The Manalyst

Arabnet 2012: The Afterthought

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:26:04 +0100

Do you follow me on Twitter? Then I must have spammed you a week ago for five days tweeting about the largest digital event in the region: Arabnet Digital Summit

I had the pleasure of attending Arabnet 2011, and a greater pleasure returning to Arabnet 2012 as an official blogger among some other great bloggers. This year’s event was bigger, with more workshops and talks, and more focus on details! Read on to know what you've missed ;)

Starting with the Developer Days on March 27 – 28, there has been a great focus on the mobile industry. It’s not a surprise since the world is going mobile, more precisely 80% of the world already owns a mobile phone and 84% of them use it for internet browsing and 59% of them use it for social networking. Other interesting statistics can be found in The Smartphone Usage Statistics 2012 [Infographic]! And according to Google’s 12 Mobile Prediction for 2012 at Arabnet, one million small businesses will go online with a mobile website, and Arabnet made sure it included enough talks and workshops to help pave the way for them.
This year’s Developer Days were better planned with more room for more people and better networking, at the Metropolitan Palace. The most interesting workshop was The Facebook Developer Garage: Open Graph and Mobile Apps by Stephane Crozatier, Partner Engineer at Facebook who gave the developers some hands-on tips and answered the audiences’ question regarding the social networking giant. Stephane was clearly pushing for less fake accounts, but sadly, it doesn’t seem that Facebook has yet developed a strategy to combat that. Which leaves you wondering: Of the 800+ million accounts on Facebook, how many are the real users? Most of the friends you know have probably more than one account, not to count the dozens of brand accounts that agencies create, and the fake accounts that prize hunters create to vote themselves up in a Facebook competition. The first day ended with an Overnight Developer Competition that encouraged developers to compete over the course of 12 sleepless hours to build a web application or a mobile app.

What was different this year was the addition of Industry Day on March 28, which had workshops and talks covering 4 industries: Healthcare, Education, Travel, and Banking. Although I loved the micro-focus on each industry separately, but it made things confusing for me and other people I talked to at the event because it was difficult to choose which industry workshop to attend, given that we can’t be in more than one place at the same time. However, following the hashtag did make it easier to get bits and pieces from all workshops. I personally attended some Travel and Education workshops, the most interesting of which was Leila Khauli’s case study of The Use of Social Media in the Classroom. Check out the hashtags of her classrooms to see how she helps her marketing students apply their social media skills in their class: #mktg225 #mktg350b

The Forum Days on March 29 – 30 are usually the most important and most crowded, especially since it featured the Ideathon competition where multiple contestants presented their ideas to appeal for funding and of course the Arabnet prizes. Winning first place was Mahmoud AlDwairy with his Influsense idea which you should ask him about because it’s interesting :D It’s mostly like Klout but with a gamified competition where influencers need to perform certain tasks to get influence points in certain topics, making it easier for brands to target them as promoters. The Forum Days were filled with too much great content for me to restate here! But just to recap, some of the presentations that stood out were The Social Bakers’ Measuring Social Media with Jan Rezab and the Augmented Reality demo by Omar Tayeb Gilles Fayad.

Overall, a prominent feature in this year’s Arabnet was Sociatag which allowed attendees to register their Facebook accounts on a Sociatag card that they could use in various checkpoints in the event to “check-in”, “like” a workshop, or take a photo and post it to Arabnet’s Facebook Page album which is fun to browse even though the image quality is a disaster hehe

On a side note, Mike Butcher, a correspondent from TechCrunch and a feature speaker at Arabnet, co-hosted a meet-up (#TCBeirut) alongside Wamda and AltCity. I was looking forward to that event like many others. To my disappointment, the meet-up, which was supposed to be a gathering of intellectual minds discussing the future tech in the Middle East and the digital ecosystem in Lebanon, took place at a small pub in Hamra where drinks and loud music buried any potential for intelligent conversations. In my humble opinion, which I am sure is supported by the general global professional standards, a meeting with any valuable input should never be held at venues that do not facilitate networking and discussion, and certainly does not defer most of its conservative target audience. The meet-up should have taken place at a more appropriate bigger space where everyone could have enjoyed it and benefited from it, then, those who wanted to grab a drink could have gone altogether afterwards… Just my two cents!

Keep on the look out for the coverage from the other official bloggers on Arabnet’s Facebook Page and Twitter account, and leave your questions and comments to me below :D

Arabnet Digital Summit 2012 Agenda

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:05:27 +0100

Over 100 leading global and regional ICT professionals are set to take the stage at the ArabNet Digital Summit 2012 to share their expertise on the latest trends and topics in the field of online business.

