Twitter in the Middle East – A Rising Force!
A prototype of the product was originally used for internal communication within Glass’ first company, Odeo. Following Odeo’s collapse, Twitter was launched publicly on July 15th, 2006. The definition of “twitter” in the Oxford English Dictionary is “a short burst of inconsequential information; chirps from birds”. Jack Dorsey describes the instant that he and his co-founders stumbled across the word as an “Aha!” moment, as they realized that the definition perfectly matched what they wanted the product to achieve. The core service of Twitter is to allow its users to answer, in 140 characters or less, one simple question: “what are you doing?” Its foundational structure is similar to that of Facebook in that you create a profile and add connections, and then you can communicate directly with your connections. It’s a meeting point between a social network and a messaging service on some serious steroids.
Despite the fact that the OED’s definition describes twitter as “inconsequential information”, twitter has played an extremely significant part in several world events since its public launch. During the unrest that surrounded the 2009-2010 Iranian elections, twitter allowed members of the Iranian public to communicate with news organizations outside of Iran and describe the events that were unfolding, dubbing it the “Twitter Revolution”.
As of February 2015, Twitter had 6 million users in the MENA region, up by staggering 2.3 million from February of the year before. As 2014 marked the first year that the MENA region reached the global average for internet usage, along with a social media and mobile penetration rate that is regularly at a higher rate than the global top 10, it is absolutely unnegotiable that we have only begun to see the tip of the iceberg of Twitter’s potential outreach in the Middle East.
