As we mentioned before, there has been
some interesting commentary in the last few days about Twitter in the region, as well as the role being played by Watwet, a Twitter-style service started by Jordanian entrepreneurs, that aims to be a Twitter for the Arab world.
This post on ArabCrunch pointed out some interesting figures. Watwet has around twice as many users in the region as Twitter is estimated to have, but its userbase is overwhelmingly skewed towards Jordan, and its percentage of active users is even lower than Twitter's.
Quite a few people shared their thoughts on Watwet afterward, and the skeptics among them
were best represented by Salem, who wrote in the comments to our post:
Watwet recently transformed themselves into just another Twitter application by connecting their accounts with Twitter...what is the value of having your tweets in two locations? what is the
value of using watwet as an inferior twitter app when you have all hose
other really useful apps to use (on your mobile)? why would anyone want
to maintain two accounts for the same function? Why would anyone follow
you on watwet when they can do that on Twitter? Why would anyone be
looking for you on watwet when you "and they" are also on Twitter? Why
do all the hard core watwet users (very few btw) still maintain a more
active stream on Twitter? and before the twitter busines plan was
leaked, did the watwet guys know where twitter -or they- were heading?
or were they just twaiting for twitter's next move? Ask them that, but
don't wait for an answer.
I asked them, I waited (about half an hour) and they answered. Here is what Karim Arafat, Watwet's founder and CEO, had to say:
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1. Watwet is an extremely tiny startup. With very little resources at hand, and a team of three people, we were able to bring up Watwet as it is today. We are just starting to dig our way out of Jordan to the region.
2. We are not here to compete head-to-head with Twitter or other global social networks. Some news headlines might sound like it, but here at Watwet, we know that we have so much to work on, and we are excited about the coming few months. Our passion lies in popularizing micro-blogging in the Arab World and give a loud and heard voice for the people. We still don't have strong case studies of that happening on Watwet; in the sense of being the source of news. The best case study that we can offer today was during the Gaza crisis; in mobilizing people to volunteer in sorting in-kind donations at Aramex warehouse in Jordan and WEF conference that took place in Jordan; in which several bloggers were covering it directly through Watwet and Twitter too.
3. We believe there is plenty of room for a localized service like Watwet to operate in the region. As a localized service, we work more closely on the ground to make people aware of micro-blogging. We work with citizen media groups to encourage micro-blogging amongst people in areas you wouldn't imagine. It is slow indeed, but it is happening.
4. Given the low broadband penetration in comparison to the mobile penetration in the region, we believe SMS support is very important when it comes to the mass market. Savvy and power users will be most of the time connected, and behind their computers. But most users in the Arab World would not be constantly connected to the web, and need to stay updated by other means; SMS and mobile web. This is where Watwet comes in to the help. We work with mobile operators to make this happen. Admittedly, things are slower than how we would like it to be. Mobile operators are big organizations with many snail-like procedures.
5. In the coming months, we will be focusing more on making Watwet a better tool to mobilize people. We want to see more people using Watwet to share those bits and pieces of their lives with the world, and what is happening around them. We want to see it used to promote and mobilize the numerous causes in the Arab World that need to be mitigated. We want to see companies use it as a marketing tool. Hopefully, some news on some celebrities joining Watwet too.
6. The integration we have with Twitter; in which every watwet update is a tweet, and tweets become watwets, is something users on Watwet asked for, and we delivered on it. We are not looking at building a separate gated sphere on Watwet, but we want it to be open to existing global tools like Twitter and Facebook. The integration with Twitter saves both Watwet and Twitter users from updating their accounts separately. Users can do it on Watwet or Twitter.
7. On the metrics, we do have 25k users; mostly from Jordan. We do not inflate our metrics.
8. We thank every person out there supporting us. There are small groups of people, that we are aware of, that are lending us their unconditional support. We are always flattered when we see that. It re-energizes us. We know how difficult it is to support upcoming and new services. Likewise, there is a small group of people who are skeptical about us. I don't blame them. But between the supporters and the skeptics, there are hundreds of thousand (if not millions) of people out there in the region who don't know about Twitter and Watwet. They still don't know they can have their own powerful voice using these tools. We need to reach these people, and increase the conversation. In doing so, we can make use of some more support too. It is up to the users as to where they want to carry us.
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For me, point number three is the most interesting. As mentioned before, the adoption of public self-expression online has been relatively low in the Middle East, for a whole bunch of reasons. Watwet's idea of going out and evangelising the microblogging concept directly to different communities, social groups etc, sounds like a great idea.
If I remember correctly, a similar approach was taken with blogging in Egypt - some of the early bloggers led workshops and trained people out in the regions, and Egypt now dominates the Arabic blogging community as a result. Anyway, it would be great to hear your thoughts on all of this.
well said from Karim, but i have to differ with Tom "the adoption of public self-expression online has been relatively low in the Middle East," actually it is not law that is why forums are the most popular websites in the region, however SMS MircoBlogging can bring things to the masses virally aka Virus Marketing.
I am really surprised by the amount of coverage WatWet and Ikbis are getting from the National. Really? stealing an already established and successful application and giving it an Arabic name, is considered innovation and praise worthy?
