Cloud961- New Year 2014

CLOUD #7 - NEW YEAR 2014

REIGN OF TECHNOLOGY

www.cloud961.com

TAREK MATAR

FADY SABBAGHA

BASSAM JALGHA

Bureaucracy in the Lebanese System Prevents Benefit from E-commerce

looking forward to develop new products that can scale us up to the global digital market

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Lebanon is Still a Fresh Market for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Takes a Lot of Time to Pay Off P24

Donner Sang Compter Connecting Blood Donors to Those in Need

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5 people to Follow on Instagram

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Dr. Cloud Online Collaborative and Converse ‘Get Loud’ in Beirut Online Collaborative, the initiative bringing together online influencers in Lebanon, celebrated its 3rd year anniversary in style on the 15th of November, taking part in Converse’s global ‘Get Loud’ Initiative. GET LOUD took over the country’s digital platform, through the hype created on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Through a series of events in Beirut, a number of the Lebanese.... P42 PARTNERS:

when your community manager screws up, tell your audience that it was a staged stunt to get people’s attention P35

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EDITORIAL

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

EDITORIAL

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

You Can Never Please Everyone

Publisher: Cornerstone Public Relations SAL

By Mohammad Hijazi, Editor in Chief @mhijazi

Chairman Bassam Karam / bassam@cloud961.com social media is that it eliminates the human aspect from communication and that’s what the online community needs to be aware of.

Negat iv it y on t he internet can take a lot of shapes and forms .

Constructive criticism (without passive aggressiveness) should always be welcome to improve oneself or a brand. Anyone who does not accept such feedback is considered to be a whiny close-minded know-it-all. There is always room for improvement and people should be able to take this into consideration without getting upset.

As cliché as it may sound, it is very true.

You will have to learn it the hard way to believe it. No matter if you are nice to everyone or employ democratic techniques to try to balance all the sides, you can never please everyone at the same time. It is something that you have to live with and get accustomed to. The only way you can avoid this is do nothing with your life (and even then, you will be getting comments about how lazy you are).

This is more evident online. Individuals and brands get criticized and bashed all the time. It is easier to criticize because most people don’t realize that at the other side of the screen, there is a living breathing human being that will be affected by their words. If it were an offline conversation, most people will tend to consider the consequences of their words more and try to be diplomatic in order not to hurt the individual they are criticizing.

Possibly the most negative aspect of

Other forms of negativity can and will cause tensions between people. Many arise from simple misunderstandings or false judgments, especially online where the tone of a person or the context cannot always be inferred. In this case, I invite the different parties involved to engage in a constructive dialogue to straighten out the dilemma.

It is really not that hard to drop the person an e-mail or a direct message to get on the same page.

The worst form of negat iv it y is hatred and bullying and it seems this is very popular on the interwebs.

From teenagers getting bullied using anonymous ser vices like ask .fm (where it resulted in suicide on some occasions) to upfront bullying due to the green monster of jealousy or inability to have an open mind when differing opinions on a certain topic occur. I am no stranger to this type of negativity; at first I did not really know how to handle it. Believe me, it is not an easy thing to encounter unjustified abhorrence from a community that you are working so hard to improve while receiving no material gain whatsoever.

The obvious reaction is to fight back.

But it is rarely the right move; it will only cause more virtual bloodshed. If you are representing a brand, there is only one approach that you can take to handle the issue gracefully. Try to communicate with the person and

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figure out the problem and try to fix it using professional communication and customer ser vice tools. You always have to be the bigger person to preserve the image of your brand and gain the respect of your audience.

If it a personal attack, you can always try being the bigger person. I have recently published an open letter to the Lebanese online community to tr y and mend fences and f ix misunderstandings which worked with a few people. But that’s not the only option. As a person, you do not have to put up with the hatred and the bullying, especially that it will get to you at some point and you will explode (and it will not be pretty). It is very plausible and highly advisable at this point to make use of the BLOCK button which is conveniently present on all social networks. If you think that the negativity that you are receiving is unjustified and you are doing your best to right your wrongs but the other side is not cooperating, you do not have to take it. Not reading and ignoring is your best solution. Of course, you can always try yoga as a stress-reliever, but I’m starting to doubt how effective it is to handle such situations.

To wrap things up, success w ill always attract the wrong crowd and sometimes it will get on your nerves.

Pure jealousy on other people’s part can be medicated by simply including them or engaging them in your plans.

Other times, it cannot be remedied, mostly because people criticize the faults of others before assessing their own. As long as you believe in what you are doing and are giving it your best, the opinions of jealous haters should not put you down, but rather only prove your success and incentivize you to advance. As Winston Churchill said: “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life,” and that should be your motto.

