It's time for Arabic hashtags!

If you are an Arabic speaker and on Twitter, you’ve probably come across the increasing demands from the Arabic-speaking community in Qatar and the Arab world for Twitter to start supporting Arabic hashtags.

With the #letstweetinarabic movement going strong in Qatar and spreading in other Arab countries, Twitter is increasingly becoming a hub for quality Arabic e-content. But users in the Arab world are want more from Twitter than just their great platform – they want to be able to index their content in their own language through Arabic hashtags that match the Arabic e-content that they’re creating there.

We want more than just a hashtag though. We also want Twitter’s support of an Arabic interface that allows users to have Arabic usernames, index content via Arabic hashtags and have their profile settings and site-wide instructions in the Arabic language. This is a move that other social networking websites, most notably Facebook, have already taken in recognition of the great numbers of users from the Arab world.

But for now let’s focus on the hastags and why having Arabic hashtags is important– and  yes we did have to use the English #letstweetinarabic for our Arabic campaign!

Here are ten reasons why I think Twitter needs to support Arabic hashtags:

1. Arabic Content Indexing: It’s simple – the main function of Twitter hashtags is that they help organize Twitter streams and index content just like a funnel in which a variety of content goes through or a book with millions of pages that needs an index to help readers recognize the various topics rather than browsing millions of pages. With over 22 million tweets generated by users from the Arab word during the first quarter of 2011 (as per the Dubai School of Governance Twitter Report), it is evident that content indexing in Arabic is quite needed at the moment.
2. Increase Opportunities for Arabic Speakers’ Usage of Twitter: Recent figures say the estimated figure of the active Twitter users in the Arab world is around 1.15 million (out of an estimated Arabic Twitter population of over 6 million). Not all of these users are equally proficient in English & Arabic and the latter remains their native language. An Arabic Twitter interface, and subsequently, an Arabic Twitter hashtag means wider access for those who either can only read and write Arabic or actually prefer to express their thoughts and tweet in Arabic.
3. Increase Quantity of Arabic e-Content on Twitter: The current tweeting rate in the Arab world is around 252,000 tweets a day which means 175 tweets a minute or 3 tweets per second. Arabic hashtags will motivate users to post more tweets, knowing that they can easily index them in Arabic.
4. Widening the Reach of Arabic e-content posted on Twitter: Hashtags facilitate re-tweeting, improves content visibility and increases the probability of people seeing the indexed content and acting upon it. Having this for Arabic e-content will certainly increase the amount of Arabic tweets hence the percentage of Arabic e-content posted on Twitter as a platform.
5. Improving the Interactivity of Arabic e-Content Posted on Twitter: we all know that Twitter isn’t just about posting tweets – that’s just a small part of it. If you are familiar with Klout scores, you probably know that your Klout score will not go up unless your followers act upon your content. Since hashtags allow for more content visibility, this opens more conversation streams around the indexed topic and with Arabic hashtags, and more conversations can easily arise among Arabic speakers.
6. Better Usability, Easier Search: For Arabic speakers, searching for Arabic themes or topics using English hashtags can be a daunting process due to a major linguistic difference between Arabic and English. Due to the absence of Arabic language support in various social sites and apps, Arabic users have turned to an “English-Arabic” style whereby they write Arabic words using English language characters(Latin characters) to compensate for the lack of Arabic support. Arabic hashtags will guarantee better usability in that regard, as users will no longer have to express meanings using dispersed, multiple ways in English. For example, to hashtag a topic for العربية, there are over 5 or 6 ways an English hashtag can be written (#3arabeya, #3arabiya, #3arabeyah, arabeyah..etc). Like Internationalized Internet Domains, Arabic hashtags will unify this process and have users no longer guessing how to index using Latin characters.
7. More Trending Opportunities, Better Visibility: We all check daily for the top trending topics on Twitter and they are all (or mostly) top trending hashtags. With Arabic hashtags being activated and supported on Twitter, this increases chances that they could make it to the top trending topics as long as there are sufficient conversations around them. This allows not just for better visibility for Arabic e-content, but also grows global conversations around those topics for all Arabic speaking people around the world who, yes, are not just located in the Middle East.
8. Equal Importance Assigned to Arabic: Twitter now supports Latin languages (French, English, Italian..etc), Russian, Korean, Chinese and most recently Japanese. With all these languages supported, Arabic hashtags will be a move that gives equal importance to the Arabic language.
9. Matching Rising Twitter Usage Figures in the Arab World: Like any product, it’s all about supply & demand. Demand for Twitter in the Arab world is definitely growing, especially since the beginning of 2011. In a country like Qatar, Twitter usage is booming to an extent that Qatar is now the top Arab country in terms of Twitter penetration (an assessment of active Twitter users divided by total population figures – a percentage that has become close to 8% by Q1 2011). More demand means higher need for supply – whether in terms of technical support or wider support for other languages such as Arabic.
10. Encouraging the Usage of Arabic Characters: as mentioned in point 6, Arabic hashtags means less dependence of Arab users on Latin-characters equivalents to index Arabic words as topics. More usage of Arabic characters as عربي instead of 3arabi for instance does enhance Arabic e-content in a way and provides less confusion when it comes to content indexing in Arabic.

