) and will launch its Arabic Interface within 6 months as Amir told me. He also said he is targeting Arab users.

Good Luck WeziWezi, tough market to compete at. Early Arab Tech adaptors already using Twitter now, I think it is hard to switch them over WeziWezi, what do you think?

Ameer Omari 25 year’s old freelance developer from Amman, Jordan. WeziWezi is his part time project.

Twitter logo

Update: (Sorry guys there was miss understanding, It is a source/s inside and outside Zain who confirmed that Zain is in talks with Twitter for SMS notifications deal across their branches in the region. As for Zain PR they wrote on an email, that SMS connections are under discussion with different social networking services and No date is set yet. Again other sources also tipped ArabCrunch that Twitter is in talks with other operators in the Arab region for SMS deals (more about this soon.) You might probably know that Twitter is publicly interested to get it 2-way SMS up and running on Iraq. (read Time magazine story about Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, last April visit to Iraq under the sponsorship of the US government.) Iraqi Mobile Operators AsiaCell  on their part declined to provide information to ArabCrunch when I asked them questions regarding any deal with Twitter, saying: “can’t provide you with such information for it is confidential.” You can draw your own conclusion out of this answer. AsiaCell  is one of 3 mobile operators in Iraq: Zain Iraq and Korek.)

Twitter ended last year  its free out bound SMS in bound notifications  to users worldwide excluding 3 countries because it costs them around 1000 USD per user/year. But now it is using the global media buzz they are getting to snap cheap or free deals with Mobile operators around the world, including the Arab world, ArabCrunch learned.

Kuwait based Zain the 3rd largest mobile operator in the world with a commercial presence in 24 countries, has confirmed (Update: a source/s inside Zain has confirmed) to ArabCrunch that they Zain is in talks with Twitter for SMS notifications deal across their branches in the region. Other source/s have also told ArabCrunch that Twitter is in trying to strike 2 ways SMS deals with more operators in the region . (I am following up on this  and will update you on AC.)

Update: It was Zain PR who said on a previous  email that no launch date is set yet, and that things are still under discussion (Update: with different social networking.) Zain refused to comment on the details of the discussions, however I expect the Twitter 2 way SMS deal if agreed on will include short local codes and will not cost Twitter a penny.

WatWet new Logo

On the other hand, WatWet the regional Microblogging and messaging startup that has more members than Twitter in the region, has very recently added new local numbers for receiving SMS notifications with more 7 regional operators  after Zain Jordan: Jawwal in Palestine, MTC Touch Lebanon, STC and Zain KSA in Saudi Arabia, Etisalat in Egypt, Etisalat and Du in United Arab Emirates. WatWet also now broke from Friending into the following methods with private profiles and “@” messages.

In the Arab world Zain operates in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq , Saudi Arabia and Sudan as Zain, and in Lebanon as mtc touch (under a management contract). And now in Palestine via Zain Jordan’s recent merger with Paltel. Paltel is the only Palestinian fixed and mobile (‘Jawwal’) operator ( Paltel has a base of 1.5 million active mobile customers and over 363,000 fixed line customers, as well as approx 78,000 ADSL customers as of March 31, 2009. Zain Jordan, has over 2.35 million active mobile customers. The merger is expected to generate over US$1 billion of revenues this year.)

Zain operates in 24 Arab and African countries with a workforce of over 15,000 providing a comprehensive range of mobile voice and data services to over 69.5 million. It operates in the following countries: Bahrain, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Iraq, Jordan, Kenya, Kuwait, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. In Lebanon, the company manages the network on behalf of the government operating as mtc-touch. In Morocco, Zain in a joint venture owns 31% of Wana Telecom.
Zaina achieved in its the half-year ending 30 June 2009: Consolidated Revenues of US$4.014 billion a 37% increase , and a Net Income US$533.5 million a 4.4% increase.

#You can follow ArabCrunch on Twitter: @ArabCrunch on WatWet: @ArabCrunch

Twtri.com developed by Laith Yousi from Iraq, was announced few days ago at GIGAOM‘s  Structure 09 event as one of 2 U.S. grand prize winners for Microsoft’s newCloudApp() – The Azure Services Platform Developer Challenge- . The contest winners were judged by 2 industry leaders Om Malik (founder of GIGAOM) and Michael Cote. ( Submission deadline is on July 9 for the International contest of newCloudApp() opens tomorrow.)

Twtri is a very simple why to keep our friends and family updated on twitter, facebook or email automatically with your flight status,  such as when your plane depart, arrived or if there is any delays in the flight. The web app is useful because it saves you the time and the effort of sending SMSs, Tweets or emails, especially if Internet and phone services were not available at the plane.

