3 years old Jordan based Arabic microblogging platform Watwet has closed down, in a massage posted on the site the site admins says that they are pulling the plug on WATWET and All your information on WATWET will be deleted permanently. However they are offering microblogging service to organizations.

Why did WatWet fail and close? I wrote a detailed analysis back in July 2009 saying that WatWet has a very hard chance to match with Twitter even though it had more members at the time.
In short cloning international site into Arabic is a bad idea for startups. However it works in some markets like group buying where GoNabit copied groupon and ended being sold to LivingSocial as they had the local advantage that LivingSocial did not have.

Saying that cloning international startups is bad idea for Arab entrepreneurs, the question is why local social networks in markets such as Russia and China are doing better than facebook while no single Arabic social network has made it?

Facebook used its translation tool to crowed source its International site wide translation efforts. Where users submit translations and they are voted up or down or others can suggest better translations.

Dakwak a Jordanian startup founded by Waheed Al-Braghouthi former ROR developers with Arabic micro blogging site WatWet, was launched today to help any website to localize to  60+ languages in simple steps.

Webmaster need to create a project for their website choose the languages they want their site to be translated to and then add a code on their website .

Now users can view your site in other languages and participate in improving the translation via signingup on Dakwak website (vote translation up or down, or suggest a new one) Dakwak uses Google translator combined with its own machine translation engine to improve the translation.

In the coming weeks Dakwak will launch widgets that allows user to translate your website without leaving it.

We think Dakwak is a step forward to help localize websites as it saves money and time and we might use it in the future at ArabCrunch.NET

Here is a video in how dakwak works:




Kareem Arafat and his friends at tootcorp, the mother company that launched around 2 years ago WatWet,Twitter’s Arabic clone- has launched a new online project this time around Twitter it self.

The new project called Zoofs features an interface that contains the most popular Youtube videos on Twitter and represent them in a nice interface. Zoofs enables users to run these video without leaving the site and supports HTML 5.

Users on Zoofs site can browse videos by categories ( tech, gaming ..etc.) and filter them by showing only those that were uploaded on YouTube in the past 72 hours. The site also contains recommended videos from team Zoofs .

How does Zoofs find the most popular youtube videos? No specific idea, and as I am in Syria right now, I will email Kareem for an answer.

Zoofs somehow competes with Toot Crops own video sharing site for Arabia: Ikbis and to a degree with Twitvid a realtime video sharing site for Twitter which was launched in May 2009 by Jordanian entrepreneur  Mohammad Al Adham and his cofounders. TwitVid though is based on Silicon Valley, the social site has over 1 millions visits per month and recently launched its Andriod app .

Zoofs is an interesting idea and has some interesting UI concepts, I have stumbled across another site that features your the tweets of people you follow in a magazine style but forgot its URL

The question is, Is Zoofs a signal to the end of WaWet? lets wait for Kareem’s answer.

Updated.

imHalal the a new search engine for Muslims that went live on September 1s.t during the Islamic month of Ramadan has achieved popularity in very short time with around 800,000 visits since its launch.

The new search Engine was which developed by ZSMedia Group a Dutch based startup founded by Reza Sardeha a Kuwaiti-Iranian, uses an opt-in filter to search results that are deemed unilsamic,. The search engine aims to prevent you from “accidentally” bumping into “explicit” content.
So for example if you search for “britney spears” you get a warning message in the result:

“Oops! Your search inquiry has a Haram level of 1 out of 3. This means that the results fetched by ImHalal.com could be haram! ”
However there is a message at the end that says, “If you still think the results will be clean click me!”

iHalal usess what it calls a Haram Rating System, which is based in a two layers of filtering: the first filter analyzes the world wide web and only retainers clean results. The second filter the one that triggers the Haram rating system.

Reza explained to ArabCrunch via email how the Haram Rating system works:

”

When you get a Haram warning of 1 out of 3 this means that the results fetched by ImHalal.com could potentially contain explicit content but if you think the results will be clean you still can continue your search.

When you get a Haram warning of 2 out of 3 this means that the results fetched by ImHalal.com probably will contain explicit content but if your really sure your search will return clean results you can continue your search.

