Social Networking – StartUpArabia

Sikkaa: A Social Network For Amateur Football Players And Teams

April 6, 2011April 6, 2011 MMM 13 Comments

Sikkaa is a new social network type site launched from Kuwait and that targets amateur football (soccer) players and teams, helping them to promote themselves and organize matches and tournaments between them.

The word “Sikkaa” is an Arabic word that means “road”; which has been used in Kuwait for some time to describe the alleys and streets where children gather to play football, one of the most popular sports in Kuwait and around the region.

Sikkaa enables users to create their profiles as football players, upload photos and videos showing their skills at the game, create or join teams with their friends, challenge other teams, as well as participate in tournaments and events organized around them.

ReKrute Signs Exclusive North Africa Partnership Deal With Viadeo

October 12, 2010October 12, 2010 MMM

The online recruitment platform ReKrute; which operates in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria; has signed a partnership deal with Viadeo, the professional social networking service, by which it becomes the exclusive representative for Viadeo in North Africa.

Under the agreement ReKrute will be able to expand its range of e-recruitment solutions, to start reselling and providing Viadeo’s recruitment solutions: jobs, profile and resume databases, as well as its other HR services.

Viadeo is one of the large professional social networks in Europe, that was founded in May 2004 and based in France, targeting a global audience, although it focuses more on Europe and emerging and growing countries. It has reached 30 million members so far, the biggest chunk of them from China at 4.5 million members. 10% of the users are based in France.

Du Launches Anayou A Central Social Platform For The Arab World

October 10, 2010October 10, 2010 MMM 11 Comments

Du, UAE’s second mobile operator, has just launched a new big online project branded Anayou, which seemingly aims to position itself as a central destination for users. Some are describing it as a social networking service, and even though that’s the biggest piece of it, there are other pieces to this puzzle that Du seems to be putting together.

The first thing that you’ll notice from Anayou, before even getting to know what it does and doesn’t do, is how slick and neat it looks; it’s a well designed service that stands out from many of the other services that were previously launched in the region in the same area of focus.

Anayou offers a variety of features, covering the different functionalities you’d expect from a social network like finding and connecting with your friends, following their updates on Anayou as well as on services like Twitter and Facebook, leave comments (shout outs) on their profile pages, as well as messaging them in private.

YallaWain: A New Kuwaiti Social Dining Out Service

September 23, 2010September 23, 2010 MMM 1 Comment

YallaWain is a new social networking service that was launched in Kuwait, and that revolves around the experience of dining out; helping people pick what places to go to and what to have.

The service describes itself as a new way for people to mix and tip-off each other about the finest restaurants and top dishes in Kuwait; which sums it up quite nicely.

Basically, the site is built around user reviews and ratings of the different restaurants and eateries in the country, their ratings of the different dishes those places serve on their menus, and tips they leave for other fellow diners.

The service also integrates a social aspect that enables users to follow their friends and contacts on the service, in order to get a more personal touch and receive their different tips and reviews, as well as what restaurants are their favorite ones.

Revisiting Arabic Social Bookmarking And Content Discovery

June 23, 2010June 23, 2010 MMM 2 Comments

A bit over two years ago, I wrote a post about the Arab social bookmarking services out there, listing the existing options, how good they looked and how well they seemed to be doing, identifying the top ones at that time.

If anyone were to pull up that same list today and go check on each one of the sites, they’d find that some have shut down, others have become useless and spam ridden, some others have become pretty much inactive, and only one or two are still holding on. What’s clear though is that these social bookmarking services never caught on with Arab web users, and never achieved their founders’ initial dreams for them.

However there are some new kids on the block, who are here to take another stab at social bookmarking and facilitating content discovery for users in the Arab world.

Tweet To Email, Share Your Tweets With Your Friends Via Email

June 14, 2010June 14, 2010 MMM 1 Comment

Tweet to Email is a service that was recently launched from the UAE, that aims to make it easy for twitter users to share tweets of their choice directly with groups of their friends, who aren’t on twitter yet, through one of the oldest and most established sharing mediums online: email.

The concept is very simple and the tool is as simple and easy to use; the user signs up to Tweet to Email, inputting their twitter username while doing it, and then they get to create groups in which they can add their friends and contacts who they want to share with.

They get to choose a hash tag for each group they create (currently pre-defined and limited to five options), and when tweeting they can use that hash tag in their tweets if they want it sent to the people in that group, directly to their email inboxes.

Quirkat Launches Fantasy Football Game On Facebook

June 12, 2010June 12, 2010 MMM 1 Comment

Quirkat, the Middle Eastern game development studio has announced the launch of a new online ‘Fantasy Football’ game just in time for the South Africa 2010 World Cup. The game was developed exclusively for the Facebook platform and can be played in Arabic, English or French.

The game offers players the range of features they’d come to expect out of a fantasy football game. They’ve also featured all 736 players from the 32 teams participating in this summer’s World Cup in South Africa in a visual playing environment.

As users play on in the game, their teams are ranked against a number of real-world player events, such as scoring, successful defending, and bonus points for Man of the Match stature.

The game also allows users to create their own leagues in which they can compete head to head against selected friends.

Zoofs, The Most Talked About YouTube Videos On Twitter

May 3, 2010May 3, 2010 MMM 1 Comment

Zoofs is a new simple and pretty fun service, offering users a destination where they can start to discover the YouTube videos that are proving popular with people on Twitter. So basically what the service does is scour twitter to find the most tweeted videos, ranks them according to popularity, and serves them up for users to enjoy.

The project is yet a new offering from TootCorp, the Jordan based company that brought us the video-sharing portal Ikbis and micro-blogging service Watwet in the past.

Visitors to the site can browse through videos by category, and also filter videos to show only the freshest (ones that were uploaded to YouTube in the past 72 hours only). The Zoofs team also mark some of the videos they really like as “Zoofs Picks” to highlight them for users.

ArabNet 2010: Trends and Opportunities in Arab Web Business

January 13, 2010January 13, 2010 MMM 1 Comment

IBAG, International Business Alliance Group, presents the first edition of a new international conference for the Arab internet industry, ArabNet 2010, under the tagline of “Trends and Opportunities in Arab Web Business.”

The conference will be held in Beirut on March 25-26, 2010 with the support of Endeavor Jordan, the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship, the Syrian Young Entrepreneurs Association and YallaStartup!.

ArabNet aims to bring the internet community together to network and help launch the hottest startups from across the region. Top investors, internet executives and leaders from Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, AdMob and Intel will address subjects that are critical to the Arab Web Industry including: e-commerce, gaming, mobile, content, online advertising, social networking, new media, and start-up fundraising.

Key to the conference are pitch sessions: Ideathon & Startup Demo. This is the place to match talent with opportunity.

The Ideathon is looking for 10 select entrepreneurs to introduce their fresh startup ideas to eager investors in a rapid-fire pitch session. Similarly, the Demo will select startups with innovative products to pitch and exhibit their companies for the duration of the conference.

Applications are currently being accepted from entrepreneurs and startups from all over the region with strong ideas and products.

For more details about the conference as well as how to apply, you can visit the official website: ArabNet.me.

[StartUpArabia is an official media partner of ArabNet 2010.]