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Managing Director Hagop Manisajian/ Hagop@cloud961.com Editor in Chief: Mohammad Hijazi / mhijazi@cloud961.com News Editor: Joelle Hajji / joelle@cloud961.com Staff Writers: Darine Sabbagh / darine@cloud961.com Lynn Bizri / lynn.bizri@cloud961.com Paul Gadalla / paul@cloud961.com Contributors: Armen Bakkalian, Dalia Ramadan, Dr. Cloud, Elsa Abi Khalil, Maria Frangieh, Mira Nouaihed Nadim Frenn, Sarah Sabbagh, Trending Bytes, Vana Kalzy Marketing & PR Relations Michelle Nabhane / michelle@cloud961.com Outreach Manager Vicky Ghanem / outreach@cloud961.com Cloud Events Manager Mia Saab / events@cloud961.com Sales Manager Hala Jack / hala@cloud961.com Web & Application Development Mindfield Solutions Branding & Layout Behold The Agency / keep@beholdin.com Consultant Partner The Online Collaborative ngo@onlinecollaborative.org

Cornerstone Holding Building, 2nd Floor, Main Street, Beit Mery T + 961 4 401 870 M + 961 78 961 961 www.cloud961.com Management: info@cloud961.com Advertising & PR: sales@cloud961.com Subscriptions: subscribe@cloud961.com Editorial: editor@cloud961.com

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NEWS Creative Commons launches fourth generation licenses After two years in the making, the 4.0 licenses are the most global, legally robust licenses produced by CC to date. They incorporate dozens of improvements that make sharing and reusing CC-licensed materials easier and more dependable than ever before.

You can find highlights of the most significant improvements on http:// creativecommons.org/Version4.

Twitter allows Direct Messages from People you don’t follow using Linkedin.

Until now if anyone that you didn’t follow on Twitter wanted to message you, they had to send a public message with your Twitter name in it.

But now, Twitter‬ has finally made it possible to Direct Message people not following you. To find out if you have the option, simply go to Twitter settings and look under the "account" section.

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

Facebook Messenger App upgrade available to all iOS, Android users

The Facebook Messenger app update the company announced in late October is now available to all iOS and Android mobile users. The most notable update to the app allows users to message anyone in their contacts who has the Messenger app, not just those they are Facebook friends with. The speed of messages also improved, meaning the app works much more like SMS or texting than it did before.

Twitter now running pre-roll ads Twitter will now run American Express pre-roll ads before Fox programming is displayed on the social network. As part of the Amplify program that launched last week, these Fox spots are ads themselves by design, so the American Express pre-roll ads are effectively ads on top of ads. Right now, that’s scheduled to be 2015, but if the company can leverage ads to make that happen sooner, they’ll take every chance they can get.

Nikon D5300, Its First DSLR with Built-In WiFi and GPS A few updates to the camera have been made, but the headliner is the fact that Nikon has finally added built-in WiFi. It’s also the first Nikon SLR to feature built-in GPS. The new WiFi and GPS features are joined by an enhanced 24.2-megapixel DX sensor without an anti-aliasing filter and a powerful expeed 4 processor. That translates into the ability to shoot 1080/60p video, 5fps continuous in both live view and via the viewfinder, a max ISO of 25,600 and better battery life to boot (700 shots vs 500).

Nokia Lumia 929, an upcoming High-end Smartphone Nokia is preparing to release Lumia 929 and it is rumoured that it is a potential replacement of Lumia 928 at Verizon.

Recently Windows phone central leaked the specifications of Nokia Lumia 929 which seems like an upgraded version of Lumia 928 and it would be an exclusive device for Verizon.

Nokia Lumia 929 will be released by early this year and it will come in glossy white & matte black colour with aluminium frame and it looks like Nokia Lumia 1520.

Over 5% of Instagram ad views have led to likes Instagram ads are off to a strong start. CEO Kevin Systrom said about the early ads that “Over 5% of the impression led to Likes on these ads that we’ve run.

That’s pretty tremendous considering most of the ads we see on the internet we ignore.”

Instagram Analytics Company Nitrogram looked at the Kors ad yesterday and believes it was seen 6.15 million people and received over 218,000 Likes, as SocialFresh reported. That would imply 3.57% of views led to Likes of the photo, which isn’t far off Systrom’s stat.

Helpouts from Google connects People with Experts over live video.

A new product from Google, Helpouts, connects people with experts over video chat to give free or paid advice for tasks like how to apply lipstick, how to treat a burn or how to speak Mandarin. If Helpouts succeeds, Google hopes it will provide experts with a source of income, so retired doctors or guitar players could teach people online. Experts charge a fixed rate or by the minute. They keep 80 percent and Google takes 20 percent.

