Middle-East
Has the Arab Spring turned into a torrent of cash?
Whilst debate continues, even now, on how pivotal the role social media was in the revolutions of the Arab Spring, there can be no doubt that Arab digital activism woke up businesses and governments across the world to the potential of new digital media. In the Middle East the change in attitudes towards digital media […]
Causing a stir: Twitter and the news media
The latest in a long line of Twitterpower case studies came last week with the news piece in The National highlighting Twitter outrage at the decision to send 25 Emirati women to Bahrain to watch the UAE play Bahrain in the Gulf Cup. The prevailing tide of expressed opinion was strongly against the activity, rallying […]
Spirit of the Arab world
It’s that time of year when digital companies all over the world punt annual sum-up reports in an attempt to generate some nice end-of-year publicity (watch out for ours!). Google’s popular Zeitgeist online report on popular search terms has just been published and it makes interesting reading for those watching search trends and online behaviour. However, […]
Are brands at risk from the UAE’s new cyber-crime law?
Taking many media watchers by surprise, the United Arab Emirates President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan has approved a new cyber-crime law for the UAE, Federal Legal Decree No. 5, this week. The online law was duly announced by the Emirates official news agency WAM yesterday evening (you can find the contents […]
How ‘social’ was GITEX 2012?
The Middle East’s largest technology trade show, GITEX, took place at Dubai World Trade Centre last week, bringing an estimated 3,500 exhibitors from around the world together with more than 100,000 businessmen and IT professionals (estimates vary). That’s equivalent to about 20,000 visitors per day, plus more than 10,000 company representatives on stands each of […]
GITEX 2012 Social Buzz
* Go straight to GITEX 2012 Social Buzz dashboard * It’s nearly that time again! GITEX, the Middle East’s largest technology trade show, starts on Sunday, bringing the region’s IT industry together with attendees from all over the world. More than 100,000 people are expected to converge the Dubai World Trade Centre halls from October […]
Welcome to MENA, LinkedIn!
As big fans of LinkedIn, we’re pleased to see Mountain View’s LinkedIn Corp. finally set up a Middle East and North Africa office. I am a keen business networker and I’m very happy with LinkedIn’s business focus and conservative approach to enabling business networking, even if it’s meant having to wait quite a long time […]
Honest statistics
As any politician, publicist or PR person knows, one can prove absolutely anything with statistics! And in a region, such as ours, where reliable statistics for many things are so hard to come by, people certainly try! As veteran journalist and long-term UAE resident Peter Hellyer rightly says in Tuesday’s National newspaper, scarcely a week […]
The future is important
There are few things more depressing than sitting in one of the Middle Eastern digital conferences listening to the Ministerial Keynote. The Internet, we are invariably told, is important. Now you count two seconds, one Mississippi two Mississippi as The Great Man scans the room, his arms held stiff and his hands grip the lectern. […]
#StopTimeOutDubai rings alarm bells
It’s today’s marketer’s nightmare. You’re alerted to an outburst of negative sentiment towards your brand on social networks. Worse, it has some legitimacy. You don’t know how big it’s going to get, you don’t know how long it’s going to continue and it’s impossible to forecast the impact on your business. Yesterday’s UAE Twitter campaign targeting […]
