Posts Tagged ‘UAE’
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
Technology news site Arab Crunch posted some interesting Facebook statistics yesterday from InsideFacebook’s most recent Gold Report (read the ArabCrunch story here). According to InsideFacebook, Facebook’s Arabic language interface is now the fastest growing language version inthe world, growing by 18% per month. According to Spot On’s research, Facebook’s Arabic platform in the Middle East & North Africa added about 1 million new users during the past three months (accounting for about half of all new users in the region) and the momentum that the Arabic platform has is changing the Facebook demographics for countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt for ever.
Language preference of MENA Facebook users (as percentage)
As expected, the language bias for Saudi Arabia’s Facebook users has now switched from English to Arabic. During the past three months the percentage of Facebook Arabic users in Saudi Arabia has crossed the 50% mark and now stands at 53% of total users of the platform. It’s a change of a few percent, but it’s going to be increasingly important for marketers as Facebook reaches new demographics of users, perhaps previously put off by having to user its English language interface.
Numbers of Facebook users by country (in millions)
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco added the most new Facebook users during the past three months, with Egypt adding 641,000 new users. Egypt also added the most Arabic language users during the past three months, which accounted for 57% of its total new users added to Facebook. However, 81% of all new Saudi Facebook users were adopters of the Arabic platform. At this rate, we could well be looking at a 60:40 percent ratio of Arabic to English Facebook users in Saudi by the beginning of next year.
Overall, Facebook users in the Middle East and North Africa grew by 15% over the past three months adding some 2.2 million new Facebook users and bringing the total MENA Facebook population to 17.3 million.
Want to read more?
If you liked reading this post MENA Internet users, you might like our other Internet demographics and habits surveys:
Media consumption & habits of MENA Internet users (July 2010)
15 Million MENA Facebook Users – Report (May 2010)
Twitter & Customer Service Survey (March 2010)
Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)
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If you would like to receive reports like this by email click here to join Spot On PR’s mailing list.
Tags:Arab World, ArabCrunch, Arabic, Carrington Malin, communications, digital marketing, Egypt, Facebook, InsideFacebook, Internet, marketing, MENA, Middle east, Morocco, Online marketing, research, Saudi, Saudi Arabia, social media, social networking, statistics, UAE, United Arab Emirates
Posted in Facebook, General, Internet, Internet research, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Online marketing, research, social media | 3 Comments »
Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Scroll down the page for survey download links
The figures in our new Media Consumption & Habits of MENA Internet Users Survey simply confirm what everyone involved in the Middle East’s growing digital marketing industry has already been talking about for the past year or two: Internet connectivity has become pervasive amongst many of our key target audiences and is now a significant part of their daily lives. The new research survey conducted by Effective Measure in conjunction with Spot On PR, underscores that the Internet opportunity is not just something that exists in the USA or Europe, its right here in the MENA region too. It’s not just a rich thing. It’s not just a youth thing. (And its not just a Facebook thing either). The Internet’s reach is now much broader than that and its influence in the Middle East and North Africa is now truly rivalling its traditional media counterparts and providing marketers with real (and highly measureable) alternatives.
Here are some of the survey’s key findings:
- MENA Internet users now spend more time browsing the Internet than they do watching TV.
- 88% of those surveyed stated that they access the Internet daily
- 71% of those surveyed stated that they watched television daily.
- Most traditional media have peaks and troughs in attention. Radio and newspapers achieve peak share of audience in the morning. Television audiences peak in the evening. However, the Internet holds audience attention fairly consistently throughout the day and well into the night.
- 28% more respondents watched TV during peak viewing hours than when viewership is at its lowest, at 7%),
- 20% of respondents stated that they use the Internet at any time-period surveyed, peaking at 33% in the evening (just 13% higher than the lowest period).
- Predictably, 73% of the survey’s respondents cited email as the activity they most often carried out online, ranking abover all other online activities.
