October 30th, 2008 elitani
The Saudi Telecommunications Authority has blocked access to the Voice of Saudi Women website (www.saudiwomen.net) for opposing government policy. Reporters Without Borders has joined the Saudi Human Rights Commission and the Saudi Human Rights Association, as well as the website’s members and visitors, in condemning the measure. The Voice of Saudi Women site has a number of analytical reports about the status of women in Saudi society. It monitors legislative changes and denounces impediments to women becoming effective actors in Saudi society, according to RWB.
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October 30th, 2008 elitani
By Mohammad Itani
I had the opportunity, and for the second year, to participate as a judge in the 2008 Ibdaa Awards which was organized by the local UAE chapter of the IAA.
Along with me was Yousef Tuqan, the CEO of Flip Media (A Neo Digital sister company). I was impressed by the level of production (video and animation) students are having nowadays and especially from emerging markets such as India and Iran.
One thing i thought it was worth the attention is that the level of creativity wasn’t up to the standards. Most video advertisements discussed four main topics which are Child Abuse, Smoking, Drinking, and Global Warming. A hint to all participants is that there are much more topics to shed light on that i shall leave to your imagination.
Some pictures of the event to follow and i am looking forward to have a look at the shortlisted entries.
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October 22nd, 2008 elitani
Source: BI-ME
In the fallout of the global financial meltdown, it’s difficult to think of a positive side to the economic crisis. But it actually might be good news for Web 2.0 social networking, according to a new book to be released next month.
Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom, by Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta, is the first comprehensive book written for a wide audience about the powerful trend that is reshaping your life: the Web 2.0 social networking revolution
Social networking sites are a global phenomenon. Sites like MySpace and Facebook now boast hundreds of millions of members. Online social interaction has become an indispensible part of their daily lives. This book examines the powerful forces driving this social e-revolution. It also describes the equally powerful reactions to it, and makes predictions about its far-reaching consequences. As the book’s subtitle states, Throwing Sheep in the Board is about how the Web 2.0 revolution is transforming your life, your work, and your world.
It would reasonable to predict that social networking sites like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Ning — and even Facebook — will see their membership ranks soar in coming weeks and months as widespread insecurity drives people to connect with others to boost their social capital.
There can be no doubt that, as people worry about their financial security and career situation, many will feel compelled to plug into online social networks. Anxious about their institutional status inside vertical hierarchies, people will turn to the social dynamics of horizontal networks.
The empirical data already appears to validate this hypothesis. In the Spring when petrol prices were spiking, Nielsen released findings that suggested people were networking online to “cope” with hard economic times. LinkedIn meanwhile has been boasting soaring membership numbers, reaching 28 million worldwide. Nobody will be surprised to learn that many of LinkedIn’s new sign-ups are coming from the financial sector, whose membership has doubled. It may be hard to feel sorry for bonus-bloated investment bankers, but many are frantically dusting off their CVs and rushing to online social networks in the hope of repositioning their careers.
A new LinkedIn survey has revealed that 42% of the network’s members feel their job security has been impacted by the economic crisis, while 13% say it’s too soon to tell. In other words, more than half of LinkedIn’s worldwide membership is scared.
Close and weak social ties
Some have dismissed LinkedIn as “Facebook for losers”, in other words, for opportunists who are looking only out for themselves in the job market. This attitude underlines two fundamental tensions that the authors analyse in some detail in Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom. The first is the tension between rational and non-rational motivations to belong to social groups. The second is between “close” and “weak” social ties.
Motivations for joining social networking sites are varied and complex. At risk of oversimplifying, we can classify motivations into two broad categories: rational and non-rational. Professionals who join sites like LinkedIn are primarily motivated by rational calculations related to their career interests. Most teenagers who collect “friends” on MySpace, on the other hand, are not looking to improve their career prospects. Their social interaction is motivated primarily by a non-rational instinct to forge social bonds based on common values, beliefs, passions and so forth.