Let’s start asking Twitter to support hashtags at this link!

Guest blogger Amy Hollinsworth is a rising senior at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada majoring in Communication Studies.  Amy is currently a summer intern at ictQATAR.

Tired of all the mainstream pop and want to discover some amazing, independent music. Well buy into the hype and jump into Hype Machine. I have been using Hype Machine for a few years now and I am always amazed at the great remixing masterpieces I discover. One of my friends in my first year at University showed me the website and my ears have been hooked ever since. Hype Machine is a music blog aggregator created in 2005 by a small group of music enthusiasts in New York. The editors of Hype Machine find the best music blogs in the world and bring them to you through one searchable, playable platform.

There are thousands of songs to listen to for free and music blogs to read. You’ll find great new music and hear the chatter around it. You can find anything from Top 40 music like “Hello” by Martin Solveig featuring Dragonette to mash-ups like “I Want Brooklyn Back” by The White Panda. There is a search engine where you can type in your favorite artist/song, or click on “Latest” to find the most recent music blogs, “Popular” to listen to the most listened to song that week, and “Spy” to see what people all over the world are listening to. The great thing about Hype Machine is that if you like a song you can click on the heart beside the song title and the website will save that song for you under “My Favorite Songs,” helping you create a playlist or remembering which songs you want to download later.

Hype Machine is all about sharing, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that it features Creative Commons music! I wasn’t expecting to find Creative Commons music on Hype Machine, but that tends to happen on this website. You find unique songs that you never thought you would like or that you have never heard before. A couple of weeks back I found a band called Superhumanoids. Under one of their songs I noticed it was tagged as Creative Commons. I clicked on the tag and the website brought me to pages upon pages of Creative Commons music.

What does this mean? Well it means Hype Machine make music available for everyone and allows them to remix and share it easily, while protecting the rights of the musician. Musicians can put their own twist on these Creative Commons songs without having to worry about copyright issues because the artist has already specified how it can be used. You can “Share, Remix, Reuse – Legally.” I personally do not do any musical remixing but I love hearing what other people can do to music. I love the idea of mixing 2 or even 10 songs together to create something new and unique. Often the final creation is better than any one original. It would be awesome to see (well I guess hear) Creative Commons music posted by artists in the Qatar community.

Discover Calvin Harris on Hype Machine

Check out this link to see what I have been listening to recently. You might notice that I enjoy a WIDE variety of music. I highly recommend creating your own account; you never know what you will find on Hype Machine! To get you started, take a listen to this new track from Calvin Harris I recently discovered.

-Amy Hollinsworth

ictQATAR’s Section Manager on Numbering, Interconnection and Internet Domains, Mohamed Al-Bashir, shares his insight on how government can and are taking advantage of new media to serve their constituents. Visit Mohamed’s blog!

Public service organizations around the world are jumping on the new media and web 2.0 bandwagon— engaging citizens through social networks, blogging, developing ever more sophisticated government interactive websites, investing in “Enterprise 2.0” platforms and even encouraging the public to create mashups and apps using government data.  The challenge for public servants is to look past the hype to understand the real benefits of new media and develop action plans to maximize these benefits.

Here are some great examples of how government organizations are effectively taking advantage of new media:

Improved Efficiency

Through internal blogs, wikis, collaborative planning applications, social networking platforms and mashups, organizations can increase productivity by sharing best practices across the enterprise and dramatically reduce the cost of collaboration. Canada’s GCPedia, for example, uses enterprise wikis to connect employees and enable them to share learning. Moreover, by replacing traditional desktop strategies with software-as-a-service models and cloud-based desktop strategies, public service organizations can also reduce the cost of IT and the risks associated with implementing enterprise applications.