- Social networking and search activities followed as the next highest ranking online activities for MENA Internet users, all coming it at about 40%.
- 54% of Internet users surveyed used mobile applications daily.
- 79% of Internet users surveyed spent up to three hours per day updating their social networks. 20% spent more than three hours updating their social networks.
- Internet users were more positive to companies and brands using “Internet marketing” than they were towards companies and brands using “social media marketing”.
- Most responses to our survey showed little variance between male and female respondents. However, there were a number of notable differences between the genders in their stated experiences with social media.
Survey Downloads
Download the full survey report (PDF)
Download the press release (English, Word doc)
Download the press release (Arabic, Word doc)
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Media consumption & habits of MENA Internet users by Effective Measure and Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Want to read more?
If you liked reading this post MENA Internet users, you might like our other Internet demographics and habits surveys:
15 Million MENA Facebook Users – Report (May 2010)
Twitter & Customer Service Survey (March 2010)
Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)
Sign-up for more reports
If you would like to receive reports like this by email click here to join Spot On PR’s mailing list.
Tags:communications, demographics, digital marketing, Effective Measure, Egypt, Facebook, habits, Internet, magazines, marketing, media TV, MENA, Middle east, Netlog, newspapers, North Africa, radio, research, Saudi Arabia, social media, social networking, Spot On PR, statistics, survey, Twitter, UAE
Posted in Applications, Facebook, General, Internet, Internet research, Measurement, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Mobile, Newspapers, Online marketing, Twitter, brand marketing, public relations, research, social media | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
The promise of behavioural marketing is a wonderful thing. After hundreds of years of mass media advertising that targets broad audiences with the same advertising message (whether they like it or not), the technology is now becoming available to advertise very specific advertising offerings targeted to reach only those that are likely to be interested in them. It’s a concept that excites both advertisers and consumers, since advertisers get to market to specific consumer audiences in the most profitable way and consumers only see the ads (and other types of content) that are directly relevant to them. However, as with many good things in life, there is a price to be paid by consumers and the currency is information. As the old English proverb goes, one can’t have one’s cake and eat it.
The cake is particularly delicious one. The Internet promises to tailor its audio, video, text, links and other content specifically to suit your individual preferences. Advertising is obviously leading the charge here, by investing in campaigns that are more closely targeted to consumer needs. However, the technologies can be just as useful to provision any kind of content over the Internet. Just imagine a web site, where every story, video clip, link, recommendation or advert was exactly according to your preference, not only in terms of content, but delivery, frequency and style too. Ultimately, it has the potential to become your own personal Internet, just the way you like it and as you discover new websites and services they automatically change to suit you.
Now here’s the catch. In order for behavioural targeting to be effective, it needs to know your preferences and behaviours, and update them in real-time. This includes data on the websites you visit, what you search for and where you spend your time whilst online, plus information like what devices you use to access Internet content, via what browsers, from what locations etc. It raises a plethora of privacy issues, and does so at a time where consumer attitudes towards privacy and knowledge of privacy issues are changing rapidly. Many thought little of putting all their personal details on Facebook a year or two ago, but recent media coverage of user reactions to changes in Facebook’s privacy settings has given many Facebook users pause for thought. A year or two ago it became quite common to find out that ‘all’ your friends were suddenly on Facebook. These days it’s quite common to know someone who’s quit Facebook entirely.
A new survey undertaken by Real Opinions highlights that there is enthusiasm for behavioural targeting and concern over privacy issues in almost equal measure. Consumers appear to appreciate efforts to provide them with more relevant content, but don’t want to control access to their personal information and behaviours online. The survey found that 60% of Internet users in the UAE favoured behavioural targeting for customised advertising and Internet content over less targeted means. However, 76% of UAE Internet users would prefer that behavioural data was only collected with their express permission, given in advance. In the fullness of time, it’s likely that users will have access to more and more tools to control their level of privacy online. In the short term, the likelihood is that new technologies are going to offer opt-in/opt-out options for Internet users. In other words, you’ll need to choose whether to enjoy your cake today or save it for later.
