Book Marketing - The UAE, Stunts And Social Glue...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have, as you may have noticed, a blog. I also have a number of followers on Twitter, Google+ and a few people occasionally keep in touch on Facebook and Instagram. I have an 'author website', which I happen to think is quite natty. And I have a mailing list of quite a few people who have given me permission to share stuff about books with them. You can join them, if you like, by using the simple, easy to use form to the right of this post.

There are a few people out there who review books who have enjoyed my previous work and so have been keen to review the latest. That is a small and steadily growing resource of people who are treasured because they represent a network effect. A review tends to reach a wide audience and have the benefit of providing recommendation.

This, then, is my 'author platform' - my very own marketing machine. All of these people have, for one reason or another, given me permission to talk to them. Not all of them want to talk to me about books, a lot have been attracted by my ranting and other unstable behaviours. And so when I do talk about books, I see a drop in blog traffic and, with an increasing frequency of promotional tweets and posts, provoke a mixture of reactions from disinterest through to mild amusement, bemusement and, when an unseen line has been crossed, even mild irritation.

The balance here is clearly to try and provide interesting, thought provoking or amusing content on these platforms to increase engagement and stretch the elasticity of the Line of Follower Irritation. When it comes to book marketing, I am clearly without morals. And while I'm not quite reduced to screaming 'Buy my book!' in the faces of strangers, there have been times when I've thought about it. The trouble is, of course, people don't automatically go away and buy books just because they're asked to or told to. Oh, how much simpler my universe would be if that were the case! No, there's something else that makes us click on that 'Deliver to my Kindle' button. And I wish to God I knew what it was. I don't even recognise it in myself as a stable or discernible pattern of behaviour.

It's interesting to see how little strength there is to 'social glue', as well. People will 'like' at the drop of a hat and generally make nice, supportive noises. But getting them to take an action, beyond a click, based on social media interactions is not easy - or even a known, defined science. We basically do a number of things we think might result in that (engagement and all that stuff) and hope it's worked. Clicks are not a measure of action - as I've explained before.

Without a doubt, word of mouth has a huge role to play. Reviews, as I have mentioned above, take the form of recommendations* and so have the power of word of mouth - but I haven't seen them create notable spikes in sales. This is hard to track in terms of physical book sales because physical book distribution is such a slow and placid process. On Amazon I get day by day data and analysis and so can see spikes when they occur. They're usually of a binary nature, by the way. I'm not quite in the hundreds of books a day game!

But my experience has been that people, even when they have thoroughly enjoyed, even 'loved' a book, don't necessarily go around berating their friends about it. And a single recommendation isn't enough to send people jetting off to the nearest bookshop, either. Scale has a huge amount to do with it. If you see a positive review, have a friend or even two recommend it and then see it on display in the bookshop, then you may well act. But any of those in isolation will likely not do the job. My personal theory is the average punter will act on a book purchase after five 'touches' - and then only if the last touch is while they're actually in proximity to a BBO - a Book Buying Opportunity.

It's that scale that is the issue, of course, in the UAE - where, incidentally, much of my 'author platform' is located. The market here is relatively small (Olives - A Violent Romance sold out its run of 2,000 copies and is considered consequently to have done really very well here) and also underserved by all the major platforms - Amazon won't play here, Google and Apple have limited offerings and B&N and Kobo are non-existent. And people here will buy my books from me at signings and other events, but they'll tend not to buy a paperback from Amazon to have delivered here.

Which is why at last year's LitFest, I sat next to Orion's Kate Mills and explained that, as a self-publisher, I was weary and recognised that I actually could really do with the scale that an operation such as hers offered to reach into a market like the UK where I cannot, for all my 'platform', reach. It's there where the scale lies that brings quantum effects into play and starts to launch books towards the exosphere. Of course, in order to make that stellar journey, the book has to have 'that' quality, the something that has people interested enough to pick it up, flip it around, scan the blurb and go, 'Hmm. Sounds interesting. I'll give this little puppy a spin.' Or whatever it is they say at that sublime and subtle moment when a complete stranger decides to exchange value for your book...

Meanwhile, I'ma gonna keep plugging away on the A Decent Bomber pre-order campaign. Once November 5 is past, it'll be all about reviews and events. Up until then, I'm quietly nagging people to email their friends to ask them to email their friends with a link to the book. Because in the world of 1,000,000 clicks to get one sale, network effects are king, baby.

See? I got through a whole post without linking to the pre-order A Decent Bomber link on Amazon.com! Oh...

* Unless they're stinkers, of course! I have so far in the main avoided these, although I do say this with the feeling of mild dread that accompanies pronouncements such as 'I've never had a car accident in my life...'

The Vicariousness Of Self

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I'm constantly battling the urge to beat people to death with their own selfie sticks. I know it's their life and they can do with it what they will, but for some reason the whole performance irks me in a deep and profound way.