The dynamic line up of speakers will include respected professionals from well-known organizations such as Osama Bedeir, Vice President of Payments at Google; Shervin Pishevar, Managing Director at Menlo Ventures; Amina Belghiti, Head of Platform Partnerships, New Markets EMEA, Facebook; and Barry Wacksman, Chief Growth Officer at R/GA. Presentations will provide in depth insight into a wide spectrum of topics such as entrepreneurship, investment, the future of media and advertising, interaction through social media platforms, and the affect of the latest technology trends on the digital market.

“We are creating a platform for the exchange of ideas between individuals at all levels of the industry with the aim of generating true forward movement for the many strong public and private sector initiatives shaping the region’s online markets,” stated Omar Christidis, Founder of ArabNet. “The region is seeing remarkable growth in the online space and major new opportunities are opening up daily. We’re aiming to harness that energy at the Summit.”

Over the span of the five-day summit, speakers will focus especially on fields such as commerce that have witnessed major shifts to online, and adopted new models in order to keep pace in an increasingly digital world.

“E-commerce in particular has developed at a stupendous rate over the past year. Websites like MarkaVIP and Jadopado have been experiencing remarkable growth both in terms of customer acquisition and revenues” explains Christidis.

The region has also seen the proliferation of vertical sales websites like Mumzworld, an e-commerce site dedicated to mothers, and Run2Sport, the first online sports apparel shop in the Middle East. The latter alone secured a 2.5 million USD investment from Souq.com, a Jabbar Internet Group company.

“Of course the Telecom industry remains a key player in the tech sector, with mobile operators looking to increase and expand their revenue streams through creating and monetizing content” adds Christidis.

The ArabNet Digital Summit 2012 is garnering huge interest from the Telecom industry. This year Saudi Telecom Company (STC) joins ArabNet as a Strategic Partner in addition to Bank Audi and MBC Group, with Lebanese Mobile Operator Alfa sponsoring the event. The Summit will also host a Telecom Executives Panel that features speakers from STC, Vodafone Egypt, and Oger Telecom.

The future of media will be addressed as well in light of the latest developments in web, placing special emphasis on the convergence of television and online media, SmartTVs and on-demand content, and the evolution of news reporting through crowd-sourced information and citizen journalism.

What Startups Need: An ArabNet Community.

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:46:13 +0100

When you work in the social media field like I do, it becomes inevitable to run into startups that are eager to launch the newest idea, the most tech-advanced service or the best-specialized network. As a startup, it is perhaps important to believe that the product you’re developing will be a success, will bring you fame, and help you cash in, hopefully sooner than later.

I do not claim to be an expert on entrepreneurship and startups, but if there is one thing that I can deduce by common sense, it’s that every successful business needs a COMMUNITY! An interesting definition of a community is by Michael Wu, the Principal Scientist of Analytics at Lithium Technologies Inc.:

A community (both online and offline) consist of people from all walks of life that seem to have no relationship at all but is a very robust social structure. What holds a community together is common interest. It maybe a hobby, something the community members are passionate about, a common goal, a common project, or merely the preference for a similar lifestyle, geographical location, or profession. People join the community because they care about this common interest that glues the community members together. Some stay because they felt the urge to contribute to the cause; others come because they can benefit from being part of the community (source).

Building a community may or may not be a long daunting task depending on what your product is, but it is a known fact that it is never as easy as “Build it and they shall come”. Growing Facebook from a small college community to the largest global community did not happen in a day. It wasn’t that the idea of Facebook was so revolutionary, in the simplest terms, it succeeded in capturing a fraction of a community with common interests (college students who wanted a social way to get to know each other), then gave way to that community to create other sub-communities with other common interests that others joined in, until everyone else felt they MUST be part of that community. According to Matthew Shampine, a serial entrepreneur, as a startup founder, you should not “be too focused on your product, because if you’re not building a community for it, it may never get off the ground.” He gives 2 successful case studies on how building a community the right way can help your idea or product (Source).

As a startup in the MENA region, your best chance is to find opportunities where early adopters, fellow entrepreneurs and potential investors... For you, that means the digital MENA event of the year, ArabNet Digital Summit. It’s the biggest event for web and mobile in the region! Last year’s summit brought over 1000 attendees, 100 speakers, featured 18 panels and 17 talks, in addition to 20 entrepreneurs pitching their ideas and startups. And this year’s summit is less than 2 months away so you better start working on your pitches and hone your skills in building your community! This year’s event is going to be even bigger. Cutting-edge panel discussions, specialized workshops, exciting competitions, focused networking sessions, social activities and more, spread over 5 action packed days including:

Two Developer Days with technical discussions and workshops for programmers. Even though I am not a developer, but I did enjoy this day as you can read in my post from ArabNet Digital Summit 2011.
An Industry Day about how web and mobile are transforming traditional industries like healthcare, travel, education and banking.
Two Forum Days, the largest gathering of digital business leaders in the region featuring over 100 globally renowned speakers covering the latest trends and technologies in web and mobile.
A Community Day raising public awareness about the the power of digital.

