Mid East eyes social media

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Godudu launch

As per sources, Godudu is billing itself as the world’s first multilingual social network

Going social

The uprisings seen in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya this year played an integral part in the growth in popularity of networks such as Facebook and Twitter – as they were harnessed by the young people to organise and give momentum to the Arab Spring.

In the Middle East and North Africa, the number of Facebook subscribers has doubled in the past year, and there are 20 times as many active users of Twitter according to consultancy firm Value Partners.

And in Egypt alone, Facebook gained five million members in the month leading up to and immediately after the protests that led to the fall of leader Hosni Mubarak.

And while the likes of Godudu are seeing that as a reason to launch a social network here, other companies are keen to take advantage of the platforms.

Almost 60% of firms now say they now have some sort of social media presence, according to a report by Econsultancy, well up on a year ago.

Banner advertising has been the key business for the Middle East’s advertising network Ikoo.com – which is opening offices in places such as Morocco and Tunisia, which are among the countries seeing the region’s greatest internet penetration growth.

Ikoo's Hussam Khoury

Ikoo’s Hussam Khoury says more firms want to integrate social media and advertising

But Ikoo also reports rising interest from firms wanting to incorporate social media into their advertising.

“Because of the Arab Spring what we’ve seen is brands starting to use social media because they’ve realised it’s actually a personal interaction with the actual consumer,” says sales and marketing director Hussam Khoury.

“In particular it’s been Egypt where we’ve seen a massive growth in demand from the brands and the agencies we work with in the region.”

‘Great opportunity’

That trend was evident at the Gulf region’s biggest technology exhibition, Gitex, held in Dubai earlier this month.

While the stands demonstrating the latest gizmos – from smartphones and display screens to the car which the makers claim “can park itself” – for the first time there was a section dedicated to digital marketing – including seminars on using social media to boost your business.

And for some companies trying to break into this region, social media is a crucial part of their marketing strategy,

UrFilez app

Music streaming company UrFilez targets emerging markets

Music streaming company UrFilez targets emerging markets, which do not have access to firms doing similar things such as Spotify.

Having already launched in Bahrain, it has now done a deal with a United Arab Emirates mobile phone network – and its boss says social media will be essential if it is to win enough subscribers to be viable.

“Because social media is booming here in the Gulf region, that’s a great opportunity for us,” says chief executive Hassan Miah.

“The social media audience is our audience. It’s those people who love music, and who use it to find out about music, to recommend music.

“It’s as big in Saudi as in Dubai, It’s happening everywhere, and particularly now.”

Early days

But despite this enthusiasm, only about 4% of all advertising Middle East advertising spending goes on digital campaigns – from mobile to online display adverts.

Gitex

Social media made its mark at the Gulf region’s biggest technology event, Gitex

And only quarter of that is specifically for social media, according to Emmanuel Durou of Value Partners Dubai, who thinks it is still early days for the sector.

“It’s a new concept and you need new local talent to make it happen, which is something that’s currently lacking, whether you’re talking about brands or about the agencies,” he says.

“And I think in terms of return on investment, that is much more difficult to track than traditional advertising, so for advertisers it’s a much more difficult proposition to validate in terms of budgets.”

Back at the Godudu launch party, a singer in sequins waits in the wings for an event-closing performance which will, it later transpires, feature a version of Tina Turner’s Simply The Best.

But before this finale, at a question-and-answer session with the firm’s boss, a woman leaps to her feet.

“I’m a Facebook addict, I check it five times a day so how are you going to get me to give that up and start using you instead?” she asks.

For all the razzmatazz and the confidence about booming markets and growing potential users, it is an exchange which really brings home how tough success in this industry will be.

Facebook sets up shop in Lapland

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Father Christmas and reindeer in Lapland

In the main league of the reports released by the company, it isn’t the native inhabitants that have driven Facebook to Lapland. Facebook is heading to Lapland, lured not by the possibility of seeing Father Christmas but because of the climate. Temperatures in the city of Lulea, in northern Sweden, make it the perfect location for the social media giant’s first non-US data centre. It means it can use outside air for cooling its servers for up to 10 months of the year. The facility will process data from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It will cover 30,000 square metres.

