Today, Thursday at 2.35 pm, Amman Net Radio (Amman community radio on 92.4 FM) will be talking about blogging in Jordan and the Arab world. I was interviewed for the show to talk about blogging in general and about toot, the Arab blog network.
You can listen to the live broadcast of the station on their home page.
Comments
9 responses to “Toot and Arab blogging to be featured today on Amman Net Radio”
Can you tell me on what grounds you highly think of Toot? Let me give you couple of examples and I would like your honest and professional opinion:
1) A little discussion between two “tooters” about an icon that isn’t showing!
2) A little thumb video showing a finger talking about toot!
3) Some toot sites that have not added an article in Months
4) No hirarchy,
5) no authority
6) no idea who is running the show, how to get on the show, what are the ETA’s to get there, how are sites considered or anything.
Now, the effort is great and impressive, but certain areas lead to the feeling that the whole venture is very unprofessional, extremely subjective and wasta-kind of system
Maybe you can provide a down-loadable version of the show for everyone who can’t catch it on the air? (would be much appreciated)
Toot’d never add bloggers unless by wasta or connections, I see too many silly blogs there.. the good ones are like 10-20
BEWARE: LONG COMMENT AHEAD.
It’s really great to get some feedback regarding toot. So I am on a roll here
Moey!
Wastat? So all the 122 blogs on toot, according to you, have been added because have Wasta with us at toot. That’s a pretty big statement.
And only 10% of the blogs we’ve chosen (by wasta, of course
are good. I sincerely would like you to submit, here, or on your blog, a review of the 122 blogs we feature, to determine their level of silliness/seriousness.
Quweider:
Maybe you don;t know I am a co-founder of toot so my opinion might be a bit biased. But let me attempt to answer your questions.
At toot, we embrace both seriousness and silliness. We’re inclusive!
So one moment we might be discussing a serious piece of PHP code or interface design, and the next we’re dealing with silly little icons and talking thumbs (the video was viewed over 300 times if you can believe it! See it again here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qt2lbsRnnY&eurl=)
We’re like that. We can’t help it. So we show it. If you’re expecting us to get all serious and ‘professional’ and wear grey suits, don’t count on it.
No hierarchy and no authority.. hmm. Sounds like my kind of environment
But in all sieriousness. I think we have enough authority to get some work done. After all we launched the site and have two other big projects in the works. Stay tuned.
If you mean hierarchy of content, well, you’re right. We might need to have some structure to our content soon. But many bloggers just write about different things, so we don’t want to structure things too much.
Who’s running the show? Read toot’s about us page. We’re running the show.
I can assure you there is no Wasta. Also, we’re a private venture. We’re a web media company. We could simply say “we can choose whatever blogs we like”. We’re not the Ministry of Blogging. We’re not really compelled to have an ‘absolutely fair’ process for choosing our blogs. So we choose bloggers according to a criteria of: does it interest us? Will interest the readers? Do we have agood mix from different countries? Balance of males and females? A good mix of topics? For how long has this person been blogging? How’s the traffic? How popular is it?
Yes.. it’s ‘subjective’.. But I think the toot team is diverse enough to make our choices interesting.
It’s just our (the toot team’s) take on the blogosphere. No wasta. No money under the table
Does that make us ‘unprofessional’? Unprofessional means not doing your job or treating customers and partners badly. From that perspective I don’t think we’re unprofessional.
Ok.. that’s it..
Sadly the radio show is still not availble for download.
Thanks everyone for taking the time to listen to the show and also checking out and critiquing toot..
The wasta argument is awesome
I mean, we’re not even on first name basis with most of the bloggers on toot, and we only personally know a handful of them, so how in the world could most of them be added by wasta or connections?
And man, I’m hurt that you don’t like my brother’s toot video
Please don’t take my words out of their context, and focus on the single word that will make every single person on iToot upset, I’m not denying that there are fantastic blogs there. What I mentioned was an example (Wasta)
All I wanted to hear was: “It’s a personal venture and it’s up to us to decide what we think is interesting”
Thanks
PS: The last time I checked iToot (this morning) was the very last time I am going to check it. Not for anything, but I will continue to think that my choice of what “Interesting” means is actually worth something
And the diversity you’re talking about is a joke, negated by the previous sentence, I don’t want to go on preaching about what diversity really is, but I don’t think it’s being demonstrated in the proper way
Now, don’t get me wrong, I admire the effort, and praise the interesting work. And especially appreciate Roba and Jad’s work, and I personally think it’s fantastic, yet the little “My definition of cool is the only definition of cool” is jut so uncool!
I’m glad I can argue with you without actually fighting with you. I’m sorry for the negative feedback … but despite what you said above, I still think our opinions matter to you.
Finally, the only reason I said wasta is simple, some blogs are way too primitive to the level that there is no way they got there other than “Wasta”
Send a text message to 0900 290 990, include the phrase “electric blue” in the body of the message, and get a chance to win a place on toot!
each message charged at 1jd
Just kidding
Just accept us for what we are, people!
Qwaider,
OK.. so I am glad that you are satisfied with my statement regarding toot being a private venture (I did not say ‘personal’).
But I am still curious about something. You say that some blogs on toot are there because of Wasta and that they are primitive. I will not ask you to list them if you don’t want to. But can you tell me approximately the percentage of such blogs. Is 10%, 20%, 50%, 90%?
I am also interested to know what you mean by ‘primitive’.
I would appreciate the feedback..
Thanks
For the lack of better terms. I tried to use the least offensive word I could think of.
You want me to give you exact statistics, I find that it’s only fair the I comply.
Around 50% have not been updated with anything in weeks
Tried to find out the male:female and found
I don’t completely agree with you Qwaider,
some places of management choose a flat orginizational system that barely has hierarchy. It’s like, all are equal, but all are equal WITHIN the STAFF of Toot.
Personally I was glad I was added to Toot lately, but I still don’t believe the selection of the blogs to be added is going through a certain, outlined, specific criteria. It may be Wasta sometimes, but it’s becoming a matter of a personal choice and I think this is totally unappropriate.
With all due respect to the members of Toot, as I am one of them, but some blogs there are just not worth it. I don’t know what got you thinking you would add them to the website along with some other worthy blogs.
Enjoy promoting on the radio!