How did this happen and we completely missed it? Or, I completely missed it.
I knew about iToot.net, the network of Arab blogs. But many of those are also in English, thus excluding many exclusively Arabic-speaking people. Now the makers of Toot have come out (as of late 2006) with another site that is like Youtube and Flickr in one, and in Arabic: http://ikbis.com/.
They were even featured in Newsweek. I read in Jordan's Pulp Magazine (I was up till the dawn adhaan jetlagged and was bored, ok?) about Ikbis in an interview with its creator Ahmad Humeid where he says that the goal is to incorporate other Jordanians and Arabs besides those in West Amman in the Internet revolution.
A lot of people, especially in the Gulf, don't speak English very well. And according to our statistics, most people prefer the Arabic interface over the English one. Not everyone in the Arab world is like people in West Amman. For the most part, everyone here speaks English. But that's not always the case.Other pluses of Ikbis include the fact that it's videos and pictures in one place (in other words, better than Youtube and Flickr both), and the fact that there's no pornography so they don't go getting their site banned in a bunch of places. (Sorry Nadeem)
I guess that means we can't link the Indian Buffalax video to it?
Also a big draw is this:
So why would I, as an English speaking person in Jordan, choose Ikbis over Youtube?
You use Ikbis if you want to be part of a smaller, more focused community.... For example, there was an American Muslim guy who wanted to talk about culture and religion and start dialogue about Islam and the West. When he put his video up on YouTube, he got no responses. But when he put it up on Ikbis, he got hundreds of views and comments. So, you go to Ikbis when you want a more localized, Arabic experience.
7 comments:
Emily,
There's really no need to make excuses for reading Pulp Magazine. That's pretty lame. It's actually a great thing, and if you took the time (other than your sleepless nights) to look through it properly, you'd see that the quality of writing in there is better than anything i've ever seen you write on here. So i'd think twice before i'd dismiss something i can't live up to - which, is painfully obvious, you can't.
pulp is great, and so are the lovely people that run it.
you'd be lucky to meet them, i think... although i'm not sure how they'd react to someone like you.
again, lame.
So faisal, out of all of the things I've commented on in the past two days, the one that most offends you is the one regarding pulp magazine?
yeah, pretty much.
... i'm not usually one to comment, but when something particularly rubs me the wrong way, i make a point of commenting. Nothing you've said so far bothers me - i'm pretty apathetic when it comes to the issues you cover. so i guess, you should be kind of flattered that i bothered to comment on anything you wrote at all..
hugs :)
faisal
Out of curiosity, are you from west amman?
i guess you could say that.. although i'm not a native. why do you ask?
just as a side comment to my initial point: i feel like if you thought the interview with Ahmad Humeid was interesting enough to post about on kabob, then obviously the content in pulp isn't as embarrassing to admit to reading after all, is it?... so what's your beef? you still haven't said..
i also think it's lame to make fun of pulp. why is everybody here so negative about homegrown things? we should learn from pulp and start supporting innovative and creative things happening in our country.
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