To the "creative" developers behind Ikbis and WatWet: want to impress us, show us innovation and a something new, not stolen!
Hi Copycat - I agree that the "just like X only Arabic" model isn't the most exciting game in town.
But then 99% of all business is not flat out innovation, inventing a whole new market space like Twitter or Facebook. The majority of entrepreneurship is just good execution of a service that the market wants.
By your logic, there is no praise deserved in running a decent hotel, restaurant, newspaper or IT service provider. All have been done before, and probably better, by the people who invented and/or dominate the industry.
Just because Ritz-Carlton, Wagamamma, The New York Times and IBM are the masters of their industries, doesn't mean we shouldn't applaud people like Jumeirah, Noodle House, Emarat al Youm or Optimiza for getting it right and delivering something that people want in this part of the world.
Same goes for the internet, especially so
Arabic language is not a parallel between good services that is provided in English like twitter and the Arabic internet user ....
so watwet is just a clone or tweeting services.
Do NOT consider the language as the only advantage you got ..
consider user needs ,so u can be a live in the web 3.0 era :D
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To Tom: I have to agree with you on one thing. YouTube to Ikbis is exactly like The New York Times to Emarat Al Yaum. So the conclusion is that, it is doomed to be a failure, if you know what I mean :D
To Ameen: I guess that explains it!
Where are the "Answers"? All we got is a bunch of random comments from Watwet. I'd love to hear answers to the questions in the comment.
Second, I can't believe that the only advantage they could come up with is that they are local.
Finally, a hint to Watwet on their next innovative feature: "Reat-time Search" ;)
Let me ask you, what makes twitter Twitter? Twitter is not the only micro-blogging service out there. Some other service such as Jaike have more features, and some others like Pownce are sexier. And you know what, Pownce committed suicide and Jaiku is dying. So, it is not all about features and design. Something else is missing. There is a secret sauce that Watwet has to discover in order to beat Twitter.
I believe, what makes twitter that big is its marketing strategy. There is an Egyptian saying that states "Ganna mengheer nas ma tendas", or "Heaven without people is hell". So, no matter how big is your service or how cool and appealing features you have there, if people don't believe in your service and see their friends and idols using it, then it will never succeed. And twitter has succeeded in making us believe that it is the ultimate place for people to find new job, for marketers to market their goods, etc. I know many ones who do not know what is the point of twitter and they do not even know how to use it or why they should have an account there. They only know that everyone else is having an account there and is using the service. Obama, Mark Zuckerberg, TechCrunch, Yahoo, Ashton Kutcher, Oprah and many other are using Twitter, so we simply have to use it too, to be as famous and powerful as they are.
By the way, this doesn't mean that Twitter is a dull service or it is featureless. All what I am saying is that it is good service, but being good is not enough to succeed. Twitter success is due to it's API and the ecosystem build on that API. So the API is not enough. Those who believed in Twitter and started developing applications on top of it are essential too. Same with it's Web Interface, the interface is clean, the search capabilities of twitter is essential too, but also people who invented the hashtag and the retweeting are a major force behind twitter's success.
Those who have jumped on the twitter wagon just recently don't know how it started and they did not see it the first day it launched. What it is today is not a result of planning or genius vision. Twitter was made slowly and gradually by the users into what we see today. They came up with all the abbreviations, concepts and practices, like direct messaging, retweeting, and even the word "tweet" was coined by users.
The tools that are powered by Tiwtter were made by its users. Twitter users even gave rise to some new trends in the web space, like Tiny Url and Real Time Search.
All of this was adopted by twitter and made it into what it is today and we can expect the same to keep happening, which I cannot say for any other competing service because they are essentially "copies".
Would love to get people's views on this.
@Ali-Noureddeen, Can't agree more. But what was the motive for users to use such service, and to believe in it to the extent that they started to develop the missing features there by themselves. What made them invent the RT, because according to Pareto Law, it's about 20% of the users who generate 80% of the content, so they gave the other 80% users a megaphone to help them spread the content generated by the 20%. Keeping in mind that the RT's have reference to the one who wrote the tweet and the one(s) who help in spreading it as well, so it's people's tendency to love their own selves that helped in boosting the retweeting culture. Also what was the motive for people to build Twitter Clients, URL Shortening, etc. Come on, some other micro-blogging service do not put the 140-chars limit, and some other have seperate fields to share URLs. but people here decided to invent new ways to share long URLs on twitter instead of migrating to the other micro-blogging services. Same with sharing pictures and videos. Twitpic and Pic.im were creating to overcome twitter's disadvantages against its clones.
In fact, I believe, twitter marketing team has played a role in all this. The focused on marketing their service even more than adding new features to it, and crowdsourced the process of creating new features to the users.
It's the effect of the masses. the more people are on it, the more you want to be on it and stay. If it were a marketing genuis plan, then probably Google or Microsoft could have done it... but it's not. It's the reason why no other service will overtake Twitter.
Another question: What will happen to imitators when the masses start moving away from microblogging and onto a new trend? just like they are doing with Facebook and MySpace....
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