Archive for the ‘Morocco’ Category
Revisiting Arabic Social Bookmarking And Content Discovery
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | June 23, 2010 – 12:00 pm |
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A bit over two years ago, I wrote a post about the Arab social bookmarking services out there, listing the existing options, how good they looked and how well they seemed to be doing, identifying the top ones at that time.
If anyone were to pull up that same list today and go check on each one of the sites, they’d find that some have shut down, others have become useless and spam ridden, some others have become pretty much inactive, and only one or two are still holding on. What’s clear though is that these social bookmarking services never caught on with Arab web users, and never achieved their founders’ initial dreams for them.
However there are some new kids on the block, who are here to take another stab at social bookmarking and facilitating content discovery for users in the Arab world.
Mobile Monday Morocco, Casablanca, November 3rd 2009
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | October 30, 2009 – 10:03 pm | View Comments
The 5th edition of Mobile Monday Morocco has been announced and will be taking place this coming “Tuesday”, November 3rd 2009, which would make it more of a Mobile Tuesday, but that doesn’t sound as cool, I guess.
The event will be taking place at l’Office des Changes in Casablanca, from 6:30PM to 8:30PM.
The program of the event will be as follows:
- 6:45PM : Presentation of Mobile Monday
- 7:00PM : 4 presentations, 4 visions of the present and future of mobility:
- MobileWorks 3D : Search and content accessibility on mobile devices (Christine Maxwell)
- Online Advertising : Online advertising « from web to mobile »
- Lemon Way (France) : Mobile Banking solution
- WebyPass : Social networks through mobile
- ART UP : Mobile Film Festival Morocco
- 7:45PM : Networking, free discussions, partner connections.
This edition of Mobile Monday is happening on the sides of the Moroccan leg of the regional IT trade show Med-IT which is taking place in Casablanca, Morocco, from the 3rd to the 5th of November 2009.
For more information on Mobile Monday in Morocco and to sign up for the event, you can visit the official site: Mobile Monday Maroc.
International Conference On E-Commerce, E-Payment And Applications, Marrakech, 25-27 September 2009
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | September 15, 2009 – 10:45 am | View Comments
For three days this month, from September 25th to 27th 2009, in the city of Marrakech (Morocco), the ICEP’09 Conference (International Conference on e-Commerce, e-Payment and Applications) will be gathering researchers and executives from all over the world to discuss the latest developments in e-commerce and in e-payment solutions.
Speakers have been invited from academic institutions and leading innovative companies to debate the most crucial contemporary issues related to e-payment and e-commerce. Over a hundred advanced papers will be presented and discussed.
The conference will also act as an opportunity for a number of e-commerce and e-payment companies to exhibit their already built services and products, and provide a stage for a number of e-business presentations from executives of leading e-commerce and e-payment companies.
The Conference generally aims to open the opportunity for:
- Academics and researchers to present to and share with other colleagues from all over the world their findings on the topics;
- Researchers to meet decision makers;
- Vendors and experts at all levels to meet and discuss business opportunities;
- Companies with offers on the conference topics to exhibit their solutions/products to other experts and to the end users through an exhbition;
- Enabling any other possible business opportunities.
For more details about the event, the speakers and the programme; check out the official site: ICEP’09 Conference
Damrej, A New Local Thematic Web Search Engine
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 13, 2009 – 11:43 am | View Comments
Damrej is a newly launched thematic search engine developed to make it easier for users to look for different items they want to buy online, special offers, cars, properties, jobs and more.
Damrej takes a local approach, and has been launched for Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Egypt for the time being; with versions for the UAE and other countries to follow soon.
The services’ robots crawl different websites from the country building its indexes of shopping catalogs, jobs, real estate offers, cars and other types of classified ads; making them all searchable from one central point. The results provide some collected details about the item and point to the original website where the item or offer can be found.
Some merchants or classifieds services also provide an updated feed directly to Damrej to make it even easier to index their content and provide through the search engine.
Users can search by theme, narrow their search by using theme-specific filters, and get results from one or all online services depending on their choice. Related offers are also served up next to the items found through the search.