The Digital Summit will also include ArabNet’s annual competitions: the Ideathon and Startup Demo. The Ideathon aims at turning bright ideas into functional products will introduce the top 20 entrepreneurs and startups in the region, exposing the latest in digital entrepreneurship and giving entrants the chance to win big cash prizes and the attention of investors, incubators, and developers, not to mention the media! You’ll for sure have a better chance at exposure if you actually participate in the Ideathon. So you put your entrepreneurial hat on and get ready to network!

As one of the official bloggers of ArabNet Digital Summit 2012, I'll be bringing you more news about the conference and will be live covering it from March 27 till March 31. So don't forget to subscribe to my RSS, and follow me on Twitter if you aren't already ;)

(Image source)

Lessons of Engagement on Facebook Pages

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:09:50 +0100

A Facebook Page for your brand is almost always an obvious must-have in your social media platforms. Despite the contrary belief, or what some so-called online marketers would try to sell you, having a facebook page is not about the number of fans you have… it’s about attracting your true target audience and engaging them in effort to achieve your business goals.

Your target audience is easily your customers, potential customers, or any entities you’d like to get a message to. Reaching your target audience and getting them to “like” your page & be active on it are also a result of engaging the fans. Think of it as a cycle: You get fans, you engage them, the message reach other potential fans that, then, become fans to participate in the engagement.

For the purposes of clarification, engagement in terms of Facebook is wall posts, comments and likes in the literary sense. In a much more comprehensive sense, engagement is the collection of fan feedback that carries a value, be it negative, positive or neutral. In my personal and professional opinion, I’d classify the types of engagement per value (according to their attributes in the right table), from lowest to highest, as:

Now that we’ve got introductions out of the way, we can get straight to the points:

Personalize Engagement. It might be common sense to be social in your engagement with the fans since you are on a social network, but personalizing it is a whole different level. Teach the fans to communicate with the brand through a person, not an admin! Talking to an admin is formal & eerie, no matter how social that admin is, because at the end of the day, the fans are talking to someone who they have absolutely no idea of. Therefore, it makes it harder to build a closer relationship with them & get their trust. Yes it is that dramatic. By giving your admin a name and personality, you paint a picture of him/her in the minds of the fans that allow them to cross intimacy barriers. The character communicating with the fans needs not be a match of the person who is really managing it. You can be a female college student who is managing a brand page that requires you to speak as a businessman because that’s whom your target audience will relate to. That’s why, if you work in an agency that handles social media for different clients & brands, you need to be trained to understand each brand fully & mimic different personalities and speak a language that is inviting to the fans of each page.

Creating a personality for the admin of a page might not be an easy task if the target audience varies in gender, age and demographics; but even in the worst cases, there will be a set of common characteristics between them and that is what makes them all fans of your page. Find those common characteristics & inject them in the page’s personality. If it helps, you can even create more than a persona to manage the page, and be sure to make that clear to the fans by including the name of each persona with its related post. For example, let’s say you are running a brand magazine page with posts about men fashion and women fashion. You might want to create male and female personas and announce it to the fans that, for example, John is the expert on men fashion & is the one behind the related posts, and Jane is the female fashion expert handling those postings. Signing the name of the different people behind each post is common recommended practice for pages that are handled by a team of admins for real.

In some cases, the strategy of having a personalized page or different personas per page might not be recommended, so if you’re unsure whether it fits your brand or not, drop me a line below & I’ll help you with that!

Don’t Get TOO Personal. I don’t mean to confuse you or contradict with the first lesson, but there are limits that you need to keep so you can maintain successful engagement. While you want to humanize the brand and personalize communication, you do not want to dissociate the admin from the brand. While you want to get close to your fans & create a bond with them, you do not want to creep them out by getting too personal because at the end of the day, you are representing a brand & a company that is legally accountable if it infringes on the privacy of its fans or acts inappropriately. So for example, it would be okay for you to pass a general comment asking the fans about the well-being of their families, but you do not want to dig deep into their network & friends’ updates to ask a fan about how her niece’s surgery went. Sure you might be asking that from the kindness of your heart, but to the fan, you would just seem like a stalker hiding anonymously behind a brand name, or even a company that is invading her social/personal turf.

Another lesson in not getting too personal is to avoid letting your own personal issues slide into the admin’s character/brand spokesperson. There might be fans who are offensive, stupid, intolerable, and annoying, but keep in mind that you are representing a brand at all times, and to a brand, respect is due to everyone with no discrimination. So do not comment when you are feeling emotional: agitated, pissed off, depressed, or even too excited where you might say things in a rush that would hold the brand accountable. No matter how cool or personal you want to portray the admin’s persona, always keep a respectful tone because no brand is in the business of insulting people or alienating them! Learn to handle negative comments diplomatically as a role model would; you will have to be a perfect communicator all the time, if you feel any less than perfect then step away from the page & come back when you do.