I asked Laith to give me an example of what type of info Twtri will update the user’s status with, he said:

“Before the flight depart it will show a message on your twitter like this “DL73 scheduled to depart John F. Kennedy International Airport @ 7:05 PM”

After it depart it will show:

“DL73 en route & scheduled to land on SFO International Airport @ 10:58 PM(earliar 5 Minutes)”

if the flight is delayed in the air, it will show:

“DL73 en route & scheduled to land on SFO International Airport @ 11:18 PM(delayed 15 Minutes)”

after it land it will show:

“DL73 Landed in SFO International Airport @ 11:20 PM(delayed 17 Minutes)”

So the process is keeping the status of the flight updated.

( DL73: flight number, 11:01is the airport time.)

He also said that it also updates if there is multi-leg flight (when ever your flight connects with another flight.)

As for the future plans for Twtri, he said he has plans to integrate it with other services as he sees needed. And plans to develop APIs so developers can provide the features of Twtri on their own services or websites. (Twtri currently gets its flight info from flightstats.com)

According to Laith, the monetization model will be: sponsorship on the website and the renting the service to clients who can have Twtri services as part of their offerings. However he said that it will be always free for users.

Kevin Rohling’s IMPULSELIVE a mobile GPS based exercises tracking and sharing service also shared the grand prize  of  newCloudApp  with Twtir. Azure is a .NET cloud platform where applications are hosted and run at Microsoft datacenters. Azure competes with Google App Engine, Heroku and RackspaceCloud.

(Note: I am not flying to Indonesia.)

I had few questions for H20 New Media in light with their first funding round, Steve Vaile – Founder & CEO of H20 New Media answered me, then I followed with some more via email. So I thought to put them all here. Many thanks to Steve for answering them.

AC: who is your competition in the region in each of your product and service?

We have one main product and that’s social media communities, to that basis there are no other companies I am aware of in the region doing what we are doing, globally Kick Apps, Mzinga and a couple of others. We have a number of our own communities that we will be deploying across the region focused on specific functions and vertical market applications, we also offer white label applications that we are building into the H2O partner network.

AC: list of all platforms and services?

Lots, our own Dubai Lime, Clipo, Events Gossip, Promos in our partner network AdNation, Dubaimums Club, Adrenaline Sports Live, Custom-Nation and many more in development with partners – however the funding marks a significant shift to our own vertically focused platforms.

AC: You intended according to your press release to close partnership deals with Mobile operators in the region : partnerships in mobile advertising or Content distribution for your white-label social media platforms? explain please?

More to come on this later, but surface to say we have a large number of social media applications that drive mobile revenue from SMS Services, MMS Services, Mobile Location Based Services, Content Consumption and Application Notification – Our focus is to the VAS (Value Added Service) provider of a mobile operator * Run all of these cool social media applications branded under your mobile brand and share the revenue whilst generation more data traffic and revenues and of course and most importantly providing really super cool applications for your users.

AC: So your white label Social Networking platform is B2C (business to consumer) not E2E?

Its B2B B2C C2C E2E – depending on the client requirement.

AC: In the platforms and services you listed , you said it is done with partners? what does that mean are they joint ventures, or they pay you?

They are customers – our customers are always partners because although they pay for the platform we then introduce them into the network.

AC: Mobile Location Based Services: you will develop mobile location based social network whitelabel platform? or what?

Nope this markets gone – We will integrate into the LBS platform of an operator and use data to trigger actions for a clients service – that’s a future, data correlation for social media is also very interesting – putting the them all together where a company can use standard open source product, plus some of our software, plus some services to for example send a user a message (That they want and have requested) when they walk past a store (that they are interested in) to send them a special offer or provide them with a loyalty benefit is very very interesting – with the large amount of data volume correlation is going to be very critical.

AC: You developed  MINT CMS  in what Language ? PHP 5 MySQL? .Net?  

 Its PHP based LAMP Environment with the CMS based on the popular Joomla CMS – MINT is a fork of Joomla – We are also porting our community engine to.

AC: What about SODA CMS? also i need a link to SODA CMS website.

 Soda we haven’t published information yet – but Soda contains our community engine and database structure which is H2O developed software.

AC: Hosting for both? SaaS? self hosted? or both?  

It’s a SaaS platform – both platforms are SaaS.

AC: Can you send me the list of the key features?

Community Website – SMS Engine – Location Based Services Platform – Plus H2O free fields data structure based on SQL . 

AC: What is your Social Networking platform key advantage to your global competitors? ex: Drupal, SharePoint, Mazinga, Awareness , Socialtext, socialcast?  

We don’t view these as competitors – We are currently working at porting our social engine and data services to Drupal and EZ Publish – The CMS is really independent.

AC: How did you came up with the idea of H20 New Media? Do you have co-founders? if so who? 

We started an open mic in Dubai to provide a place for original music artists to play their music, then we developed a social community for that – then people asked us to develop their social communities – that’s how H2O was started.

AC: When you started H20 new media what type of funding did you use? self, angel? and how much?

 My own personal funding, around 500,000 USD give or take.

AC: What was your biggest challenge when you started?

 Finding the right qualified and committed staff was the biggest challenge – Cashflow Cashflow Cashflow is the next – getting a balance on cashflow is the most important thing to get right.