Soko Maroc Launches New Version With New Design & Features
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | December 28, 2008 – 9:07 pm | View Comments
SokoMaroc.com, a free Moroccan online classified ads website, has recently launched a new version of its service, introducing a new design and incorporating a number of popular Web 2.0 best practices.
Their aim was to present the content in an attractive way with very little advertising to help users maximize their sales online, while retaining the concept ”results in 1 or 2 clicks”.
The service is now available in three languages: English, French and Spanish; and has integrated a number of new features like: simple and fast single page ad posting, optimized search tools, and two options to display ads (list or photo gallery).
Another new interesting additiong is the concept of user galleries; Users with a SokoMaroc account can now setup a personal space “gallery” to present their items for sale and details of their activities. They can personalize this space with their logo / photo, contact info and a unique url for it to share with friends and potential buyers.
A Facebook application is also being developed and should be released soon.
SokoMaroc.com has been active since November 2007 and is run by Soko tech, which is based in Boston US.
SokoMaroc.com is a central network of online communities in Morocco featuring free classified ads organized geographically and by categories (Jobs, Real Estate, Auto-Motorbikes, Personals, For Sale, Services, Community, and Resume categories) and forums on various topics in Morocco. The site currently serves over one million page views and 50 000 unique visitors per month.
ReKrute.com Expands Into Tunisian Employment Market
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | December 17, 2008 – 10:59 pm | View Comments
ReKrute.com, one of the leading online career portals in Morocco, that was launched from Casablanca in 2006, just expanded into the Tunisian market, recently opening an office in Tunis and launching a dedicated version of their portal.
Like other online job portals, ReKrute.com aims to continuously connect companies looking to recruit in Tunisia with the best candidates out there.
The portal is totally free for candidates searching for a job, hoping to become their main access point to the job market, providing them with fresh job offers, information on the Tunisian job market, career advice and tips, online language tests and more.
Of course, the possibility to just post their CVs to the portals database so that they can be found by employers is also possible.
For companies, ReKrute.com provides a global and flexible e-recruitment solution, that enables them to search through a database of CVs that match their exact needs, post their job vacancies and get in touch with the right potential employees for them.
All Job offers through the portal will also be reachable through the MSN Maghreb‘s job section which is powered by ReKrute.com.
In order to promote ReKrute.com in Tunisia and increase its visibility, partnership agreements are being finalised with big media entities, as well as a number of important Tunisian and European universities.
Ramla Jamel, who previously was a channel manager at Intel Corp., is the general manager of ReKrute.com in Tunisia.
Forum Nokia North Africa Road Show (October 13 – 19)
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | October 10, 2008 – 5:42 pm | View Comments
Forum Nokia, Nokia’s global developer program, which has built a mobile development community with more than 3.5 Million registrants, making it one of the biggest in the world, will kick off its first ever Road show in North Africa, passing through Casablanca, Algiers and Tunis from the 13th to the 19th of October.
The event will be conducted by the Forum Nokia business development management team, who will be meeting startups, SMEs, established firms, operators and developers from the three countries.
Forum Nokia will also be participating in the Mobile Monday Morocco event at the Casablanca TechnoPark on Monday, October 13th.
The Road show’s main purpose is to reach out to the local mobile application developer community in the region and stimulate innovation on top of the advanced Nokia mobile platform. The road show will be a unique opportunity for the local developers and universities to see the best technology and business platforms that Forum Nokia provides. They will also get a better understanding of the potential market and the great business opportunities for their innovative mobile applications thanks to Nokia’s large consumer base locally and globally.
Through Forum Nokia, local developers and universities have access to Nokia’s large developer community’s knowledge and expertise; they are connected to tools, technical information, support and distribution channels they can use to build and market applications around the globe.
From offices in the U.S., Europe, Japan, China, India and Singapore, Forum Nokia provides technical and business development support to developers and operators to assist them in achieving their goal of successfully launching applications and services to consumers and enterprises.
Strong Growth For Moroccan Internet & Mobile Phone Sectors
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | October 8, 2008 – 6:08 pm | View Comments
According to recent market indicators from the National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT), the internet and mobile sectors in Morocco continue to see strong and sustainable growth.