Tags:advertising, behavioural targeting, consumers, Content, data, demographics, Facebook, Internet, Internet marketing, Internet users, marketing, online, Online marketing, privacy, UAE
Posted in Content, Facebook, Internet, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Newspapers, Online marketing, Publishing, social media, strategy | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010
Does this mean the death of newspapers? Not quite...
The seventeen countries we included in the Middle East and Northern Africa Facebook Demographics study have widely varied news media: some, like the UAE, have strong English news components while others, like North Africa, have strong French language daily and weekly news media. When you look at the penetration of newspapers per capita in the region there are some odd anomalies that show some very different reading habits – almost a million newspapers are sold in the UAE to a population of some 5 million people, while Saudi Arabia consumes just under 1.5 million daily newspapers with a population of 28 million.
But one thing stood out for us when we looked at regional newspaper distribution with our Facebook survey in mind: today, more people are on Facebook across the region than buy newspapers.
So what?
So what? They’re both totally different media, aren’t they? We don’t get pages and pages of news from Facebook and newspapers don’t tell us what our friends are thinking and doing.
Well, yes. But consider this. If I, as an advertiser, marketer or professional communicator, want to reach a regional audience, instantly and with guaranteed reach across the MENA region – can I do that using newspapers? Perhaps yes, if I was prepared to advertise in, and try to solicit coverage in, 144 Arabic newspaper, 29 English newspapers and something like 25 French ones. You also have the additional problem of selecting consumers. If I want to advertise to, or promote to, housewives in their 30s with two kids and good household incomes, why would I want to talk to millions of newspaper readers who don’t fit that demographic?
Of course, online advertising and promotion can be much more targeted than that – using content to attract consumers (the right content, of course, attracting the right consumer) and using context to ensure that I put my message in front of the right people at the right time, I can use a regional platform that has the punch of every single newspaper in the region, the ability to target within that audience. Let’s not forget, with online advertising I ideally only pay for results – it’s pay per click. I also would pay to generate content that attracts my target audience and I would have to fund the time my staff give to interacting with consumers. That is likely to be a tiny fraction of the cost of advertising in over 200 newspapers.
But Facebook isn’t about news, is it?
But the comparison doesn’t work because Facebook isn’t about news, surely? Well, that’s a great point. But we can’t say where the future’s taking us. Facebook is drawing in new features, the latest set of which (the ‘like’ button and its kin) bring powerfully Twitter-like features to Facebook, allowing people to ‘feed’ content through Facebook. This adds the powerful ‘discovery’ aspect of Internet usage to Facebook – people can share content and there’s every possibility that stronger offerings based around content sharing using Facebook as a platform will come in the future. But by that time, the landgrab will be over – and the newspapers will still be wondering what hit them and where it came from.
It’s also worth considering that Facebook is just one of a number of online platforms that are coming together to provide powerful information resources. We Google when we want to find information, use Twitter (and, increasingly Facebook), Digg or other tools to ‘discover’ information – either links to interesting stories our friends share or raw news being Tweeted and Twitpicced, posted up on Youtube or hosted on Flickr or Panoramio by eyewitnesses and we use RSS feeders to keep in touch with the blogs, websites and other news resources we’re interested in.
In this environment, we’re creating our own news feeds and resources. Our own newspapers – we no longer need an editor to serve up a dish of the news and content that will suit a median of a readership of thousands of ‘averaged’ readers. In the brave new world, each reader selects the information sources he or she is interested in rather than scanning the headlines of a newspaper for the stories that interest them.
In short, the strong adoption of online media in the Middle East is starting to build a compelling case for money to shift from print to online properties.
And that’s why comparing Facebook to print newspaper sales makes perfect sense to us.