Last but most certainly not least when you get a Haram warning of 3 out of 3 this means that the search results will most certainly contain sexual explicit content and so you can’t continue your search and you are advised to try another search inquiry.”

imHalal pitch its system as designed to facilitate several purposes such as functioning as a warning system, child protection system and to inform Muslims and or Non-Muslims what is supposed to be “Haram” or not according to the Islamic Law.

The search engine counters those who claim that the system is being “a dangerous tool since we are a heavily censored search engine” by saying that they only heavily censor pornographic content and that there is no censorship just content filtering, where the search engine warns you but still you are in charge to determine if you want to see the full results or not.

As for people like the extreme secular Jordanian blogger Ahmad Humeid the cofounder of Toot Corp the company behind iKbis and WatWet, who insults the people behind imHalal on his blog post by calling them “the fanatics / forces of darkness / narrow-minded crazies,” and describes the systems as “it supposedly only returns results in line with some ultra conservative/fanatic interpretation of Islamic teachings.”  Reza replies by saying “Obviously Ahmed hasn’t even tried ImHalal.com and unfortunately Ahmed is ignorant and really doesn’t know what ImHalal.com is all about.  We advice people like Ahmed to visit our blog at: www.imhalal.com/blog so that they can inform themselves before they conclude certain things.”

Reza told ArabCrunch that he got imHalal idea when he was talking about search engines with a couple of his friends where the conversation inspired him “since the conclusion of our discussion was that once in a while accidentally you could bump into explicit content on search engines like Google even though safe search is on. So then we thought we can create a better search engine tailor made for Muslims.”

Reza has more ambitious project for imHalal as he said that he is planning to roll out more extra services like Islamic Widgets, news feeds and that his startup is in the process of making a ImHalal game.

imHalah is self funded but looking for a capital injection, the startup is run by 4 people and uses Bing and Yahoo to do the actual search as Reza told me ( I will update you here in how they use them.) The top 3 countries for imhalal.com in terms of visits are: Turkey, India and Pakistan

Other websites that specialize in “clean” Islamic content include Gummah which like iHalah in search and NaqaaTube an Arabic site that filter content from Youtube Videos deemed unislamic in accordance with “Ahel El Suna Wa El Jamma.” and away from forcing ” extremism or fanaticism ” as the website says.

Update: Reza told me they use Yahoo! BOSS (Build your Own Search Service)  it is Yahoo!’s open search web services platform. Where Developers, start-ups, and large Internet companies can use BOSS to build and launch web-scale search products that utilize the entire Yahoo! Search index. BOSS gives you access to Yahoo!’s investments in crawling and indexing, ranking and relevancy algorithms, and powerful infrastructure.

Unfortunately BOSS might die with Yahoo’s Suicidal Deal with Microsoft in which Bing will power Yahoo’s search .

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

Again, I am sorry for not updating since a while part because I am preparing for the launch of ArabCrunch Arabic version and also for being busy with other projects. However this is an interesting post I hope you will enjoy it:

According to a recent research by SpotOnPR a leading regional PR agency, Twitter‘s growth rate in the Arab world, was 261% in Q2, at around 12,266 users, the fastest growth rate for Twitter in the region.

On the other hand WatWet the Jordanian based Arab clone to Twitter, which was launched in 2008, has around 25,000 users mostly in Jordan with a growth rate of 25% since March.

WatWet recently launched its API and redesigned the site enabling follow and unfollow, before it was like friend adding on facebook, they also recently integrated with Twitter. This post looks at the differences between WatWet and Twitter and will examine the findings of the research and compare them to WatWet .

(Note: according to Karim Arafta CEO of WatWet website will be unstable until Thursday because they are moving the server.)

1- Features:

Web:

On Twitter, you can update your status up to 140 characters you can also ?reply to anyone on Twitter via “@” , the message is sent to an “@username” inbox that essentially collects all @ messages with your user name. Keep in mind the @ message is not private, it will appear ?in your public timeline, whereas a “direct message or DM” is a message solely intended for you and no one else can see them. These messages are preceded by a ?D? and are collected in a “Direct Message” inbox.