Intellipedia is another great example. It is essentially the intelligence community’s version of Wikipedia, allowing analysts and officials across the United States federal government to share information over the Web and plan operations. About 35,000 federal employees contribute to Intellipedia, and there are some 4,800 edits made every day. It’s a good example of how to use collaboration technologies to let experts pool their knowledge, form virtual teams and make quick assessments.

More Accessible Public Services

Web 2.0 enables organizations to provide citizens with information about accessing public services as never before; not only through government sites but also through user-generated mashups and apps, social media and personalized feeds like those provided by the District of Columbia’s Digital Public Square. Web 2.0 could also enable citizens to report problems to and request service from government more easily through social networking sites, widgets on non-government sites and mobile apps. Fixmystreet.co.uk is a h nongovernmental web 2.0 site that enable citizens to report problems to government more easily.

DC's Digital Public Square Website

Greater Citizen Participation

Through popular social networking sites and by developing their own web 2.0 e-participation tools, public service organizations can engage citizens in a more productive discourse about what they expect from public services, how public services could be improved and what they as individuals can do to improve their own or their communities’ quality of life. For example, local authorities across the UK are using online budget simulators to engage and educate the public and develop a better understanding of citizens’ public spending priorities.  Barnet Council offers a citizen portal with an application designed to help citizens understand the tradeoffs necessary to budget for and administer public services.

Improved Transparency and Accountability

Public service organizations can increase transparency and become more accountable to their constituents by developing platforms, such as the NHS Choices website, that enables citizens to rate and comment on the quality of services. Also, opening up government data banks to the public and developing web-based tools, like recovery.gov and the IT Dashboard in the US, to report on spending and results, are good examples of governments being more transparent and accountable.

When it comes to government, I don’t really expect radical change too fast. Governments are large, complex beasts subject to a number of constraints. In fact, the institutions of democratic governments were deliberately designed to induce stability and prevent radical change. But the good news is that new media is making change easier and in many ways less expensive. Hopefully governments around the world will continue to embrace new media in innovative ways to better serve their constituents!

Note from Brian: Engage with ictQATAR on our Facebook page and via Twitter @ictQATAR!

A lot of what I have been posting about on Digital Qatar lately focuses around the benefits of being open in the digital realm and how amazing innovation can take places because of the collaboration that is now possible. Well, to me, forcing web publishers to register with the government will stifle these potential benefits. As soon as a content creator needs to register with the government – whatever the country it is – there will be concerns about privacy and censorship. People are far less likely to openly share their views and information if they feel they are being watched or controlled. It is totally contrary to how the internet has grown and flourished.

And while the Saudi Ministry is saying their goal with the planned registry is to cut down on libel and defamation (which it might), what will really be reduced is the number of people willing to blog and share their voices online. The Arab world is already grossly underrepresented in the digital realm, so I view anything that discourages the creation of original Arabic content to be a step in the wrong direction.

The Arab world certainly does not have the best reputation for protecting the rights of bloggers and promoting free speech, but in a lot of ways I remain optimistic that progress is being made – and that the internet has been invaluable in helping that progress along. Hopefully this proposed registry does not come into effect. The more Arab voices on the internet, the better the rest of world will understand this region and hear the many and varied views and ideas that come from here. Keep blogging!

I must admit, when my boss decided she wanted to start a blog and I found out that I would be doing the bulk of the writing, I was a bit skeptical (and not excited about the increased work load). But, honestly, writing Digital Qatar is now one of the favorite parts of my job – and dare I say I don’t even really consider it work…but don’t tell my boss that. It certainly has exposed me to new ideas, provided me with a creative platform and helped me think about technology in a completely new way.

So start blogging if you aren’t already – whether for your job or about something that personally interests you. I’m pretty sure you’ll find it to be rewarding, and who knows, people may even start turning to you for insight.

(Special thanks to Gerd Leonhard, our Connected Speaker for December, for posting this video on his blog.)

As the amount of digital content being created continues to grow – blog posts, movies, graphic arts, poetry, music and more – protecting the rights of the content creator is an increasingly important topic. Do you mind if people take the song you created and mix it? Does it matter if someone takes your blog post and puts it on their website? Some people believe anything online is free and fair game to use as they please. But for most people that are creating original digital works, they want some sort of protection or rights.