We nipped up to Hatta a while ago for two days of mountain air and Martinis in my favourite bar anywhere in the world ever (the luxuriantly '70s brown velour and walnut charm of Hatta Fort's Roumoul Bar) and I sat, aghast - interrupted in my mission to lie sunning myself by the pool and consuming as many books as a Kindle Voyage can carry - as a couple swooshed around in the water gurning at a GoPro hoisted on the end of a selfie stick.

They were filming themselves so that in 20 years time they can look back at that time in Hatta when they didn't enjoy the pool because they were too busy filming themselves not having fun so they could capture their strange, onanistic non-fun pool filming for posterity.

They probably shared the moment they never really had. Up on Facebook it goes, that time we walked around a pool filming ourselves so our friends could see what wonderful lives we're leading together and experience the moments we never got around to having because we were so busy making sure everyone else had a glimpse of what it is we haven't got.

I stopped taking pictures of food for Instagram quite quickly. I realised I had started to eat excellent food that had gone cold. I have since come up with the brilliant scheme of Instagramming empty plates. Those smears I'm sharing are the meal I enjoyed all the more because I didn't share the moment of epiphany when a plate of really good food leaves a kitchen and is slid noiselessly under your nose with a murmured 'Bon appetit'. There I said it. I care more about food than you.

This is not new behaviour, just in case you're tempted to think it is. It's more aggressive because of the Internet, but I remember walking the bounds of Chester a decade or so ago because Sarah was attending a course there and I was left to spend my days fossicking around the city's ancient ruins and medieval buildings. The city was full of chattering groups of excited Japanese people who thought the world was square, their view of anything of even the slightest significance being captured from behind a viewfinder.

By the way, apropos nothing really very much, this tumblr blog is rather brilliant: Pictures of Asians taking pictures of food.

We're constantly being egged on to share, seek the approval of our peers, our 'friends' and 'followers'. But sharing a moment doesn't signify enjoyment: it means you've denied yourself that moment. And approval isn't experience.

Live it. And just be aware, as you raise that selfie stick to capture yourself and your pimply moon-faced girlfriend framed by the Burj Khalifa, you might be the ones that make me finally snap.

Yes, yes, I do feel better now, thanks for asking...

Book Post - Pills, Skulls and Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy. The Cover.

Gerrard King's Memento Mori

The search for a cover image for Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy was a long one. It was always going to be a mission to follow on from Jessy Shoucair's 'Lipstick Bullet' on the cover of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller.

The image had to be strong, stark and striking and somehow representative of the book itself. I spent long hours playing with various ideas, eventually settling on skulls and pills, an occlusion of the 'deadly' nature of the story and the dependency of protagonist, dying diplomat Jason Hartmoor, on painkillers and enzymes. There's also quite a lot of heroin in the book. If you're gonna do drugs, I reckon you might as well go all out, see?

I found one stock shot that seemed to go down that road, a skull and crossbones made from pills that I shared with the nice people on my mailer (Look! To the right! You can sign up too and get occasional updates, freebies and answer silly questions about book covers!), asking them what they thought. The answer duly came back and it boiled down to 'get what you're doing there but meh.'

A few more frustrated hours of playing with ideas and Googling followed before I stumbled across an image that leapt out of the screen, stuck its fingers up my nostrils and smacked my head on the keyboard. It was one of a series created by Australian artist Gerrard King, called 'Memento Mori'. I hit Gerrard up on Facebook and we quickly agreed a license for me to use his image on the book and in promotional work for Shemlan. Oddly enough, it turned out he had some history with Dubai - for a time he had been a 'trolly dolly' on Emirates. Seven points of separation and all that, see?

Gerrard's art is startling, surreal and bold stuff - you can follow the links below to explore more of his wild forays into gibbering insanity. In the meantime, I took the opportunity to interview 'Mr Pill Skull'...

What started your fascination with skulls as canvases? 
My thing for the skull has really incubated since youth. From the very first one adorning my school bag in '88 (I think it was Guns n Roses) to what you see now. The skull to me, is a perfect sculptural form with an ever-changing mood. It can be classical one minute and hair metal the next!

Why the pill/skull occlusion. What made you think of the image? 
The Memento Mori series really is about juxtaposing elements of pop, fashion and western culture with the classic skull, echoing the deep-rooted tradition of skull ornamentation prevalent in other cultures. The pill design harks to a classic '70s fabric design by Marimekko, which takes on a sense of irony when combined with the skull. I kept thinking of the song 'Mother's Little Helper' by The Rolling Stones while doing this piece.

Your work splits into pop, surrealism, realism and skulls. Will there be a fifth category? 
It's true that I do not like to be pigeon-holed with a particular style, preferring to float between whichever means serve the end. I couldn't say what I may do next, so yes, I will probably add another arrow to my quiver somewhere along the line.