This concludes my first two lessons and surely there are more to come. If there is anything specific that you’d like to ask about or you would like a review of your own Facebook page, leave a comment below.

Memories in Gold… with Nokia Oro

Sat, 20 Aug 2011 18:30:32 +0100

There’s nothing like spending a week in Lebanon hanging out with friends and having fun… except commemorating it with a golden mobile phone, the Nokia Oro… A phone that’s easy to use and easy to carry, with no compromise on beauty or elegance.

18 carat gold, premium leather and a sapphire home key were surely attention-grabbers every time I held the phone to use it. My friends had a few good jokes about taking it & running away with it :P

The phone has 3 customizable homescreen as you see in the photo above. And although I’m not a fan of touch-screen phones that don’t have tactile keyboards, but the QWERTY touch keyboard on the Nokia Oro wasn’t bad at all. Unlike the Pink Nokia N8, the Nokia Oro had a full keyboard in both landscape and portrait mode, making it easier to sms, chat and tweet all day long.

As most people can guess by following my twitter or from my Facebook albums, I like taking photos of everything, everywhere I go so it’s critical that the phone’s camera is of great capabilities. The Nokia Oro is equipped with an 8 megapixels camera and face recognition software, making it ideal for photo taking as you see in the some of the photos I took below.

& As I had hoped of any Nokia phone, the Nokia Oro had a really useful photo editor that I miss in my HTC Desire Z. I’m a fanatic of editing photo’s color balance, contrast, and exposure until I get real vibrant colors in my photos… the Nokia Oro’s phone editor gave me exactly that and more. You can see the difference in one of the photos I edited below.

The Before

The After

As a positive change, the Nokia Oro sports a Micro USB connector and charging. It’s compatible with the typical USB cable that you’d use for any of your other digital devices such as digital cameras, MP3 players, and new mobile phones. You don’t have to worry about keeping many chargers with you at all times, you just need to carry one USB cable & look for a USB slot to plug it in & fill your battery up :D This saved me from a dying battery so many times!

I don't want to get into apps in details because as you already know, you can get most of the apps you want through the Nokia Ovi. However, one game app (that was pre-installed in my Nokia Oro) that really caught my attention and I enjoyed playing is Climate Mission. It's a fun educational game with an ecological environmental message! You can check out the trailer below to know more about the game. I hope we get to see more of these games especially ones that are targeting children instead of most of the crap they play these days!

To conclude, while I’m not too big on showing off, it feels nice carrying a mobile phone that not many other people carry. There’s just nothing special about a mobile that everyone you’ll ever meet carries (Yes, I’m talking about iPhone & Blackberry). So if you fancy some uniqueness and you’re just down right fancy, you’ll definitely love a Nokio Oro! Case in point, my very classy & upscale aunt (she's so classy & upscale that we call her Hajje Calvin Klein) loved the phone & intends to get one ;)

HOW TO: REALLY LIKE TWITTER

Sat, 06 Aug 2011 11:53:51 +0100

I live in the Middle East and you don't need statistics to know that people here are more of Facebook fans, probably because we tend to be very talkative and 140 characters simply doesn’t cut it for most of us. Or perhaps because FarmVille doesn't have an account on Twitter (for which I'm really grateful).

I asked some friends about that, and read some other people's opinions on it, and barely any of them seemed to really like Twitter. But I kept seeing it everywhere online and was curious enough to try it, and finally took the leap about 2 months ago. After spending all that time interacting with people on Twitter, learning about it and from it, I really liked it and even became addicted to it! So I figured that liking Twitter or not liking it depends on your understanding of it, your experience with it, and basically how you start on it!

Facebook Vs. Twitter

Seriously, stop comparing between these two. I've been on Facebook for many years now and for almost 2 years on Twitter but I knew they are completely different from my first day on Twitter. I was told that Facebook is much more fun than Twitter and that the latter is basically only updating your status. WRONG! I've had more interactions and more fun on Twitter than I've had in years on Facebook. Facebook is really great when it comes to keeping in touch with your family and friends easily, and checking out their photos, and sharing things with them. But Twitter is like having the entire world on wheels that keep the fun coming your way. I was also told that Twitter is lame. WRONG AGAIN! I said it before and I say it again now, Twitter is only lame if you're following lame people (and dare I say, if you're lame too!). In one hour on Twitter, you will learn more things than you would in a week on Facebook.

If you really learn how to use Twitter, it can be the best thing ever (until something even better comes along in the future, it will for sure, but for now Twitter is doing just great). Now here are some answers that would help you start on Twitter (they're also good if you've already started but not really doing well!):

What Do I Use Twitter For?

