FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a partner in TootCorp, creator of ikbis.com.
Before we start talking about the “failure” of Arab web 2.0, let us first admit that the Arab world is still stuck in web 0.5 and has not even reached web 1.0. By global standards, web 1.0 encompasses things like e-commerce (think Amazon.com and eBay), full featured newspaper sites (think The New York Times) sites, personalizable portals (think My Yahoo).
I personally have been around the web industry since the birth of the commercial internet in the Arab world, as I was part of the small founding team of the (now defunct) Arabia.com (back in 1995), arguably the first Arab web portal. In our naivety, we where already pitching the portal as a place for “merchants to do business”. Amazon.com was born around the same time. Yet, for the past 12 years I’ve been waiting to see the emergence of a major Arab e-commerce player. I am still waiting. Most people I ask have never bought anything online from an Arab online retailer.
Blame it on low internet penetration or on the commercial fragmentation of Arab markets. Blame it on Syria if you want (the fact that Arab countries with large populations like Syria and Iraq came online very late is indeed a major factor behind the timid pace of internet development in the region). The bottom line is: We’re not even at Web 1.0, while the world is already talking about web 3.0.
In the past couple of years, we’ve seen the emergence of a number of new Arab web companies who saw themselves as the new generation of the web industry in the Arab region. An interesting side note here is that a number of them were born in Jordan, just like some of earlier pioneering sites (Maktoob.com, Jeeran.com, Arabia.com).
TootCorp started with its experimental blog aggregator itoot.net in January 2006. It then launched the first Arab video and photo sharing site ikbis.com in November 2006. This was followed by Maktoob.com launching its own photo and video sharing sections. Then D1G.com came along with the intention of becoming a major portal which includes everything from email to cartoons.
In the past year, Jeeran.com started morphing into a social network (ala Facebook). Mecca.com wanted to be the facebook for Muslims. Half a dozen of Arab DIGG clones, like Wapher.com and Darabet.com were launched.
But what have all these sites really achieved?
Probably not much. Or not much, yet.
If you look at the Alexa chart above, which covers the rankings of a number of old and new Arab sites over the past year, you will notice that the whole Arab web picture doesn’t look too pretty.
Maktoob.com, the well financed leader (with a reported valuation in the ten of millions of dollars), has shown some growth a year ago (fueled by an aggressive acquisition strategy that brought some high traffic Saudi forums under maktoob’s wing) then a decline in the past few months. Maktoob doesn’t seem to grow anymore.
Jeeran.com, which recently received a good financing shot in the arm, has noticeably declined over the past year. So has Albawaba.com.
Also see D1G.com, supposedly a “Maktoob killer”: Aggressive growth for six months, fueled by a lot of money thrown at acquisitions of sites and heavy advertising on Facebook and elsewhere. Growth then stagnation.
Ikbis is no exception here. Nice growth in the first half of the graph, then a pretty flat performance.
All of this is happening at a time when Facebook is taking the Arab web by storm. In Jordan, a small market, Facebook has grown from zero to around 100,000 users in less than a year. There is growth in broadband internet connections across the Arab region. But the new (and old sites) can’t seem to capture that growth.
That isn’t to say that all these sites and companies are doomed to failure. In fact, they some of have been able to translate their traffic they have into revenues. Advertisers believe in the web more these days. Professional internet publishers can reap the benefits and survive financially. But none of the old or the new players have quite cracked the nut of continued growth.
The low number of net users in this region will remain an obstacle in the path of growth. I also believe that the industry has not been able to deliver relevant innovation to Arab users. Why can a site like Facebook grow this fast, while Mecca.com has less traffic than this blog.
User also have more choice these days. They aren’t all flocking to a limited number of sites like the good old days of the net.
The year 2008, might see some exciting developments on the Arab web. The international web leaders are starting to take notice of the Arab market. Deep pocketed regional media giants (like MBC) are finally understanding that the web is to be taken seriously. The traditional web and the mobile web will move closer to each other, bringing mobile operators into the game.
A friend of mine once said: “The Arab world has missed the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution and the electronics revolution. It would be a real shame if it misses the web revolution”.
The lesson: the new kid on the Arab net have their work cut out for them.
Comments
15 responses to “Has the Arab web 2.0 failed?”
I would like to add some points regarding e-commerce:
1- first and foremost is the privacy issue, and by that I mean both financial and personal info.
2-Trusted third parties.
3-The face to face deals culture.