Here in Qatar there doesn’t really seem to be any laws or regulations that protect a digital content creator’s rights. There are certainly some copyright laws, but do they apply online? The answer is vague at best. Let me propose a possible solution – Qatar can support and adopt the Creative Commons licenses.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that is committed to increasing the amount of creativity in the “commons” or the public realm. They provide free, easy and standardized tools (licenses) for everyone – whether individual creators or large companies – to grant copyright permissions to the creative work. These licenses were created because of the internet and the emergence of “free” content and provide a legal framework for content creators to either reserve all rights, some rights or, if they choose, no rights. Already a lot of big-name organizations are using the licenses, including Al Jazeera, Google, Flickr and the White House.

Essentially a content creator determines how people can use their work and how it should be attributed to them. The creator can allow their work to be shared with attribution in an unaltered format, shared and altered with attribution (such as mixing of music), freely shared with attribution for non-commercial purposes, or even just freely used in anyway someone wants without attribution.

So here’s how the licensing works. You, as a content creator, visit the Creative Commons website and go to the “License” section. You then answer questions using a free tool about your content and how you would like others to be able to use it. Once you complete this short review, the tool lets you know the appropriate license for your work and gives you easy instructions on how to link the license to your material. Simple! And the great thing is this license has legal standing in more than 50 countries around the world, with an additional nine working on “porting” the licenses to be aligned with their copyright legislations. No, Qatar is not one of these countries, but numerous Arab countries are in the process of supporting Creative Commons (Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Syria), so why shouldn’t Qatar join in?

And while you can still use the Creative Commons licenses now to provide a certain level or protection to your digital content, if Qatar adopts the Creative Commons licensing standards, you would have a much higher sense of security here when sharing your creative works. No, Creative Commons will not completely stop unauthorized use of content, but it certainly helps and has rapidly-growing international recognition.

Hmmm… I wonder if there might be a government body that could get Qatar onboard?

Raana Smith's Great Blog

It’s been about three months since ictQATAR hosted Mudwanat: All About Blogging. The event brought together bloggers from Qatar and across the region, and lots of people just generally interested in blogging. We recently reached out to some of the attendees and got great updates from many of the bloggers and it thrilling to find that the event inspired some people to start blogging.

One such person is Raana Smith. She came to the event because her friend, Shabina Khatri, was speaking as a panelist. Here’s what she had to say:

“Attending the conference and hearing the speakers really made blogging seem like something I can do.  My husband and I are in the process of adopting a baby from Morocco.  We figured blogging would be a great way to let people know about international adoption and to keep our family informed being that they’re in the US and we’re in Doha.    Check it out: http://babymaghrib.wordpress.com/”

Awesome blog Raana!

Some other updates from our blogger community:

Mickie Mathes is chronicling her memoirs online.

Qatar Visitor is covering the upcoming Arab Net conference.

Abdulaziz Dalloul is keeping his blog going in two languages.

Vani Saraswathi (The Life of Umm) keeps posting at least three entries a week on a range of topics.

I Love Qatar is continuing its work on sharing the good things about Qatar.

And Kenza4u is sharing endless self discovery.

If you have a blog in Qatar let us know. We would love to keep growing the community of bloggers here in Qatar and talk with more like-minded bloggies.

Keep blogging Qatar!

Outside.In totally gets the importance of blogs in providing valuable local content.  The site, which is attracting a large number of investors and has just linked up with CNN to provide content for its website, creates a newsfeed for local communities, aggregating information from traditional media and the blogosphere. Outside.In currently has more than 4,000 bloggers covering more than 50,000 neighborhoods across the US (sadly nothing international yet).

The founder of Outside.In, Mark Jospheson, recently did an interview for Econsultancy’s blog. The most interesting comment he made was about how the local news market is now really an ecosystem. His point is that bloggers are no longer “outside” news sources, but instead are an integral part of the media market. If I were a journalist, this would make me nervous.

The Outside.In model seems like one that has great potential for growth worldwide. As more “writers” share their insights online, the quality of non-professional content has skyrocketed. I think this is especially in terms of local news and very specialized topics – like my friend’s cooking blog. Qatar Living does a solid job of sharing local information in a forum format, but there is certainly room for more in-depth insight from the blogosphere – if they are allowed to be open and honest.