Unlike Facebook where a friend has to accept your befriending request before you see his/her updates, Twitter you can follow a person and it is up to them to decide to follow you back. Once you follow someone that user’s “stream/updates” go directly to your homepage. ?Again you are able to @ reply or message if a user is not following you but you can not DM anyone unless they are following your updates.

Just like Twitter WatWet’s offers you also the 140 characters limit. As mentioned in the first paragraph recently WatWet redesigned their site enabling the follow and unfollow feature whereas before it was like friend adding on facebook.

WatWet also has an “@” function but not an “@” inbox tab. Yet,?Karim has assured me this feature will be available as soon as next Thursday and will also be called “replies” in English and “Roduod” in Arabic. Similar to Twitter’s DM feature; WatWet has “WashWihses” (whispers) which works almost the same way but once you hit a washwish button, your followers list pops up, and you can choose to DM several followers at one time. This is very useful as with Twitter you may only DM one follower at a time.

Another difference WatWet has, is you are able to directly upload a picture to your timeline (it also can go to MMS.) While with Twitter you must use a separate web app.

WatWet also has Channels to subscribe to, according to Karem, they are going to cancel the channels and rename them suggested users.
As for Privacy both WatWet and Twitter offer a protected profile option this is where your updates are only available to people you have approved to follow your watwets or tweets (updates). **Note: your updates DO NOT appear in the public timeline**.

SMS and MMS:

You can send SMS updates on Twitter from any country in the world, this is possible via an International UK number. Last year Twitter has stopped supporting inbound SMS worldwide, but Recently Twitter has started to role out support for more countries to its 2 way SMS : USA, Canada, UK via Vodafone and O2, Sweden, New Zealand And Germany . Though until now, no Arab country is supported, unless with a growing number of startups who offered paid in-bound SMS updates to most of the world including a lot of Arab countries. Although it don’t last long Twet2 was launched late February, offering free in-bound SMS updates, but soon shut down!

On WatWet, 2 Way SMS and MMS updates are available only in one Jordan operator (Zain Jordan) while SMS sending is available world wide via a UK number. You can send updates via one operator in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) “Mobily”. The good news- by next week WatWat will support more countries for receiving updates but with no localized number, including Egypt (Itasalat), UAE (Itasalat) and Du. (Unlike USA the mobile companies do not charge for receiving SMS)

APIs and apps:

Twitter has released its APIs long ago, which led to the creation of an eco-system made of thousands of web, desktop and mobile apps. This Eco-system was one of the main factors that has made Twitter more useful and led to the tremendous growth. On the other hand WatWet has been slow in releasing APIs, until few days ago but still no third party apps released yet. (If you know of any please let me know.)

Desktop:

To me, and I think to most people the AIR based third part Desktop apps such as TweetDeck and SeesmicDesktop and gmail Twitter Gadget, are the apps that made Twitter really useful and made us use it, why? Because in these apps, you get your Twitter updates in near real-time, which is much better than hitting F 5 over and over to refresh Twitter webpage with updates, nevertheless there is an API update limit of 100 API’s an hour forced by Twitter, which tends to expire quickly in my time line.

We are still waiting for WatWet to release a Desktop app, although they have assured me it is coming soon. I do not know what has made them late in this? Maybe someone will develop it for them, or maybe TweetDeck will do them a great favor by supporting them.

Mobile:

We are now in the Mobile 2.0 era, where your mobile is inter connected with the web via mobile apps and widgets, whether the connection is WIFI, 3G or GPRs. Twitter Mobile apps are available in nearly every smart phone and developed by third party developers (using its API). This has made us interconnected with the world all in real-time. In contrast, there are no Mobile apps supporting WatWat yet, the Jordanian startup has already developed iPhone and Nokia S60 app and plans to launch them soon, but again I do not know why they are still late in this.

Arabic Support:

WatWet had an Arabic interface since day one, but 2 apps have released Arabiztion for Twitter:arTwitter a RTL web Interface for Twitter developed by A Mohamad AL Rahaili from KSA and TwitterFox a RTL Firefox Add-0n that lets you update via your tab Arabized by Mazen A. Melibari.