Before you decide to use twitter, you need to know WHY you want to use it. Do you have a blog/website that you want to promote? Do you have a business that you want to grow? Or do you just have a lot of spare time and you want something new and cool to have fun doing? If it's the latter, then you've come to the right place, because I tweet for fun mainly. Sure it doesn't matter to anyone else why you want to be on Twitter (unless you're a spammer, in which case STAY AWAY!), but it would help you to know what your goal is to know where to go from there. In my opinion, there is no wrong reason to be on Twitter, there are just wrong uses of it. If you're not sure what the experience is going to be like, then read some posts about it first, but the experience greatly varies from one person to the other. Some people are addicted to it, some people think it's very useful, and others just can't understand it and even hate it. So I say the best bet is to just go ahead and try it for yourself!

Tips: If you want to learn everything about Twitter, you can start here with Mashable's Twitter Guidebook (who you should follow as well).

Who Do I Follow?

There is no general rule here. There are people from everywhere tweeting about everything all the time (Yes, all the time!). So you can decide to follow whoever you want to follow and that depends on your goal as per the previous point. Basically there are different types of tweeters, and you can learn about them from Guy Kawasaki's The Six Twitter Types or Mashable's The 10 Users You'll Meet On Twitter. You might want to follow people in your niche so you can get the scoop on all the related news if you want to use Twitter for professional goals, or follow interesting people who tweet about anything that you can find online, or maybe specialized people (or brands) who just focus on one topic like technology, politics, movies, celebrity news, etc. You can follow all the celebrities you love, if you're into that sort of things, to keep up with their latest updates, the most active and interesting ones being Ashton Kutcher and Alyssa Milano. And there are non-celebrities but really amazing people that you would want to follow like Guy Kawasaki (He has the greatest stuff but don't expect him to talk to you though), Diana Adams (The most lovable person on Twitter with lots of interesting links and will reply to you), Blair Semenoff (He keeps the interesting links coming, and he still stops once in a while to thank you for a retweet or retweet something interesting you shared), Scott Stratten (this dude is hilarious, enough said!) and many others (you can just check out my VIP list to see who I personally like).

Tips: You can start by following people based on their interests or professions by checking out sites like www.listorious.com or www.wefollow.com; and you can also follow people from the blogs and websites you like.

P.S.: Don't go on a following frenzy and follow everyone you see. You are only allowed to follow up to 2,000 people at first, until the number of your followers is right about that much (The rule is you can only follow 10% more than the number of your followers once you get to 2,000).

Who Would Follow Me?

Unless you are a celebrity, you will probably suffer with that a bit. Don't expect the number of your followers to skyrocket anytime soon, and that's OK. Don't worry because you will get followers anyway. But the number and quality of your followers will greatly depend on your tweeting skills. Just expect a lot of spammers (people promising you lots of money or followers), bots (accounts with numbers in their names and pictures of hot chicks, especially if they offer you porn) and marketers (basically the same as those who call you up at inconvenient times, or send you junk emails) to follow you in the beginning. And whatever you do, PLEASE don't fall for those telling you they can get you thousands of followers. I know we all want to have thousands of followers to brag about, but soon enough you'll know that getting followers who are really interested in YOU and love what you do is much more rewarding than a huge number of followers who don't really care about you.

Tips: If you really want to reasonably increase the number of your followers then start by following back those who already took the time to follow you, and also look for others who often follow back but make sure they are worth following (as mentioned in the previous point).

What Do I Tweet?

Of course that's also your business and no one should tell you what to do with your own account, but if you simply want to tweet about meaningless things in your day (like what you had for lunch or dinner, what your mom just said to you on the phone, how upset you are about something, the color of your PJs, etc), don't expect people to care enough to follow you. Apart from that, you can tweet about anything you like. You can share interesting links you find online, you can share various news, quotes, your blog posts (if you have one), jokes, etc. It all depends on what kind of followers you want, and on what you enjoy best. In my opinion, it would be best to include a bit of everything, that way you know that no matter who is following you, they would at least like some of your stuff, and that would get you other followers as well. And surely it matters what your followers like because you're not there tweeting "for your eyes only". The whole point about Twitter, the way I see it, is that you share things you already know and enjoy with others who you think would enjoy them too. So yes, it is (or at least should be) about sharing! Now the best thing you can share with your followers is a conversation. Make sure you always engage with your followers by initiating conversations with them, commenting on their tweets or answering their questions, retweeting the ones you like, or thanking them for retweeting yours and replying to them as often as you can. Always, ALWAYS, make time to talk to people. It's not called a "social" network on a whim, you are expected and you should socialize with people.

Tips: If you're not getting many followers, it might mean you're not a good tweeter. Try to see what others are tweeting and learn from them. You can also see what your current followers like and retweet, and tweet similar things.