Google Now gets new updates with news topics and movie recommendations

Google has updated its mobile personal assistant, Google Now, with several interesting updates, including news topics, website updates, as well as movie and TV recommendations.

Other new features include real-time traffic updates from Waze and real time scores for rugby teams. You can also check when your packages are ready for in-store pickup and set repeat reminders.

The update is available now on Google Play as part of the Google Search app.

Now you can save attachments directly to Google drive Gmail A new Gmail update will let you view and save attachments directly to Google Drive from within your message. The new feature is twofold. First, attachments are now visible as previews at the bottom of a message. That means instead of just seeing a list of files with the option to click "preview" (which opens in a separate browser tab), you see a preview within the message itself. Clicking on the preview brings up a full screen view of the file, and you can navigate through several attachments the same way you flip through a photo slideshow.

The more significant feature, however, is the ability to save an attachment directly to Google Drive. Simply click on the Google Drive icon that appears when you hover over an attachment and choose where to send your attachment.

LG G Flex’s flexibility and self-healing back put to the test(www.androidandme.com) We’ve all seen LG’s unique G Flex smartphone. It’s one of the only smartphones with a true flexible display inside, but it offers so much more than just a curved phone. According to LG’s advertising, the phone can actually flex without breaking, and the self-healing back can repair scratches.

MKBHD put the device to the test, first using a set of keys, then taking a sharp knife to it. He compares it to the ads LG put out, and sees if the device actually repairs itself. Lo and behold, minor scratches actually do heal after a while!

They are not 100% gone, but they become very hard to see.

There are now more than 25 million small business pages on Facebook (www.insidefacebook.com)

More and more small businesses have been setting up shop on Facebook. Dan Levy, Facebook’s Global Director of Small Business, announced recently at the Dreamforce conference that more than 25 million pages represent small businesses, including e-commerce all over the world.

Levy previously told Inside Facebook that small businesses are a growing part of Facebook’s advertiser base, which weighs in at more than one million.

"Ijma3" or “Collect” launched in Beirut the Arab Regional Union for the Internet The Arab Organization for Informatics and Communications “Ijma3”, under the auspices of the Minister of Telecommunications Nicolas Sehnaoui, organized a regional meeting in Beirut as part of the "Union for Freedom of the Internet", which included delegations from Egypt, Iraq, Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon.

The participants represented a section of the three sectors: information technology, civil society organizations and the private sector. The meeting, which was held in Rotana, Arjaan – Beirut was to establish an Arabic Regional Alliance for the internet consisting of stakeholders from various non-political entities that are in the private sector, civil society and specialists in the field of Internet from the Arab countries, to develop a single vision and a single goal: to preserve the internet and have access in their countries.

Nasrallah shuts down Lebanon Debate page on Facebook!

Facebook closed Lebanon Debate page and prohibited the page to publish any new news after spreading news with images related to the “Hizbullah” and "Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah."The management of the page wrote to Facebook and had been trying hard to restore the page.

COVER FEATURE Why do People Buy Online?

By Vana Kalzy

@vkelzi

Last year, worldwide e-commerce sales rose to $1 trillion dollars for the first time, and the number was expected to grow by 18% this year, according to digital marketing, media, and commerce outlet, eMarketer.

But consumers won’t buy anything from anybody online.

It is difficult to sell expensive products online especially when it comes to services. People love to touch, smell, taste and try the products before pulling out their credit cards.

Here are 5 reasons why consumers might be attached to online shopping:

1.Comparison shopping

One of the reasons we might choose to buy online is the dozens of stores that we can see and compare products in less time than having to travel from store to another.

We will see the reviews compare prices and qualities.

2.Wider selection

It is difficult to carry millions of products in a retail store

E-payment Solutions in Lebanon are only offered by very few banks

By Lynn Bizri

@lnlne

While E-commerce is on the rise globally, in Lebanon the market is still developing. Over the decade, e-commerce founders and supporters have faced several challenges in starting and building online businesses. Most in the e-commerce industry blame the slow growth to the general mistrust of online purchasing, the slow connection speeds and the lack of secure online payment gateways as well e-commerce sites.

Since most Lebanese consumers fear credit card fraud, especially when it comes to new online retailers, they tend to have a preference for offline goods. Since it is a misconception that online payment is unsafe (as long as precautions are followed), banks and card providers should promote awareness campaigns that educate people about the benefits of e-payment as well as encourage the launching of more e-commerce

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

but it is very easy to find any product that we need online because there is a wider range available on websites. For example Amazon started as a book seller and now you can find anything from a MacBook to powdered peanut butter.