AC: Where you from originally? UK?

Yes from the UK, been in the region for 5 years this time, spent quite a lot of time in Oman, France and Trinidad before that so I would say more global than British these days

AC: As an English entrepreneur in the Arab world, did/do you face any difficulties? 

No but then I am quite Arabised in the fact that I have been and grown up in the region when I was very young.

AC: H20 is profitable now?  

Yes H2O is profitable on paper – that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to watch it like a hawk to ensure that it stays that way.

AC: What advice do you offer Arab tech entrepreneurs?  

Be very careful of people that say they will help you and then charge high rates for their services, we had a potential Investor turn into a company that just sold is overpriced consultancy – watch cashflow and ensure you implement core systems such as CRM and finance.

We talked before about solutions that let you get out bound Twitter SMS  back after Twitter ended its SMS service in most of world, but most of the solutions offered  are paid.  Though there are other MicroBlogging platforms which offer SMS updates, regionally WatWet and Location-Based BrighKite .

Now with Twe2 you can get Twitter SMS updates for free, but only the @s and the Direct messages (DM) plus search terms you define to follow on Twe2 website.

Twe2 service is available in many Arab countries such as Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. It also supports many European and other countries in the world. (full list here)

This is great news, but we miss the updates from people we follow, I Hope they get that soon.

Why Free? Twe2 out bound SMS is free because it is ad supported, which is their business model.

I have been using the service for few days now, I defined few search terms to get them on SMS such as TechCrunch Mashable and ReadWriteWeb, but the problem is that whenever someone retweets any of their posts they are sent to my phone which drives me crazy! Though you can define how many SMS tweets you can get from Twe2 in each hour, I defined 10 which are delivered to me in the first minute of each hour, So I canceled the Search terms.

Having @s and DMs delivered to you is very useful way to be alerted in the go about who is reaching you, Though as I mentioned above, I would like to get updates from few interesting tweetarars such as TechCrunch and Mashable while I am in the go, so I stay updated up to the minute with the tech news all the time.

I just emailed Twe2 if they would bring that feature to the table, at least they SMS updated to a maximum of 10 people.

In another related news Twitter has brought back 2-way  SMS to Canada using Bell Mobility. 

Yesterday I visited Citex Software’s ( the company behind Adhere) office office in Cairo Egypt, met its founder and CEO Hussein F. Salama also met with Citex team. We spent  many hours talking about Adhere, mobile advertising and starups in the Arab word. He also displayed to me Adhere and showed me a
demo of how it works. This post profiles in general Adhere, As you can get better insight of the Platform when Citex Software demo Adhere during ArabCrunch DEMO next February.

Adhere the free open source mobile advertising platform which consists of a suite of software products that serve the needs of the mobile advertising industry.

Adhere beta was released recently, its core is the free open-source Adhere Ad Server. The platform also includes the Adhere User Profiles Server which is key to Adhere’s ad targeting capabilities. Adhere Ad Server is built on the popular open source ad server, OpenX.

OpenX and Citex Software are currently working together to build a group of community members, to help push forward mobile functionality as this blog post by OpenX mentioned.

In Adhere, the server works in similar way to OpenX ( which I am test currently)  for example advertiser may have multiple campaigns. Each campaign may consist of multiple ads. Adhere supports a variety of ad formats to serve different mobile advertising channels. Campaigns and ads may be targeted in order to be more effective.

For example, SMS advertising: both text and pics ads can be embedded inside person-to-person SMS or server-generated SMS. MMS advertising: pics, audio and video. Mobile web advertising: banners with stats. Advertising in audio calls such as inside voice mail and ring tones: this work for example when you receive a call, the ring tone plays an ad. The server offers also Advertising in video calls, idle screen advertising … etc.

Adhere Ad Server presents a comprehensive set of ad targeting and selection criteria. These criteria include: Time of day, Day of week, Ad language: English and Arabic currently supported, Maximum ad size, Recipient’s mobile number or number prefix, Recipient’s age, Recipient’s gender, Recipient’s purchasing power, Recipient’s location, Recipient’s handset type, Keywords describing the recipient’s interests.

Adhere offers more mobile advertising control to the advertiser, the publisher and the mobile operator, for example each campaign has a budget, specified as the number of impressions to be served. In addition, the advertiser may specify a daily limit on the impressions served for a campaign.

Citex Software was founded in early 2007. Adhere is Citex Software’s first product. The company specializes in custom software development and has clients from USA  and the UK.

