Is social media making the Middle East more ’social’?

[Carrington Malin]

I’ve been a big fan of LinkedIn since I signed up just after it launched in 2004. I immediately found lots of my technology industry friends and colleagues were doing the same and were more than happy to introduce me to their contacts. I spent hours browsing LinkedIn user records looking for useful contacts, business prospects and old friends and over the years LinkedIn’s introduced me to new clients, new staff and other useful new business contacts. However, LinkedIn is a very business-focused social network and, for me, using LinkedIn has always been about business. Moreover, it’s a way of keeping in touch with lots of people, without actually meeting them very often.

For many of us in the Middle East, we started using Twitter this way too. Twitter has been great for following what people are up to and, for the most part, those that we have a business interest in finding out about, learning from or keeping in contact with. In early 2009, when Twitter had just 1,000-2,000 users across the whole region it was the business social network users that were there first (and excited about the prospect of discovering more business contacts!). Well, one year on, things have got a great deal more ’social’. With some 30,000-40,000 Twitter users across the Middle East and North Africa (Spot On’s estimate), there seem to be many more people these days that use Twitter day-to-day for their social lives (read Eman Hussein’s ‘Life without Twitter?’). Tweetups and other offline gatherings have been springing up all over the region, bringing together people with shared interests, introducing new connections and putting faces to Twitter handles.

2010 has already seen tweetups held all over MENA including Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, plus GeekFestBeirut in Lebanon. These meetups happen for many different reasons at different types of venue, both as public open invite events and private gatherings. GeekFest Beirut, held on Friday February 5th at the Art Lounge in Beirut (see Alexander McNabb’s report on FakePlasticSouks ) drew about 120 people to socialise, talk geek and listen to geek speakers. On the same day in the Sultanate of Oman, 45 tweeps gathered at Muscat’s Indian Embassy to meet visiting Indian Minister of State for External Affairs Dr. Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor on Twitter, read Digital Oman for a full report), who now seems to have penciled in a Dubai tweetup for sometime in the near future. On Saturday January 30th a group of more than 30 Jordanian Twitter users met at Wild Jordan in Jabal Amman to meet ‘the faces behind the tweeps’ (see full report on Under My Olive Tree) and there have been at least two more Amman tweetups since! Meanwhile, more than twenty tweeps met at the Riyadh Tweetup on February 2nd. Organisers are now looking at bigger venues to hold a Riyadh Tweetup on the first Monday of every month.

As one of the volunteer organisers for the first Twestival Dubai held in February 2009 (by the way the next Twestival Dubai takes place on March 25th), which followed a month after the first ‘big’ tweetup in Dubai organised by @rida, I remember the air of mystery that used to surround organising a tweetup. Many were unsure of the etiquette (or twettiquette!) involved in hosting a tweetup. Many, also, were used to keeping ‘online friends’ and ‘real friends’ compartmentalised, never mixing the two, and never meeting the former! Now is seems Twitter has helped bring the walls down and people are more comfortable inviting people to an event over Twitter than they are over the telephone. People are inviting other people that they would normally have considered to be ’strangers’ to meet and socialise all over the region, making new contacts and yes, even friends.

Read the original story on the Spot On PR blog here.

[Makram Adnan]

Oh I have no doubt that he number of people using social media has grown quicker than anyone could have anticipated. What I'm saying is applications like IRC and ICQ largely paved the way to social media sites and provided them with quicker adoption rates than they would have had, had people not had any interaction with applications that allowed them to interact more freely with strangers.

Also, because of the social media sites' openness to the public, it fed the voyeuristic urge (Peeping Tom syndrome) in people which IRC and ICQ did not, this in turn helped increase its popularity rather quickly. Or perhaps, like you said, because people got to know so much about one another, the social taboos started to dissipate. When everything is out in the open, there's nothing to hide. Either way, I think the question right now is will this last or will it die off slowly and become another past fad?

[Carrington Malin]

Thanks for the comment Makram! You're right, I also know people who met via IRC and ICQ going back to the 1990s. The difference for me now is that I know hundreds of people that have met via new social media. Sure, it's partly just different technology, but I think some of the taboos have gone because today's social media tend to be a lot more out in the open than in the past. Network on Twitter and you're in full public view most of the time and I think that gives chatters a little more comfort to both make new contacts and meet in person. Also, as you know, the number of people connect these days is much, much bigger these days.

[Makram Adnan]

There is no doubt that social media has facilitated the process of connecting people, made spreading the word quicker than ever which made mobilizing the masses easier. However, it is not the main driving force behind the "socialization" of Middle Easterners.

The social norms started changing long before facebook and twitter emerged. People have been meeting each other from various chat applications such as IRC and Yahoo chat since the late 1990s. I know of several instances where people from the same chat rooms organized a gathering and some even got married to someone they met online.

My point is the will to meet new people and mix with complete strangers has been around for a while, but twestivals and tweetups are just more visible and considered a "cool" thing to do now with all the hype that has surrounded social media sites since their inception.

[Carrington Malin]

It is a gift! And quite exciting to be able to watch cross-border, cross-cultural tribes developing across the region powered by social media. Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

[Yusuf Mansur]

Nicely said; is socila media making change? yes, it is. We are better informed and more connected. We are networked and can say what we wish for sometimes even when what we say is not commonly accepted. So many things said here and there are not sanctioned by the regular press; so many people that one meets through social media would have never met...This is a gift and opportunity to expand and grow...It alos allows the making of tribes, new tribes, not of blood but of people who want to access and engage...a beautiful dawn indeed