Where do you sell most of your work - do you generally feel 'understood'? 
I sell my artwork at events, self-organised exhibitions and markets, as well as online. Living in a tourist area, one can easily feel misunderstood by throngs of holiday-makers looking for beach scenes and cutesy mementos. I have developed a bit of a support crew where I live who continually support my endeavours and drink free wine at my exhibitions!

Is this your first book cover? Do you see Gerrard King placemats or biscuit tins looming over the horizon? 
Ha ha! Yes this is my first cover image on an intelligent publication. I draw the line at prints and tee shirts for now, but if they were damn fine biscuits, well...!

Here's Gerrard's website with galleries and the like or you can see what he's getting up to here on Facebook.

And here, of course, is the handy link to buy Shemlan: A Deadly Tragedy  complete with its scary cover in paperback, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Android tablet or iPad formats!

Expo 2020: Dubai's 'Social Bid'

(Photo credit: @cpe)

This is the week Dubai goes Expo 2020 bonkers and if you thought the noise level was already high, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Five cities originally launched bids to host Expo 2020 - the latest in a long string of 'World Fairs' that started with the original World's Fair, the 1851 Great Exhibition in London's Hyde Park. The bids are evaluated by the body governing Expo, the BIE (Bureau of International Expositions) and voted on by the 167 member states. This vote, as anyone in Dubai except the most dedicated of ostriches will know, takes place Wednesday 27th November and will pick a winner from Dubai, Sao Paolo, Yekaterinburg and Izmir. Thailand's bid, the city of Ayutthaya, was withdrawn earlier this year.

Dubai has been pretty hardcore with its bid. The city's made no secret of the fact it wants this and intends to get it - and a remarkable package of infrastructure and a relentless tide of promotional activity have been flung into the fray. The stakes are high - expo sites typically span hundreds of acres and the events attract tens of millions of visitors. Has Dubai got what it takes?

If social media is anything to go by, yes it has. Because its competition doesn't seem to have got the hang of the whole 'inclusion' concept.

Let's take Turkey's Izmir. The city has a website with all the right buttons, as well as quite an annoying interstitial that promotes its Facebook page. With over 73,000 likes, there's precious little sign of engagement but a high octane broadcast of 'support our bid' type messages rather than any attempt to foster or encourage a debate around the Izmir bid's theme of improving healthcare. Izmir's YouTube Channel is also on broadcast with a lot of 'talking heads' garnering typical views in the low tens and a couple of slick ads with higher views. Again, it's all about mememe.  It's hardly any better over on Twitter, where a tad over 6,000 followers receive broadcasts on supporting the bid. The Izmir Twitter profile does suggest you might like to sign the 'Health For All Manifesto', which on cursory inspection appears to reason that if you support Izmir's bid, it would be good for global health. Hosted on WeSignIt, the manifesto has attracted 522 signatures.

It's hardly compelling, is it?

Yekaterinburg is arguably Dubai's toughest competitor. It's Russia's fourth largest city and has a complex and diverse history, including being the site of the murder of the Romanovs. The vanilla template website doesn't really sparkle and isn't even particularly informative. Facebook offers 1,459 likes and again is more of a tourist board broadcast than any attempt to foster engagement around the bid's theme of The Global Mind. There is, for some odd reason, a picture of a squirrel. With under 500 followers, the city's Twitter account is just posting the same images as Facebook. YouTube hasn't really sparked inspiration, not even the slickly produced 'Global Mind Adventure'. There's certainly no sign of community involvement - or any invitation to involvement.

As far as I can tell, Sao Paolo's website is down or dead and its Facebook page, with a tad over 4,000 likes, hasn't seen a post since June. YouTube hasn't been fed a new video in five months, either. And its 162 Twitter followers have also lacked companionship since June. If you just saw Sao Paolo's online presence, you'd be forgiven for thinking they've given up and gone home for a Feijoada.

And so on to The City That Gave The World Modhesh. How's Dubai shaping up in the online stakes - and, more importantly, is there any sign that the city actually wants to talk about its theme rather than just nag people to support its bid?

Over 58,000 followers on Twitter and 721,000 likes on Facebook appear to be saying something. Yes, we know it's not all about the numbers, but there's a question of scale here. Uniquely, Dubai's using Instagram, with over 9,000 followers. There's participation, community and engagement going on over at the Twitter account, including a couple of cheeky tweets from 'Our Dave'. Facebook's similarly lively, with community events, stunts (the inevitable Guinness book of records stunt) and widespread public participation very much in evidence. The Dubai bid's theme is 'Connecting Minds, Creating the Future', with sustainability, mobility and opportunity as sub-themes. The website features a number of thinkers talking about these themes. YouTube hasn't seen an upload in a while, but the content there again goes beyond tourist board images and 'back our bid' calls.

