More Arabic Blogging Services
Now as I expected earlier this year, many companies started introducing blogs as part of their service offering, as well I heard of many companies and efforts that is having blogs, and blog-related services part of their start up plans.
Shortly after Fastlink started their blog service for fastlink subscribers (which I am not one of), Al Bawaba Blog service started in beta as well.
Although I didn’t test the Fastlink service, I found that it was great that they promote blogging on such a wide user base as the mobile users, as well facilitate posting blog posts by mobile SMS and MMS and so. A disappointing thing was the un-friendly interface (for me as a reader) as it didn’t follow the normal blog view that we are all used to, as it seemed that all views are time limited, and the default is to show the post of the day, or the last couple of days. Not the last N posts as most blogs do. Another thing that I was disappointed in was that the service didn’t provide any blog feed method, which would allow aggregating the blogs (for example adding them to Jordan Planet would require a blog feed). It seemed to me that the Blog service isn’t reader-oriented, and will only serve as a great way to introduce people to blog-writing, but is not well-designed to create blogs that are readable.
Soon after, I heard from Ammar about Al-Bawaba’s offering of a Bi-Lingual blog service. I am familiar with the blogging software used for the service, and I find it great that it was a “real” blog software used for the service (unlike the fasklink one). In a matter of 3 minutes I had my own Blog in Arabic in Bawaba. One thing that I found a little complicated is the administration interface, there are things in the admin pages that I can’t really understand the function or the purpose of. Another thing that I would like to see is a way to allow me to customize the design, they provide only 7 designs (which are nice, one of them is exactly like the theme I use for my blog), and no way to select other than those, or alter any of them..I think that blogs are supposed to be personal, and so personalization should be possible. I really see a great future for Al-Bawaba Blogs, specially that it is based on Open Source Software and Technologies (or so I heard) :)
Today, I saw another service that I first heard about few months ago; Jeeran Blogs comes as a latest of Bi-Lingual blog service providers. Although the system is .NET-based (yes, I said Although), I found it to be very clean, neat, and usable. As well in a mater of 3 minutes, I had my Jeeran Test Blog up and running. A nice advantage ofer Al-Bawaba’s service is that it provide you with a blog address that comes with a subdomain (bayazidi.jeeran.com) so it is easier/shorter to spell, and remember. They as well provide a set of designs/templates (9 templates) and without the ability to alter/change the design. So you are stuck with one of their options. Administration interface is a lot easier and more friendly (but have much less features than Al-Bawaba, for example Categories for posts isn’t available, and I wasn’t able to make the blog show the Gregorian calender instead of the Hijri one).
Now I hope that both services take steps further in ironing things out. And I’m happy that both of them are there, and I hope that more will come. Blogging in the Arab world will be having a major boost soon with the availability of those Arab-based services. I really can’t wait until Jordan Planet will have a set of 10-15 arabic blogs from Jordan to start it’s Arabic section which had been on hold for months.
Another thing that thrilled me is that those all are Jordan-based businesses, so it seems that Jordan internet companies are acting as pioneers (at least on the Arab-world level) as they had always been.
Until then, I’ll keep watching and waiting.
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November 9th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Not all of them are Jordanians (at least, not all of the companies coming in 2005 ;) )
November 9th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
I’m looking forward to see this dream coming true, Isam. All the best :-)
November 9th, 2005 at 7:31 pm
Hello, I am Co-founder and Director of products and Software development at jeeran.com.
I want to congratulate you on being the first to ever review “Jeeran Blogs”. This means you are an avid watcher over the Arab Internet scene, which is very impressive and means I will be reading your writings more often.
To those interested, Jeeran Blogs -just like all our services- has been built from the ground up as a 100% in-house masterpiece by our extremely talented team. It also utilizes the latest .NET technologies, and best practices, which makes it one of the few web applications of this scale to be built using .NET 2.0, in the region. We always strive to apply the best standards in software development, and bring our members powerful, and in your words “clean, neat, and usable” web applications that help them better utilize the internet.
Finally, I want to tell everyone to expect a lot more from Jeeran as a company and Jeeran Blogs in particular, in the near future.
November 9th, 2005 at 10:01 pm
Hi Laith :) I noticed that I provided a free ad. space for jeeran in here :) well I have to say that “Although” it is a .NET company, I think that it is one of the success stories that I am glad that it is started in Jordan. The blog service still misses some important features, such as “categorization” or “tagging” for posts, while providing a feed per category. As I think that using “templates” is almost a must. I can’t imagine that after a few months, with jeeran having few thousends blogs, they will all look the same, or within a range of 9 available designs.
November 10th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
Hello Isam,
Your comments are right on the mark. We are aware of the lacking features you mentioned and we plan on releasing the latest version soon. We did a soft launch on our site to test the basic functionality of our service, and more features will be added very soon. Inshallah we will get more valuable feedback from you.
Hope to see an updated review once we release the final version ;-)
November 10th, 2005 at 3:38 pm
Dear Sir,
I recently joined Jeeran team as the Online Advertising Sales & Marketing Manager; and I thank you for the free ad. space :)
Many thanks for your careful observation, comments and useful suggestions. To tell you the truth; we were actually thinking of some of these things ourselves, and working on implementing them, and you kindly highlighted other things that are of the same significance.
More designs are in preparation, more features are going to be available for all our members and more fun coming in the world of Jeeran blogs, and this is a promise so stay tuned!
Thank you again
November 13th, 2005 at 9:23 am
Hey Isam,
Thank you for your review about Al-Bawaba Blogs, we have been working on implementing the suggestions you have made, we launched the service as Beta just to test the back end components, expect many new things to come soon :)
cheers.
November 27th, 2005 at 3:25 pm
Hi Isam,
Since everyone used your space for a free run, I would like to quickly note on Fastlink’s Blog.
Fastlink Blog is developed in cooperation with a local vendor (Maktoob for their reputable experience in building online communities) from scratch as to allow it to grow organically - as the demand grows the, blog will accommodate.
Our aim is to encourage people to speak out on their free space and be mobile while doing it.
P.S: for a trial account contact me :O)
Thanks Isam for the opportunity to briefly discuss different engines. I agree with your points mentioned above, but think of Fastlink’s blog as a separate entity that hopefully will allow the mass to start the good habit of Blogging!
Thanks again, and keep on posting.