19 Tuesday Mar 2013
Posted in Writing: Qatar publications
Tags
Here’s my first piece for the business magazine, Qatar Today: “Flying Digital” a feature on airlines and social media), which was in their March 2013 issue. I’ve included a very poor scan below. You can see it better on pages 56-58.
16 Saturday Mar 2013
Tags
@mrdamian76, Arabia, arabic, Arabic content, arabic digital content, Arabic Language, Arabizi, Damian Radcliffe, Digital Arabia, egypt, Facebook, Instagram, Jordan, KSA, Lebanon, linkedin, MENA, middle east, research, Saudi Arabia, social media, Stats, Trends, tweets, Twitter, wikipedia, World Bank
Here’s a link to a short post on ictQATAR’s Digital Qatar website highlighting 10 key social media developments from the Middle East last year. Accompanying this I also wrote a recent article for the BBC College of Journalism website on some of these key digital developments. Of these, the rise of Arabic usage on Facebook is probably the most noteworthy, but there’s plenty to take stock of.
by Damian Radclife · February 18, 2013
If you’re on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter – and I suspect most Digital Qatar readers are – then it’s easy to forget that actually you’re in a minority. Most other people in the region aren’t on social networks, but they are joining – and engaging – in ever increasing numbers. For example, 36,000 new people in Arabia join Facebook every day. That’s over 250,000 people a week, or a million a month. Yikes!
Below I’ve captured some of the key social media developments from across the region during the last 12 months.
If you haven’t got time to read the whole deck, here’s 10 developments to note.
What are they talking about?
MENA social media users are much more likely to talk about politics, community issues and religion online than in other parts of the world. Does this chime with your own experience of these networks? What are your predictions for 2013?
I think Instagram is going to become even bigger in the region, but that’s another story for another time…in the meantime, browse through the slides below (see here) and let us know what excites you.
18 Friday Jan 2013
Tags
2012, arabic, Facebook, MENA, middle east, research, social media, Trends, Twitter
This is a cross-post of a recent article1 for the BBC College of Journalism website on some key digital developments in the Middle East during 2012. Of these, the rise of Arabic usage on Facebook is probably the most noteworthy.
Tuesday 8 January 2013, 16:22
Last year was another momentous one for the internet in the Middle East. Whilst not as high profile as the previous year, 2012 saw take up of ICT reaching record levels. It also showed that social networks still had room for growth, with both Twitter and Facebook expanding and evolving in the region over the last year.Both Facebook and LinkedIn opened their first offices in the region – a recognition of the growing importance of their MENA (Middle East and North Africa) membership base. Here are a few examples which show some of the key regional trends from the past year.
Take up
A report into ‘Arab ICT Use and Social Network Adoption’ by the Madar Research and Development Center in Dubai, contains a treasure trove of data on this front, including the revelation that mobile phone subscriptions in the Arab world nearly matched the region’s population – 346 million at the end of 2011. In countries such as the UAE and others bordering the Gulf, penetration rates exceed 125%, with Saudi Arabia enjoying a mobile penetration rate of 189.24%.
Anecdotally, I can report that in Qatar it is not uncommon to see drivers working multiple phones at the same time as negotiating rush hour traffic or a three lane roundabout. As someone who is still a relative newcomer to the region, I confess this is not a trick I have managed to master (or indeed attempt). Yet.
Over the summer it was reported that one hour of video per minute is uploaded to YouTube in the MENA, with users consuming 167 million video views a day. This is second only to the US. How many of those were PSY – Gangnam Style, is hard to say, but given the popularity of the song on the radio – and indeed with young dancers at various public events – my guess is probably quite a few.
Either way, bandwidth consumption in the region is growing at an average of 40% over the past year, leading Cisco to predict that the MENA will be the fastest growing region for Internet traffic across the globe in the coming years.