In fact, of all four bids, it has to be said that Dubai Expo 2020 online has the strongest sense of community and broad public participation of any of 'em. It's by far the most active and popular campaign on social platforms by a huge margin. It could do more and be a great deal slicker, without doubt. There is a huge opportunity to build further on what has already been established. But what's there is streets ahead of its rivals.

From its online presence alone, Dubai's the only Expo 2020 bidder that has clear evidence of coming together as a community in support of the city's bid - and a genuine interest in fostering discussion, debate and thought around its theme.

I must have mislaid my cynicism pills. Where did I put those blasted things?

Posting People's Pictures Online Could Carry A Fine Or Even Jail Time

United Arab Emirates (Photo credit: saraab™)

The National newspaper today confirms what has long been an odd quirk here in the UAE has indeed been taken to its (inevitable) online conclusion - publishing (posting) pictures of people without their consent is against the law here - and, as a criminal case, could result in a hefty fine or prison time.

It's always been the case that you actually needed written consent before publishing somebody's photo in the UAE. That we often shortcut this requirement - as so many legal requirements are shortcut in a society which rubs along very nicely with a mainly 'laissez faire' attitude - does not mean it does not exist. As with so many aspects of life here, when things go wrong, the law comes into play and suddenly what seemed a forgotten piece of legislation becomes very real indeed.

Now it's been confirmed in words of one syllable that the online equivalent of the offline phrase 'publish' which is, of course, 'post' also carries the same weight. In short, you post an image on Facebook, Twitter or the like and you are open to criminal prosecution. Not a civil case, you understand, a criminal one.

Lt Col Salah Al Ghoul, Head of the bureau for law respect at the Ministry told The National: "Article 24 of the cybercrimes law stipulates that anyone who uses an information network to infringe upon someone else’s privacy shall be punished by a minimum prison sentence of six months and/or a fine of between Dh150,000 and Dh500,000."

You can consider an image to include video and, presumably, audio. So if you see a gentleman beating a hapless-looking chap around the head with his agal, you have 500,000 great reasons to pass by rather than film the incident and post it on YouTube.

That has always been the case here - as some of the more liberally grey-haired on Twitter pointed out when that particular video was put up. You can, literally, defame someone with the truth in the UAE.

Protecting decent folks' privacy or obviating social justice? You tell me...

Careful What You Tweet For

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gulf News today carries a roundup of recent cases of bloggers and tweeters in trouble around the Gulf and it's an extensive and growing list.

Flagged as being 'with inputs from AFP', 60% of the story is lifted directly from an AFP file, (the rest being made uo of this report from Habib Touma, which is the only bit available online) but we mustn't cavil, must we?

Tweets aren't a joking matter anymore - imagine facing this one in court: "undermining the values and traditions of Bahrain's society towards the King on Twitter". The six Bahraini 'tweeters' who did have just been sentenced a year in prison for 'misusing the right of free expression'.

It's as neat an illustration of the conundrum posed by social media in the Middle East as you're likely to get. Here we all are in possession of these powerful and far-reaching technologies that support widely sharing information and opinion and when we use them we're suddenly very far above the parapet indeed.

All this freedom of expression stuff suffers from the problem that it is, of course, that it's an absolute. You're either free to express or not, surely? But then we also apply 'filters' to that absolute in the West (whilst being all to ready to be scandalised by the hypocrisy of societies that don't allow total freedom of expression) - incitement, hate speech, holocaust denial and a number of other things our society deems to be unacceptable.

We also saw how fragile our freedoms are when British Prime Minister David Cameron, faced with lawless rioting across the country organised via Facebook and Twitter made it clear he would favour 'switching the Internet off'. That's the kind of thing despots do, isn't it?

The trouble is, of course, that government is government the world over - there's that lovely definition of democracy - "Say what you like, do what you're told." which works well as long as when you say what you like it doesn't have the benefit of a platform open to every man and with enormous power to allow messages to be shared and reach audiences far wider than are possible with 'traditional media'. Let's not forget, there are now over double the number of users of Facebook Arabic in the Middle East and North Africa than there are newspapers sold every day (in English, Arabic and French combined) in the region. That's Arabic alone - most users in the region still prefer the English interface, whatever language they are posting in.

It doesn't take insulting a leader or inciting religious hatred to get into trouble with the law on Twitter - you can just break any old law that would have applied in the 'analogue world' - for instance, a lady was fined Dhs 1,000 in Dubai earlier this week for calling an Egyptian gentleman 'stupid'. The law in the UAE does take the issue of personal respect very seriously indeed - it's not something limited to the rulers alone. So, logically, calling someone stupid on Twitter could potentially open you up to a Dhs 1,000 fine.

It's a reminder - whether you're going to put your life on the line for something you believe in or whether you're just sounding off. The law is peering over your shoulder - and those little 140 character blipverts are subject to its full might and weight...

