Tag: UAE
Facebook rules, regs and crime
The UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) announced a whitepaper on Facebook usage guidelines, terms and conditions this week, to a grateful press that reported on TRA ‘warnings’ to Facebook users. As usual, we ask ourselves the question; how relevant is this for brands online? The whitepaper is, in fact, a good, readable summary of Facebook […]
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 […]
Happy birthday @spotonpr
It’s five years ago tomorrow that Spot On PR joined Twitter! We haven’t bought a birthday cake or anything and we’re not asking for any presents either, but it does give us some pause for thought. A lot has happened in those five years. Barack Obama had just become a presidential nominee five years ago. […]
UAE is world smartphone leader
The United Arab Emirates leads the world in smartphone penetration, with 74% of mobile subscribers carrying one of the natty little devils in their pockets. The Emirates is closely followed by South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Norway in the ranking, compiled by Statista from the results of Google’s ‘Our Global Planet’ survey. Amazingly, the […]
Counting clicks
There was a good vibe at the Click 7.0 Digital Marketing Event today. Chairing the event, I did expect to see a slightly larger crowd, which was a huge shame as the day turned out to be one of the most varied, diverse and insightful I remember from a Dubai event in a long time. […]
Intelligent use of social media
The chaps at Studio One wanted to explore how best to use social media, especially if you were starting out with a small business. What top five tips could we give an SME. Naturally, as so often happens with these things, we didn’t really stick to the top five tips and then ran out of […]
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 […]