Most of us like to feel connected to others through close-knit ties or shared interests and passions. Yet ironically, we frequently depend on people with whom we maintain only “weak” ties, especially when we are looking for a job. The strength-of-weak-ties theory was famously elaborated by American sociologist Mark Granovetter. He defined “weak ties” as social relationships characterised by infrequent contact, an absence of emotional closeness, and no history of reciprocal favours. In professional parlance, you might say people in your “extended network”.
Granovetter found that we rely on “weak tie” connections much more often than we think. Most intelligent job-seekers don’t turn to close friends or family for jobs, unless they are expecting to benefit from the advantages of cronyism or nepotism. Most turn to their extended network. And most business networks are based on relatively “weak tie” associations.
Which brings us back to the economic downturn. When out-of-work investment bankers scramble to sign up to LinkedIn, they are making a rational calculation. They’re not looking for friends; they are seeking to leverage the strength of weak ties.
What happens, however, when people start invading Facebook where “friend” values are embedded in the site’s social etiquette? It’s easy to see how a tension between non-rational and rational motivations could create conflict on Facebook. And yet Facebook is cluttered with self-promoters, career artists, and marketing entrepreneurs. Can these people really be considered “friends”? And just how many Facebook “friends” can we reasonably have anyway?
Anthropologists tell us that it’s impossible to maintain stable social relationships with more than 150 people. This is widely known as “Dunbar’s Number“, named after British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who argued that the necessary ritual of “social grooming” breaks down in groups whose membership exceeds roughly 150.
If we apply Dunbar’s figure to all social networking sites, any “friend” list that exceeds 150 is not credible, and it pushes social networking into the zone rational calculation. Maintaining a professional network of more than 150 connections on LinkedIn might be plausible, but it would appear to be humanly impossible to maintain social relations with more than 150 different people. And yet many Facebook profiles feature “friend” lists that not only surpass that figure, but double, triple, and quadruple it.
Some Facebook “friend” lists count in the thousands. Which leads to the question: is the virtual world exempt from basic laws of socio-anthropology?
While we ponder that question, it’s a safe bet that the economic downturn will boost sign-ups for sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. And that this membership drive will further blur the line between rational instincts to connect socially with like-minded people and rational calculations to build social networks for self-interested reasons.
Popular culture and new business models
Combining a pop sociology approach with rigorous analysis rich in economic history and organizational behaviour, authors Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta have written a lively and provocative book about the global popularity of social networking platforms, from MySpace and Facebook to YouTube, Wikipedia and Twitter. Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom is unique because the authors, both academics at the prestigious international business school INSEAD, have merged their particular perspectives in an analysis that is refreshingly original, often unexpected, and always insightful. Fraser is an acknowledged expert on the pop cultural industries, and Dutta is a world-renowned authority on information technology and innovation.
Providing examples from many different cultures, the authors argue that Facebook-style social sites represent a profound e-ruption whose lessons for market forces, business organisation, and democratic institutions will be far-reaching. Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom assesses both the real-time impact of Web 2.0 sites on social interaction and consumer behaviour. It offers fascinating case studies to illustrate how social networking sites are transforming the dynamics of business models, organisational behaviour, and civic participation.
The book argues that while the Web 2.0 revolution has reached a tipping point socially, especially among young members of ‘Generation V’ who feel completely at ease in the online world, it is meeting powerful forces of resistance inside organisations , especially corporations and government bureaucracies. The authors examine the underlying reasons behind this “fear factor”, making the case that senior managers must understand the dynamics of the Web 2.0 revolution because it will soon be sweeping through their corridors whether they like it or not.
The book is organised around three major themes: identity, status, and power. The authors argue that the explosion of Web 2.0 social platforms is transforming how our identities are shaped, how status is assigned socially and inside organisations, and how power is distributed and exercised. In cyberspace, identities are becoming increasingly multi-faceted, status is becoming more democratically based on performance, and power is being diffused from centralised vertical structures to horizontal networks.