That is the equivalent of around 11 football pitches. The social network needs to ramp up its computing power as it continues to grow. It currently has more than 800 million users.

RIM facing lawsuits over outage

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Blackberry smartphone

The company lately launched a report in which it stated that Blackberry customers in the US and Canada are suing Research in Motion over the recent global outage which left millions without email, instant messaging and net access. A Canadian lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, was brought on behalf of all Blackberry owners in the country, and accuses RIM of breach of contract.

A similar complaint has been filed in the US. When contacted by the BBC, RIM had no comment on the news. The lawsuit claims that RIM “is responsible for Blackberry users’ loss of email, BB, and/or internet service for approximately one and a half days”. “It has not compensated consumers on a prorated basis for such loss of use, while knowing full well that Blackberry users pay a monthly fee to their wireless service providers for data services and that they were deprived thereof.”

Anti-piracy firm back in business

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Keyboard

As per reports, the firm responsible for tracking down illegal file-sharers in France is back at full speed, after an enforced suspension of some of its work. Trident Media Guard (TMG) was told to send details of alleged net pirates to the French government via posted DVDs, after it suffered a hacking attack. The firm agreed to tighten security following the incident.

The French data authority says it is now happy with the changes made, and is allowing TMG to send reports online. Critics describe the incident as an embarrassment to the French government, which has introduced new rules targeting illegal file-sharers. Suspected offenders receive three official warnings, after which they are reported to a judge who can hand out a range of punishments, including disconnecting them from the internet.

TMG was employed by the French anti-piracy unit HADOPI to monitor peer-to-peer networks and to pass on to rightsholders the IP addresses associated with illegal downloads. It was hacked in May, exposing some of its records, leading to an investigation by officials responsible for data law compliance.

AI computing pioneer dies aged 84

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John McCarthy

As per reports, Artificial intelligence researcher, John McCarthy, has died. He was 84. The American scientist invented the computer language LISP. It went on to become the programming language of choice for the AI community, and is still used today. Professor McCarthy is also credited with coining the term “Artificial Intelligence” in 1955 when he detailed plans for the first Dartmouth conference. The brainstorming sessions helped focus early AI research.

Prof McCarthy’s proposal for the event put forward the idea that “every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it”. The conference, which took place in the summer of 1956, brought together experts in language, sensory input, learning machines and other fields to discuss the potential of information technology. Other AI experts describe it as a landmark moment.

“John McCarthy was foundational in the creation of the discipline Artificial Intelligence,” said Noel Sharkey, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sheffield. “His contribution in naming the subject and organising the Dartmouth conference still resonates today.

The big businesses thinking small

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“The genesis of it was: look, this landscape is shifting very very quickly,” Mr Ellington told the BBC. ”We’re kind of living in a little bit of a bubble in a big corporation. ”I think at its simplest the idea was how can we get ourselves really at the leading edge of some of those new technology ideas as an organisation?” While the scheme has its obvious commercial benefits, Mr Ellington says the small-scale financial help also gives them chance to let some of the start-up culture rub off onto their own teams. ”We’ve got lots of folks in our marketing team who I think are really going to enjoy working with these start-up businesses because they do come at the world from a different place.

A screenshot from the TvTak website

TvTak is among the 10 companies being offered marketing pilots with PepsiCo ”One of the things I hope it will do is just breed a much more entrepreneurial spirit and mood in our marketing. ”It’s infectious. It sets your mind spinning – they’re people who just operate in a completely different way, and think in a totally different way.”