P.S.: When you engage in a conversation with someone, make sure you move that to the Direct Messages so you don't annoy the rest of the followers, unless you think they'd be interested in it. Also, if you initiate a conversation with someone and they don't answer you back, it's not the end of the world! (I've come to learn that personally, and I was even featured in a post for it). Perhaps they are very busy, or maybe that's just their style and they don't like to talk to people. If you get too irritated with it then you can always unfollow them, unless they really tweet valuable things which would redeem their lack of sociability.

When Do I Tweet?

Practically whenever you want and whenever you have time. Once you get the hang of it, you will probably find yourself addicted to it and browsing the net from site to site to find interesting things to share all the time. But I'm sure you have a job or an actual social offline life, and you can't afford to tweet at all times. But take note that the frequency of your tweets is related to how many followers you get. If you rarely tweet, then you probably won't get as many followers as you'd like. So just make sure, if you can, that you would tweet at least a couple of times a day. But seriously there is no rule here either, it all goes back to what you're comfortable with. Just don't stress over it. If you can make time to tweet interesting things every day, then do so and you will see the difference it would make. If you can't, then it's not a big deal, but just make your time there worth it.

Tips: You can use services like Hootsuite to schedule your tweets to a later time. So if you have some free time now, but you know you will be busy the next day or so, you can tweet a few extra things and schedule them to when you would be offline. One thing I personally do is that I reschedule the really interesting things for 6 hours or 12 hours later so that followers who missed them the first time can check them out the second time when I am offline. Just don't overdo it and keep the repeated tweets at least 6 hours apart and schedule them for the peak times depending on where your followers are.

Of course, there are a lot more things that you need to learn about Twitter and you can find them everywhere online written by much more experienced tweeters. But the 5 things above are what will directly affect your Twitter experience, the rest are just techniques that would make your journey easier.

If you're still hung up on the 140 character limit, just remember that some of the best things come in small packages… Just look at how small the iPhone is! Or kittens… those are really cute too.

Now name other great things that come in small packages, or share your own Twitter start-up experience with us. And if you like this, don't forget to retweet it and subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter if you aren't doing so already.

Thanks to Cute-Death for the really cute picture I used!

Pink is Freedom: The Nokia N8

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:09:41 +0100

My favorite colors are red and black as someone who've always sought out passion and power. However, when I was designing my personal brand about a year and a half ago, red and black didn't feel to have the right touch. In a shocking twist, it was pink with black that felt very inspiring to me, I say "shocking" because everyone who knew me knew that I was an anti-pink girl. Ever since I launched my website, my branding identity and my online activity, I experienced growth more than I have ever imagined, reaching a state of independence and… freedom.

Being also a branding fanatic, you bet I like to make sure that everything about me reflects my personal brand. That's why I was excited about getting hold of the new Nokia N8, priding itself on being pink. It's been the lightest device I've owned and it's been very easy carrying it around and using it for hours. And look how awesome its picture looks in my blog :P it looks even better with my business card!

As someone who is addicted to taking pictures with my phone wherever I go, the N8 has been quite practical to use as a digital camera especially with its 12MP camera and many photo editing tools. Compared to the HTC Desire and Desire Z that my friend and I carry for personal use, the photos of the N8 had much more vibrant colors and were sharper and more detailed. For photography hobbyists, such as my friend @flopjoke who carries the older (blue) N8, the mobile camera is just amazing to use in different conditions to get great results and memories that lasts. Below is one of his photos with the caption: "Just spotted a blue BMW Z4 in Khobar. The large sensor in Nokia N8's camera helps a lot in low light!"

The N8 was also easy to play games with because of its practical size and weight, and it came equipped with a free version of Seasons Angry Birds, i.e. hours wasted in pig bashing :P. I must say my friends also kept bugging me about borrowing it to play Angry Birds and Need For Speed which was very amusing to play with this phone. In terms of applications, which is a critical part for me when it comes to mobiles, N8 Pink comes equipped with the basic apps from Ovi. The most app I was looking forward to having again in a Nokia phone is the Nokia Email Messaging where I can add multiple Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo email accounts in the same app. Otherwise I have to set up each email account in a different app and it gets really annoying to update all of them and remember to check them all.

The phone is also great to use for social networking but only if you intend to just browse around and read updates because personally I wouldn't depend on just a touch phone for heavy typing, messaging and social updating… and I'm a heavy social updater so I can never disregard having a tactile QWERTY keyboard. It would be a bit more appropriate to at least have a QWERTY touch keyboard which you only have in landscape mode of the N8 but not the portrait mode. Typing in portrait mode with the old style keyboard just brought up bad memories of hours of key pressing in the old days lol

Now let's talk about the key issue here: The Pink Nokia N8 ad…

WTH is up with that?! The funny thing is that on the same day that I saw that ad on youtube and was thinking how weird it is, I got the mobile. The ad is trying to communicate a powerful or liberated image of barbie girls, maybe to embrace their womanhood and eccentricity… and that's what the phone is all about?! Correct me, if I'm wrong, with a comment!

