Content
Is Arab content really a lost cause?
It’s no secret that the Arab world has lagged behind in content creation. Conference speakers have been decrying the lack of Arabic language content for years. According to various sources, Arabic language content accounts for less than 3% of the content on the web (1%, 2.5% and 3% have been quoted), despite the fact that […]
Saudi plans to regulate Youtube
The Saudi government is planning to monitor and regulate YouTube and other online channels, having this week entrusted the task to its General Commission for Audiovisual Media, established last year to regulate the broadcast industry. There has even been talk of issuing permits to Youtube subscribers, which would appear to signal the introduction of a […]
Could your brand commit a content crime?
News media in the United Arab Emirates have reported this week that posting images or video of someone in the Emirates without their consent is a crime punishable by up to AED 500,000 (about US$136,000) and a prison sentence of up to six months (read The National’s story here). To those familiar with the […]
GITEX Digital Strategies Forum
Read about GITEX Digital Strategies 2014 Spot On’s Alexander McNabb will be chairing the Digital Strategies Forum in Dubai next week, which takes place on Wednesday 23 October 2013 during GITEX Technology Week 2013. The conference agenda will take delegates through global digital consumer trends, digital marketing strategy and planning, customer relationship management (CRM), […]
Has news journalism been sabotaged by Twitter?
Talking Twitter on the Business Breakfast is always a pleasure and this morning no less so than usual. The question was, “Has news journalism been sabotaged by Twitter?” and my answer was pretty much a resounding “Yes!” There are three major problems with Twitter and news journalism, I think. One is the challenge of real-time […]
Create more compelling content
Five questions to ask your content before you let it go into the wild The Internet these days is getting pretty busy. There are millions of us out there churning out words and adding them to the growing pile for dumpster diver Google to sift through and select whenever someone has a question. How can […]
The problem with content
One of today’s persistent business challenges is protecting and monetising content and digital intellectual property. The Internet is great at providing tools to display content and make it accessible to millions across the world. However, that same global access combined with Internet technologies’ ease-of-use make it all the easier to copy, abuse and misuse content […]
A wake-up call for aspiring citizen journalists in the UAE (and lessons for Middle East marketers)
The story is now well known and has received media coverage around the world. An incident of road rage in Dubai captured on video by a bystander and posted online inadvertently breaches United Arab Emirates laws, resulting in the arrest of the citizen journalist a couple of days later, even though he removed the video […]
Are you being genuine?
One of the great challenges for companies investing in digital communications is content. As we’ve said before on Spot On’s blog, we are all publishers now. However, if your company is not currently structured to create great online content there are good reasons to take care. Whilst there is room for both editorial and advertising […]
The buzz around Arab film
Those of us that are old enough to have known 1970s and 1980s television in the GCC, will remember, among other things, the broadcasting of old Arabic movies from the golden age of Egyptian cinema (or, indeed, turning the TV on to watch the English language movie of the week!). The video quality often left […]