What's Your Favourite Colour?

Color your World (Photo credit: Michelle Brea)

For some time, The Niece From Hell was in the endearing habit of filling any untoward social silences by incessantly asking 'What's your favourite colour?' until you either answered her or bludgeoned her into stillness with a spade.

While she has now thankfully outgrown the habit, I am frequently reminded of it when I see brands 'seeking engagement' online. The prevailing wisdom from many 'experts' is that you should ask questions to obtain 'engagement'.

The trouble is, true engagement comes from asking questions that matter, that are genuinely seeking answers. Blindly ending every post with 'What do you think, what's your favourite chocolate moment?' is at the least insincere. It can also lead to some hilarious moments, as the Lebanese mobile company asking just such a question got caught out by a rather large bomb last week. One delightful response to the question (which was something like 'We love furry animals, what's your favourite furry animal?') was 'Why don't you stop screwing around on Facebook and go fix the mobile signal that's down so we can contact our family and friends?'

A meaningless question topping off every communication also quickly just blends into chatter. It's such a shame - the chance to recruit consumers and use their feedback to genuinely hone a product, its distribution and its marketing is being wasted by brands hiring agencies to make social media go away - the online version of that wholly disempowering entity, the call centre.

What do you think? What's your favourite question?

The Quietest Office

Image via CrunchBase

Apple has an office in the UAE. Operating out of Abu Dhabi media zone TwoFour54, it would appear to be something of a 'best kept secret'.

Where was the fanfare? The dancing girls? The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowds? Companies typically waste no time at all in trumpeting office openings - look at the fuss Facebook and LinkedIn are making.

Tech website itp.net ran a couple of speculative stories on Apple opening a UAE office back in 2010 - one based on channel rumours of an office opening 'this year' and one quoting distributor Arab Business Machines (ABM) on how the opening wouldn't materially affect their business. And that's it. Nothing else. no announcements, no interviews. No Tim Cooks talking about commitment to the Middle East. Silence.

The only reason it came to light at all is that I mentioned on the weekly Unwired radio show yesterday that Apple had famously never opened a point of presence in the Middle East. In all these years, Apple has provided highly capable Arabic language support (it was very early to market with Mac Arabic language support for the burgeoning desktop publishing market, which it dominated in the Middle East) but never actually been here as such. A listener texted in 'not so' and so I asked Twitter.

The result was surprising. Not only did people come out of the woodwork with affirmatives, but one former journalist at The National even pinpointed the office building at TwoFour54 and mentioned that he'd been asked to desist from following up his story. Apple itself doesn't list out any worldwide offices on its website but does identify Apple UAE in its map of training centres.

So there we have it. Apple is actually here on our doorstep. They're just being very, very quiet about it...

EIDA Discovers The Internet

Eida (Photo credit: cgsheldon)

A lovely piece in Khaleej Times today lifted from national news agency WAM  telling us how the Emirates Identity Authority is launching "the Social Media engagement service". 

The brave providers of 'context and analysis' didn't even bother changing WAM's copy,  using the official headline and including the redundant definite article and the unnecessary caps for social media. You can read the EIDA announcement on the authority's website here.

I must confess, they might have made a remarkable four year long hash of their communications, but EIDA has consistently served up quality entertainment.

The "Social Media engagement service" will help customers with queries and "underscored the Emirates ID’s keenness on keeping pace with the development of the modern media and employing the social networking tools for upgrading the ID card-related services and meeting customers’ requirements by responding to their queries and solving their problems most urgently through the channels they prefer in their daily life."

EIDA has already lauded its own success with  the service, replying to over 1,700 customer queries and complaints last month alone. It's followers have grown by 40% over the month-long test period.

If you want to social media engage with the Emirates ID people, you can talk to them on Twitter @EmiratesID_HELP or on Facebook, where you can pick up insightful hints and tips such as 'Important info! Ensure that all personal data entered in the e-form are correct'.

There is also, by the way, a new ID card status service. I've just renewed my visa (itself a somewhat fraught process in the circumstances) and am waiting for my new ID card so I thought I'd try it out. Apparently I'm 15 years old, which is always nice to discover when father time weighs down on one's shoulders. Quite where my ID card is, I couldn't honestly say...

Got Any Lebanese LIRA?

Pound for pound, the Lebanese LIRA is the daftest regulation you'll see in quite a while. It's yet another example of a government trying to define the role of online media as it struggles to manage the potential of unfettered human thought and opinion being freely shared, following hot on the heels of the American near-disasters we know so well as SOPA and PIPA. Once again, it shows legislators are hopelessly out of touch with the dynamic of that shifting, changing thing we know as the internet.