PERSONAL BRANDING: THE ART OF BEING YOURSELF – PART 2 YOUR BRAND NAME AND AVATAR

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:13:34 +0100

As you've read my previous post on the importance of personal branding (hopefully); I'm sure you've been waiting for the second part of my tips on your personal brand name and logo/avatar (hopefully). So without further ado, read on...

Your Brand Name:

In its simplest easiest forms, this can be your own name. However, the thing is your name might be special to you, but it would mean nothing to most other people. Unless you're creating your brand to make your family name recognized and popular, perhaps also for business use, I do recommend that you get yourself a witty nickname. Take mine for example, "The Manalyst". You won't believe how many times I got really great feedback over the way I used my name to create a brand name that represents who I am ingeniously. They also ask why I called myself The Manalyst and where it was inspired from so think of it as a conversation starter. Now imagine if I plainly used my own name "Manal Assaad"… What comment can you actually pass on that?! Okay I have some really nasty comments that I can say about my own name spelling in English, such luck I have. So think of a creative way to represent your name. Some personal brands I came across of and liked are "Zenology" and "AskAaronLee" both on Twitter.

You have to really think hard about this one, because whatever you choose, you need to stick with it for a really long time and use it across all social networks whether in Names, Nicknames, email addresses, or profiles URL.

Your Logo/Avatar:

Here is where you can actually get visually creative and might even have to do some designing. Most importantly, you need some really good clear shots of your SMILEY face. You might be lucky and have some photographers in your friends and use them to take some good shots of your portrait, otherwise a camera phone works out fine –that's the only thing I use actually and so far I got no complaints :P–.

Let me stress this enough here: NO MUG SHOTS OR PASSPORT ID PHOTOS OR NAUGHTY PHOTOS IN YOUR BEDROOM! I hope it was clear… Also, don't use generic pictures of nature, kids, celebrities –unless you are that celebrity, in which case: hi, can I have your autograph!–, etc. because people need to see the person they are interacting with in order to build trust.

It's best to use friendly pictures of you being casual and comfortable. If you really want to get creative, then choose a photo theme and stick to it. I'm known to have only pictures of myself wearing big sunglasses. People might think that I'm just showing off my wide collection, but actually It came by chance as I wanted to use some picture that didn't show my face clearly –for personal reasons, and no, I'm not a wanted criminal– and the only solution I could find was putting good pictures of me in big glasses, and it worked really well as a theme. Now when people meet me in person, they wonder who I am until I tell them I'm the girl with the big sunglasses and they ask me why I don't have my sunglasses on… even at night lol.

Another alternative to having your own personal photo if you are not comfortable with it is to use a photo of an item that represents you very well. Like choose something that you really like and have passion for, or have a certain meaning to you… but the connection has to be very obvious or publicized that your own name will be coined with that photo… Think in terms of how tissues actually mean Kleenex to almost everyone.

Third alternative, which is mostly for professional use, is to have your own logo. Here if you don't have any designing skills, try to get a friend who could help you with it, someone who knows you and understands you enough to get it right or who you can torture until he/she gets it right. If you want to take this very seriously, you may also pay a freelance designer to help you with it.

Finally, whatever you settle on, you use it on all social networks at the same time. You may change them all periodically but better keep them in sync.

Now that you have your brand name and logo/avatar, last thing to add to the mix is your own personality, and here I recommend strongly that you just be yourself. However, if you're an offensive obnoxious jerk, you might want to work on changing your personality… unless you're funny, because surprisingly that works for some people!

PERSONAL BRANDING: THE ART OF BEING YOURSELF – PART 1 WHY YOU NEED A PERSONAL BRAND

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 15:11:53 +0100

You don't have to be in the marketing field to understand what a brand is. Most probably, you have been a brand all your life and you don't even realize it. Whether you are the cool funny person in your family, the geek in the office, the go-to guy or girl in your click, or the troublemaker in your neighborhood, chances are you have been branded with some label… quite possibly some people have even branded you behind your back with labels I can't point out here...

Those brands were usually just known among our family members, friends, and people who are in our social or professional circles. However, now with our social and professional circles reaching as far as the world can go through our online social networks, you can actually get the chance to present your personal brand the way you want the world to see it.

Keeping the technical terms to a minimum, the key features of a brand are the name, image and personality. Here, I try to give you a few tips on how to make your personal brand -aka yourself- into an art, with a purpose of course because let's admit that as much as Picasso's paintings are a form of art, probably most of the normal population have no idea what the heck is going on in those paintings… But I digress.

In part 1 of my post about Personal Branding, let me point out some of the reasons you need to brand yourself for:

A unified online existence. This way it would be easier for people to find you on the various social networks -given that you want to be found!- and be able to recognize you on any channel online from the first glance. It gives you a unique character that is YOU and you won't have people mistaking someone else for you -unless it's someone very rich, good-looking and important in which case you should be flattered :P… Just kidding-.