Social Networks
Social Bakers reported that Facebook had grown by 29% in the region during 2012, adding over 10M new registered users, a quarter of whom were in Egypt alone. Membership is growing fastest in Qatar, Libya and Iraq, with more than 115%, 86% and 81% new users respectively.
Much of this growth is driven by usage of Facebook’s Arabic interface, which is growing at almost double the site’s overall growth in the region. As a result, Arabic is now the most popular language on Facebook in the Middle East, whereas two years ago English had a 50% market share. It is a remarkable transformation, to the extent that there are now more Facebook Arabic users in the MENA today than there were total Facebook users in the region two years ago.
Twitter is also growing fast with 17 million tweets every day in Arabic. That is 1 billion tweets every two months. Much of this, about 40%, comes from Saudi Arabia but the volume of Arabic tweets is increasing across the region. The Dubai School of Government is reporting that the percentage of Arabic tweets in the region had increased from 42% of activity in September 2011 to 62% in March 2012.
In the same month, the main Twitter site was made available in right-to-left languages for the first time, a service recently introduced to its mobile site too.
Looking ahead
I would expect that we will see these trends continue in 2013, but one area to potentially watch is e-commerce. Ofcom may have recently reported that UK consumers are a nation of online shoppers, but the picture in the Middle East is much more mixed. Even amongst ‘Digital Natives’ many still prefer to buy in person, even if they’re increasingly researching products and services online.
But in a region where many nationals love to shop, that may start to change. Arabian Business recentlyreferred to E-commerce in the Middle East as a ‘Virtual gold rush’ with sites like Namshi – an online shoes and clothing retailer recently securing $20m financing from JP Morgan Chase and Blakeney Management. For them, and others, 2013 promises to be a busy year.
07 Monday Jan 2013
Posted in Middle East Digital Developments, Work; ictQATAR
Tags
2012, Arab Facebook, arab world, Arabia, Arabic Language, Arabizi, Arabs, Bahrain, digital, Digital Qatar, dubai school of government, egypt, EMEA, Facebook, Farsi, Global Attitudes, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, linkedin, MENA, middle east, Middle East and North Africa, North Africa, Oman, palestine, Pew Research center, research, Salaamworld, Social Bakers, social media, Spot On Public Relations, taghreedat, Trends, Tunisia, Twitter, Yemen
02 Wednesday Jan 2013
Tags
@mrdamian76, Apple, arabic, arabic digital content, Arabic tweets, assistive technology, Bahrain, Booz & Company, data, digital take up, e-Commerce, e-readers, egypt, Facebook, GCC, Google, Google Data Centers, Groupon, International Telcommunications Regulations, ITRs, Kuwait, LTE, mada, MENA, middle east, Mobile subscriptions, Namshi, Nielsen, Oman, Qatar, research, Saudi Arabia, sms, social media, Stats, Trends, Twitter, Vint Cerf, wcit, youth
13 Thursday Dec 2012
Posted in Writing: BBC College of Journalism
Tags
active citizens, arabic, Arabic Language, Booz & co, citizen journalism, dubai school of government, Google, Governance, linkedin, MENA, middle east, morsi meter, research, social media, Stats, taghreedat, TED, Trends, Young People
This is a cross-post of a recent article I wrote earlier this week for the BBC College of Journalism website which comments on 10 digital related stories from the Middle East, including research about young people and digital media and social media usage in the region.
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With younger demographics and an expanding user base, communication technology in the Middle East is a hot topic, especially because of recent political changes in the region. Yet finding a good source of editorially neutral information on the subject isn’t easy.
So this summer I started producing a regular Digital Digest, both as a personal aide memoir and also, I hope, something of value to others who want a roundup of digital developments from across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
Here are few links to 10 stories which caught my eye over the past couple of months:
- Young people
Booz & Company, in partnership with Google, surveyed 3,000 digital users under 35 years of age across nine countries and identified three big trends among this group, 40% of the MENA population:
1. Communication with friends and family: the group has reduced direct personal contact with their family and friends as technology increasingly provides them with alternatives. Forty-four percent spend less time meeting close friends face to face and more time communicating with them online or over the phone.