The Lebanese Internet Regulation Act requires owners of websites to register with the government. interestingly, the draft law was proposed at the start of a month where the region's most vibrant and important annual forum for the online and digital industries, the ArabNet Digital Summit, is to take place in Beirut. Debate on the regulation has been postponed for further discussion by the Lebanese cabinet, giving the public time to make its views known (not that anyone will be listening, I conjecture).

LIRA attempts to take the Internet and squeeze it into a square peg shape so it'll fit the Lebanese press law shaped hole. Any owner of a website would have to register with the Information Ministry and websites would be governed by the conditions imposed on journalists, media and broadcasters by the Lebanese press law, the law specifically mentioned in the new regulation is Press Law 382/94, which is the audiovisual media law - a law that, as far as I can make out, merely modifies and re-ratifies the existing 1962 press law. It does seem like a very lazy way of saying "See the press law? It holds true for the Internets as well, people" which, as we all know, simply won't cut it.

That's about it. There's absolutely no attempt to understand the dynamics of the Internet, let alone even defining what a 'website' is - does this law apply to blogs? Only to owned domain-hosted websites? Mobile Apps? Facebook pages? Twitter?

It'll be interesting to see if Lebanese information minister Walid Daouk will speak at ArabNet and, if he does, how he'll be received. There has been a very lively hashtag, #STOPLIRA, pinging around the Twitterverse for a few days now and it's likely quite a few of the 1,500 digital innovators, specialists and leaders who'll be attending will have some helpful hints and tips for the minister. As it is, the ArabNet organisers turn off the Twitter wall for the keynote session in which ministers traditionally like to tell the audience of web-heads how the Internet and youth are important to our future. You wouldn't want to be reading what Twitter says about that kind of thing, you really wouldn't...


A translation of the Arabic language regulation is to be found on Joseph Choufani's blog here.

Social Crimes

Image via CrunchBase

It must be me, but Gulf News seems more and more crammed with court reports than anything else these days and they're certainly coming thick and fast. From the Afghan charged with slashing a Range Rover tyre in a bid to steal $4m ("I am not guilty. I didn't use any sharp tool to puncture the tyre. I never tried to steal anything" he told the court, channelling Vicky Pollard) to the Bangladeshi kidnap and brothel case and the employee demanding Dhs3 million compensation for his false dismissal, the tales of crime and counter-crime are certainly stacking up. Today's paper also features two 'social crimes'...

Notable among the other tales of wickedness are the continuing Twitter trial, the man who's been held since February 19th for Tweets that cursed Dubai Chief of Police, Dhahi Khalfan Tamim. Claiming he's being held in solitary confinement, coerced and pressured, the man lodged a special plea to have the police chief attend the court and give a statement. The plea was denied and judgement in the case will be issued on April 1st. Someone's got a sense of humour.

Another court report in today's packed schedule deals with the worker and housemaid whose 'love flowered after they met on Facebook' and who are consequently being charged with having consensual sex out of wedlock. This is something taken seriously here in the UAE and they're being jailed for two months and then deported. Apparently the couple chatted for two weeks on Facebook and then fell in love, the consummation of this passion taking place at the housemaid's sponsor's villa and, although Gulf News doesn't mention it, presumably their subsequent interruption by a scandalised sponsor wondering what all the noise was.

Give people technology and they find all sorts of interesting and different ways to use it, no?

Nostradamus

Image via Wikipedia"A Facebook group on the conflict between the army and Fatah Al Islam in Lebanon grew a membership of 8,000 in a single week: an average of two new members every minute. The movement of people, of opinions and debate in the new social networks can take place with incredible rapidity. This debate is taking place in a region where public debate, assembly and the mass publication of opinion have traditionally been discouraged. There is a new egalitarianism in the air and it’s a heady scent for many.

A flash survey of 100 Middle East based Facebook users tells us that 93% of them are using broadband connections. And 89% of them have laptop computers. 73% of those Facebook users are between 25 and 35 years of age. The survey took less than 1 hour to conduct.

There is a strong and growing Arab community using broadband technologies to move video content across the Internet, often as part of participation in social networks. The video featuring King Abdulla II of Jordan produced by the One Voice organisation, calling for peace and understanding between Palestinians and Israelis, has drawn over 279,000 views in Youtube. Video clips on Lebanon have consistently drawn above 150,000 views, while other topics and productions from the Arab world have consistently driven between 60,000 and 1 million views. Few FTA channels in the region could claim such viewership.

Social networks, the core aspect of the thinking that has been characterised as Web 2.0, are driving the adoption of broadband services in the Middle East. Perhaps interestingly this is not a technical audience of technology early adopters. That the growth in adoption has not been stronger is almost undoubtedly a product of prohibitive pricing strategies among the region’s operators."

