Micro-Blogging – StartUpArabia

Watwet Opens Up Their Platform Through Public API

July 22, 2009July 22, 2009 MMM

Watwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, has gone on and taken another big step forward by releasing a public API covering the different methods and functionalities of the service.

Methods covered include ones to get user and friend timelines, search, follow and unfollow users, retrieve lists of followers and friends, and of course send updates, among others.

This means that developers can now easily integrate the different Watwet functionalities into other web, mobile and desktop applications.

The full documentation for the Watwet API is available at developer.watwet.com.

This comes not long after them providing users the possibility to link their Watwet and Twitter accounts, in a way that anything posted to Watwet gets automatically posted to Twitter and vice versa.

On another note, Watwet also went ahead and changed its interface moving to a simple “following/follower” model, instead of the previous “friendship” model that was based on reciprocal agreement from two people to become friends.

Watwet’s New Version With Twitter Link, Channels And Better Language Support

May 20, 2009May 20, 2009 MMM 8 Comments

Watwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, has released a new version of their web application code named ‘Suzie’, and with it come a bunch of really interesting new features.

With the recent migration to the Rails 2.2 framework, they’ve worked on better language support on Watwet, which translates into better handling of Arabic in this version, but also opens the door for other languages like French, Farsi, Turkish and Swahili, that are in their future plans.

Something interesting they’ve also gone and opened up is the possibility for anyone to create a channel of their own, without having to go through the Watwet team like they used to in the past.
It should be interesting to see how many people and businesses start using this feature; and when/if we’ll start seeing the concept of sponsored channels.
Complementing this move, the public timeline of Watwet now also shows the watwets coming from channels too, along with the watwets coming from the users.

Another good move with this version is the possibility to link a Watwet account to a Twitter account, in a way that anything posted to Watwet gets automatically posted to Twitter and vice versa. A simple settings page available under ‘Twitter Link’ turns this on for the user.
This makes it easier and more efficient for people who mainly use one of the services, but also want to try out the other, or who want to streamline their status and lifestreaming activities across both platforms.
I expect more focus will be put on the integration with Twitter in the future to try and lure more Twitter users to play around with Watwet, growing their user base and activity level through it to make the service even more interesting to use.

Other than these mentioned points, they’ve also worked on some design and layout tweaks for the interface, as well as on browser compatibility issues.

Some really exciting moves in this release by Watwet, paving the way for some pretty interesting possibilities in the future and for some other features they seem to have hidden up their sleeves.

KuWeet, Your Window To Kuwaiti Tweets

May 3, 2009May 3, 2009 MMM 3 Comments

One of the biggest factors of Twitter’s success and popularity is the wealth of third party tools and solutions built around it and using its API.

Just recently, I came across an interesting little project built around Twitter that aims to open a window on tweets coming out of Kuwait, and about Kuwait, by the name of KuWeet.

The way it was built is really simple: an account @kuweet was created for twitter users in Kuwait to follow, and then what happens is that all followers of this account are collected and placed in a list. All tweets originating from people on this list are then aggregated into a a public timeline of Twitter users from and about Kuwait.

According to its developer, it’s based on an integration of Twitter2html into WordPress, with a theme that is pretty much identical to the Twitter interface.

New tweets are fetched every 10 minutes through a planned cron process.

KuWeet is a project by well-known Kuwaiti blogger and tweeter @nibaq.

Minixr, A New Microblogging And Lifestreaming Platform

November 25, 2008November 25, 2008 MMM 3 Comments

Minixr is a new Microblogging and lifestreaming platform launched from Algeria.

The service enables users to post and share their status updates, links, different types of files (videos, photos, audio) and events with their friends through the website.

Basic social networking features, enabling users to find and follow their friends, building their own personal network on the service are of course integrated.

On the other hand Minixr also offers the ability to automatically pull user activity on a number of other websites (Digg, Last.fm, Delicious, Flickr, YouTube, …etc) and centralize them on the user’s timeline for all followers to see.

If compared to international services, Minixr looks pretty much like a mix of Pownce and FriendFeed.

Minixr also offers users the possibility to send status updates through their mobile phones, or through IM (Google Talk, Jabber, AIM).

The service mainly targets young adults, between the ages of 20-35, from Francophone countries and the Middle East. The revenue model is planned to be solely advertising based.

The service is currently in Beta, with the official launch slated for sometime in January 2009.