2. Marriage: More than 60% in North Africa and the Levant approve of a member of their family marrying a partner he or she met online.
3. Religion: 70% of the group reported that technology allows them to explore the various facets of religion through websites.
The report also threw up a number of other interesting stats: 83% use the internet daily, with 40% using it for at least five hours a day. Sixty-one percent spend more than two hours per day on social networking sites.
Interestingly, whilst 76% access the web from home, only 16% do so from schools or other academic institutions. No wonder 43% of young Arabs believe education services require technological upgrades.
Perhaps, given these trends, it’s not surprising that 37% believe technology has reduced family communication and cohesion!
- Arabic language
This is an area which has seen a real resurgence online in the past 18 months.
One of these initiatives, Taghreedat, a group that aims to increase the amount of Arabic web content, isworking with TED International to localise the TED site into Arabic. This builds on other recent initiatives including efforts to introduce the first Arabic Tech/Web 2.0 Dictionary, offering Arab Twitter users their own search engine and working with The Wikimedia Foundation to create the Arabic Wikipedia Editors Program which will find and train Arabic Wikipedia editors.
Booz’s research showed that, among what it calls the ‘Arab Digital Generation’, 41% search the internet in both Arabic and English. Almost half say they’re unsatisfied with the quality of local websites or local versions of international sites.
Given the prevalence of smartphones and new technology in many parts of the region, it’s interesting to note that both of the voice recognition apps, Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search, which run on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch now fully support Standard Arabic and are free from Apple’s App Store.
- Governance and government control
Booz’s research also found that just 8% of young people use an online platform to connect with government or political leaders. Twenty-four percent believe media content is totally controlled by government.
That figure may be even higher in countries such as Jordan which recently passed legislation requiring “electronic publications” to get a licence from the culture ministry. Critics argued that the law will stifle freedom of expression online. The BBC reported that the law “gives the authorities the power to block and censor websites, whose owners will be held responsible for comments posted on them”.
Associated Press estimated that about 400 Jordanian websites would be affected by the new law. And in late August hundreds of Jordanian websites such as Jeeran, Jo24, Wamda and BeAmman went dark in support of #BlackoutJo - a protest against the bill, which was also publicly criticised by Queen Noor Al Hussein (below) before it became law:
- Citizen initiatives
Given this climate, it is interesting to see that seven Omanis have come together to draw up an ethical code for internet publications, bloggers and social media users in their country.
One of the group, Turki Al Balushi, was quoted in the Gulf News as saying: “There’s a kind of boom in internet users in Oman and we felt that as responsible users we need to draw a line, especially in the light of recent crackdown on users… Obviously this is not mandatory but a volunteer group that would help people in deciding what is right and what is not.”
In Egypt, Morsi Meter (below) was set up by a couple of young Egyptians to encourage citizens to monitor the new Egyptian president in order to see “what has been achieved from what he had promised in his program during his first 100 days in power”. It was recently awarded first prize by the World Summit Youth Award (WSYA): a global contest for young people who are using information and communications technology (ICT) to put the UN Millennium Development Goals into action.
- Social media
LinkedIn opened its first MENA office in October. The network has more than 175 million members worldwide, with more than 5 million in the MENA – a million of which are based in the UAE.
The Dubai School of Government has published new data about social media usage in the region, including LinkedIn for the first time alongside Facebook and Twitter.
Even though Arabic is now the sixth-most popular language on the Twitter, accounting for almost 3% of all tweets, Facebook is still the dominant social media player in the region (below).
Damian Radcliffe (@mrdamian76) is internet and society manager for ictQATAR. He wrote about his new role in a previous blog.
