According to numbers from AqarMap, they’ve grown quite well over the past few months, reaching a number of over 600 registered Real Estate companies and brokers, who are using the service and posting their properties on it.

The new version of the site aims to bring improved usability and more features for the users. The interesting thing is that all the enhancements and features in this new version were built on ideas and features requested by the early adopting users and clients of AqarMap, which makes it pretty much a crowd sourced effort.

Most of the improvements were centered around search and quick access to information. Adding listings has also become much easier, with a better guided process in place, and the possibility to add virtual tours in the listings using YouTube videos.

Another new development is that from now on sellers can add their listings in their preferred language, and the system automatically translates the content so it can be displayed in the buyer’s preferred language.

Ras2Ras, which was founded by Amad Almsaodi in 2008, was built around a very simple yet really interesting idea: putting any two comparable things against each other, and letting people vote on which they like best.

Now, even though the tool’s idea is very simple in principle, it could be used for a number of research and user engagement purposes by businesses, with the potential to be a source of some really interesting and useful insights and information.

Many people believed in the potential of the platform from the day it was launched, however there wasn’t much focus on it from the founder, who had another big project on his mind, AqarMap (a regional real estate marketplace), and so it didn’t grow as it could have to meet its true potential.

So this acquisition is definitely a really good thing for the product as it seems Ahmed Alaji, who initially was just looking at the site for advertising purposes, came to see the underlying opportunities the platform offers and is now interested in growing it to its full potential and making it a profit generating service.

As for Amad Almsaodi, who is fresh out of a third place win in the MIT Arab Business Plan Competition for his project Arabic Coach, well the deal couldn’t have come at a sweeter time, he now doesn’t have to worry about maintaining Ras2Ras anymore and can focus all his attention on growing AqarMap.

We’ll be keeping an eye on how things go with Ras2Ras and what new developments happen with the platform, and will make sure to bring you any interesting updates on that front.

The current version of the competition was officially launched on October 12th 2009 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The competition went through a number of rounds, including different teams covering the following sectors: Energy, Engineering, Healthcare, Internet, Software and Telecom.

The final round just took place at a ceremony in Cairo, Egypt, and the awards for this year were handed out. The winners of this edition of the MIT Arab Business Plan Competition are as follows:

First place: The Little Engineer (Lebanon) – Prize: $US 50,000
An after-school edutainment center which introduces kids and teens [age 4-16+] to pre-engineering courses such as robotics, physics, electricity, electronics, renewable energy and more.
Team: Rana El Chemaitelly, Albert Shamieh, Nadia Alamah, Marwa Harb.

Second place: BioBusiness (Egypt) – Prize: $US 15,000
BioBusiness is developing a solution for the continuous monitoring of blood glucose in the form of s a small product that will fit into a hand- held battery-operated ergonomic shape. The product is comprised of two pieces, the gBracelet is worn anywhere on the arm and is the main measurement sensor which transmits the glucose measurements wirelessly to the gMon hand-held device. The gMon is the main display device. It displays the continuous curve of blood glucose levels, keeps track of the glucose level trends, and produces alarms of current/ predicted glycemic highs or lows.
Team: Islam Badreldin, Amr Elwakeel, Mostafa Elwakeel.

Third place: The following two startups got this position, with a prize of $US 5,000 each:

Arabic Coach (Yemen)
A system that will enable students to browse teachers’ video based portfolios and schedule virtual teaching sessions with the desired teachers. The online teaching sessions are fully interactive and each teacher can determine his own hourly rate, and Arabic Coach gets 15% of the teachers’ profits.
Team: Amad Almsaodi, Mohamed Almussaabi, Saeed Alfagieh.