Grave warning

Crucially, however, Pepsi are not buying the companies, or even acquiring a stake. To do so has proven fatal for start-ups in the past, causing great losses for the acquirers. Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, is not surprised to see the likes of PepsiCo and other large retail companies beginning to lean towards the start-up way of thinking. He does, however, offer a grave warning to any business haphazardly dipping their toes in acquisitions. Continue reading the main story “Start Quote Middle management doesn’t like risk and typically fails to provide the right environment for the start-up to thrive”

End Quote
Joshua Schachter
Founder, Delicious

“They think that the company will continue to innovate in its old form as part of their big bureaucratic organisation,” Mr Ghosh said.

“When they do that, they usually kill the very thing they’ve bought. They kill the spark in the company.”

Bureaucracy aside, another killer of motivation can simply be the fact the once-impoverished founders are now multimillionaires.

“In a traditional big company you incentivise people by giving them promotions, by giving them a 7% raise instead of a 5% raise, by giving them a slightly higher bonus.

“All of these levels that you have become pretty much useless when someone’s just made a big amount of money on day one and is probably richer by an order of magnitude than their managers.”

That was certainly true for Joshua Schachter, the founder of social bookmarking site Delicious. He sold the site to Yahoo for reportedly about $10-$15 million.

He told the BBC that running his start-up from within Yahoo! was “suffocating”.

Ian Ellington, general manager of Walker's Crisps

Ian Ellington hopes start-up attitudes may rub off on his own marketing team ”I’d make a decision and my boss would decide he didn’t like it and just block me. ”Start-ups, and innovation in general, are a way to take risk.

Aviva, one of the world’s biggest insurance companies, is experimenting with QuoteMeHappy.com – a price comparison site which draws heavily on the style of the likes of Innocent smoothies and O2′s off-shoot network GiffGaff. Aside from allowing Aviva to resurrect an old advertising slogan, the QuoteMeHappy launch is a rolling experiment in recreating the start-up “feel” within a multinational. ”We’ve got a different attitude,” says QuoteMeHappy managing director Marco Distefano. “Effectively we have one floor, we’ve got a customer services team, we’ve got our retail and trading element, and our operations element which includes technology – and that’s all together.”

In addition, Mr Distefano’s team is based in a building away from the rest of Aviva, giving it the breathing room, they say, to remain focused and save time. “It removes all of the layers. We still need to do compliance, but what we don’t need to do is when we’re making decisions as a team is go through that hierarchy.” Whichever route these big companies opt to take, all seem to revolve around a single aspiration – the ability to take risks and adapt quickly. “You can try 10 different approaches and see which one works the best,” concludes PepsiCo’s Mr Ellington. “And then build on that, rather than put all of your faith and hope in one 30-second TV ad that you’ve spent months making. “Five years ago we weren’t thinking in that way at all. It’s a totally different mindset.”

Fund ‘would boost games industry’

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Man playing video game

As per sources, the UK games industry has called on the Scottish government to establish a fund to boost the video games sector north of the border.

Games industry association Tiga has proposed a creative content fund (CCF) to encourage new studio production. It also wants to stimulate the creation of new intellectual property. Under the proposal, the CCF would provide funding of up to £100,000 to game developers and operate on a commercial basis. Tiga said the measure could help put Scotland on the global map as a centre for video games development.

It claimed the country was losing out after the UK coalition government failed to introduce games tax relief, with investment and jobs going overseas to countries which have tax relief. Tiga chief executive Richard Wilson said: “The Westminster coalition government is failing to invest in the Scottish and UK game development sector.

‘Decisive leadership’

“The Scottish government now has the chance to show decisive leadership in support of the video games industry by adopting Tiga’s proposal for a creative content fund.

“Tiga’s proposed CCF would improve developers’ access to finance, stimulate original IP (intellectual property) generation and promote studio growth.

“It would enhance the independence of developers and strengthen the prospects for the expansion of the Scottish video games industry.”

He added: “In the long term it would establish Scotland as one of the best places in the UK to develop games. It would give a really powerful signal to the UK and global games industry that it’s open for business.”

The proposed CCF would make investment available on a matched-funding basis.