29 Monday Oct 2012
Posted in Middle East Digital Developments
Tags
3D printing, @mrdamian76, Ahwaa, Arab Digital Generation, Arab youth, assistive technology, Damian Radcliffe, data, digital, Digital Native, FinSpy, itu, Jordan, law, linkedin, mada, Maps, MENA, mobile, morsi meter, news, research, SAP, social media, social networking, Stats, tablet, taghreedat, technology, TED, Trends, youth
16 Thursday Aug 2012
Tags
arab region, arab world, arabic, Arabic Language, Bahrain, British Library, cryptocat, dubai school of government, egypt, EMEA, Google, jeeran, Lebanon, MENA, middle east, morsi meter, palestine, ramadan, research, research and analysis, Saudi Arabia, self-drive cars, social media, society and culture, taghreedat, technology, Time Magazine, Twitter, wikileaks
My August round up for Digital Qatar of recent developments in the Internet and Tech space relevant to the Middle East. Stories of particular interest in this issue include the Top 100 Arabs on Twitter, use of the crowd to monitor the new Egyptian Presidency, as well as initiatives to teach children code and Google’s self-drive cars. You can download the slides from here.
29 Sunday Jul 2012
Tags
Arab Facebook, Bahrain, Brazil, Damian Radcliffe, Digital Digest, Digital Qatar, dubai school of government, egypt, Facebook, Iceland, Kuwait, linkedin, Qatar, research, Saudi Arabia, social media, Stats, Syria, Trends, Twitter, UAE, US, YouTube
Cross-post from a short piece I wrote for Digital Qatar, ictQATAR’s blog for technology enthusiasts. This graph is also useful.
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Last week the Dubai School of Government published a raft of interesting dataabout social media usage in our region. In addition to Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is included for the first time.
In this post I have summarized ten key data points relating to Qatar. These stats show how Facebook continues to dominate social media usage in Qatar, the rising popularity of LinkedIn and the true size of Qatar’s Twitterverse. The latter is smaller than perhaps you would think, with just under 60,000 Twitter users in Qatar.
Here are our Top 10 stats. Do any of them surprise you?
YouTube
We think most of the stats speak for themselves, but what do you think?
19 Thursday Jul 2012
Tags
#UAEDressCode, @mrdamian76, AFP, apps, arab digital content, Arab Media Forum, arab region, arab world, arabic, Ask.fm, Cisco, Club Penguin, Damian Radcliffe, Digital Digest, digital migration, disney, EMEA, Global IP traffic, Google, internet freedom, Internet Rights, Internet Traffic, ipad, MENA, mobile, mobile advertising, newspapers, Peak Games, research, Saudi Arabia, Smartphones, social media, social networking, Stats, Tablets, Trends, Twitter, UAE, wearable computing
This is a cross post from Digital Qatar, a blog for technology enthusiasts launched by ictQATAR in 2009 with the purpose of providing a platform for genuine thought and conversation in Qatar around everything ICT.
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by Damian Radclife · July 18, 2012
Last month we published our first Digital Digest, a round-up of the very latest digital trends and developments impacting Qatar and the MENA region. That edition has been viewed over 1,200 times in the past four weeks.
Thank you to everyone who read and shared it.
A lot has happened in the intervening month, from the launch of new tablets by Google and Microsoft, through to the publication of a range of new research about mobile and Internet use.
It was revealed that Saudi Arabia is Twitter’s fastest-growing marketpercentage-wise month on month and the network was also home to a campaign - #UAEDressCode – which provoked heated discussion across a range of social networks.
Meanwhile, French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) launched its iPad app in Arabic and Turkish based games company, Peak Games, became the world’s No. 3 social-gaming company in terms of daily active users. Are you one of their 9.4m daily players?
Finally, with Ramadan fast approaching, a designer from the U.K. has created a prayer mat, known as EL Sajjadah, that lights up when it faces Mecca. We would be interested to know what Digital Qatar readers make of the idea.
As always, please feel free to share these slides. You can email the link, tweet about specific stories or embed the full slides on your own site (NB, from here). We would also love comments and suggestions for future editions too, so feel free to contribute below.
Thanks for reading and Ramadan Kareem.