That was all written early in 2007. Not bad, huh? I recently had reason to revisit a white paper I'd written together with Spot On bright spark Mai Abaza to support my presentation at the Arab Advisors Convergence Conference in Amman. The above text is part of the argument we were making that regional telcos needed to bring down the price of broadband and stop considering it a service for shifting big files and start looking at it as a way for many people to shift many files quickly.

I recall asking the conference how many had heard of the phrase Web 2.0 or social media and getting a show of eleven hands from an audience of hundreds of operators. That's telcos for you.

Re-reading this reminded me there's a line that connects Nahr El Bared with Occupy Wall Street - those Facebook groups that sprang up contained debate and discourse we had never before seen in the region - passionate and sometimes violently abusive, the adoption rate of these groups and the way they brought people together were stunning to watch. Of course, Mai and I were so busy examining the implications for the broadband market we missed the wider implications that here was a new platform for discourse and organisation that would grow to have the ability to bring down governments.

Those groups showed people in the Middle East, for the first time, that they could not only talk to each other, but broadcast opinion to tens of thousands. It took four years' growth in adoption, but the seeds sown as the Lebanese army blasted the Nahr El Bared camp using helicopters carrying bombs in home-made cradles would lead to something a great deal bigger...

Die Telco! Die!

Image via Wikipedia
Facebook has tossed its hat into the mobile handset ring according to TechCrunch today. The move is fascinating and adds a dimension to the whole new world emerging from the competition between companies who, five years ago, you would have never have thought of associating with the phone business - principally Apple and Google.

The idea of a phone that cuts out the old number dialling thing entirely and creates connections across a social media platform is a short leap ahead from the Google Voice stuff I was waffling about a few days ago, but it's a logical one. With the ability to make 'analogue' calls as well as Facebook to Facebook calls, the phone would logically use the same VoIP based technologies as MSN and Google are using to connect people directly today. The mobile Internet is about to get very hot indeed as 'telephones' transform into IP based devices that will support, potentially, voice and a huge range of other functionalities.

In that instance, you don't actually need a telco or its tottering infrastructure of switching exchanges - and you won't be paying circuit switched pricings anymore, just your flat rate monthly Internet access fee to your ISP.  Today's traditional telco is not a sustainable business model: telcos will have to downscale and slim up to a tremendous degree or will have to find a massive new, services based, business model to add to the diminishing revenues that their decreasing importance in an Internet-driven communications model will yield.

Or they could just keep blocking everything. That's another option, I guess...

But block or not, it is inevitable that telcos that don't transform fast will die.

UAE Facebook Libel Case Heard

Image by Fati.m.a Maria via Flickr

It was inevitable that we'd see such a case one day. Dubai's Misdemeanours Court yesterday heard the case of a Syrian who had posted photographs tagged with 'libellous comments' on his FaceBook page, according to Gulf News today.

The National, incidentally, didn't seem to get the story - there's a pattern emerging here where GN is stronger on the Dubai-led official stuff and The National on the Abu Dhabi/Federal beat.

No judgement has yet been passed in the case, although the defendent did say, according to GN, "I'm guilty and I did defame him because he provoked me." This could well avoid any wrinkles in the case that would test the ability of the judiciary to sit in judgement of complex cases involving online behaviours and technologies - I hope it doesn't stop the judge from exploring the legal issues the case opens up.

However, the critically important precedent in this is that the case was brought to court at all. In fact, Dubai Police's E-Crime section received a complaint from the allegedly defamed party and presumably brought the case.

The judge's summing up on this one has the potential to be important for many of us - we have already seen both cases and judgements in the UK and US that start to set precedents for how online media are being treated with regard to issues such as anonymity (the British High Court, for instance, judging that blogging is 'an activity carried out in public' and therefore a blogger does not have a right to have his or her anonymity preserved or protected) and online libel (we have now seen cases involving FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter).

The GN story is worth a read, BTW - the 'libel' that GN reports seems pretty mild as they go and appears to refer to a dispute that is itself ongoing in Dubai courts between the plaintiffs, according to the defendant and so wouldn't necessarily appear to be as clear-cut as the defendant's 'mea culpa' statement seems to make it.

Your news is my news now...

Image via Wikipedia

An interesting piece filed by AP today on 'social netiquette', talking about the increasing problems of how we manage information in this online, socially overloaded, on demand world of ours. There are some good examples of people losing control of their news as others Tweet or Facebook it - so that other friends and family are upset to find out about important events online rather than in person. It's here.

I've posted before about the problem of journalists combing Facebook for information about you when you die (here, in fact) - just one of these new ways of behaving we're all finding out about as we all experiment with the media and its consequences. And I was talking the other day to someone whose mother found out from Facebook about his engagement being broken off - one reason he refuses to go near it now.

There are an increasing number of examples of people having reason to deeply regret something they've done on social media, with often life-changing consequences. And yet a recent Spot On Twitter poll found that many people still re-Tweet links they see on Twitter without actually checking them out. That urge to get to the story first is something most journalists will understand - and the need to stop for a second and assess what you are sharing and the potential consquences of that sharing is also something that journalists will not only appreciate, but have evolved practices to manage. Social media hasn't - yet.