These are powerful changes with profound, far-reaching implications for how we organise our lives, our institutions, and our society.
Note: Matthew Fraser is a Senior Research Fellow and Soumitra Dutta is Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Business and Technology, both at INSEAD. Their forthcoming book, ‘Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Change Your Life, Work and World’, is published by Wiley.
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October 20th, 2008 elitani
Google is vowing to introduce more Arabic products to the market as it looks for ways to enrich the internet experience of web users in the Middle East.
The search engine giant, which is exhibiting at GITEX Technology Week for the first time, intends to strengthen its regional offering in line with the investments it is making in local staff and infrastructure.
“We are working on parallel opportunities and the result will be even more Arabic products in the near future,” promises Yasmina Brihi, regional marketing manager for the Middle East and North Africa at Google.
We already have 15 products available in Arabic so we have made great progress and there is a lot of emphasis on that. But we’re not only working towards localising products, we’re developing new products and features as well.”
As more of the Arab world comes online, Brihi expects a sharp acceleration in the adoption of Google products and tools in the region.
Visitors to Google’s stand in the DIC Pavilion are invited to get the lowdown on the company’s portfolio, including the services it now provides in Arabic. Its Knol, Gmail and iGoogle tools have all been developed in Arabic, as has Chrome, its latest web browser. The company also has representatives on hand to explain how its search advertising and enterprise applications offerings can support Middle East businesses.
“The way we do business is always to start with the users,” explains Brihi. “All of our innovation comes from looking at what the user wants and giving them what they need to empower them for a more interesting life on the web.”
Google’s appearance at GITEX represents a milestone for its Middle East operations, which continue to expand in size. “We have been ramping up over the last two years by investing on several fronts. In terms of physical presence, we now have offices in three of our key markets - Egypt, KSA and the UAE. We have also invested heavily in terms of products with the Arabic market in mind,” insists Brihi.
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October 18th, 2008 elitani
By Cathal O’Toole on Thursday, October 16, 2008
The global mobile advertising market will, according to some industry sources, be worth over $18.5 billion by 2010. Not only will it offer operators a new revenue stream that has, as yet, not been fully ascertained by them, it also offers the media industry one of the most exciting means of mass-audience targeting and message delivery in the history of advertising.
Mobile advertising is still evolving, with multimedia content and latest 3G-and-beyond network capabilities creating major opportunities for high-speed service and advertising delivery. TV, for example, already one of society’s major advertising vehicles, is now reaching the mobile and mobile TV advertising is a forgone conclusion. Funding future mobile content is likely to rely on a degree of mobile advertising with brands gathering to support and sponsor the most popular content received by subscribers.
In the Middle East and Africa, where both saturated and developing mobile markets exist, what is apparent is that each of these market profiles will gain from mobile advertising in different ways.
In saturated markets, the primary concern of the senior management of mobile operators is where further growth will come from. With their shareholders demanding further returns but with subscriber numbers and ARPUs level, at best remaining static, operators must pursue alternative revenue streams. Advertising is a very compelling, alternative revenue choice that can augment the traditional product lines of messaging and minutes.
In the region’s developing markets, the main issues are often the low ARPU per customer and the difficulty in expanding profitable product usage in environments where per-capita incomes are low. Mobile operators have multiple customer touchpoints and mobile advertising allows them to bring a second payer to the market. Now, instead of each minute or text just being paid for by the mobile subscriber, the costs can be part-subsidised by the advertiser in return for the placement of advertisements on the subscriber’s traffic. In addition, operators can place advertising within traditionally non-revenue-generating traffic like missed call notifications. In this way, traffic growth can be part-funded by the advertising industry in return for gaining access to a brand new channel through which to communicate with consumers. In situations where the choice between feeding your family, or using your mobile phone is very real, the potential advantages, to the operator of introducing mobile advertising are considerable.