It would be entitled to recoup the money from recipients out of successful sales of the games once they had generated a certain amount of revenue and over an agreed time period, together with a defined share of the additional profits.

These profits could then be used to augment the CCF and be applied to future projects.

‘Significant support’

The Scottish government said it already provided “significant support” for the games sector in Scotland, handing out more than £6.75m last year.

That figure included direct support to computer games companies from Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland.

A spokeswoman said: “We will continue to put pressure on the UK government to implement tax breaks, which we believe is the best way enhance the competitive edge of our computer games industry on the international stage.

“Giving Scotland control of these tax levers would be the best way of ensuring we support all our key industries.”

A UK Treasury spokeswoman said the government was committed to making the UK “the best place to start, finance and grow a business” and making it an attractive location for innovative industries.

Kung-fu pandas join Warcraft game

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Screengrab of Pandaren monk

If sources are to be believed, the expansion will let players explore Pandaria or life as a Pandaren. Pandas, skilled in the martial arts, will be at the heart of the fourth expansion for World of Warcraft. The update will introduce the lost continent of Pandaria to the online game and let players go adventuring as a member of the Pandaren race. It will also let players make existing characters even more powerful and allow them to stage battles between teams of in-game pets. No date has been given for when the add-on goes on sale.

Flying horses

The announcement about the Mists of Pandaria expansion was made at the BlizzCon annual conference which was held in Anaheim, California over the weekend. World of Warcraft has about 10 million players around the world who spend their time in the game killing monsters, completing quests and gathering loot. Other changes to WoW announced at the show include the introduction of a challenge mode for parts of the game. This will find out which players can complete a closed-off section, known as a dungeon, the fastest.

The expansion will also see the inclusion of what Blizzard calls “scenarios”. These will involve players banding together briefly to achieve a common goal – such as defending a village against invaders. The most recent expansion for WoW was called Cataclysm and was released in December, 2010. It saw many parts of Azeroth ripped up and reshaped by the emergence of a dragon called Deathwing. Separate to the expansion, Blizzard unveiled some other changes to WoW. It unveiled a deal which will give a free copy of the forthcoming game Diablo III and a flying horse to use in WoW to those who pay a year’s subscription all at once.

UN sets global broadband targets

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Cables around the world

According to the ITU, Net users account for just 20% of the world’s population.

The United Nations has set “ambitious” new targets for broadband uptake around the world. It calls on all countries to put in place broadband strategies by 2015. By that time it wants to see 60% of people in the developed world online, with a slightly lower target of 50% for people living in the developing countries. It also wants net access to be made available to 40% of households in the developing world by 2015.

It emphasised that broadband services must be “affordable” – amounting to less than 5% of average monthly incomes. The four targets have been set by the UN’s broadband commission for digital development. “These targets are ambitious but achievable, given the political will and commitment on the part of governments, working in partnership with the private sector,” said Dr Hamadoun Toure, the secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The ITU will be charged with measuring each country’s progress towards the targets, with an annual broadband report, ranking nations in terms of broadband policy, affordability and uptake.

While the majority of broadband connections in the Republic of Korea run at speeds of at least 10Mbps (megabits per second), countries such as Ghana, Mongolia, Oman and Venezuela offer much slower connections, rarely exceeding 2Mbps. Oliver Johnson, an analyst with research firm Point Topic, thinks that new league tables will force countries to think about broadband. ”Countries have to pay attention or risk becoming seriously uncompetitive,” he said. He also expects to see the EU making it easier for customers to buy services from a wider range of providers.

“Why can’t you buy your football feed from Greece or your IP or broadband service from the organisation that offers the best price, regardless of where they are in Europe?” he asked. In the UK it is estimated that 8.7 million adults have never used the internet. Race Online – the body charged with getting more people using the net – has begun a new campaign urging net-savvy individuals to ‘give an hour’ to someone new to the web. The BBC is backing the campaign, and on its website presenters and others celebrities explain how and who they intend to help.