Archive for August 8th, 2006
The Financial Times ran an interesting story yesterday about Google’s foray into the Arab market. It’s an interesting read which shows that thing are moving in the Arab internet scene.
I am happy to see AdblogArabia quoted in the article.
FT.com / Companies / IT - By Fiona Symon
Google searches for new users
Google’s foray into the Arabic world has received a mixed welcome from the online community. Some worry that the group’s technical and financial might could spell the demise of local internet companies that have only just begun to be profitable in the past three to four years. “I’m not sure if we should be congratulating ourselves or if we should be concerned about the impact of Google’s Arabic offensive on long-established Arab online businesses,” says media industry blogger Ad Blog Arabia.
The quote comes from this post by Zeid Nasser, which was also linked-to by many blogs in several languages.
Anyway, the article says that Arab world’s leading portals, Maktoob and Al-Bawaba, don’t seem afraid of Google. They are convinced that their local knowledge will enable them to hold their own.
From my point of view, the Arab internet industry should really shape up. Google’s presence in this market will surely have an impact. Although entrepreneurial web efforts in the region are on the rise, I hope we see more innovative Internet startups come online in the coming months and years.
Read the whole FT article here.
August 8th, 2006
Your Aid Can Turn The Country On
Agency: SABCO Art, Oman
Art Director: Abdallah Sumrin
Copywriter: Siddhartha Banerjee
This is the second campaign we see from Oman in support of Lebanon.
It refers to the electricity outage in Lebanon, due to Israeli air strikes of power plants. It could also refer to the Lebanese economy being ‘off’, and that it needs assistance.
Via [Ads Of The World].
August 8th, 2006
Well, if 88% of office workers in the United States don’t know what RSS is, it’s a wonder we get RSS subscribers in this part of the world.
For those of you who don’t know what Real Simple Syndication (RSS) is, look to the left panel on AdBlogArabia, you’ll see the orange RSS button with a link saying ‘what is this’…. read please!
Anyway, back to the survey in the US, carried out by WorkPlace Print Media, only 9% of the respondents know what an RSS feed is, and a tiny 2% said they subscribed to an RSS feed!
The survey included a national sample of 1,000 US employees at companies with under 2,000 employees.
I’ve always believed that Microsoft is to blame for the difficulty users face with RSS, as Explorer does not have an automatic RSS-feed option, unlike Firefox which makes adding an RSS feed to your browser so easy. Just press the RSS icon, and the site feed becomes a pull-down menu in your browser bar.
Maybe Microsoft will fix that problem with Explorer 7. If and when it does, RSS use will become huge overnight!
And with these current numbers- of 2% subscribers- the potential for RSS growth will have serious implications to marketers and advertisers.
August 8th, 2006
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