Social Networking – StartUpArabia

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.

Watwet Opens Up Their Platform Through Public API

July 22, 2009July 22, 2009 MMM

Watwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, has gone on and taken another big step forward by releasing a public API covering the different methods and functionalities of the service.

Methods covered include ones to get user and friend timelines, search, follow and unfollow users, retrieve lists of followers and friends, and of course send updates, among others.

This means that developers can now easily integrate the different Watwet functionalities into other web, mobile and desktop applications.

The full documentation for the Watwet API is available at developer.watwet.com.

This comes not long after them providing users the possibility to link their Watwet and Twitter accounts, in a way that anything posted to Watwet gets automatically posted to Twitter and vice versa.

On another note, Watwet also went ahead and changed its interface moving to a simple “following/follower” model, instead of the previous “friendship” model that was based on reciprocal agreement from two people to become friends.

Folowen Releases Public Beta With New Features

June 23, 2009June 23, 2009 MMM 3 Comments

Folowen, the social media search tool that aggregates social profiles of people and organization’s on several social media sites into one search result, and that was previously covered here, has just gone into public beta.

The tool makes it easier for users to follow a person or organization’s social web; be it a Facebook profile, page, group, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, a YouTube channel …etc.

Currently, folowen uses Google AJAX Search API to find user profiles in 20 social media sites.

A number of new features have been introduced with this public beta, based on the feedback received from the private beta users, among them are:

– Search is now open without sign up.

– Search results will list up to 4 links for each service for you to browse through to find the account you want to follow.

– Direct Follow: It is now possible for you to directly follow the person/organization you searched for directly from the search results page. This feature is currently enabled for only four services (Twitter, YouTube, FriendFeed and Facebook) that you need to connect folowen to from your Settings/Direct Follow page.

Folowen, A New Social Media Search Tool (Private Beta Invites)

May 31, 2009May 31, 2009 MMM 17 Comments

folowen is a new social media search tool that just went live in private beta and enables users to search for the social profiles of different people and organizations on several social media sites, returning all found profiles in one search result.

The aim is to make it simpler for anyone to find and follow a person or organization’s social activities online, be it a Facebook profile, page or group; a Twitter account; a LinkedIn profile; a YouTube channel …etc.

Currently, folowen uses Google AJAX Search API to find user profiles on 19 different social media sites including three Arab ones: Questler, Ikbis and Watwet.

Search is only the first piece in the bigger puzzle that folowen wants to build, and this ongoing private beta is concentrated on perfecting that to make sure that users are getting the right results for their searches. Once out of private beta, the search will be open to anyone without any need to sign up for the service.

Signed up users also have the possibility of having their search history saved automatically so that they can go back to them and view their results at any time.

The next step after search will be to enable signed up users to link up folowen into some of the supported social services to be able to follow/connect right from folowen without having to go to that service. This obviously will only be available for services that have APIs that are open and allow this.

folowen doesn’t aim to be another social network now, or a social activity aggregator, just a facilitator to help people find and connect to each other over several platforms.

folowen is founded by the same team Jordan-based team that was behind Questler: Razan Khatib, Alma Khasawnih and Hassan Shahin.

If you’re interested in getting an invite to play around with folowen, just drop a little comment below and I’ll send you one as soon as possible.

TasmeemME: An Online Networking Service For Creative Talents In The Middle East

May 25, 2009May 25, 2009 MMM 2 Comments

TasmeemME, Tasmeem Middle East, is a new service that was launched in its beta version from Jordan, and which its creators describe as the first online networking site for creative talents across the region.

TasmeemME recognizes the link between social connections and finding the right job (if you’re an individual) or the right person for a job (if you’re a company), even more so when it comes to creative talent that is mainly available for freelance work.

The site caters to the creative niche by putting together a service that allows creative people to build their profiles, showcase their portfolios, connect with one another and sell their services; and provides clients with the possibility to post their projects and search for the best talents to work on them.

The service being in beta, it might still need some tweaks and fixes here and there, but overall it’s in pretty good shape. Still, there are a number of important features that are still under work to be added soon; among them are the following:

Bidding on projects: Clients will be able to post their projects with certain specifications for interested users to bid on; and then they’ll be able to choose after comparing talent portfolios and proposals.
Marketplace: Users will be able to post some of their work; such as logos, templates, photos and more; as ready-to-buy products for set prices.
An online payment system will be introduced to make the whole issue of payments more straightforward and secure.
A rating system through which clients get to rate the talent’s work, and vice versa.

The site, which is available in English only, was founded by Noor El-Fadl, Tamam Mango and Khaled Abu Gharbieh, and developed by Indemaj Technology.

# TasmeemME

Salam Business Club Takes Important Step Into Islamic Finance and Banking

April 23, 2009April 23, 2009 MMM 11 Comments

Salam Business Club (SalamBC), the social business network built especially for the Arab, Asian and Muslim business world, and that recently launched versions in Arabic, Urdu and other languages (and soon in Persian), will be officially announcing an interesting new business development for their service in the upcoming days.

Through a partnership with the Institute for Islamic Finance and Banking (IFIBAF), they aim to be the first online destination to offer Islamic Finance and Banking products to its members.

The deal comes at a time when demand for Islamic financial products is really high and growing, both from Muslims as well as non-Muslims all around the world, yet this demand remains far from covered and satisfied by whatever offers currently exist in the market. And the current economic crisis is pushing even more people to consider Islamic finance and banking as a safer option, with a number of banks working on building up Islamic finance units.

The Islamic finance industry, which is still a nascent one, is currently estimated at $700 billion to $1 trillion in asset size, with a 15-20 percent annual growth rate.

The move by SalamBC to launch such products also comes upon the requests and feedback that they kept constantly getting through listening to their members.

With this deal, SalamBC brings its whole database of members from over 180 countries worldwide to the table, while the IFIBAF brings its long years of experience with Islamic finance and banking, as well as its extensive global network within the Islamic Banking Community, to offer together a central entry point to Shariah-compliant financial products for everyone interested.

Their initial focus for their offerings will be on the European market, as the demand there is largely unsatisfied, but they will be extending to the rest of the world soon after that, as they continue to finalize more partnerships and agreements around the world.

# Salam Business Club