Watwet is a new Arab social networking and mini-blogging platform, quite similar to Twitter, that was launched in December 2007 by the TootCorp team, who brought us services like the photo and video sharing site Ikbis and blog aggregator Toot in the past.
The concept is very simple: Using watwet you can post short messages (watwets) updating your status, through which you can stay in touch with your friends. These watwets can be posted from the web or by sending SMS to Watwet. These updates are then shown to your friends on the Watwet website, as well as sent to them by email and SMS.
You can also send your friend direct private messages too or whispers (Washwishes) as they call them.
Watwet doesn’t stop at short text messages though, it goes even further supporting photos, that can also be uploaded through the web interface or sent by MMS.
The website is well designed, pretty straight-forward and easy to use, and work is currently underway on an AIR based desktop client. The only two points I found a bit inconvenient are that users’ timelines, their lists of updates, are only accessible to registered users even if they choose for them to be public in their privacy settings; and the public timeline (updates from all users) can only be seen if you logout.
The service is available in both English and Arabic, and is open to users from all over the world, although the SMS service is only available in Jordan for Zain subscribers now. Not sure when they’ll be expanding to other operators around the Arab world.
Something I think Watwet should do though is open up their system a bit, either through an API or through modules they develop themselves to enable users both to pull information from Watwet onto their own blogs/websites/services and push updates from other services to Watwet automatically.
For more on how to use Watwet, you can take the Watwet tour.
# Watwet
I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.
Robert Michel
I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.
Robert Michel
This sucks. They are just copying Twitter.
This sucks. They are just copying Twitter.
@Robert Michel: Thanks 🙂 Looking forward to hearing more from you 🙂
@Sucks: Well, even though it is quite similar to Twitter, plus the photo option, the plus with Watwet is that it has an Arabic interface making it more accessible and usable for users who are more comfortable using the Arabic language.
Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce and others do more or less the same thing; why does it have to suck to have an Arab player in the market too? If anything, I think it’s enriching.
@Robert Michel: Thanks 🙂 Looking forward to hearing more from you 🙂
@Sucks: Well, even though it is quite similar to Twitter, plus the photo option, the plus with Watwet is that it has an Arabic interface making it more accessible and usable for users who are more comfortable using the Arabic language.
Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce and others do more or less the same thing; why does it have to suck to have an Arab player in the market too? If anything, I think it’s enriching.
Well..thanks for posting about Watwet, which btw one of my favourite sites. TootCorp people are doing a good job developing new websites. they didn’t just go and copy twiter they added the SMS thing which seems to be a good effort.
Well..thanks for posting about Watwet, which btw one of my favourite sites. TootCorp people are doing a good job developing new websites. they didn’t just go and copy twiter they added the SMS thing which seems to be a good effort.
I prefer http://bwjams.com over watwet simply because it allows users to post videos, images, pdf files, excel sheets, ppts et al along with the posts – Its a blogertizeworld product, a – Blog advertising network
http://www.m-chamila.blogspot.com/2013/04/blog-post.html