The initial reaction of readers to the launch of Sindibad, the Arab business renaissance blog, has been pretty interesting. The most popular content on the blog was the series of posts about the story of Facebook. (translated into Arabic from Fast Company).
Facebook is making waves in the Arab region and digital entrepreneurs have many lessons to learn from its rise to fame.
Then there’s an interesting story by Sindibad contributer Dr Ammar Bakkar about the disastrous state of reading and libraries in the Arab world, where a story about the great late Arab literary figure Taha Hussein is recounted. He was once asked by someone if god would turn him into an animal, what would be preferred to be turned into? “A mouse,” Taha Hussein answered. Why? So that he could sneak into the great libraries of the world and ‘devour’ all the books in them!
Also check out the post on the fastest Arab cities, according to Fast Company and Business 2.0.
Comments
5 responses to “What’s on the Sindibad blog”
it’s been great how people are reacting to the blog; although it is still (work in progress), we are in no way near what we intend to do yet, it’s just a modest beginning… keep reading…
many aspiring entrepreneurs commended the facebook article and expressed their interest in starting something similar for the region. so i decided to publish another eye openning story about Friendster.com story. the first ever social network in the world, but nobody remembers it anymore because it folded although it pioneered the concept back in 2003-2005…coming soon
Bahjat Homsi
Founder, TheSindibad.com
I really dont know what to say about sindibad blog. i mean am glad they are keen in showing the blooging phenomena in the arab world, but I dont see them taking it to a new level.
the interface is really nice and the colors are cool (I study GUI and database management so this is my specialty :p )
but I have some issues with their content.
first, its too general for the middle east as a whole. i think they should be more segmented to reach and benefit a more dedicated and segmented market.
second why do they keep blogging about other countries’ entrepreneurial adventures. why not start at home? I wish there was an arab blog that is tailored to show some real arab talent and entrepreneurship – a term still not known to many arabs, particularly jordanians.
yes its interesting to read about face book and fast company. its really great. but how about bogging about youthful entrepreneurial businesses in the arab world as a start?
Dear Bilal, you have basically described our vision…bring professional business journalism to the region is no joke, let alone new economy coverage. We are basically building our project’s components from scratch. We couldn’t build on what’s available in the region, the industry is so immature..
you will be surprised to know that prominent journalists are not familiar with the terms and stories we want to cover, so we are educating people as we go. We understand we are building a new business culture in the region and that will take time, and we are using Fast Company & Inc material to help bridge the technological gap and let readers know what’s happening worldwide then relate it to what’s happening in our region.
your segmentation remark is also in place… just keep following our blog, I promise you in 3 months time you will see it evolving into an amazing blog that covers your concerns an add true value to our readers
thank you so much for the response. I truly believe your mission and vision are first class and desperately needed in our region.
I also want to thank you for being open to feedback.
I am sure your blog will bring a true value to readers like us.
I highly recommend a story about Aramex: one of the top Jordanian businesses started by one Jordanian entrepreneur!
Hopefully one day we will see it as a rival to DHL, Fedex or UPS.