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You can find Spot On PR on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/spotonpr
Download the press release (English, Word doc)
Download the press release (Arabic, Word doc)
Want to read more?
You can read our original blog post about May 2010’s MENA Facebook Demographics and download the full report here:
15 Million MENA Facebook Users – Report (May 2010)
Tags:Algeria, Arab, Arab World, Bahrain, Carrington Malin, Egypt, Facebook, Internet, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, marketing social networking, Maroc, MENA, Middle east, Morocco, North Africa, Oman, online, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi, Saudi Arabia, social media, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
Posted in Content, Disintermediation, Facebook, General, Internet, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Newspapers, Online marketing, Publishing, public relations, social media | No Comments »
Monday, May 24th, 2010
Scroll down the page for survey download links
Summary
Facebook has become a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East and North Africa and the platform can now claim 15 million users as of May 2010. Whilst Facebook saw strong early growth in 2008/2009 from English and French speaking users across the region, Facebook’s decision to add an Arabic interface in March 2009 has opened up access to a whole new demographic of Internet users and added 3.5 million Arabic users over the past year. Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s Facebook communities have seen the strongest growth among Arabic users during the past year with each adding 1.1 million Arabic language interface users. We soon expect the number of Arabic language Facebook users in Saudi to surpass the number of English users.
However, with the strong expectation that the weight of numbers will move from English language users to Arabic language users in a number of key MENA Facebook markets, today’s reality is that just 23% of users across the region use Facebook’s Arabic interface. So, those seeking to make the most of the Facebook platform are advised to keep up-to-date with its changing demographics.
Here are some of the key Facebook statistics covered in this report:
— There are now 15 million Facebook users in the Middle East & North Africa (this figure excludes Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Turkey).
— MENA’s top five Facebook country markets, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, account for 70% of all users in the region.
— 50% of MENA Facebook users have selected their primary language for using Facebook as English, with 25% preferring French and just 23% Arabic.
— Only 37% of Facebook users in MENA are female (compared with 56% in the USA and 52% in the UK). Only Bahrain and Lebanon Facebook communities approach gender equality with female users accounting for about 44% of total users.
— The GCC has five million Facebook users, which Saudi Arabia and the UAE representing 45% and 31% of that total respectively.
— North Africa has 7.7 million Facebook users, with Egypt accounting for 3.4 million users (or 44% of all North Africa users). Egypt has the largest Facebook community in MENA.
— Francophone countries Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia together account for 3.7 million French speaking Facebook users, equivalent to nearly 25% of all MENA users.
— Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia and Yemen all have Facebook communities with more than 50% of users below the age of 25 years old.
— The UAE has the oldest Facebook community in MENA with 41% of users being over 30 years old, 28% being 25-29 years old and 31% being under 25 years old.
You can find Spot On PR on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/spotonpr
Survey Downloads
Middle East & North Africa Facebook Demographics (May 2010)
Facebook beats newspapers in MENA (Press Release, English)
Facebook beats newspapers in MENA (Press Release, Arabic)
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Middle East & North Africa Facebook Demographics by Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Want to read more?
If you liked reading this post about Facebook statistics, you might also like:
Twitter & Customer Service Survey (March 2010)
Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)
Tags:Algeria, Arab, Arab World, Bahrain, Carrington Malin, Egypt, Facebook, Internet, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, marketing social networking, Maroc, MENA, Middle east, Morocco, North Africa, Oman, online, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi, Saudi Arabia, social media, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
Posted in Facebook, General, Internet, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Newspapers, Online marketing, social media | 3 Comments »
Monday, April 19th, 2010
Things are looking up for the online marketing community. Recent surveys and media reports widely credit the region’s online advertising spend to be growing fast and becoming increasingly important to more and more people. Although last year was a difficult one for many, some believe that this gave big advertisers pause for thought and time to re-look at where online marketing fits in with their overall spend. Meanwhile, the social media revolution that has forced many businesses in other parts of the world to rethink how they interact with customers seems to finally be making its presence felt in the region with Facebook’s user numbers in the Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia rivaling traditional media audiences. The likes of Facebook, Google and Yahoo! have also all commented during the past year about the Arab world’s Internet coming of age and opening up opportunities for developers, advertisers, governments and others stakeholders across the region.