4-The lack of affordable and relaible logistics providers(Take Fedex and UPS, I can argue that those two companies were the ones that enabled e-commerce)
well i guess the reason for this is poor Arab planning and marketing techniques, I first saw facebook on 20/20 show on mbc 4 ,at first i thought its gonna be like hi5 or other crappy social networking web pages that starts of as being cool then blows with garbage and unnecessary features and bad users, face book kinda avoided this stuff by constant monitoring and necessary enhancements, also to be able to keep it simple yet with capability of going complicated on users request,
right now i cant think of anything more powerful, think of this:
souq.com::facebook has a marketplace “its for free and a loot easier to use”
jobsclub-jo & bayt.com :: facebook is alot easier to use “notice that even akhtaboot.com uses it”
Ikbis.com :: facebook has a built in video uploder not to mention the support for any other video website , say yourtube.com, and u don’t have to watch a coca cola ad “that what made stop watching ikbis
”
email :: on facebook i don’t have to keep a contact list , just search and send a message,
not to mention news,blogs,events,images,applications and having ur own personal web page, all these are bundled nicely into facebook and contribute to its growth
bottom line if u want something to grow u need to feed it and keep taking care of it.
wishing u all the luck in ikbis.com god knows how much i love it and hope to see it prosper, but u need to keep in mind that its a tough world out there, and u need to be smart and creative to survive
I think the fragmentation of Arab markets is definitely a factor and you are correct there. I can buy any imaginable item on the internet in the United States and have it shipped overnight from a place that is comparable to how far Morocco is from Jordan and not have to worry about it being stolen, stuck or mysteriously lost in customs or have to pay international shipping for it. Supposedly the GCC will not have this issue anymore because they’ve unified their markets just recently, right? But that’s still not a really big market when you think about. For Jordan, it’s a completely hopeless case. You can start an online retail store like Amazon or an internet bidding site like Ebay, but it’ll never achieve any good volume.
All the “Arabic Youtube”, “Arabic flickr” or “Arabic facebook” sites won’t get much attention either because most people will prefer to stick with the usually more capable original sites.
“The Arab web 2.0” – that’s hilarious. Almost an oxymoron!
Your “Arab web 0.5” – way too generous. I would give it a 0.2!
I too have been on since ‘95 – and today sometimes feel we are where we were 13 years ago at arabia.com!
OK, I’m getting really angry and frustrated trying to reply to this blog, so rather than starting to hurl obscenities at our pathetic Arab web situation, I’m going to go cool off and will come back here with a more productive/proactive response.
Quickie on Facebook: It works for everything one can possibly want, it’s super easy (idiot-proof), and the clean/simple GUI is ingenious! So far, I think it’s the ultimate tool for work & play. Point me to a similar Arab solution….
The success of Facebook and Youtube in the Arab world and their 100k penetration in one year only speak volumes, most importantly, it’s really not the internet penetration to blame. It’s the ways we run our businesses.
There are major issues that stops me, and millions others from trusting the arab services online. You can check my complete article on Why I don’t trust Arab online services. Once these issues are resolved, we might have a chance.
In my socio-techno predictions for 2008, I am predicting the demise of many Arab social networks after they finally “GET IT”
Being first to the market with something doesn’t mean anything. Look at myspace and facebook. But we just insist on rubbing it in the face of everything that X was the first to do Y. I’m not sure why we’re so obsessed with that
Anyway, this is a huge issue that needs to be tackled at many levels.
I would add that legal framework of ecommerce is messy. Either missing specific laws to address cyber world or judicial weakness in ruling cases with internet involvement. Fax documents for instance do not hold well on documentation, neither emails. It would be accepted as supporting documents given no contradiction with blue pen papers. As governments don’t push for a shift in legal framework and supporting infrastructure, nor mass urge by the people due to weak penetration among the public due to poverty: a positive change is not expected.
I agree with mohannad regarding logistics role, but would also emphasize on the role of giant businesses among Jordan or Arabia to stress on ecommerce to lower costs for example, in addition to the lack of unified markets, which disables businesses from operating on large scales. Take for example internet banking, though not dominant enough in banking dealings, yet considered among the fastest growing areas in banking in arab world after winning scheme products. On the other hand many huge businesses deal with their websites as a mandatory decorating style.
As for social networking areas, what new do they have to offer? they are just copying international or mainly western projects. so why join? why arabic youtube? flick or facebook? who uses internet and can not command english well enough to browse through original websites? Do i need a religious social networking promoting potential brides, or someone’s story about X who dreamt of Y regarding Z? thanks, my junk email folder is full already
I don’t mean that any mentioned name promotes sleazy ideas, but all fall within the social bottle neck we all face. Arabian TV channels are full with good and junk copies of international programs, though I disagree with the copying approach but those make higher volumes because majority do not have access to the original products.
I think that any failure you are discussing related to the social networking falls within the main social problem of Arabia.
Ahmad,
While I tend to be more of a realist myself when thinking about problems, I think your view this time borders on pessimism, especially when we’re witnessing what could be considered an Intnernet renaissance in our region.
Let’s examine the following two points and reset our thinking accordingly, maybe then we can come up with some possible answers to cracking the nut;
1- We need to stop looking at our internet in terms of “The Arab internet” because the world is more flat today than it has ever been. It’s simply “the Internet”, and -believe it or not -the YouTube of the Arab World is “YouTube”, the Facebook of the Arab World is really “Facebook”, and the Google of the Arab World will always be “Google”… the list goes on. Once you believe in that, the rest will become very obvious.