If you are outside USA, Canada and UK, you no longer can get your twitter friends update via SMS, though a number of starups came along to offer you twitter SMS but with hefty charge per SMS. Well that change now if you use Brightkite (BK)- which is still in privet beta- because BK now supports international SMS updates via a UK number, in-bound SMS receiving is free, I keep getting them! (I have 30 invites thanks to Martin May cofounder of BK, please leave a comment below this post with your valid email address)

Brightkite is a location based social network, I reviewed it few months ago here and where I gave them some ideas based on a startup project I wanted to do. BK basically lets you update your location via SMS and web, and get Free SMS or web updates from your friends locations and blurbs; you can also see who of your friends is near you via the both platforms, and get to know and meet real people around you.  On BK you can also post photos via mobile email, email or web and see what your friends has posted. So basically the application is twitter plus facebook but location aware.

Brightkite has taken some of my advice lately; they added comments on photos, and users’ status update. But no sign for video updates yet! Other adds include tabs for: Updates from me and Friends, around me, mentions, comments and universe (Updates of everyone in the community). The most recent BK’s redesign includes instant updates from the universe on BK’s homepage, Ajaxly done, which is cool  and much better than hitting refresh all the time!, with a cool new homepage design. Though these ajaxy features seems  not to work when you login!

Also BK is finally currently testing a native iPhone app, which they have been late releasing  it (you can throw tomatos at Martin there ). Moreover BK has now some cool applications that works with it via its API, such as Guess My location right from your Wi-Fi connected laptop, powered by Geode and  Loki and Brightkite Map Visualization with SpatialKey (Brightkite Map Visualization with SpatialKey)  Though the missing app I am waiting for is desktop  AIR app and support for Twhril. since the current AIR app socialAddict is not cool at all.

If you wonder what is BK business model since twitter does not have one. Well it is location based advertising that caters to any business from big corporate and mom and pop shops. let’s say you’re a coffee shop owner, you can send SMS ads to people around several blocks away from you announcing happy hour with discount via BK.

Again do not forget to leave a comment with a valid email so I send you the invites.

Watwet the micro blogging & social networking Arabian clone of Twitter has launched a new design today with some new features. ( I have reviewed watwet in the past here)

What is new:

The new design is very nice, sleek and straightforward, I personally like it. And it seems other wawaters did. The new design also comes with a number of pre-built themes.

Huda a watwet users even demanded more:

can we have a dynamic design that changes automatically according to time of day, in the morning and at nite (night)? nice font btw (by the way.)

.

Now Mobily’s customers (the second Saudi mobile operator) can send and receive SMS updates, as well it has been the case for Jordan’s Mobile operator Zain’s customer. But if using any other mobile operator in Jordan KSA or anywhere worldwide you can only now send SMS updates.

Other new features include:  a Badge similar to Twitter’s badge which allows you to embed your wawets updates to your blog or any website, be it your updates or your friends, also a new Facebook app and statistics which list all the user activity stats, such as: number of watwets, friendship request , ..etc.

Public  timeline has been added with latest, featured, and channels: which now has Play FM ( A customer to  Ahmad Humeid’s  other company, he is the CEO of iToot Corp the owner of Wawet and Ikbis) and  Shopping guide. But both at the moment are not functioning. Though this shows that Wawet is introducing social media to businesses so they use it as a marketing tool,  thus watwet will in turn make money.

What is missing:

Wawet’s -as I said before- main differentiation to twitter is its 2 way MMS service and its Arabic interface. Also as I said before Watwet might have benefited from Twitter ending out-bound SMS services to Arabia and most of the world. But anyways Twitter with around 2 million users has not gone main stream in USA yet, let alone in the Arab world!

Though since Watwet 2 way SMS service is limited to Zain’s customers in Jordan, and now Mobily in KSA, there is no real value for users like me in using the service. Plus there is no desktop app that can let me receive and send updates like Twhirl does with Twitter, identica and seesmic. It is really annoying to keep hitting refresh to see latest friends updates or to get my email spammed with tens of updates per day.

Actually by looking at watwet’s timeline it tells you that usage rates seems to be very low with few updates from only few users per day.

I have sent a watwet to Ahmad Humeid with few questions but he did not answer.

TweetSMS has been launched today after around a week of internal testing, the launch was scheduled yesterday, but apparently they had some hiccups which lead to delaying the launch to today.

As reported by ArabCrunch last week, TweetSMS enables Twitter’s users who no longer can get SMS notifications from Twitter in countries outside USA, Canada, and India.

TweetSMS messages are paid for by credits. 1 Credit = 1p (1 pence in Great British Pounds), which will be converted from your local currency when you purchase them. So If your country is listed as 5 credits, a single SMS message would cost you 5p (or equivalent). Message bundles are currently available in quantities of 100 credits, 200 credits, 500 credits and 1000 credits.

The service is available in 190 countries with different fees. For example fees for some Arab countries are:  Jordan, Oman, Qatar , Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen , Bahrain, Egypt, and Libya Arab Jamahiriya  4 credits.  U.A.E , Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon  5 credits, Morocco  7 credits , while Kuwait  8 credits.
For non Arab countries Australia, Denmark and Japan 4 credits, Norway 5 credits, France and Italy 8 credits.
To view TweetSMS full price list go here.