That’s the glass-is-half-full story.
The other half
The empty half of the glass is that the numbers of advertisers, developers, web ventures, educationalists and government departments using the Internet effectively in the Middle East is still remarkably small. Online marketers are all too often siloed in their own disciplines such as online advertising, website development, e-commerce and lately social media. Businesses very often see their online as a bolt-on to their traditional media campaigns and their website as an elaborate company brochure: and their view of the online world can be equally siloed. Sales might see the value in direct response from websites and email campaigns. Marketing may favour banner ads. Public relations may want to do social media, but marketing and IT are probably in disagreement over that. And customer service is often the elephant in the room, being largely ignored because online budget is owned by marketing.
Businesses across the region have been challenged over the past 20 years to reinvent themselves from being importers and sales agents to being marketing brands that are associated with providing customer value. Today the Internet is challenging Arab businesses to reinvent themselves again and become more open and more customer centric. The divide and rule school of business development no longer works, particularly on the Internet. With the arrival of Web 2.0 customers, non-customers and other key audiences can all be affected by the actions of marketing, sales, PR, customer service and technical support. Marketing can’t send an email to new contacts without existing clients knowing about it any more than customer service can expect customers who have had a bad brand experience not to talk to anyone. This calls for a much higher degree of planning and coordination of communications than Middle East businesses have been used to. And businesses are scared.
The good news: you don’t need to be a wizard
However, as with many new trends, much of the fear, uncertainty and doubt felt by business about Web 2.0 and Internet marketing is due to a lack of knowledge. Sadly, the online industry doesn’t help itself much here. Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need to be a member of the magicians union to know what PPC, PPV, CTR or CPC are, you don’t need a special qualification to use Google Analytics and there’s no secret handshake required to become a social media marketer! In fact, your organisation probably already has much of the expertise required to plan, execute and manage a successful online communications campaign, because the central and most important consideration in this campaign should be your customers and other important key audiences.
Coming late to the party also has its benefits. Organisations across the region can now learn from a wealth of knowledge, example campaigns and online case studies from around the world whilst developing their own online campaigns. Furthermore, many brands, across many business sectors still have the opportunity to be first movers in developing online campaigns for their particular markets.
Introducing Digimedia.ME
Spot On PR is supporting a first-time conference next month called Digimedia.ME. The conference was born out of an idea to showcase and help explain the range of online communications disciplines to the business community. We’re excited about Digitmedia.ME, because a real effort has been made to rope in many different voices from the region’s online business community and the cost of attending has been kept very affordable, making it easy for business people to attend. So, if you want SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing, brand protection, online PR or brand monitoring demystified, we hope that you’ll join us there.
Spot On Public Relations is a supporting partner of Digimedia.ME 2010. Digimedia takes place in Dubai on 5th and 6th May 2010. See the Digimedia.ME website for more information: http://www.digimedia.me
Tags:Conference, cust, customer service, Customers, digimediame, digital, Dubai, Internet, marketing, MENA, Middle east, online, online advertising, Online marketing, social media, Spot On PR, UAE
Posted in CRM, Customer care, Customers, General, Internet, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Online marketing, SEO, brand marketing, competition, public relations, social media, strategy | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 29th, 2010
Scroll down the page for survey download links
Summary
It’s now well publicised that the rapid growth Twitter experienced during 2008 and the first months of 2009 slowed dramatically towards the end of 2009, although ending the year with 75 million user accounts. Twitter activity, on the other hand, grew from 5,000 tweets per day in 2007 to 300,000 by 2008 and 2.5 million tweets per day in 2009. Figures released by Twitter in February 2010 registered 50 million tweets per day (or an average of 600 tweets per second). No such figures are available for the Middle East & North Africa, but activity on Twitter has visibly increased over the past year and overall user numbers have also grown. Spot On estimates that there are currently 35,000-40,000 registered Twitter users in the region compared with a mere 3,000 users in March 2009.