2- Facebook was not the first nor the last “social network”. You will find a lot of sites that came out before and after facebook that never made it -and who by the way were very well funded. So it’s not a matter of pioneering, coming up with new ideas, or having enough money.
Eventually, even the “non Arab” internet has its failures, but it never stopped those guys from trying. What matters is that the Arab world’s understanding and adoption of the internet is evolving and is looking really promising. I just hope that we as companies keep having fun while we give it our best, because when it stops being fun, that’s when I will lose hope.
p.s. I would think that by now Arabia had become very irrelevant to any discussion about the present state of the internet, let alone the future. there was nothing wrong with the Internet back then, because people like Maktoob have not just survived that era, but have come out on top, and are still evolving
regardless of the details. I would think Arabia was more about “very bad cashflow management” quoteunquoteAhmad, I think there’s a bug in your blog; the last 3 lines in my prev comment got struck out automatically. you may want to check it out.
Here is an interesting fact about Alexa, it’s bullshit and isn’t accurate at all and I guess Yahoo! acquired just to keep saying: hey we are “number one”. Ahmad your blog is much older than mine, and you seem to be much active than me, and yet I have a better rank! So Alexa is not a reference, at least I believe so.
I don’t call it failure, it’s a clutter, we have too many players with a small audience, the last number I heard was 26 million, I believe that we have between 10 – 15 million active internet users in the Arab world, if not even less. Plus if this area is as you described it, it won’t attract giants like Google and Yahoo to “invade”, I guess it’s very promising.
Maktoob confirmed 7 million unique visitors last year in an independent audit done by a British firm, and I guess exceeded the 9 by now, so there is a growth.
As for the standards, who said it should work everywhere? When Google wanted to enter the Chinese market they had to submit to the Chinese government’s rules regarding privacy, I don’t this this is happening in any other country, so what do you call this, web 0.0? Imagine having no privacy, and being threatened by being jailed for a simple query!
Hi Ahmed,
Nice post. I have reservations, not about your conclusions per say as we all have long ways to go, but about what you’re basing all of this on: Alexa stats!!
In many occasions, the subject of Alexa ranking has been brought up and I thought I would share some info to illustrate the uselessness of Alexa stats (even though we have a relatively good ranking on Alexa).
During the period of Jan 2006 till mid 2007, we have seen our Alexa rank soar from ~600 to ~400, but our unique users/month only moved from 1.8 to 2.5M.
From mid 2007 till now, our Alexa rank changed (gotten worse) from ~400 to ~570 in Feb 2008. The funny part is our unique users for the same exact period has seen some of the biggest expansion ever: it went from 2.5 to now closing on 4 million unique users/month (Google Analytics).
So it’s really ironic and anecdotal to see a big decline in Alexa, but a big boost in real traffic numbers during the exact time.
Alexa is global, and the trend you are seeing might be simply saying that users in Latin American or Southeast Asia are growing a lot more than the Arab World (so their sites get ranked better and Arab sites get ranked worse). I would not categorize it a failure of Arab sites, look at your property (Ikbis.com), it reached ~20k relatively quickly.
But in general I agree, The Arab world has definitely a lot of catching up to do, whether online or offline.
We have a lot of problems to solve before thinking about web 2.0 in Jordan. Even the “normal” services like post offices and pubblic transportation runs really bad. Even the address with street name and home number is a new stuff for us, in Europe & USA they have this things from almost a century! We have a lot to do…
I think we should understand what Jordan is and compare it with similar countries not with Europe and USA. Jordan is in the 86th place worldwide in HDI (Human Development Index). The good thing is that we are the first of non oil arab countries (so excluding Gulf and Libya). But we are behind poor and small countries like Albania, Cuba and Armenia.
For a complete look of HDI and list of countries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index
Salam
Thanks everyone for pitching in. I think some very valuable things have been said.
I am not pessimistic about the Arab web. I am just saying that we have not yet found the right formula (and have not reached the right conditions) to create a killer app for the region.
One of the things that annoy (and interest) me is how some sites created “out of a tent” like some forums or some Arab link pages seem to be extremely popular with Arab audiences.
Beyond the business aspect of this discussion, the Arab internet culture sometimes scares me. Lazy link pages and forum and fiery (and sometimes mindless) forums attract users, yet getting people to share interesting life experiences via a video is harder than one thinks.
Yet, by all means, we have to continue experimenting and developing new sites. This is what we have done at TootCorp and will continue to do.
And yes. Alex sucks. But it remains the only indicator that one can use for comparisons. And, surprise, surprise, advertising decision makers use Alexa rankings when making decisions about where to place their banners..
Thanks again everyone for contributing your thoughts..
Yes, It has some how.
i think thats all true since we couldnt target the right gaps that facebook and others similar are missing that we need in the arab world, so facebook was the only one for arabs to trust as going with the flow. I have been working for the past year on developing a state of the art arab/english social network website that targets not just the arabic language but also the arabic nature and culture in terms of our privacy and our closeness to family as well as friends, that led me to create fameego which will have all what we need in one portal… its not in beta/prototype phase which you see at http://www.fameego.com
I am 100% with you on this.