Archive for the ‘Portals’ Category
Taya IT Launches Beta Of Yajeel Content Discovery Portal
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | January 14, 2010 – 11:42 am |
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Taya IT, a regional specialist in Enterprise and internet search applications, has announced the beta launch of Yajeel, a new content discovery portal which aims to play the role of an independent gateway to some of the best online content from Arabia.
The portal is in Arabic only, and uses Taya IT’s advanced search technologies to provide Arabic internet users with a new tool to easily discover and share Arabic content online,
Through the Yajeel homepage, users will be able to find the highlights from Arabic content around the web, search through content, as well as navigate through content specific web channels that serve as dedicated portals to the most popular topics available from third-party web publishers. With the beta launch, the only channel available now is a football news service containing the latest news and fixtures from Middle Eastern and international football.
The service also integrates a ranking tool, that allows users to rate the content they view and push it up or down in the listing of “most popular” pages.
The technology behind Yajeel intelligently classifies Arabic internet content, giving users access to a continuously updated stream of relevant web pages categorized according to topics of interest. Users can then customize the stream controlling what they see and how they see it, as well as share content from all web channels with their friends.
The official release is expected to be sometime in February 2010, with a number of new extra features and additional web channels products.
# Yajeel
Arab Auction Portal Souq.com Launches Operations In Egypt
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | December 22, 2009 – 12:56 pm | View Comments
Souq.com, the Arab online auctions company, that is a subsidiary of Jabbar Internet Group, has officially launched operations in another country in the region: Egypt.
The Egyptian version of Souq.com is available in both Arabic and English, hoping to tap into one of the biggest internet markets in the Arab world in terms of number of users with over 12 Million internet users as of June 2009 according to ITU numbers (15.9% out of a population of nearly 80 Million).
Souq.com has been cautious not to attempt to grow too fast and launch the service for the whole region at one go, preferring to set up operations country by country, having staff on the ground in each country to manage the system and make sure users (both sellers and buyers) get the most out of the system and are fully satisfied, also aiming to overcome any trust or security fears.
A number of listings have already started showing up on the site, and one of the offers the service is currently giving is free pickup and delivery in Cairo and Alexandria.
With this launch, Souq.com now operates in four countries: United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and now Egypt.
LancersCafe: A New Freelance & Outsourcing Portal For The Arab World
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | December 8, 2009 – 11:23 am | View Comments
LancersCafe is a new freelance and outsourcing portal for the Arab world, launched to manage the relation between companies and individuals who need to hire a freelancer to get a job done and the freelancers themselves.
The idea is one that has been applied globally a number of times by sites like RentACoder and Elance. LancersCafe brings the concept to the region.
The idea is pretty simple, a company needs a certain job done but they don’t have the need to hire a full-time employee for it, so they look at contracting someone to do that job for them. On the other hand, you have freelancers, people who take on individual projects, and who are always on the lookout for new projects they can take on to make their living.
LancersCafe aims to be a platform to connect the companies looking for people to take on certain jobs for them with the freelancers looking for those jobs, and to govern the whole relationship between them so that the projects goes as smoothly as possibly, reducing the possibility of any problems arising from either side throughout the project lifecycle.
The service is free for both companies (buyers) and freelancers (providers) to join. The buyers get to post their project for free, listing the skills they need, the timeline for their project, their budget range and other project requirements; Providers can build their profile and portfolio, search for projects and then send in their proposals, that the buyer can review, evaluate and negotiate, before making their choice.
LancersCafe also offers both buyers and providers special online training courses on the best way to use the system and get their work done online.
The site covers 175 specialties, starting from Data Entry and passing by programming, web design, article writing, graphic design, fashion design and up to Marketing, accountancy, engineering and landscaping and a lot of other professions.
LancersCafe was launched from Egypt, and is open for companies and freelancers from around the Middle East, offering companies the opportunity to get their work done cost-effectively, and freelancers the chance to find projects easily and make more money.
Nakhweh, A Volunteer Matching Portal For Jordan
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | October 4, 2009 – 10:26 pm | View Comments
Nakhweh is a new portal that was recently launched in Jordan, aimed at being a tool to foster and develop voluntary work in the community, through bridging the gap between available programs and volunteers.
