July 2008 – StartUpArabia

What audience should Arab startups target? [Poll]

July 31, 2008July 31, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

A new poll has gone live on StartUpArabia, you can find it on the first sidebar on the right or vote straight from this post.

This poll addresses the question of target audience for Arab startups, and it asks:
What audience should Arab startups target?

Should they go global? Should they concentrate on the region? Or maybe just on Arabs around the world? Or does it depend on what the service they’re actually providing is?

What do you think?

Feel free to further expand on your response in the comments section of this post.

Madar Research Reports Growth In Online Advertising Spend

July 30, 2008July 30, 2008 MMM

Madar Research reports that online advertising spend in the GCC-Levant region registered a growth twice the global rate in 2007. Travel/Hospitality and Real Estate sectors emerged as top online advertising spenders in the region during the past year with a combined outlay comprising nearly half (45%) of the total online spend.

As in previous years, the ongoing rapid growth in online advertising spend in the GCC-Levant region still failed to deliver a market share on par, or at least comparable, with the current world statistics. However, this scenario is expected to improve over the long term as the global market reaches maturity, causing a stable, less rapid growth compared to that of the regional market.

Overall global advertising spend grew by 5.2% last year (2007) fueled by developing markets, whose advertising spend growth managed to offset the comparatively slower growth experienced in developed markets like the United States. On the other hand, total ad spending in the GCC-Levant region rose by approximately 19.4% in 2007, with UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar registering the most growth.

# Source: MediaME

Ayna Launches Beta Of Online Map Service for the Middle East & North Africa

July 29, 2008July 29, 2008 MMM 11 Comments

A few days ago, Arab search engine Ayna launched a beta version of Ayna Maps, a service that provides interactive maps of places and businesses for all major Arab capitals in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Ayna is one of the first Arabic search engines in the region, and now aims to grow its search services by providing more types of information like its new street level map service covering 26 cities in 17 countries and presented in Arabic and English.

Ayna maps aims to provide detailed street level mapping that is not available through any other online service, including Google, Yahoo, and MapQuest; in order to give businesses and individuals alike the possibility to easily locate and add points of interest. As of the launch, Ayna Maps are preloaded with over fifty thousand searchable points of interest available in Arabic, English and French to meet the needs of local audiences.

Businesses will be able to mark their physical location on a map to guide their customers, and easily embed the marked map in any web site along with their contact details, such as name, address, phone, email, and a descriptive summary.

Cities covered by Ayna maps include: Beirut (Lebanon); Damascus (Syria); Baghdad (Iraq); Amman, Aqaba (Jordan); Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Madina (Saudi Arabia); Kuwait City (Kuwait); Doha (Qatar); Manama (Bahrain); Dubai, Abu Dhabi (UAE); Muscat (Oman); Sanaa (Yemen); Cairo, Alexandria, Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurguda (Egypt); Khartoum (Sudan); Tripoli (Libya); Tunis (Tunisia); Algiers (Algeria); Rabat, Marrakech (Morocco).

Ayna Maps future releases include providing routing and directions, updating map data, and publishing submitted points of interest for businesses in the region. A mobile version of the map service will also be launched soon.

The idea is a very useful one and really needed in the region, and for an initial beta release it is pretty good; Hopefully future versions will have more detailed and revised maps, with more integrated points of interest.

# Ayna Maps

New And Improved Version Of Araby Directory

July 28, 2008July 28, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

Towards the end of 2007, Arabic search engine “Araby” bought popular Arab website directory “Eyoon” in order to integrate it as a service of Araby; Araby Directory was officially launched in early 2008.

The goal behind Araby Directory is to add the number of useful services for Araby users, as well as grow the user base, through providing for users’ every need.

Ever since the intial launch, the Araby team have been working on a set of improvements for the Araby Directory service, to enhance usability and provide better and more organized content.

Some of the main enhancements released with this new version are the following:

A new design for the directory and an easier way to navigate through it.
A number of new main categories and subcategories to better cover and organize as many websites as possible.
Addition of a large numbers of websites, organized under their relative categories and subcategories.
Integration of the advanced Araby search functionalities to make searching for and finding websites a lot easier and efficient.
The possibility to suggest new websites by users.
The possibility to report broken links or inappropriate content by users.
Display of more information about the websites in the directory.
Integration of the “Email to a friend” functionality.

Araby is one of the services and companies of Maktoob Group.

# Araby Directory

Al Jazeera Labs Launched To Showcase New Media Group’s Innovative Developments

July 26, 2008July 26, 2008 MMM 5 Comments

Al Jazeera recently launched Al Jazeera Labs, a website that showcases some of the most innovative developments coming out of Al Jazeera’s New Media group; including new ways of interaction, and the possibility to get the news anytime, anywhere, anyhow.