EG-Bioinformatics (Egypt)
Provides software products and services for genomics data management and analysis. Its products include novel software programs for comparative genomics with applications in healthcare, agriculture, and pharmaceuticals. Its services include cloud-based data management and analysis, development of customized solutions on behalf of global customers, and conducting data analysis on behalf of regional customers. The business model is based on ‘pay-per-use’ basis, subscription, or licensing.
Team: Moustafa Ghanem, Mohamed Abouelhoda, Sameh El-Ansary, Mohamed El-Kaliouby.

For profiles of all the semi-finalist teams, you can download and check out the Semi-Finalists Catalogue 2010 (PDF)

However, I’m sure the founders of AqarMap would disagree, and would argue that it is at times like these that opportunities are created; I know because I had this discussion a few months ago with the CEO of AqarMap, Amad Almsaodi, who has been driving this effort.

The idea is that as things are currently quite tight for real estate companies and owners, and their marketing budgets aren’t what they used to be, they need more affordable and efficient marketing channels; and that is the spot AqarMap wants to establish itself in, launching to specifically target this demand with a new platform that tries to take a different and more innovative approach to matching sellers and buyers based on location.

What AqarMap aims to do is tackle the weakness in the regional addressing system by allowing real estate owners to precisely identify their properties using satellite maps; enabling buyers and renters to search the market by browsing an interactive map instead of using keywords.

Amad Almsaodi, CEO of AqarMap.com, says: “We built our marketplace by capitalizing on the Real Estate golden rule: Location, Location, Location. The price of a property is irrelevant if it is not in the customers preferred location. Customers can now search by location and find the nearby points of interest, such as: parks, schools, public transportation, …etc.”

Property owners can post their listings on AqarMap.com for free, and for a small fee they can promote their listings to gain higher visibility on the map, also enabling geo-targeting of potential clients to increase click-throughs.

AqarMap.com also uses a number of different technologies and services to empower its users; Google maps for location, YouTube for videos of properties, Twitter and Facebook to help share listings in social circles, as well as other services to translate content and convert numbers and currencies.

AqarMap is a service based out of Yemen, is currently available in both Arabic and English, and has already taken part in several regional competitions over the past period and won a number of awards.

The new release comes with a slightly different new design and layout that still hangs on to the simplicity of the old one, but is just a bit more organized, more visually appealing and integrates their new features.

The service which is still in beta is looking more mature now, with the new design and a number of other previously hanging details ironed out.

Comparisons, or Battles as they’re called on the service, now end after 90 days. Then they can be found up in the site’s results section. Select battle results will also be highlighted by the Ras2Ras team on their blog and elsewhere on the web. 

Users can now also join discussions on battles, getting alerts whenever someone submits a reply on the discussion; making it easier for people to follow topics of interest to them.

Other little additions and tweaks have been added here and there, like the rotation of the latest comments on the homepage, the improved URL structure and the site becoming more search engine friendly.

# Ras2Ras

These comparisons are called ‘battles’, and competing against each other we can find products, services, websites, people or anything really; and then through user voting we can find out which one the people prefer.

Users can also leave their comments on the battle, which can provide more insight into what people like about a certain ‘competitor’, or what they find negative about the other.

Anybody can register for free and start a new battle between two things for the people to vote on. Battles can be tagged for easier search, and users can also view all battles started by the same user.

Now, even though the idea is very simple in principle, it is very useful and really helps in a number of situations, some serious ones and others that could be for fun, which makes it all the more interesting.

The most obvious and interesting use is as a research tool; for example it can help businesses get people’s feedback on them with regards to their biggest competitor and understand why through the comments to better identify ways to build on their strengths and fill in their weakness gaps; The tool can also come in handy for a person wanting to buy a certain thing and not knowing which is best, and hoping that the community can help them out. And the list of examples where it can help in research can go on.

Ras2Ras was built by Yemeni internet solutions company Yemen Server. The design is pretty simplistic and straight-forward, focused on the battle and the vote, just like it should be. The service is available in Arabic only for the time being and is still in beta mode, as they’ll be rolling out more features.

# Ras2Ras