The site tries to achieve its goal by offering a number of online features to support the networking of leaders and volunteers in the community.
The portal is the brainchild of Kamel Al-Asmar and Hadi Nasereddin of Ideation Box from Jordan.
The following is a little Q&A we got to do with Kamel to know more about Nakhweh, how things have been going so far and their plans for the future. A big thanks to him for taking the time to answer our questions and offer some insight into Nakhweh.
Tell us more about Nakhweh and your goals for it in your own words.
Nakhweh.com is basically a website that aims to help in the matching process between the volunteers who are passionate about serving their communities and the organizations that need the help of those volunteers.
Nakhweh has been launched on the 19th of August with the least options that make the website usable and functioning in a way that serves volunteers and organizations simply yet effectively. That decision of launching the project at its early stages has been taken for two main reasons, which are: The Holy Month of Ramadan and to be the first in taking such an initiative before anybody else.
Our vision for Nakhweh is to make it the official volunteering platform for Jordan in a short time, to help other social entrepreneurs and to plan events every while and then to support a cause.
Bedkash, A New Palestinian Free Classifieds Portal
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | September 27, 2009 – 10:58 pm | View Comments
Bedkash is a new free classifieds portal for Palestine that was just recently launched in its beta version, providing the service for users in all Palestinian cities.
The service enables users to post the objects they want to sell or the service they can provide, or what they are searching for, for free on the site for other users to search, navigate through and reply to with their offers.
The ads are organized under categories and subcategories, as well as by city, enabling users to go through all posted classifieds narrowing down the selection either by the available categorizations or by specific cities or a combination of both.
Only registered users can get in touch with the person who posted the classified ad, otherwise they just get to see the different details of the posting without any information about the poster.
Bedkash is a new product of Sadaf Technology Development, a Palestinian web development company based in Gaza. The site is available in Arabic only, and the company plans to monetize it through selling online advertising.
Jeeran Launches French Version Targeting Maghreb
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 26, 2009 – 3:36 pm | View Comments
Jeeran, one of the Arab world’s leading user-generated content portals, have just launched a new French version of their portal.
This move aims to make Jeeran’s services more accessible for users in the Arab Maghreb region, where the French language is widely used offline and online, in an attempt to widen their reach and grow their target market.
This is most probably a first step from Jeeran to build more traffic and heighten their visibility in the region, with hopes to find ways to start generating some revenue from online advertising in the region.
A number of online businesses from the Middle East face the frustration of not being able to monetize all the traffic they’re getting from around the Arab world, especially from the North African countries, and they end up with their focus mainly being the more lucrative Gulf market. Several of these companies are trying to draw up strategies to enter the Maghreb market where they see a lot of opportunity and growth potential.
You can check out the new French version of Jeeran here: Jeeran en Français.
Yahoo! Maktoob: It’s Official, Yahoo! Acquiring Largest Arab Community Maktoob
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 25, 2009 – 10:18 am | View Comments
After months of rumors and speculation by many in the Arab internet industry, today the news is confirmed and made public officially: Yahoo! is acquiring Maktoob.com, making its big step into the Arab world by acquiring the biggest online Arab community.
A press conference was held at the Fairmont Hotel in Dubai to announce the deal with top executives from Maktoob and the Yahoo! Emerging Markets team.
The deal only involves the Maktoob.com portal and its sub-divisions (including Maktoob Research, Bentelhalal and others), that will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo!.
The other sister companies within the Maktoob Group which are: Souq.com, CashU, Tahadi, Araby and the newly acquired E-marketing MENA (which will be rebranded to Ikoo) are not part of the deal, and they will go on with business as usual under the group’s umbrella.
Following this deal, the group will be rebranding to Jabbar Internet Group (JIG), injected with a $20 million investment, and chaired by Samih Toukan.
The first steps after the deal closing in Q4, will be to work on introducing the Yahoo! Maktoob Arabic homepage, as well as Mail and Instant Messenger in Arabic; then to keep moving on to providing other Yahoo! services in Arabic, and enriching Arabic content online. Other local services for the region will also be considered and developed.
The financial details of the deal have not been made public, although many numbers have been floating around the internet over the past weeks and months, none of which have been confirmed by either companies.
This is the first time in the history of the internet in the Arab world that such a deal has taken place, and promises to take the internet industry in the region to a whole new level; hopefully in terms of quality, content, competition, awareness and investment opportunities.
