Experts debate online Arabic content growth as Twitter readies Arabic launch

Although hindered by these factors, a study debated at the Digital Media Forum 2012 shows that Arabic user-generated content is slowly increasing, which presents opportunities for businesses to mine data and target advertising via social media platforms.

According to the Arab Social Media Report (ASMR), 70% of Facebook users in the region are men, significantly bucking the global trend, as 61% of all Facebook users worldwide are women. It is men, explained report author Fadi Salem, who prefer the Arabic medium and the business world should take note.

"I don't think companies are looking at these breakdowns seriously, but are just 'guestimating' and providing content based on what they have around their networks and because English is a primary business language," said Salem, during a panel discussion at the conference.

The internet originated in the Western world, resulting in English being adopted as the lingua franca, ultimately influencing global commerce and communication. But recent studies have estimated there are now 72.5m internet users in the Middle East, of which 60.25m are Arabic speakers. Dana Adhami, Digital Director of the annual media summit Mindshare, stated that the relatively small amount of Arabic content is directly linked to a lack of talent in the region, both in terms of user generated content and digital production, which in turn related to a need for better facilities, or tools.

"The other issue related to talent is infrastructure. The capability of writing right-to-left, and setting up technologies that adhere to Arabic language, is somewhat a challenge in the region. To create a platform or application in English could take around four weeks in development, but then if you wanted to do that that in Arabic, changing things around adds [much more time]," Adhami added.

Arabic Twitter nearing launch

Meanwhile, microblogging platform Twitter has this week announced that right-to-left languages are indeed in the works for its growing translation platform, starting with Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu. A team of 425,000 volunteer translators are involved with the new development, which is expected to be released later in the year.

Campaigns by Twitter users such as @supportarabic and @Taghreedat, who have promoted the #letstweetinarabic hashtag, have been lobbying tens of thousands of followers to communicate in their native language. There are now already 2.2m Arabic tweets daily, marking a 2,146% increase over 12 months, according to a separate study by Paris-based Semiocast. Total global tweets number 180 million per day.

Twitter played an important role in the Arab Spring, particularly during the first part of 2011. The ASMR estimates the number or tweets generated by 'active users' in the first quarter of 2011 numbered 22,750,000 - roughly three tweets every second. The most popular hashtags were #egypt, with 1.4m mentions and #jan25, marking the outset of the Egyptian revolution, which was mentioned 1.2m times
Sites such as Wikipedia in Arabic do show that there are online users translating vast libraries of information, but the prevalent issue in producing original content is freedom, which, according to Hussein Hallak, co-founder of content development firm TheContentPeople, is a 'number one requirement.'

With opinions varying on how to profit from the ever-growing online Arabic community, it is up to companies to learn from the seemingly endless flow of user generated content via social media. User generated content not only indicates trends, but plays a huge part in setting them, also providing greater opportunities for targeting advertising.

As development continues with social and other digital media, governments and businesses will also need to regulate accordingly. This would create business opportunities surrounding compliance and consultancy, according to Fadi Salem, who subsequently tied monetisation to related political issues.

"The changes that happened in the Arab world in 2011 will mean that there will be a lot of usage online for advocacy and political campaigning, etc. This is something that most businesses in the Arab world do not have any expertise in - and it's a matter of time. This is something that will be one of the key factors in online usage," he explained.

Later, towards the close of the event, it was Etisalat's Vice President of Technology Strategy who had the last word, suggesting, in his keynote speech, that 'customer data is the new oil'.

Facts and figures can be found online at www.arabsocialmediareport.com and on Twitter: @arabsocialmedia.

Twitter's 'translation center' is accessible at: http://translate.twttr.com/welcome