2- Stats:Twitter (12,266 members in the Arab world) vs. WatWet (25,000 members).

Users and Growth:

Twitter growth in the Middle East and North Africa over the past few months has jumped up from 100% to nearly 300% according to SpotOnPR press release with 12,266 Twitter users registered in the Arab world, while Watwet has around 25 thousands members with a growth rate since March 2009 of 25% according to Karim “Every 9 months we double the subscribers.”

Arab Countries:

According to SpotOnPR research, Gulf Cooperated Council (GCC) countries currently have 8,212 registered Twitter users with the UAE accounting for about 60% of all GCC users. In common with Facebook usage across the region, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have the three largest Twitter communities, accounting for 1,741 users, 1,405 users and 4,952 users respectively. At the end of 2008, the GCC had less than one thousand Twitter users in total. While the vast majority of WatWet members are from Jordan at 90% rate.

Demographics:

Carrington Malin the cofounder of SpotOnPR told ArabCrunch we’ve seen changes in demographic uses, he added, last year it was people close to tech and web industry. beginning this year we see more journalist, and people involved in media, PR and marketing. -

In my part I also see more people with general interest tweeting specially in KSA.

WatWet, demographics are different, as 90% of its users are from Jordan, east Amman (which has a lower income rates than the west Amman) is around 60%, and it has more members at the ages between 25-35, people of the ages between 18-25 comes second. It looks like WatWet’s vast majority of users are not tech savvy.

Actual users:

Internationally, a research by Web security SaaS company Purewire published on ReadWriteWeb on June 6, 2009, Found out:

”

• 40 percent of Twitter users have not tweeted since their first day on Twitter (i.e., the account was most likely created and subsequently forgotten about).
• Approximately 25 percent of Twitter users are not following anyone, while two-thirds are following less than 10 people (i.e., the account was created but is not actually being used regularly).

• Twitter is used more as a mass medium for receiving information, rather than as a way to interact with others. Proof is shown by evaluating the followers and friends of Twitter users.”

Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch explained:

“The adoption cycle for Twitter is a bit strange. It goes something like this: Ever-increasing waves of hype, links, and attention bring in the newbies to Twitter.com where they get their first taste of Twitterdom. Some portion of those set up an account out of curiosity or a fear of being left behind. They try sending out a few Tweets, look around, get bored by the initial banality of the service and abandon it for other pursuits.

But that is not the end of it. A lot of them come back, either because they keep getting links from friends or keep hearing about it on TV or whatever, and then they slowly start to see the usefulness a funny Tweet from a friend, a link to breaking news, a way to keep an eye on the general zeitgeist. Twitter is the kind of thing that is easier to experience than it is to explain. But it is an acquired taste and often requires repeated exposure before people get hooked. Once they do get hooked, there is no going back.”

In the Arab world, there are no accurate numbers to indicate the actual Twitter users in the region, however Carrington said that from his general experience he sees people in UAE being active in Twitter updating their status with ” what they are doing, stories, gossip, ReTweets, links, etc. ” though I saw many Arab users on Twitter who are inactive but I cannot offer an accurate percentage.

According to Carrington, as UAE is has the hightes twitter members in the region, English tweets is more represented on Twitter, because its is full of expats. In my part I add that also many early tech Adaptors in the region know English and feel ok tweeting using it.

In Contrast, Karim told ArabCrunch that WatWet has 10% active members, he considers a non active user if they do not update for 2 weeks. But By looking at the WatWet’s timeline and compare them to my Arab Twitter users time line I have, It is very clear that active updates on Twitter in the region are much, much more than WatWet. In fact many updates on WatWet public time line are updated via Twitter accounts.

Karim does note that most of his base is receiving SMS updates (70% confirmed their mobile.) however if nobody is updating then they won’t receive updates. However, From my experience by looking at Twitter updates SMS updates via Twitter, SMS seems not to be popular with Twitter users in the Arab world; probably because the only way to get SMS updates from Twitter is to pay for them.