When looking at other global players, Google chose to open small presences of its own, mainly in the UAE and Egypt, to work on some product concept development, marketing and sales in the region. Microsoft already have a wide existence in the Arab world, but mainly around their big software titles, only recently starting to look online in the Arab world.
Hopefully this deal, as well as Google and Microsoft’s moves in the region, will open the door for more international players to start seriously considering entering the online market in the Arab world, but even more importantly will show local investors the potential that exists in investing in sound internet startup ideas, and that with the region as an important emerging market, there are more exit strategies than they initially thought.
For more information on this, you can check out the story and the press release on Maktoob Business.
[Full Disclosure: I have been a Director of a Maktoob.com division ever since the beginning of 2009, and therefore haven't been able to report on this story any earlier.]
Bezaat, A New Classifieds Portal For The Arab World
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 24, 2009 – 11:19 am | View Comments
Bezaat is a new free Arabic classifieds portal that was just launched out of Dubai in its beta version, and targeting all Arab countries and their major cities.
Even though there are local classifieds sites around the Arab world, with different levels of success, there hasn’t been one that covers the whole region and that has been that successful, and Bezaat hopes to fill that space by providing a region-wide platform for classified ads, aiming to solve users’ needs around the Arab world.
The Bezaat team chose to widen the scope and target the whole Arab world from day one so as to not be branded as a local classifieds site, limiting their chances to grow later on and expand.
To make the system more relevant for each country, the interface is customized according to local needs and interests, highlighting the more popular categories.
The interface is in Arabic only, and is really simple, straightforward and organized, making it easy to surf through the existing ads or to go through the process of posting a new one.
Bezaat is a product of Danat, the same company behind Logta and Laazi.
Wheels Express, Another Take At E-Commerce In Jordan
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 23, 2009 – 7:45 pm | View Comments
Wheels Express is a newly launched Jordanian e-commerce portal, taking another hit at cracking the e-commerce nut in the Arab world.
The company’s activity lies somewhere between an online shopping portal and an offline delivery service; providing a catalog of products covering DVDs, books, magazines, t-shirts, tickets, snacks, pre-paid mobile cards and more; and delivering orders directly to your doorstep in Amman (within the 12 daily delivery hours).
Users get to sign up and put in their orders, which for most types of products should be delivered within an hour, if within the 12 hours of service, with payment in cash upon delivery.
Wheels Express does not keep a stock of its own. What it does is list products provided by third party stores, and then acting as the middle-man; handling the order, delivery and payment process.
Wheels Express was founded by a Ibrahim Manna’, Ibrahim Al-Mani and Mohamed Al-Mani.
The web solution was developed by the new Jordanian web company Ideation Box.
D1G Announces Closing Of Its First Round Of Financing
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | August 3, 2009 – 8:11 am | View Comments
D1G just announced its closing of a first round of financing; that will go towards funding the site, its expansion and its infrastructure on the Internet.
According to the press release issued by the company, this first round has attracted a number of regional businessmen and international experts in the internet industry to join the site’s management.
Commenting on this round, Abdul-Majid Qasem, D1G Executive Director, said that the first round of investment was able to attract the necessary funding for the next phase, and that the amount raised would help the company improve its products and services to achieve the board of directors’ vision and aspirations.
He also noted that the next round of strategic investment negotiations with some of the leading capital and private equity firms in the region is currently ongoing.
D1G was founded in May 2006, and according to the numbers released by the company have been able to build a community of more than 3 million people per month over the past years, generating more than 20 million impressions and over 15 million online monthly videos. They also claim to have grown 100% in number of users during the first half of 2009 alone.
D1G’s growth has been both organic and through acquisitions, and it seems they’ll be sticking to the same approach for growth in the future.
Just a couple of months ago, D1G announced that Usama Fayyad, Ex- Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President at Yahoo!, had been appointed Executive Chairman of D1G to help develop the company and take it into its next stage of growth. He was already on their board of directors since September 2008.
D1G also announced that prominent Jordanian business man and investor Karim Kawar will become an Active Advisor on the company’s board of directors. Karim Kawar, who had previously served as Jordan’s Ambassador to the US, is currently advising a number of regional capital and technology companies.
