I was wondering why I keep reading posts about startups from everywhere in the world at the most popular tech/web blogs, but none come to mention Arab ones. So I did a search on the following keywords in TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable:
Arab, Arab startups, Middle East, arabia, Maktoob, d1g, yamli, ikbis, watwet, and of course my own startup questler.
and here are the results:
|
TechCrunch |
ReadWriteWeb |
Mashable |
Arab |
10 Results, 8 with “arab” in “comparable”, 1 with “arab” in “sharable” and one about censorship!!! |
57 Results:
1 about Queen Rania YouTube Channel
1 About innvovation in UAE
1 About EgyptianYouTube Channel
7 with “comparable” so I only browsed the titles of rest! |
3 Results, one with Ikbis mentioned!
One mentiones flickr being bloced in UAE and the third one has no mention of the word arab anyway. |
Arab Startups |
0 |
0 |
0 |
Middle East |
6 Results, talking about different web companies targeting the middle east, one about Middle East Oil and one about the Internet cables! |
2 posts about World wide Internet Penetration rates |
Just too many to go through! Sorry! |
Arabia |
5 Results, all mentioning Saudi Arabia |
0 |
1 Result mentioning Saudi Arabia |
Maktoob |
0 |
0 |
0 |
d1g |
0 |
0 |
0 |
ikbis |
0 |
0 |
0 |
watwet |
0 |
0 |
0 |
yamli |
0 |
0 |
0 |
questler |
0 |
0 |
0 |
In comparison, there was a long post on ReadWriteWeb the other day about German twitter clones as a phenomenon. Korean startups, Canadian ones, China of course, Philippines, Spain, Portuguese.
So I tell you, cloning or lack of real innovation is definitely NOT the problem here, So is it because of:
- That the words “Arab” and “Middle East” are synonymous with Internet censorship?
- No interest?
- Not many startups to make the news?
- Bad marketing?
- Worse of all, low self worth, that many Arabs suffer, thinking that they won’t make it big anyway so they don’t contact these people?