Twitter Growth attributes in the Arab world:

Twitter Growth Attributes in the Arab world, are similar to the Attributes for its growth worldwide, however a number of incidents were more specific to the region:

1-War On Gaza: Since the Media were blocked of entering Gaza by the Israely Goverment, Twitter was one of the few sources of news about what is happening in Gaza. That made the media regionally to talk about Twitter for the first time, Aljazeera even launched Crowdsourced Mapping Mashup For The War On Gaza integrated with Twitter.

Moreover, Arab and Muslim bloggers along with their International counter parts used Twitter to mobilize and Tweet to counter the Israeli army twitter robots accounts spams and its claims on Twitter.

2- Celebrities joining twitter Like Queen Rania of Jordan and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid of Dubai.

3- The Recent Incidents in Iran, this was the major event that led to the media in the Arab world and all over the world to mention Twitter extensively, specially when the U.S. government asked Twitter to reschedule its maintenance. For example Aljazeera’s popular live talk show “Minbar Al AlJazeera” featured an episode about new media and Iran focusing in Twitter.

4-Aljazeera Integrating Twitter to its Minbar Aljazeera talk show.

5- Regional companies doing promotions and give aways on Twitter: Carrington emailed me the following examples:

• Dubai92 FM radio DJ Catboy who presents Dubai92′s breakfast show now uses Twitter extensively to communicate with his radio audience and run competitions and promotions (since Feb).
• Intercontinental Dubai Festival City has been running competition campaigns over Twitter for several months and have found it to be very successful as a promotion for the hotel’s services (since March). @InterConDFC.
• Virgin Megastore Middle East also uses Twitter to run competitions and promotions for special events, launches and new arrivals at its stores around the region.@VirginMegaME

On his part, Karim attributes WatWet growth for reasons such as: Some local Jordanian Media integrating with WatWet, such as the Local newspaper Addustour which run occasionally ads for its WatWet channel that has 9365 subscriber, and has added a REwatwet button its online stories. And viral invitations from friends to friends.

3- Conclusion:

Twitter has 37 millions visitors as of June 25, 2009 according to comScore, with around 25 million members and planes to grow to one billion in 2013 according to leaked internal Twitter documents on TechCrunch. In the Arab world, assuming SpotonPR research to be near accurate, it stands at 12,266 users, that is 12,266 less members than watwet, but Twitter beats WatWet in features (via third party developers) and active users in the region, and it seems will grow in the region even more, because of all the hype Twitter is taking in the media.

But will WatWet have any chances?

1-Assuming WatWet released all the promised features, it will still has to play a catch up game with Twitter in terms of features, and because it only has 2 developers it would be impossible to reach the thousands of Apps available on Twitter. Though the main difference would be support for in-bound SMS updates in some Arab countries.

2-Twitter has become a real time news source globally, actually it is a news source for ArabCrunch where I broke many news via Twitter, and some of them led ArabCrunch to be featured on many poplar Blogs and Media outlets worldwide: the second most poplar blog in the world: TechCrunch (featured AC 3 times.) the third poplar blog in the world Engadget, Mashable and many others.

3-Twitter’s tweets has become a source of real-time search.

4-Twitter has become a source of the most popular stories via sites such as TweetMeme, with ranking according to the number of Retweets.

WatWet will not be able to match steps from 2 to 4 because it is not international and will never be, and since already the early tech adaptors in the region are using Twitter, its best hope is to lure the average user who would tweet in Arabic. Because English content would not matter, a journalist from Brazil told me people over there tweet in protges!

Karim told me he plans to bring WatWet to the mass market, via more partnerships with news papers and radio stations and will try to get celebrities to use watwet. would he be successful? Time will tell, but one last point here to make: celebrities effect in the Arab world, is different than USA, people do not look at musicians and actors as role models in this part of the world, unless we exclude the stupid series “Muhand.”

All in all, the biggest challenge to WatWet is not Twitter, rather than Twitter’s main threat: Facebook, which is coping Twitter more and more (if you try to friend a person his/her updates goes to your homepage even if he did not accept your add.) Facebook has a base of around 220 million members worldwide and around 3 million in the Arab world with a complete Arabic Interface.

(Future posts will be about PR 2.0, social media marketing and community management stay tuned . PS: thanks to Heather for the help )

Updated.