The interface is pretty simple and uses pretty much the same format as other microblogging services out there. It is available in French only at the time being, but other languages will be added soon.

# Minixr

Artwitter.com; An Arabic Interface For Twitter

October 11, 2008October 11, 2008 MMM 6 Comments

Even though there is an Arabic micro-blogging service called Watwet that is very similar to Twitter in functionality, a lot of Arab users have chosen to use Twitter instead, maybe because it has mostly become the international poster child for micro-blogging, or because most of their friends already use it and it’s just easier to follow the crowd. Anyway, many of these users choose to tweet in Arabic, but as the Twitter interface is in English, thus left-to-right, Arabic script which is right-to-left gets quite annoying to read through the English interface.

So Mohamed Al Rehaili, with the help of a number of other Arab bloggers and friends, launched an Arabic interface for Twitter that can be accessed at: Artwitter.com

Artwitter.com uses the functions provided by the Twitter API, to bring its main friend timeline, replies and posting functionalities through a simple right-to-left Arabic interface, without storing any user data on its server.

The site is still in early beta, and it’s still not possible to view a certain user’s timeline or search for tweets, but I’m guessing these functionalities will be implemented soon enough, especially if the service finds success between Arab Twitter users.

# Artwitter.com

Watwet Launches New Version With New Cool Design

September 16, 2008September 16, 2008 MMM 1 Comment

Watwet, the Arab social networking and micro-blogging platform, launched in December 2007 by TootCorp, has just gone live with a really cool new design.

The new design reflects the maturing of the service, presenting the exisiting functionalities in a cleaner and more organized way, and rolling out a number of new features.

Among the base functionalities existing in other mini-blogging services that were added with this version of Watwet are replies, direct access to the public timeline, enabling and disabling SMS updates from certain friends and usage statistics.

Something really interesting Watwet has introduced with this version is the concept of ‘Channels’, which are micro-blogs with specialized content. The Watwet site says that they have signed up more than 18 radio stations, magazines and daily newspapers in Jordan to operate their own channels on Watwet; and that they have content from more than 10 international publishers and media companies around the world.

There are free and premium channels on Watwet. Premium Channels are clearly indicated as such, and thus are paid channels; otherwise the remaining channels are free. The amount to pay for subscribing to a channel varies from channel to channel. The paid channels obviously offer us some insight into one of the ways Watwet plans to monetize the service.

Something they’ve also added with this design are badges that bloggers can use to display their watwets on their blogs, which is something that should get more bloggers on board the mini-blogging wave, and give Watwet more exposure.

Another nice little touch is the launch of ‘Waticons’, little badges that users can pin to their profiles and that something about them visually.

Subscribers with Mobily, the second Saudi mobile operator, can now use SMS to send and receive updates, just like the subscribers of Zain Jordan. All other users, on other networks and in other countries, can only send their updates to Watwet through an international UK number.

Watwet, Social Networking And Mini-Blogging Platform

April 18, 2008April 18, 2008 MMM 12 Comments

Watwet is a new Arab social networking and mini-blogging platform, quite similar to Twitter, that was launched in December 2007 by the TootCorp team, who brought us services like the photo and video sharing site Ikbis and blog aggregator Toot in the past.

The concept is very simple: Using watwet you can post short messages (watwets) updating your status, through which you can stay in touch with your friends. These watwets can be posted from the web or by sending SMS to Watwet. These updates are then shown to your friends on the Watwet website, as well as sent to them by email and SMS.
You can also send your friend direct private messages too or whispers (Washwishes) as they call them.

Watwet doesn’t stop at short text messages though, it goes even further supporting photos, that can also be uploaded through the web interface or sent by MMS.

The website is well designed, pretty straight-forward and easy to use, and work is currently underway on an AIR based desktop client. The only two points I found a bit inconvenient are that users’ timelines, their lists of updates, are only accessible to registered users even if they choose for them to be public in their privacy settings; and the public timeline (updates from all users) can only be seen if you logout.

The service is available in both English and Arabic, and is open to users from all over the world, although the SMS service is only available in Jordan for Zain subscribers now. Not sure when they’ll be expanding to other operators around the Arab world.

Something I think Watwet should do though is open up their system a bit, either through an API or through modules they develop themselves to enable users both to pull information from Watwet onto their own blogs/websites/services and push updates from other services to Watwet automatically.

For more on how to use Watwet, you can take the Watwet tour.

# Watwet