Corporate activity in the MENA Twittersphere has grown too, with an estimated 400 brands represented on Twitter in the region including companies, government departments, NGOs and non-profit organizations (more than 300 can be tracked via Spot On’s Middle East Brands Twitter List). Spot On Public Relations conducted the first major MENA Twitter habits and demographics survey in August 2009. In light of the growing commercial interest in Twitter and social media in the MENA region, Spot On carried out a customer service and Twitter survey in February 2010. About 1,000 active Twitter users across the region were invited to take part in the survey and 174 users completed the survey in its entirety.
Key Findings
— 95% of respondents welcomed brand engagement via Twitter
— 87% of those surveyed said that Twitter had affected their perception of a brand or company (up from 61% in our August 2009 survey)
— 50% of those surveyed had received customer service via Twitter
— 50% of the survey had purchased a product or service as a result of Twitter
— 65% of respondents were interested in receiving special offers & coupons from brands on Twitter
— 82% admitted a preference for brands that they knew via Twitter that affected their purchasing
— 88% of those surveyed said that they would recommend a brand based on their experience on Twitter
All respondents were also asked to give one piece of advice to brands using Twitter. 101 Twitter users out of 174 contributed advice from their experience on Twitter. We highly recommend any brand that is using Twitter or considering using Twitter to read their advice in the survey report.
You can follow Spot On PR on Twitter via @spotonpr
Survey Downloads
The report: 101 things brands should know about Twitter (PDF)
Twitter and customer service survey press release (English, Word doc)
Twitter and customer service survey press release (Arabic, Word doc)
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101 things brands should know about Twitter by Spot On Public Relations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Want to read more?
If you liked reading this post about Twitter, you might also like:
Tweets like grains of wheat
5 reasons Spot On PR uses Twitter
The uninvited guest at the party
Spot On PR’s MENA Twitter Demographics & User Habits Survey (2009)
Tags:Algeria, Arab World, Arabic, Bahrain, demographics, Dubai, Egypt, Facebook, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, MENA, Middle east, Morocco, North Africa, Oman, Qatar, research, Saudi, Saudi Arabia, social media, Spot On, spotonpr, Syria, Tunisia, tweet, Twitter, UAE, United Arab Emirates, Yemen
Posted in CRM, Customer care, Customers, General, Internet, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Online marketing, Twitter, brand marketing, social media | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
I’ve been a big fan of LinkedIn since I signed up just after it launched in 2004. I immediately found lots of my technology industry friends and colleagues were doing the same and were more than happy to introduce me to their contacts. I spent hours browsing LinkedIn user records looking for useful contacts, business prospects and old friends and over the years LinkedIn’s introduced me to new clients, new staff and other useful new business contacts. However, LinkedIn is a very business-focused social network and, for me, using LinkedIn has always been about business. Moreover, it’s a way of keeping in touch with lots of people, without actually meeting them very often.
For many of us in the Middle East, we started using Twitter this way too. Twitter has been great for following what people are up to and, for the most part, those that we have a business interest in finding out about, learning from or keeping in contact with. In early 2009, when Twitter had just 1,000-2,000 users across the whole region it was the business social network users that were there first (and excited about the prospect of discovering more business contacts!). Well, one year on, things have got a great deal more ’social’. With some 30,000-40,000 Twitter users across the Middle East and North Africa (Spot On’s estimate), there seem to be many more people these days that use Twitter day-to-day for their social lives (read Eman Hussein’s ‘Life without Twitter?’). Tweetups and other offline gatherings have been springing up all over the region, bringing together people with shared interests, introducing new connections and putting faces to Twitter handles.