The growth has been fueled by a boom in 3G Internet and the sustained growth of mobile telephone subscriptions.
Morocco now has more than 21.5 million customers in the mobile sector, equalling a 70% penetration rate. In terms of market share, Maroc Telecom covers 66.37% of the market, compared to 33.37% for Médi Telecom.
Of these mobile customers, most are pre-paid users, with only 4% on contract.
The recent entrance of a third mobile operator, Wana, promises more growth in the mobile market.
As for the internet, the Morocco now has more than 650,000 subscribers; representing a growth of 37% compared with June of last year. New entrant Wana (in the 3G internet sector) holds 18% of the market in comparison to 76% for Maroc Telecom and 4% for Médi Telecom.
Regarding 3G internet penetration, it rose to around 160,000 subscribers in June 2008, with a growth rate of more than 553% in a single year, making 3G the second most popular way of accessing the Internet in Morocco, holding 24% of the market compared to ADSL’s 74%.
The number of fixed-line telephone customers has also continued to grow, recently surpassing 2.7 million, which represents a penetration rate of 9% of the population. This number encompasses residential subscribers, businesses, as well as payphones. The fixed telephony market is split almost equally by Maroc Telecom and Wana.
Hyde Park, Group Blog With Social Networking Features
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | September 21, 2008 – 3:56 pm | View Comments
Hyde Park is a new interesting Arabic project, currently under development, and which has been wrapped in a veil of secrecy up to now. We at StartUpArabia have been able to get our hands on some information about the project that we’d like to share with you.
Hyde Park is a group blog with integrated social networking features, enabling bloggers to publish freely and as easily as possible.
The main goals behind Hyde Park are to simplify the process of blogging as much as possible and to create more and more connections and interaction between bloggers by bringing them together on one collective blog where they can write about a range of common topics.
With Hyde Park there won’t be any complicated or obligatory steps to blog; a blogger can just enter his name and a password to create an account and start blogging right away, using a simple and clear visual interface. Every blogger has a personal dashboard to publish their blog posts from, get in touch with other blogges, follow comments, …etc.
All blog posts can be voted on (both positively and negatively), with the possibility of showing the blog’s content in the same way used on social bookmarking services.
Content on the blog will be categorized using tags and channels, and can be displayed according to this categorization, date of publishing, or number of votes. Comments on posts can also be followed on an independent page.
As for the social networking side of things; every blogger will get their own personal page to share their personal details and list their blog psots; this page can be totally personalized and redesigned according to the blogger’s taste. Other users can comment on the blogger’s page, much like they can do on a person’s wall on Facebook and other social networks. Bloggers can also build up their list of friends on the site.
A public beta version of the service will be released on October 1st, as a number of standard features continue to be added and completed, before the official launch of the site.
The service will be available in Arabic only at the beginning, with the possibility of more languages in the future.
Hyde Park is a project that was launched by well known blogger Mohammed Said Hjiouij from Morocco.
Synergos Middle East & North Africa Social Innovators Program
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | July 16, 2008 – 11:28 am | View Comments
In October 2007 Synergos launched the Middle East and North Africa Social Innovators Program, with funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other donors. The three-year initiative seeks to identify and support twenty individuals from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Palestine who are implementing successful social projects.
In order to be considered for selection, a candidate must be implementing an idea that has demonstrated positive social change and impact at a local level with the potential for replication in other communities and expansion to a national level. Social innovations will be considered which have as a focus one or more of the following fields; economic, social, or sustainable development; health; education; and culture.
The Program will invest in these Social Innovators through professional development and financial support to better enable participants to transform their small-scale projects into sustainable programs and organizations.
The selected Social Innovators will have access to training, mentoring and peer learning through a network of professionals and social entrepreneurs to help build financial and organizational sustainability for your innovation; as well as facilitation of connections to business, government, philanthropic and other civil society leaders in the area and across the world to leverage their innovation and make a greater impact. Financial awards of up to $17,000 per year, for two years, are also offered to help develop the winner’s social ventures.
The application period for the Social Innovators program began in early May 2008 and goes on until mid-September.
For more details about the program and project submission, check out the official program website: Synergos Social Innovators Program.