3.Better prices

Marketers always use different ways to reduce the prices and always keep up with competition, such as drop shipping, selling used or refurbished items or use “deal of the day” approach.

4.Reviews from other shoppers

We can find the readers reviews and ratings for any product and these are among the most important reasons why we buy online. It is important to know that others are also buying and satisfied with that product.

5.Saving time

The most costly factor today is time. “Saving time” is often cited above “finding lowest price” among the reasons of shopping online. The speed of service of any website is the most important factor attracting customers.

platforms by lowering fees.

Another need is the development of more options for electronic payment processing. Currently only very few banks handle local credit cards and partner with e-commerce payment gateway solutions among which are mainly Bank Audi and Credit Libanais. In order to integrate with a local bank and extract payments, online retailers must work with either bank. Bank Audi seal the majority of the deals, and according to Randa Bdeir (head of Electronic Banking and Cards Services), there are currently more than 400 online merchants using Audi's online payment gateway, giving it 50-60 percent of the market share. However, Credit Libanis was the first to offer online credit card payment and recently partnered with the Ministry of Finance, Fransabank and the online payment gateway NetCommerce to launch Lebanon's first online taxation gateway that allows credit card holders to pay their taxes online.

Although Lebanese consumers are slow to embrace e-commerce, online retailers are finding ways to build a brand their customers can trust. One popular

method is by offering COD or cash-on-delivery. Since almost 50% of online orders are cash on delivery in the region, it is the dominant channel and online retailers are realizing that they have no choice but to offer local customers that option. Apart from building trust, online retailers also need to offer diverse and unique products that will be able to attract customers and lure them away from offline stores. E-payment offers several benefits for the typical Lebanese customer, local businesses and banks. For one, it is extremely convenient for the consumer. Secondly, it lowers costs for businesses as the more payments processed electronically, the less spent on paper. It also helps them improve customer retention. Thirdly, it allows banks to better serve their customers and helps move currency from cash into electronic funds, allowing banks to be more flexible in lending money.

Finally, electronic payments benefit the economy as a whole. Not only do they reduce fraud, but they also reduce government corruption and finally empower consumers. In a world that is shifting towards e-payment, it's only a matter of time before Lebanon jumps fully on the bandwagon.

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CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

Online and Mobile Banking in Lebanon

By Lynn Bizri

@lnlne

While technological innovations in online and mobile banking have spread rapidly in the rest of the world, Lebanese banks have but recently joined the herd, still lacking many of the services available elsewhere.

While this is partly due to Lebanese law, and the lack of authority to use digital signatures, it may also be due to the fact that many Lebanese (mainly those of the middleage generation) prefer face-to-face interaction when it comes to business encounters. In this age, however, smartphones and online services have become a constant and integral part of our daily lives, and thus Lebanese banks have responded in recent years by launching various online and mobile services. Unfortunately, what they all offer is still very basic and limited compared to what is offered in Europe and the U.S. The most common services available in Lebanon include the ability to check ones account balance, and transfer money to a personal or other account. Some banks also allow customers

to pay their bills and apply for credit cards. In general, Lebanese mobile banking applications only give the user access to very basic services. Depositing a check, which is possible to do through mobile applications for banks such as Wells Fargo and JPMorgan by simply taking a photo of the check, is a mobile banking service we can only dream of, at least until digital signature law is passed. Nevertheless, Lebanese banks have found some practical fixes by relying on global standards and Visa/ MasterCard rules and regulations, as well as applying standards accepted by the Central Bank.

Many of them are making efforts to be among the Middle East's earliest adopters of innovative online and mobile banking technologies. CreditBank, for example, launched a mobile banking solution for Microsoft's Windows 8 Platform this past spring. Bank Audi plans to launch a near field communications-enable SIM card

Social E-Commerce

By Maria Frangieh, DBA in Knowledge Management and Web 2.0 tools @mariafrangieh Have you heard that top advisers and experts in the e-commerce industr y are buzzing about the next big trend in e-commerce? Social media will boost the e-commerce industry by $30 billion within the next two years! (Vocus and Gartner Research) You have invested a large amount of money in a new e-commerce website, your strategy is working fine, sales are increasing and you forecast a growth in your sales. All is working fine, but have you catered for social media in your e-commerce website?

If not yet, it is now the time to take action.

Here are some reasons why you should start now.

Creating traffic to your e-commerce website, especially mass traffic needed to generate profitable growth, is not an easy task. Social media strategies that support e-commerce websites proved to be of great help, generating

large traffic to a website for a very low cost compared to the high costs of traditional marketing tools. Conversions are created by friends’ recommendations, positive social shares and visuals on social media platforms.