It's going to take a little less haste and a little more thoughtfulness from people in general in future. I do believe we are going to see the evolution of accepted ways of using social media - that thinks like Tweeting other people's news will become unacceptable. But it's such a fast-moving environment, there are gong to be a lot of breakages on the way.

The trouble is that, even when we take care, we all make mistakes - it's just that those mistakes are now incredibly, indelibly public.

Faced

A certain media organisation in Dubai has blocked its staff from using Facebook during working hours.

This is interesting.

I have spent quite a lot of time evangelising 'social media' and the proper use of these increasingly important tools in a professional context. If you want, incidentally, to learn more about social media and leading edge innovation in web-based technologies, do subscribe to partner in crime Carrington's Insane Web 2.0 Bonkers Twitter Feed.

Banning Facebook means that the journalists and researchers working for that organisation are just a little bit more disempowered than their peers. My colleagues use Facebook extensively as a social tool, but also as a business tool. Much as their relationships with media, analysts, consultants and clients often extend into social relationships (we work with people we like, right? We do business over lunch, drinks or shisha, right?), the boundary between work and social has never been more fuzzy. For instance, we had a suhour event last night where people stayed way into the early hours (PRs and journalists alike) because they wanted to. Because they wanted to catch up, share information, gossip, put the world to rights and all the rest of it.

No more or less, in fact, than we do on Facebook.

Last year we found ourselves needing to conduct a flash survey to get the picture on broadband adoption in the region. The guys sent out surveys to their Facebook contacts, result: 100 regional answers back that afternoon and a reasonable 'snapshot' sample of the situation we wanted to evaluate. A couple of weeks ago a journalist we wanted to contact wasn't in town and wasn't roaming on his mobile - but he was on Facebook. Result: we got through, had the conversation and did business. There are a large number of examples like this: Facebook is an extension of our 'analogue' social relationships in an age where social relationships are being complicated by the availability of new tools.

Consider this. You tell John that Peter is your good friend. 'Wow,' says John. 'That's lucky, because I really need to speak to him! Do you have his mobile number?'

And you don't. What's John's first inference about your friendship? Likely that you've been telling porkies and that you're not really good friends wiht Peter at all. You'd have a friend's mobile, right? Of course you would: although the tool itself has nothing to do with the depth or success of a relationship, it is a tool that we all use as part of the broad communications toolset we have today. It's almost inconceivable that you wouldn't be calling or texting friends - and the same is likely true of business contacts.

Facebook is not actually that interesting. It's just another communication tool. In any business where relationships are important, for instance in PR or in journalism, Facebook is an extension of our communications toolset - it adds another dimension to our ability to communicate effectively. And that is particuarly true if we are taking a role in a community of people that are using that tool themselves.

Banning Facebook in the workplace as policy is not only myopic and doomed to failure, it is disempowering. Better to encourage the use of Facebook and other, similar, networking tools in a working context to support better, smarter communications for your people. Banning it is, as Ammouni tells us, 'hiding behind your finger'.

Proof that it IS Evil!

In celebration of the 1000th member of the chucklesome Facebook Group: proof that he is, indeed, evil.

Hmmm... I can feel a meme coming on...

Fake Plastic Chicken

It's not that pal and colleague Carrington has posted up a rubber chicken for auction on Facebook. It's not that he took the trouble to photograph the damn thing. It's not even that the bird-flu resistant rubbery piece of poultry is known to form part of a massive collection of totally useless things because Carrington collects useless things.

It's the fact that the item in question has so far gathered 57 views and already attracted two offers. If this success continues, I'm going to put my Acer Promotional Stone up for auction.

(PS: I've just realised where he got the damn chicken from! Unwanted gift! I'm hurt!)

Death to Modhesh: Facebook Catches up With Our Little Yellow Fiend (Sorry, I meant Friend)

Yes, that most pernicious of social networks has kicked into action and there's now a Facebook Group 'Death to Modhesh'.

Oh dear, oh dear. What is it that these naughty people can't take about our cheerful little fiend?

Well, in the Group's own words:

I've decided to create a group that finally says what all the normal sane people (yes, all 5 of them) living in Dubai have repeatedly said: Modhesh is EVIL and should be abolished.

The yellow abomination is haunting me. I've never been in such constant close contact with a yellow Jack-in-the-box.

It's the result of a Banana and a Slinky having an affair. It also gives a whole new meaning to 'Bad Hair Day'

This of course not to mention the Nasal voice and annoying grin.

All In All...I raise my voice saying 'DEATH TO MODHESH'

Well, well, well. Some people have NO SENSE OF FUN AT ALL. Really.