Hi this Gaith the Editor of ArabCrunch.com ( disclosure ArabCrunch was a media partner to ITF)

First: let me please thank you for the interview you made with me last month, for featuring ArabCrunch was in your blog roll and for mentioning some of our posts here almost every week.

Second, let me congratulate you for releasing this blog , u r doing a great job. But speaking of which, I hate a signup process to post a comment and most users do hate them when commenting on blog posts, so my advice is please make them the standard blog comment format maybe adding Facebook, twitter signup with out leaving the page (FB and Twitter signup coming soon to AC after I upgrade our WP) MT has these features to my knowledge, however I suggest to The National to use wordpress, it is much better and FREE.

Third,
I agree in many parts and disagree in other parts:

1-These startups does not represent the top ten at least to me, a company like Talasim -with all respect to its investors who I respect -is useless website with some silly content. So I would not use the title
“The Arab world's top 10 startups.”

2- Glocalizer do not have a website yet because I think they are no operational yet. So it Is understandable.

3- Its evident that the sloppy design of many of these startups reflects what many startups in the Arab world lack: the understanding of marketing and that the value of information about you might be 10 times more important than what your product can do, as Jo Lto said today during a lecture in Amman. The majority of people leave the website they visit in less than 5 second, and if you do not position what you do and leave a good impression in these 5 seconds you lost your pitch to them, maybe forever.

4- My favorite startup among them is Glocalizer, because they will make WIFI widespread everywhere (if they managed to do it), which I personally need, also they have an interesting business model. However there idea is not knew:
A-in San Francisco there was a company offering FREE WIFI and PCs for any coffee shop, they remained free for a while, but later switched to paid access via scratch cards, I do not remember exactly but I think they went out of business.

B- There is a Spanish startup that moved to SF also doing something similar, (I forgot its name so just Google it) they let anyone to share his hotspot and with the world, the business model if I am not mistaken is share ad revenues between hotspoters and the company.

C- Also NetZERO came with free DialUP in the late 90s with sponsored annoying ads while you browse. I remember they went out of business or canceled the Free service.

D- I remember Google offering Free wifi in SF and a faster access with sub. However I do not know what happened with this attempt.

E- So the question is how they are turn this into a reality? The service is much needed in our part of the world, we need to have free wifi everywhere. But are they gona get a DSL to every coffee shop and install a router? That would be very costly and would take a lot of time to cover many locations. Or are they gona agree with an ISP in every country and share revenues with them?

F- They should focus in users experience when they insert there ads, too many ads in the wrong spots will drive users’ satisfaction down. And they should consider this will look on a mobile phone.

G- I can not comment in non IT stuff, but also Vertex Technologies looks having some potentials, but are they gona be a copy of SecondLife? They say they have a business use, the business applications of web 2.0 services has a real value. IBM is testing an application of second life for businesses.

I'll do some more research on this and post it on ArabCrunch soon.

Thank you Tom

Hi Gaith, thanks for the comment.

Yes, signup for comments is a hassle and I'll pass your feedback on to our techies.

Re your comments:

1 - Yeah, I guess "The Arab world's top ten startups, according to the Arab Science and Technology Foundation" would be a more accurate headline - but also more boring :)

2 - Re Glocalizer - even if they are not operational, if you are even mentioning your startup in front of venture capitalists and other potential influencers, you are crazy not to have a web presence - even a blog is better than nothing.

3 - I agree, and I think the sad thing is that the slickness of the websites and marketing is often disproportional to the actual quality of the product. Mobilaps seem to have a pretty interesting technical product but a website straight out of 1994, while I have met a bunch of startups with incredibly jazzy websites who are basically doing nothing of interest.

4 - Re Glocalizer and free wifi: I think they are doomed, because their entire business model rests on the idea that telecom companies will sit back on watch someone else make money by reselling their internet.

Most ISP's will actually have a condition of service in their contract, saying that you cannot resell or even publicly share their service without their express permission. Glocalizer might find some friendly ISP who is happy to experiment (perhaps one of the more competitive Egyptian ISP's?). More likely, they will have to do a deal with an ISP to share revenue. Most likely, the ISP's will just tell them to go away.

- The free wifi in San Francisco was proposed by a company called Earthlink, the whole idea is dead now. It was a kind of joint-venture with Google, where Google said they would pay for the service (via ads) and Earthlink were going to build out and maintain the network.

- The Spanish company is called Fon, and they have a very interesting and different model, basically relying on a "cloud" of private people/businesses making their routers open to each other.

- I think the most likely prospect for universal free Wifi is via the mobile networks - we already have basically universal wireless internet through 3G, wait until laptops evolve to come with 3G cards as standard, and telcos work out how to monetise the whole deal...

Hello Tom and Gaith,

I think its really good to have the conversation on here, especially regarding the view of the "top ten" perhaps there should be a top ten as voted on by readers or users, that would be useful to the community.

Regarding the comments, we have a system where the moderators have to manually check each comment before it goes up, but you can post without having to sign in. However, the national is giving you the option to sign in with other open ID's etc which i think is great.

Would also be good to engage the web design and content community in this region to work together to help these startups become more prominent.

Hi Ghaith,

I'd like to comment on what you wrote because I found it to be very bizarre.

You shot down all the other ideas, supported your favorite one and then poked holes in it. You think Glocalizer is the best idea/company, but then you bring 4 examples of how this idea failed in the US.... that's plain wierd.

I disagree that a WiFi company is the best of all those mentioned. KindiSoft have some great achievements when it comes to IP and are selling their software to developers in the US and Europe. Vertex have such a novel idea which has a proven market (read up on the success Bayt's virtual job fairs), and Talasim which you say is useless is becoming one of the very few producers of original Arabic content on the Internet, theyve created their own radio show, and their content is being shared across the Arab world.

I am really curious at how you came up with that analysis.

Thanks.

I guess you picked the worst example for an Arabic website, although it wont a Grammmy but www.kindisoft.com for example is professionally designed and so are many other websites.

Hosam

PS: For the record, I should point out that I am the ex-COO and a current shareholder of Kindisoft.

Hi all,

I'm curious to know what Mr. Ghaith Saqr has to say about Hazem's comment. I think it's unprofessional that journalist just leave comments without following up, especially coming from Arab Crunch.

Journalists hold an authority by default and I think the world of blogging has allowed anyone to claim that authority without having the proper credentials or experience to back it up. TheNational and BeepBeep should consider this when choosing someone to be one of its "Sources".

Thank you.