From the Al Jazeera iPhone and facebook applications, to their podcasts and YouTube channel, to the twitter accounts they’ve set up for easier reception of news and interaction with presenters; Al Jazeera Labs will be the central point to follow and keep up with all these interesting projects and ideas.

Some of the published projects will be fully functional, while others might still be in Beta; Al Jazeera plans to build on user feedback to improve the different tools and applications offered through Al Jazeera Labs.

# Al Jazeera Labs

The Art of Online Advertising, Adwords and Analytics Seminar – July 28th – Amman, Jordan

July 26, 2008July 26, 2008 MMM

The Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship and Google have announced a seminar titled “The Art of Online Advertising, Adwords and Analytics“, by Google AdWords Account Manager Elias Darwish, that will be taking place on July 28th (5 PM) at the Loay Shammout auditorium in The Princess Sumaya University for Technology in Al Jubeiha, Amman (Jordan).

The seminar will be tackling the general topics of online advertising and analytics, and their different best practices, with a focus on what Google’s own solutions like Google AdWords and Google Analytics can do for advertisers.

Google will also be handing out free handbooks about Ad optimization to attendees.

Attendance of the seminar is free of charge; To register you can email: google@qrce.org

Winning (Jack Welch)

July 25, 2008July 25, 2008 MMM 1 Comment

One of the really interesting books I read about management is “Winning” by Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001, who transformed the industrial giant from a sleepy “Old Economy” company with a market capitalization of $4 billion to a dynamic new one worth nearly half a trillion dollars.

“Winning” describes the management wisdom that Welch built up through his four and a half decades of work at GE, focusing on actual management techniques. And even thought GE is a giant company, the basic lessons that a person can take away from this book are applicable in companies of all sizes.

The book is divided into five major sections that cover management from all sides:

Underneath It All: Here he talks about missions and cultural values, as well as candor, differentiation among employees, and inclusion of all voices in decision-making.
Your Company: Here he covers issues around one’s own company or organization: things like leadership, hiring, letting go of people, the people management in between, as well as crisis management.
Your Competition: This discusses competition, and the external factors that can influence a company’s success: strategy, budgeting, growth, mergers and acquisitions, and the implementation of Six Sigma.
Your Career: This takes it a bit more personal with a focus on individual career issues; how to find the right job, get promoted, deal with a bad boss and go about work-life balance.
Tying Up Loose Ends: Here he answers some general interesting questions that don’t fit into any of the previous categories and that he’s received in the last several years while traveling the globe addressing audiences of executives and business-school students.

“Winning” is a great management book based on the true and successful experience of one of the best managers of our time. It’s a very worthwhile addition to any manager’s bookshelf and really enjoyable read.

[Amazon: Winning – Jack Welch]

Next: The Simple, Intuitive And Limited To-Do List Application

July 24, 2008July 24, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

A couple of days ago, as covered here, the teams from SpinBits and CloudAppers launched a really interesting and exciting experiment called Zero2Beta, focused on intense design and development of a useful web application from concept to launch in a couple of days, and releasing it to the public.

The first application in this experiment, code-named “App1″, was named “Next“; The idea behind developing Next was to attempt to approach the old-and-tried to-do list web app in a simpler, more intuitive and limited way; to address short-term task management to handle usual day-to-day stuff.

After 2 days of hard design and development work at the SpinBits offices, sticking to the bare basics, and killing some features: Next was launched moments ago.

The interface is very clean, simple, and usable; and the idea is very straightforward: 1 task at any time, 140 characters per task, 20 tasks maximum; you can set priorities by dragging and dropping tasks into order; and you just start getting things done.

A very good result for something that was built in only a couple of days time.

You can all play around with Next here: movetonext.com

What do you think is the biggest challenge for Arab online startups? [Poll Results]

July 24, 2008July 24, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

In the latest poll on StartUpArabia, the question to the readers was:
What do you think is the biggest challenge for Arab online startups?

The result of reader voting came out as follows:

Poll results: Challenges

Out of 62 readers who responded to the poll:
– 32% of them think that the main challenge for Arab startups is funding
– 26% think the immature online advertising market is the biggest challenge
– 15% responded that it was the low internet penetration in the region
– Another 15% blame the non conducive environment
– Only 10% thought trust was the biggest challenge
– and the remaining 3% specified other reasons like the lack of original ideas or targeting other markets other than the local one

Even though the list of challenges in this poll, and the ones added by the readers, might not be fully comprehensive, I think they actually give a good idea about the biggest challenges and problems that Arab startups and entrepreneurs face and have to tackle, and how important each one of them is.