Social Media Awards Celebrates Beirut's Online Socialites

The Social Media Awards are meant to recognize and celebrate Lebanon’s most popular online socialites. 33 awards were distributed among bloggers, businesses and institutions to celebrate the best most creative brands and persons in the online social sphere.

The entrants were nominated after a popular vote was conducted online, while the other half of the points were awarded by the judges, including Lebanese American Stand Up Comedian Nemr Abou Nassar, Founder & CEO of ArabNet Omar Christidis, British Ambassador to Lebanon Tom Fletcher and Minister of Telecommunications Nicholas Sehnaoui.

What Are the Top 50 Social Brands in the GCC?

Gulf Business and Grafdom have recently released a new report, compiling data from Social Watchlist and Social Bakers, that highlights the “50 most influential and recognizable brands in the GCC” based on their popularity on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Based on the number of Likes + Followers + Subscribers, GCC inhabitants’ top 2 brands are Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera English. Al Arabiya has almost double the amount of Facebook fans and 60 times as many followers on Twitter, yet Al Jazeera English is phenomenally big on YouTube. Combined with Al Arabiya's YouTube reach, the 2 channels are worlds apart from everything else. 

With 26 000+ subscribers, their closest rival is STC with slightly under 10 thousand subscribers, but the gap becomes even more ridiculous when you look at views: 387+ millions for Al Jazeera alone. Combined, these 2 news outlets dwarf the rest of the brands combined.

Other stats include...

Talk Like a Pirate: Is it rude to "jump ship" during an active Facebook conversation?

Have you checked your Facebook for comments after "hoisting" new "portraits" just a couple shots o' rum ago?

Zuckerberg administration enhances the blue website with new features and new moves almost every day. Lately, Facebook changed its relationship status between with Zynga from “sailing steadily” to “Argh!”

Facebook offers its platform in 77 different languages and dialects. Two distinctive English versions are English "uʍop ǝpısdn" (Upside Down) and the underrated Pirate English. 

Social Media Use in Arabia [Infographic]

Today we present you with an infographic that details the use of social media in the MENA region.

58% of users in the region visit Facebook at least once a week, while 23% visit YouTube and 15% visit Twitter in the same time period.

And while 72% are not aware visual.ly, a data visualizations and infographics creation tool that launched in 2011, 35% still don’t know LinkedIn, which launched 9 years ago.

ArabNet has a long-term partnership with DDArabia, whereby we publish infographics on our website. Check out the following inforgraphic for more interesting figures and stats!