Aljazeera Arabic the well known Qatar based TV network, has just added listeners tweets to its “ Minbar Aljazeera” talk show. This move makes Aljazeera the first Arab TV to integrate with twitter.

Minbara Aljazeera, (which mean Aljazeera Forum) is a weekly Arabic listeners live talk show, that tackles different issues and topics, where listeners call and say their opinion about the current show topic. Users have been previously able to send emails to the show’s email address and the show presenter would read them.

But now, users are able to tweet (via Twitter) their voices about the current program topic to twitter.com/minbaraljazeera , today’s topic was “new media and Iran”.  The presenter today, did read some of the users’ tweet. However she said she had difficulties in reading all tweets.

This is a nice move by Aljazeera, but it would be nicer if users’ tweets and their user names are displayed on the TV screen.

Aljazeera has been doing many new media projects via its new media department, they previously integrated twitter with a mashed up news mapping website for the coverage of the War On Gaza.

Twitter is not massively popular in the Arab world, but this move will help twitter become popular in the Arab world, especially if other Aljazeera Arabic shows follow steps.

I have suggsted before to the founder of WaWet to ask Alajzeera to do the same with WaWet.

Update: Aljazeera English TV channel which is blocked by Cable operators in North America has an online campaign to request the English version of the channel to be on-air in North America.

The Al Jazeera Network Consists of:

• Al Jazeera Satellite channel (Arabic)

• Al Jazeera English

• Al Jazeera Documentary

• Al Jazeera Sports

• Al Jazeera Mubasher (Live)

• Al Jazeera Media Training and Development Center

• Al Jazeera Center for Studies

• Al Jazeera Mobile

• Al Jazeera.net (the English and Arabic web sites)

WaTweT is a micro blogging, group messaging & social networking platform for Arabia (like Twitter). The Jordanian startup was initially reviewed on AC here and here.

ArabCrunch channel is now featured among few handpicked channels available on WaTweT to the public, where if you subscribe, you can receive the channels updates to your WaTweT account stream and your mobile via SMS. (Many Thanks to Waheed Barghouthi WatWets’ Ruby on Rails Developer and Karim Arafat CEO of WaTweT.)

If you are not in WaTweT make sure you sign up here, and then activate your mobile number. To subscribe to ArabCrunch Channel and receive our updates for Free you can earthier go to the channel page and click on subscribe, or if your mobile SMS is activated on WatWet all you have to do is send AC or ArabCrunch to:

• 97999 to subscribe to ArabCrunch channel (Zain Jordan only)
• 5740to subscribe to ArabCrunch channel (Mobily KSA only)
• +447781489826 to subscribe to ArabCrunch channel (Rest of the world’s mobile operators only)

You can also add ArabCrunch channel bagde to your website/blog by copying and pasting the following code:

<div id=”watwet_badge_wrapper”> <div id=”watwet_logo”><a href=”http://watwet.com/”>Watwet</a></div> <div id=”watwet_updates_list”> <ul id=”updates”> </ul> </div> <div id=”watwet_actions”><a href=”http://watwet.com/channel/ArabCrunch”>Subscribe to this channel on Watwet</a></div> </div> <script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://watwet.com/javascripts/channel_badge.js”></script> <script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://watwet.com/channel/ArabCrunch/badge”></script>

Note: remember if you are using wordpress, Add <code> before the script and then add </code>at the end to enable Javascript.

Here how the channel will look like in your blog/website (The badge is designed to be placed on the sidebar of your blog. The width of the badge in your blog/website will be 190px. this one is made to fit the post :




Arafat told me that WatWet team is currently testing and developing a desktop AIR based application, iPhone App, Symbian OS Apps (like S60), Twitter integration. And they will be released in around a month or so. With these apps you can receive and send WaWet updates in your desktop and your mobile via Internet connection (like: GPRS, EDGE, WiFi and 3G.)

Karim also said that after these releases they will launch their API to third party developers. Also he stated that the startup is currently in talks with more mobile operators in the region to enable local SMS numbers.

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.

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.

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.

It is quite clear to any one that convergence between media and telecom is happening, we can add IT too.