A testimony of expertise and professionalism. Even though you, yourself, are not a company, you are still selling something: You're selling your expertise, your professional services, your work attitude, and all the other traits that get you the job/salary/benefits/business deals you want. As a job seeker, it is not a secret that recruiters and employers are now digging into your online profiles to make a final decision of whether to hire you or not, and seeing conformity and originality in your online existence will surely give you an edge. As a professional, people who are deciding whether to work with you and trust your opinions and expertise will firmly build their judgment of you from the way you express yourself online and convey your image.

A good base for future benefit. You might still be just a college student and think it's way too early to concern yourself with a personal brand, but this is just another reason to start now! Just imagine how much credibility you would gain if you were actually able to successfully create and maintain your own brand. You might think it might never come in use… but hey, what do you have to lose! Everything is basically free. It doesn't really matter what profession you'll end up in, because almost every career in the world requires a distinguished personality.

Simply because it's a fun and creative way to express yourself… and that's that!

Stay tuned for Part 2 where I give tips about how to choose your brand name and avatar/logo.

If you liked this post, be kind enough to comment and/or share it with others who might like it.

ArabNet 2011 Shift Digital Summit: Developer Day Recap

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:15:05 +0100

The much-awaited event of the year in the Middle East, ArabNet, kicked off on Tuesday 22nd of March with its Developer Day, or as ordinary people like me call it “Geeks Day” because of half of the technical stuff that flies right over our heads!

The turnout for this day was completely unexpected as most professionals in the region would be more interested in the Forum Day 1 & 2 that host many astounding speakers with talks on digital trends. The crowds in the hallway & the two conference rooms indicated an interest increase in mobile & web development whether as a career or as a business investment... or perhaps it was an indication that the space was very very small with not many chairs.

I unfortunately missed out on Omar Christidis, founder of ArabNet, opening the summit, and most of the first panel with Ghassan Chahine, Gilles Fayad, Rob Jones, & William Kanaas discussing the various Mobile Platforms and trying to answer the question: Which mobile operating system should app developers build for?

To any Apple freak, the answer is easy: more Apple apps! And considering the rise of Google Android, to a point that surpasses the iPhone market in the US, it is without a doubt a priority to developers. I’d go ahead and add RIM’s Blackberry considering I live in Saudi Arabia and Blackberry is a MUST (No I don’t carry a Blackberry, thank God), but I think the reason it wasn’t much discussed is that Blackberry as a phone is under par with mobile phones like iPhone, HTC, or Nokia and the only reason BBs are popular is their BB Messenger. I bet you that most of Blackberry users have no idea what other apps are there for the device or a motivation to use them.

Worthy of mention: Nokia felt very left out (http://twitter.com/GinoRaidy/status/50111528757755904)

Two parallel “Starter Talks” sessions were DJango (Photo Below) & RubyOnRails... My summary: too technical & uninteresting to me, I was out in the lobby chatting with great tweeps like: @sdarine, @solidd_swa @dubayan @anasonline @GhaidaZahran @Farah_Nakouzi @shireen_h @krikor and many many others!

What I was really interested in was the session with Sebastian Trzcinski-Clement and Building On HTML5, and I was right that it would be quite interesting & engaging! He showed us a lot of cool tricks using HTML5 & there’s no doubt that it’s going to be the future of the web.

The other parallel session was Microsoft Silverlight with Ms. Asli Bilgin, and since unfortunately I can’t be in 2 places at once, I missed that.

Next sessions were on Product Development, and Yahoo User Interface with Mr. Alaa’ Ibrahim, which was too technical & an aesthetic crime (deep purple font on a black background, imagine the contrast!). Perhaps Mr. Alaa’ would have used some tips from Mashhour Dubayan (Photo below) who, as many tweets testify, had by far the best presentation at the summit, with tips on User Interface & User Experience and stressed on adopting a Design Hierarchy of Needs.

For me, that concluded Developer’s Day as it was enough geeky stuff for one day! You can catch up with the review of the rest of the sessions from other bloggers & tweeps by following the hashtag #ArabNetMe on twitter.

Behind The Scenes: For *annoying* reasons, I had to stick around the conference hall a lot longer than the public but that gave me the opportunity to get a sneak peak of the preparation for the Forum Day. You can not believe how much hard work is put behind every little detail that people don’t really notice even though they make a big difference in the overall experience. Worthy of mention: the organizing & registration team deserve really heartfelt thanks & applauds for working for really long sleepless hours. At 9 pm, after having been there since 7-8 am, they were literally lying around on couches in the hope of getting a nap for a few minutes to power them for hours more. So be nice to them when you see them!

Follow me on twitter, or the hashtag #ArabNetMe for live coverage on the event.