2010 has already seen tweetups held all over MENA including Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, plus GeekFestBeirut in Lebanon. These meetups happen for many different reasons at different types of venue, both as public open invite events and private gatherings. GeekFest Beirut, held on Friday February 5th at the Art Lounge in Beirut (see Alexander McNabb’s report on FakePlasticSouks ) drew about 120 people to socialise, talk geek and listen to geek speakers. On the same day in the Sultanate of Oman, 45 tweeps gathered at Muscat’s Indian Embassy to meet visiting Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Dr. Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor on Twitter, read Digital Oman for a full report), who now seems to have penciled in a Dubai tweetup for sometime in the near future. On Saturday January 30th a group of more than 30 Jordanian Twitter users met at Wild Jordan in Jabal Amman to meet ‘the faces behind the tweeps’ (see full report on Under My Olive Tree) and there have been at least two more Amman tweetups since! Meanwhile, more than twenty tweeps met at the Riyadh Tweetup on February 2nd. Organisers are now looking at bigger venues to hold a Riyadh Tweetup on the first Monday of every month.
As one of the volunteer organisers for the first Twestival Dubai held in February 2009 (by the way the next Twestival Dubai takes place on March 25th), which followed a month after the first ‘big’ tweetup in Dubai organised by @rida, I remember the air of mystery that used to surround organising a tweetup. Many were unsure of the etiquette (or twettiquette!) involved in hosting a tweetup. Many, also, were used to keeping ‘online friends’ and ‘real friends’ compartmentalised, never mixing the two, and never meeting the former! Now is seems Twitter has helped bring the walls down and people are more comfortable inviting people to an event over Twitter than they are over the telephone. People are inviting other people that they would normally have considered to be ’strangers’ to meet and socialise all over the region, making new contacts and yes, even friends.
Tags:Alexander McNabb, Carrington Malin, culture, Eman Hussein, GeekFest, Jordan, Lebanon, LinkedIn, MENA, Middle east, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, social media, society, Twitter, UAE
Posted in Internet, Middle East marketing, Middle east, Twitter, social media | No Comments »
Sunday, November 15th, 2009
Spot On PR's Group Account Director Alexander McNabb
The MEPRA Awards shortlisted nominations and submissions are out today, which include 10 best practice categories and two individual awards categories, being Young Professional of the Year and Communicator of the Year. Having decided as an agency not to enter into the MEPRA Awards best practice categories this year, we had no expectation of seeing ourselves entered for any award. So, imagine our surprise on reading the official MEPRA Awards 2009 press release today when we saw Spot On’s own Alexander McNabb nominated for the Communicator of the Year Award! McNabb himself very nearly choked on his morning coffee as the news broke in the office!
MEPRA’s Communicator of the Year Award was created to recognise a communicator in the Middle East region that has demonstrated outstanding communication success in reaching stakeholder audiences in 2008-2009. Honest, open communications is something of a mantra for us and Alexander has certainly championed the need for organisations to communicate openly and honestly with their publics during the past year via a variety of media including print, radio, television, conference platforms and social media. Alexander is one of five nominees for the award and the winner will be announced at the MEPRA Awards 2009 gala dinner on Tuesday, November 24th.
You can read more of what Alexander has to say on the Spot On blog, his own FakePlasticSouqs blog or follow him on Twitter. And, by the way, he’ll be talking about public relations and the MEPRA Awards 2009 on Dubai Eye’s Dubai Today program tomorrow (Monday) between 9am and 12 noon.
Tags:Alexander McNabb, best practice, Dubai, MEPRA, Middle East PR, Middle East Public Relations, PR, public relations, spotonpr, UAE
Posted in Awards, MEPRA, Middle East Public Relations, Twitter, public relations, social media | No Comments »
2010 Spot On Public Relations