However, it is vital that any advertising campaign takes into consideration the appropriate advertising mechanism to deliver the message to the target consumer segment. In markets where the handsets are low-end and are unlikely to be used for anything other than calls, texts and alarm calls, the right advertising medium is text based. Where browsing is more commonplace, or where subscribers are more used to multi-media, then MMS or browsing-based advertising makes sense.
One important factor in the early stages of this new business model for advertisement delivery is that strategic partnerships between key mobile industry players and the media / advertising industry will be crucial. The principal point here is that in order to successfully build an advertising business – and indeed to make it a success in any operator’s environment – the operator must work with a solution provider that is partnered with a market-leading media agency. Without this level of partnership and without the expertise that both the media agency and the solution vendor bring to the table, it will be very difficult to deliver successful campaigns.
Addressing Prepaid Users
In Africa and the Middle East mobile advertising presents an ideal opportunity for prepaid users to receive the latest mobile services, until now priced beyond their reach, but now potentially at a much lower cost because the services can be funded by advertisers and the operators. MMS, WAP and VAS, like mobile downloads, can all now be made affordable to the typical prepaid user.
In these markets operators are very proactive building subscriber communities, which offer users products and services like IM (equivalent to Google Talk, Yahoo IM etc). For example, Zain is appending its own brand adverts on instant messages so reaching its own subscribers across 20 networks, or with local messages within a single country or even urban region.
Other operators like Wataniya, Etisalat and the MTN Group are building subscriber communities to offer more services like VAS and roaming at lower rates, which will only be possible when linked with mobile advertising. This applies particularly to the huge prepaid segment.
Mobile advertising is also a way of reaching those members in a population with low literacy levels. Although they have a mobile, these people would otherwise not see daily newspapers and other advertising media other than outdoor advertising, which is widespread through the MEA region.
Mobile Advertising Delivery
Methods of mobile advertising can be categorised three ways: advertising over messaging, advertising during browsing sessions, or advertising that employs media or VAS applications.
Advertising over messaging is where advertisements are sent using SMS, MMS, Instant Messaging, or other messaging media. The advertising engine will recognise and append the message appropriately with a targeted advert for the receiving subscriber. Selection of the advertisement is based on user profile criteria, time and date, type of message and in the case of Peer to Peer messages , keywords in the original message body. Once the advert is inserted into the SMS/MMS by the Ad Engine, it is then sent back to the SMSC (or MMSC), to complete message delivery.
Advertising during mobile Internet browsing sessions, offers an experience similar to advertising on the Internet. With a surge in the number of mobile Internet sites available to advertisers, typically as companion sites to traditional web pages, together with a more sophisticated mobile subscriber base, display-type ads on such mobile sites are a more viable option for advertisers. Mobile Internet ads consist of text, graphics, or both, and offer the audience a number of response options, such as a simple click-through, which may reach a product registration page, or a click-to-call option to a call centre, or a click-to-buy option with a purchase appearing on the user’s mobile phone bill.
Media and VAS-related advertising and handset/content-related advertising is the final category. Here an advert is inserted into a service experience such as: Ringback Tones or Interactive Voice Response (IVR), on mobile TV or using idle screen time on a mobile device. For example, an IVR message may promote a brand by telling the caller, “before entering your PIN to retrieve you messages did you know that ‘Brand Name’ is on offer…?” Though similar to messaging-domain advertising an ad in this case is received via an application such as Ringback Tone service or Voice Messaging from outside the network provided by a third party content provider.
Future Imperatives
For mobile advertising to gain effective momentum and reach its optimum potential as quickly as possible, there is an absolute imperative for the industry to work together. Advertisers / agencies need to work with mobile operators and vendors to build a supply chain that can deliver good quality advertising, and can report on this in ways that are useful for all parties.
This new media space is a very complex development, unlike that of, say, broadcast media, so platforms implemented by operators need to adhere to commonly-agreed guidelines – and it’s not just the platforms, it’s about the reporting / planning / campaigning – effectively, the design of the whole mobile advertising eco-system that requires agreement and co-operation, now.
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