The internet is a telecom medium but it is also a media medium, where a new bread of media company popped up years ago called New Media like yahoo, now the most notable trend is web 2.0: blogs, Wikis, social network, social media, etc. VoIP is changing the telecom game, Mobile 2.0: the linking the mobile to the internet with interactive apps, that some use your location and profile to customize services and ads to you. Skype for mobile, jaxter are some examples of how convergence is happening

While software applications are moving to the internet with SaaS (Software as a Service ) model: Where the software is a web application hosted online and you can access it from your browser with an internet connection.

All this convergence represents a threats and opportunities for traditional media and telecom companies.

In this them Arab Advisors group is hosting The Fifth Media and Telecoms Convergence Conference on June 2nd and 3rd 2008, with keynote speakers from 50 senior media and telecom senior executives in the Arab world, Asia and Europe.

The Conference will be held at Four Seasons Hotel, Amman, Jordan. I have covered the third conference for the Star newspaper where you can read the story here, but I did not get the chance to attend and cover the fourth one though.

Some of the regional media and telecom companies have embraced the convergence trend, for example: Aljazeera has formed a web 2.0 team, launched a channel on Youtube, an application on facebook, and you can now follow them on Twitter. Also my sources say they are planning to launch an e-commerce service in the near future.

Zain Jordan has been active with signing a deal with Javna for mobile ads called mobi ads, and partnering with iToot in its startup project watwet the new Arab social networking and mini-blogging platform, similar to Twitter, but with MMS capabilities.

MBC group introduced MBC mobile, and launched Movies in Motion, a Social Networking & Video Sharing website. Also the group started using DoubleClick the online Ad serving technology company that was acquired last year by Google for over a billion dollars.

According to the event’s website there will be over 450 telecoms and media industry delegates attending. The last conference was attended by Over 447 delegates representing major telecom, IT and media operators, vendors and regulators.

Some of the speaker will be:

· Dr. Saad Al-Barrak, MD and Deputy Chairman – Zain Group

· Mickael Ghossein, CEO, Jordan Telecom Group – Orange Jordan,

· Fayez Abu Awad, Business Development Manager – MEA, Nokia Interactive.

· Russell Merryman, Editor-in-Chief, Web & New Media, Al Jazeera English Channel.

· Massimo Migliuolo, Vice President Emerging Markets Service Provider, Cisco

· Mikkel Vinter, CEO FRiENDi mobile.

The conference sessions will tackle a lot of issues that relate to both media and telecom industry and how convergence is affecting them, some of the sessions are:

· Panel Discussion: How telecom operators and media companies envision cooperation / competition in the era of convergence and interactivity.

· Regional software suppliers’ capabilities and their importance to the regional landscape, by Nael Salah Managing Director and Founder, ESKADENIA Software.

· 3G terminal’s evolution and how it enables new market segments. By Mr. Luigi GasparolloV.P. Business Development MENA Region Qualcomm Europe Inc.

· The New Economy. Capturing the next growth phase in a convergent future. By Bo-Erik Dahlström, President and CEO, Ericsson Market Unit Middle East.

· Panel Discussion: The Broadcast industry’s strategy for new media delivery platforms (IPTV, Mobile TV)

· An Overview of the recent technology developments in the field of broadband wireless access and their impact on the Arab Markets By: Samer Taha, General Manager, Waseela for Integrated Telecommunications Company.

· Next Generation Media Consumption. By: Chris Forrester, Editorial Director, ‘Rapid TV News.

I noted that there was no dedicated session for mobile 2.0, It is relatively a new concept but is important to talk about, my advice to Arab Advisors to include this topic in the next conference.

The delegate fee is around US$ 990 per delegate, with discounts for groups. A hefty fee for some Arab startups, but something the big players can surly afford. We encourage Arab Advisors to give special discounts for some of the Arab web 2.0 startups to attend this event. But If you can afford you can register to the event here.

The event is a one of the best regionally and a great networking opportunity, I witnessed on the third conference delegates starting to negotiate deals, and according to ArabAdivsors’ Feedback from the delegates to the 2007 event shows that. 91.5% of the delegates said that the business development and networking value of the event was good, very good or excellent.