Another service that enables Twitter 2 way SMS in countries that do not have it for free is twitMobile which is already live since around a week or so, twitMobile seems to have cheaper rates than TweetSMS in some countries. They have same credit charge, 1 penny per credit. The following countries have cheaper rates than TweetSMS: UAE, Kuwait, and Norway 4 credits, while Australia 3 credit, full countries price list can be found here.

ZygoTweet  is another solution for SMS Tweeting, but they have not launched yet.
In Jordan it will cost me 4 Penny per message with TweetSMS, around 6 Jordanian Piaster. Which is the same price for sending SMS to an international mobile  number, while to a Jordanian mobile number it cost 3 Piaster , though the price is reasonable, I’d rather wait tell TweetSMS or any other startup enable free ad supported SMS. But If I get a Zain Jordan number I might use Watwet reviewed earlier by ArabCrunch here.

UPDATES Look at the end of this post.

I wrote few hours a post about Twitter ending its UK SMS receiving service thus blocking most of the world. On Twitter every one not in USA, Canada, and India is complaining
Few minutes after publishing my last post I was followed by TweetSMS which aims to solve the SMS problem for Twitter, and bring back the smile to Twitter’s International users.

So I emailed few questions to the company behind it (which is stasismedia ) and from them Craig Mason answered some of questions but not all.

TweetSMS will act as a third part for Twitter user, enabling them to send and receive SMS updates.
The service will initially be UK based (where the developers are from there), but they have plans to expand Internationally without increasing costs.

TweetSMS  will charge a small few to cover the service cost. But they are still considering offering free ad supported version of the SMS service, according to Mason, the ads characters  length will depend on an interval based on the level of messages received.

Mason added that TweetSMS is working with International SMS provider (who has direct relationships with global telcos) which will help them expand the service, and introduce Location-based-services (LBS).

Mason had an advanced notice about Twitter plans to end SMS:

We didn’t realize that Twitter were going to cut the cord so quickly – we had heard that 20th August was the date

TechCrunchUk said that European companies are welling to pay some fee to receive SMS updates, but some others like me would rather wait for the free version of TweetSMS.

Mason did not tell me when the service will be available, but he said:

the main priority is to launch a (the) service quickly and efficiently to bridge the gap for Twitter users.

Update1: TweetSMS few minutes ago posted FAQ :
Beta test open very shortly, they also plan to translate all elements of the site into local languages, to give the best possible access for international users.

Update  2:

Craig Mason explains more about Free Twitter receiving SMS

RE: Advertising. This is (at the moment) still just a concept. If advertising-based notifications are established, it will likely entail a series of ‘whole-message’ adverts. (For example, for every 20 messages you receive, you will also receive 1 advert).

International Twitter users received a message from Twitter stating that Twitter is no longer delivering outbound SMS over its UK number, which is the number that was used for UK users and to users in the rest of the world to receive and updates “tweets.”

By this move most of the world including the Arab world won’t get Free SMS updates from their Twitter friends.

Why Twitter is doing this? Hefty Cost:

Mobile operators in most of the world charge users to send updates. When you send one message to Twitter and Twitter send it to ten followers, you aren’t charged ten times–that’s because Twitter paid the whole bill.
Twitter explains:

When we launched our free SMS service to the world, we set the clock ticking. As the service grew in popularity, so too would the price. Our challenge during this window of time was to establish relationships with mobile operators around the world such that our SMS services could become sustainable from a cost perspective.

Twitter give an estimate of how much a user cost it per year.

Even with a limit of 250 messages received per week, it could cost Twitter about $1,000 per user, per year to send SMS outside of Canada, India, or the US

According to Twitter, their incoming and outgoing SMS service could become sustainable from a cost perspective. in Canada, India, and the United States, because they managed to have deals with mobile operators in these countries.
Twitter said they will continue

To negotiate with mobile operators in Europe, Asia, China, and The Americas to forge relationships that benefit all our users. Our goal is to provide full, two-way service with Twitter via SMS to every nation in a way that is sustainable from a cost perspective. Talks with mobile companies around the world continue

Twitter promised also that they will be introducing several new, local SMS numbers in countries throughout Europe in the coming weeks and months:

These new numbers will make Twittering more accessible for you if you’ve been using SMS to send long-distance updates from outside the UK.

This sad news for many in Europe and few in the Arab world, since only few of the Arab world residents use Twitter, I think less than 5 thousand. It is also sad for me because I was in my way to activate Twitter SMS service

Though this might be a good news for Twitter’s regional competitor WatWet http://wawet.com/arabcrunch (reviewed here), since they will be the only one offering 2 way SMS at least in Jordan, but only with one operator: Zain (Which sucks.) It might be a problem for WatWet because they will have an active competitor trying to do what they are doing: Forging deals with Mobile operator in the region to bypass SMS costs to them.

Never the less WaWet has an advantage over Twitter at least in the Saudi market since they have Arabic interface, which may not be available in Twitter for years to come.

