Waleg & Ikbis Launch ‘The Online Arabian Star’ Contest

Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 26, 2008 |

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Waleg, the first and largest blog network in the Arab world, and Ikbis, the popular Arab video and photo sharing service, have teamed up to launch a new online contest under the name of ‘The Online Arabian Star‘.

Talent TV shows; like Star Academy, SuperStar and a bunch of others on a bunch of Arab TV stations; have proven to be very popular with viewers all around the Arab world. This contest aims to capture some of that success online.

All contestants have to do is upload a video of themselves singing a song in Arabic, and then wait for the votes to roll in. The top 20 winners move to the second phase, and another round of voting is launched to select the winner according to user voting. The final winner gets a $500 cash prize.

For more details on the contest, you can visit the contest’s page on Ikbis or on Waleg.

It’ll be interesting to see how successful this contest is in terms of number of contestants, quality of the submitted material, and how much interest, attention and traffic it generates.

Waleg

Website: www.waleg.com
Founded: 2004
Overview: Waleg.com is a big pop culture blog about celebrities news, Real TV programs and music talent shows, tech and gadgets reviews in addition to the latest of Fashion trends. Waleg.com was founded in 2004, by husband and wife team, Zi... Learn More

Ikbis

Website: www.ikbis.com
Founded: September 2005
Overview: Ikbis is the first photo and video sharing service in the Arab World. Ikbis is part of TootCorp, a media company based in Arabia and founded in September 2005. Learn More

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» Posted in: Jordan, Startup News, Tunisia
» Tags: contest, Ikbis, songs, talent, video, Waleg

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Eman

Dear Karim,
you're an open-minded person and one of the very first bloggers in Tunisia. I do understand that many talent shows turn to be nothing but a cheap way to earn money and promote anything but talent, but it's all up to us: the contestants and the voters.

It's people like you and me who can make this contest a success or make it a complete failure. If only really good talented people participated, and people voted based on really good talents rather than than looks and friendships, then I believe this contest will be such a huge success and a very fun and nice experience too.

It's not everyday that we see an Arab-generated online activity, and it's all up to us to make the best of it, so I believe we should be more supportive and give it a fair chance.
I personally would love to see how this turns out and I'm sure if you give it a chance you'll enjoy it as much as me :)

karim2k

Waleg, those TV shows are made by dumb for dumber.

za3tar

Cool! Those Ikbis folks have been going full throttle lately. I hope this continues and inspires others.

Waleg

Thank you Marwen for this review.

karim2k, I recommend you to read some information about strategic collaborations, this post is so related to StartUpArabia and what it discusses... If companies keep working individually in the MENA region, they won't be able to compete with the rest the world...

Ziad

Si Karim,

People like you are the ones who keep Arab startups behind!

Chick

karim2k,
Don't pre-judge the project.
Not all people's lives revolve around chicks!
It seems like a very good project and it should be given a fair chance.

karim2k

Well, don't worry about their experience it would be around chicks :)

Mohamed Marwen Meddah

lol, don't worry, I won't be covering how this goes on, it's not the topic of this blog. I just thought I'd write about it because it shows two Arab startups working together on a new experience.