Everyone I know who has a Zain number in Jordan knows about WatWet but only few use it. I do not have Zain number so it is a the Zero-sum game for me, since now I cannot use any of both companies SMS services.

I am a somehow loyal Twitter user (If you are not following ArabCrunch on Twitter do here ), but I would not use SMS services if it will cost money to receive updates as TechCrunch.UK suggested.

I’ll post the opnion of other Twitter users once they answer my tweets.

So please Twitter get a free SMS deal here and please find a business model. WaWet, please do not make exclusive deals with one operator in each country.

Javi is a free mobile social networking service, developed by the Jordanian wireless   applications and software solutions company Javna.

Javi V.1.0 lets you send and receive free messages with your friends locally and around the world. Also it allows you to receive your facebook notifications on your mobile handset at no charge. ( I have not yet tested the service.)

All you have to do is to install and activate small software on your mobile handset to start using the service, and enjoy free SMS messages, but your friends need to have that application too in their handset.

I do not know what is Javna exact business model with here, but does twitter has one anyway? I guess it would be embedding ads on Javi application or within the SMS messages.

That would be true since Javna launched two days ago MobiAd, a mobile advertising platform with multiple delivery channels, (I knew about MobiAd since few months ago when it was under testing with selected advertisers, but for technical reasons I postponed writing about it, however I will  post an analysis about MobiAd very soon.)

I called Javna CEO today to get, his explanations, but all my calls where returned unsuccessfully, I was told he was busy in a meeting.

According to Javi’s website, the future releases of Javi will include, MMS & email composer, inbox, outbox, sent messages & reports, Javi Blog, sending and receiving pictures, and multi language support.

Since few months ago Javna was running periodically facebook ad campaigns for Javi, but the ads were directed to Javi’s website that has very few info, just few words telling you when you to install the mobile app and you’ll get free messages and FB notification, but not how or any other info, there were no tutorials, and no about us page!

This is an example of a wrong launch strategy which I mentioned to Javna’s business development director, Sammy Tuffaha (an ex-IBMer) at the time: You do not expect people to download an application to their mobile if you do not offer them enough information about it and about you.

When I recently checked the website it had more info, but not everything, for example, How to use Javi,   Installation guide, and User Manual sections where empty!

I hope Javna will fix these minor but important pitfalls, and as I promised about MobiAd I’ll try to get you more information from  Javna.

Beside Javi and AdMobi, Javna is working in launching MobiNet, which Javna website has little info about:

Mobinet provides a groundbreaking technology that allows enterprises to enjoy a distinctive and strategic presence on the mobile network .It allows users to utilize their mobile handsets and to access relevant information in the form of text, audio, or video using real time update and content management capabilities over a user friendly interface.

MOSecure has launched mobile marketing solutions with its MAP- Mobile Access Pack. MAP allows advertisers to push bar-coded vouchers and tickets to mobile consumers via SMS.

MOSecure is entering a lucrative market, mobile ad spending will reach $5 billion this year alone, according to eMarketer. A big jump from the nearly $4.1 billion in 2007 -, according to a Nielsen Monitor.

But in the Arab World, most of the  mobile ads where Spamy SMS, I hope MOSecure’s M-Ticketing  has an Opt-in.

MOSecure has 4 applications. Mobile Ticketing, Mobile Couponing, Mobile Access Control and Mobile loyalty.

Mobile Ticketing makes the customer mobile phone the Ticket it self, eliminating the need for paper based tickets that can be lost or purged! It also allows ticket buyers to avoid long lines and enables ticket sellers to eliminate printing and distribution costs-ultimately providing better service to their customers.

This is a very useful tool, that also can eliminate the need to hold dozens of tickets to enter events, cinemas theaters, museums, or to ride a bus, a train, airplane, or boat.

Mobile Couponing. Allows brands to push mobile coupons to consumers, and allowing brands to validate m-coupons, using MOSecure’s specially designed scanners for tracking and profiling true and loyal customers.

Applications of mobile ticketing can include the following:
Incentive Vouchers: Buy 1 get 1 FREE
Discount Vouchers: Avail X% discount at fashion store
Retail Discount Vouchers

Mobile Access Control. It replaces keys, electric cards, bio-metric or any other door access method, with the mobile.

Applications of mobile Access Control can include the following:
Mobile Access Control for secure premises at companies
Hotel can substitute their key cards or traditional keys for guests with unique codes on their mobile phone.
Premium property developers can substitute the bio-metric/traditional door access of building with the mobile phone

Mobile loyalty It replaces loyalty cards with the mobile, loyalty cards that traditionally provide customers with points when purchasing from a company where these points can be redeemed with discounts or free give aways. With Mobile Loyalty from MOSecure, businesses can get real time information about customer’s behavior and buying patterns which are collected every time the mobile loyalty card is used.

This is how it works according to MOSecure
Customer registers for a loyalty programme at a store and receives an individual Data Matrix code turning the mobile phone into a loyalty card. Our hardware scanner is used by the customer in order to collect loyalty points while making purchases or consuming services. The customer simply shows the mobile phone to the scanner, the code is identified and validated in the central database. Any points earned are automatically added to the customers loyalty account. The customer can also convert the points into vouchers and discount coupons redeemable in the same store using the same scanner.

Applications of mobile loyalty can include the following:
Airlines: Loyalty Programs
Trains: Loyalty Programs
Brands: Loyalty Programs

In Jordan there is e-Points, which is a customer rewards program that has dozens of business enrolled, it uses a plastic badge, when ever an enrolled customer buys from an e-points participating business he/she earns points which can be exchanged with products and services at the any of e-points network of businesses, there is a similar company in UAE, so I recommend MOSecure to partner with e-points and any other customer rewards program, so it will be a win-win for MoSecure , the rewards company, participating businesses and the consumers.

Another advice how about being the first company to integrate m-tickting and m-vouchers with Twitter using their APIs? I am not sure if any one did that before, but if done MoSecure will be the first in the Arab World.

MOSecure is based in , Ajman, United Arab Emirates. Established in 2002.

MAP has been developed in partnership with different international companies. One of the companies, Spain’s Daem Interactive, has helped in the development of an image recognition application for MoSecure called Smart Posters.

#MoSecure

Places.ae BlackBerry version allows users to find locations near them by using GPS, making the process of finding locations of restaurants, hotels, shops and so on, more easy and more convenient when on the go.

This move puts places.ae in the LBS (Location Based Services) market, but currently Places.au services are only available in Dubai while more Emirates to be add soon.

Places.ae is a useful, convenient and simple service; it started as a web locations directory for places, submitted by the users, and then expanded into other communications channels such as IM, mobile, and twitter.

Places.ae web interface is very easy to use and straight forward; just type the place (ex. pizza) and where it is near by, while you are typing these entries the web site suggests related words, just like Yahoo search suggestions.

Then Places.ae yields to you the search results where you can click in one of them, once in the place page for example: Oregano, it shows the location on Google map, phone number, descriptions, associated tags, and you can even rate this place and add comments. thus providing users with reviews of each place.

The service does not stop short,  it also provides you with the option to add the place to your favorites so you can find it easily next time. And it lists you at the place page similar places, a way to help you discover more places.

Even though Places.ae is currently useful it can be even more useful if it add more features and services such as: The user can optionally add his default location -such as home and work) on his profile, thereby when searching; he does not have to type his location.  Just type find places near me, and places.ae will retrieve places near his location and how far they are from him. At the same time providing the user with directions to reach that place.

Another one would be adding location based social networking , or possible integration with location based photos and videos from flickr.com and YouTube.com for example when I am at starbucks @ Ibn Battuta Mall page, it would be useful to find photos and videos taken in that location.

I also suggested to Michael Hendrickx the founder of places.ae to add GEO-RSS to the site, allowing users to subscribe to a location’s feed and get that location places update. ( I recommended ArabCrunch sponsor Feedoor to manage the feeds.)

The BlackBerry version has my first suggested feature: it detects the user’s location via GPS to find places near him and it shows how far they are from him. ( my suggestion was for the web)

When the user click the place entry he will see a little static map of the place, And phone numbers are often detected, so it’s very easy to call that place, in case the user wants to.

To access this service you need BlackBerry with GPS device, a mobile data connection and Java script enabled browser.

The BlackBerry version is part of Places.ae ongoing mobile version development , which can also server Windows Mobile and iPhone clients. but for the latter two, places.ae is currently optimizing the interface.

since they have slightly better browsers (and UI) than a BlackBerry.

Before launching the BlackBerry Places.ae launched PAM (Places Answering Machine) to support other communication channels.

Pam is what links the places.ae search engine with other communication channels available on the Internet.

According to places.

Currently PAM supports Gtalk Windows Live Messenger and Twitter. SMS, E-mail and possibly Yahoo! Messenger will be added to PAM soon.

On the future places will launch API

so people can start their own “version” of places.ae”

According to Hendrickx.

Places is the work of Michael Hendrickx -from Belgium is IT security expert who currnelty lives in UAE-   and Spinbits . It was developed using the Rails framework.

I’ve been privileged to receive an invite to Brightekite privet beta a few days ago, for those who do not know the service it is a location based micro blogging and photo sharing social network, my profile is here.

On BrightKite you can use both the web and mobile to send your status update or photos. From the mobile you have to check in your current location using SMS for example: @2911 Walnut St, Denver, CO, from the web you check in to a location by writing it down and when sending your updates your updates is attached to your latest checked in location.

You can send photos via mobile through email: Email your photo to: s1650@bkite.com and enter a caption for your photo in the subject line of the email. The service is mashed up with Google maps. You can also control the privacy of the of your posts, photos, and locations’ visibility.

The beauty about BK, is that you can know the where about of your friends, and the location of their photos and updates, also you can know who is around you at the moment in 20, 200, 2000, and 4000 radius  whether they are your friends or other BK members, using your web browser or your mobile.   if you are using iPhone, BK’s recently launched cool iPhone interface is ideal for you, BK also allows you to link your updates to twitter.

Currently Brightkite only support the following US carriers: AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Nextel and Boost Mobile.

Imagine if Brightkite would add features such as video posting from the web, and mobile with geo-location, enabling users to tag both photos and videos into relevant tags other than location, add comments to them and provide the option to view photos taken in any location, this could be done through SMS, MMS, and a special mobile application (check twitpic.com- BrightKite will launch mobile application for checking in soon) and adding more profile fields that would give more information about the user than the current Brightkite limited profile information.

These features where basically part of an idea of a startup I was planning to launch 2 years ago and the developers who signed my NDAs know a bet about it. (Note to the people who signed the NDA: it is still valid and you cannot use or share its’ content with others specially the other aspects not mentioned here.)

If these features were added, it would open the world to web 3.0 that could be used in a lot of useful ways such as: Trip planning, hanging out, and discovering places and location based instant social networking.

For example you want to visit a certain street in a certain city; you could go and look at the associated photos and videos to that street. Also you can filter them into any tag type you want -Yahoo has a working privet beta project for sharing your location called Fire Eagle and Google added recently Video locations to its’ map- these videos and photos has comments so you can read them or add yours and get a bigger picture of what is going on. Moreover you can see who has visited this location or is already there and send them messages asking them about the best places to go to. At the end of your trip you can post your videos, photos and updates, such as a photo of a Sushi dish from a Japanese restaurant, giving users insights of the restaurant’s food.

Another example is: If you go to an event, and you want to see who is who? you just login via your mobile browser and view the profiles of people around you, just nudge the people you wana connect with, and if they nudge back, you can start a conversation and build a relationship. See TechCrunch story here.
–Disclosure: ArabCrunch is not affiliated with TechCrunch-

Watwet was launched to the public about a 2 months ago After being for a while in privet beta.

The services is similar to twitter, it lets you to send your status update to your friends and receive their updates, via web, email and SMS. Unlike Twitter, on WatWet you can send and receive photos to and from your friends via web and MMS. And the service is available in both Arabic and English. (You can find my profile here.)

How you can use it:

1-For example you want to update your friends about your where about, you just send your wawet via SMS to a predefined number provided by wawet or via the web and all your friends receive your update, on web and SMS if they have activated their mobile number on wawet’s website and wish to follow your updates.

2- You take a cool photo and want to instantly share it with your friends, all you have to do is send it to a predefined number provided by Watwet from your mobile, or via the web and all your friends receive the update instantly via MMS and the web.

At this stage The SMS and MMS service is available in Jordan only and to those who have Zain mobile numbers only, but the web services is available worldwide, and soon Watwet will be available in more countries according to their FAQ.

Think that WatWet chose Zain,  because it is the most popular mobile operator in Jordan, with more than 1.4 million subscribers.

So instead of paying the cost of every SMS and MMS you want to send to each friend, you only pay the cost of one SMS or MMS and all your friends receive your update for free. On the other hand if you update from the web your cost is zero.

One of the neat things I liked about Watwet is that it automatically shorten any URL you enter when you submit your status, so you do not have to go to tinyurl, insert your URL, copy/past your tinyurl and then go to twitter to post it.

Unlike Twitter which has public timeline -status updates- from its’ users, the public updates on Wawet is available only at the front page for non singed in members, you can not see them when you sign in unless they are coming from your friends. I think they did that in order to encourage users to invite and network with their current real world friends, instead of hocking up with new people. But I advice them to enable public wawets, to helps users -like me- to promote their posts! And get answers to questions from the community.

How it can be improved:

Well I will give the idea of a project I had in mind few years ago but I did not implement it – the developers who signed the NDAs know a bet about it. –(Note to the people who signed the NDA, it is still valid and you can not use or share its’ content with other, especially the other aspects not mentioned here –

The basic idea is to make the service location aware, and that requires developing a mobile application that detects the location of the user, or use special SMS tags to check in location.

So once the user sends a photo from his/her mobile it detects his/her location and adds it to the photo properties. Also when sending from the web the user can check-in to the location that matches his/her current one, and the location’s photo is tagged with the location. The same applies to Status updates and videos, sine Watwet is part of  iToot copr,  the services should be also integrated with the other iToot Property: Ikbis.com thus providing photos web and SMS geo-location status updates and social networking, these thing are being implemented now partly by an American startup called BrightKite – to get a better understanding read my next post (How brigthtKite could evolve to web 3.0.)

One other thing they probably know is to open watwet’s API to third party developers so they can to build applications on top of wawet, which would add more value to its users, and would helo wawet  become a defacto standard in the Arab world.

Lastly you can have your own Watwet or Twitter by buying a software that costs a few hundred bucks.  but it is not just the idea, it is execution.