Social Media Today announces that social e-commerce takes a route that trusts in the altruistic nature of satisfied consumers.

Fr iends’ recommendations on social networks play a big role in the decision to make a purchase, according to 81% of surveyed US shoppers by Market Force in 2013. Increasing the sales figures can easily be done by encouraging the online community to share the products on their social networks.

Brands offering their products online are now paying more attention to the development of their websites, making sure the user journey is friendly, offering share buttons on social media networks, adjusting their strategies to enhance their targeting of digital savvy and technologically literate customers.

mobile payment application as well as an 'eMall' platform that will allow merchants to offer products and services online via virtual stores. BLOM Bank has incorporated 'eCash', whereby customers can send money to anyone via online or mobile banking, and the recipient (who doesn't need to have an account or card) can withdraw money at any BLOM ATM by simply entering the eCash code, amount and currency.

Therefore, there is obviously a lot of potential for e-banking in this country; however, Lebanon will not be ready to develop and adopt innovative e-banking services until specific obstacles are overcome, namely the legislative issues regarding the e-signature draft law as well as our insufficient infrastructure for both Internet and mobile communications and data.

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CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

Do you think such a law will boost consumer confidence?

Consumer confidence will definitely be boosted by a modern e-commerce law, but educating people about some alternative payment gateways available and about using internet cards instead of their regular debit and credit cards in their online transactions which results to a minimum risk of fraud will also increase consumer confidence.

Do you think e-commerce in Lebanon can really work without a modern e-commerce law?

Is There Hope for e-Commerce in Lebanon?

Tarek Matar: Bureaucracy in the Lebanese System Prevents Benefit from E-commerce Interview by Paul Gadallah

@paulinbeirut

Tarek Matar wears many hats; in addition to his banking careers he is active in the Lebanese entrepreneurship ecosystem and is serving as Vice president for Business at Junior Chamber International (JCI), and recently, he cofounded Neopreneur, an entrepreneurship support entity and Mawelna an equity crowd-funding website.

He has helped raise awareness about e-commerce and e-regulations in Lebanon.

What do you think is preventing a modern e-commerce law?

Unfortunately, bureaucracy in the Lebanese system is preventing us from benefiting from a modern e-commerce law that will attract several international players to launch their operations from Lebanon instead of neighboring countries.

There is e-commerce in Lebanon and we have two Lebanese payment gateways, but there are no protections for online transactions. In case of any dispute, no rules to regulations to arbitrate based on it.

The volume of online transactions in the Lebanese market is in a constant increase since the year 2000.

The most common method used in ecommerce is payment at delivery, because Lebanese customers still don’t have the trust to use their cards to buy online. A modern online E-commerce law helps boost E-commerce in Lebanon. As mentioned in the previous question, I think that educating people about the alternatives will have also a positive effect on E-commerce market in Lebanon.

For instance, Paypal, the global payment gateway, announced its interest to launch its services in the Lebanese market during the last Arabnet Digital Summit, pending the implementation of secure e-signature. Lebanese end-users currently use Paypal by linking it to their banking accounts in other countries. Among other players that entered the Lebanese market and preceded PayPal is Payfort, a new payment gateway that launched in Dubai and that is trying to penetrate the MENA market. The ultimate goal is to create alternatives medium for Lebanese customers to become familiar and trust the e-commerce market and benefit from these secure payment methods and gateways to develop the e-commerce market.

What’s e-signature and how can it help e-commerce in Lebanon?

a lot of new opportunities for the Lebanese ICT, banking, and commercial sectors to grow in the MENA region. The e-signature will be legalized as part of a full e-commerce law pending its issuance in one of the Lebanese parliament commissions.

How has the crowd-funding law impacted Mawelna?

The crowd-funding law issued by the Lebanese capital market authority is different than the electronic transaction and signature law that will be issued by the Lebanese parliament. The crowd-funding law issued lately by the Capital Market authority is considered an important step towards organizing the crowd-funding industry. Major concerns taken into consideration that pushed to this decision are mainly protecting the Lebanese financial system against money laundering behaviors and potential sanctions that may results from such behaviors. Those justifications are not enough to convince the ecosystem and are considered as high barriers to entry for many startups. The actual law transforms crowd-funding institutions to typical investment banks.

If our aim is to become a regional hub for the crowd-funding industry, the Lebanese capital market authority should review some points of the crowd-funding law, otherwise we will lose another opportunity and neighboring countries will reap the benefits from it.

What are some things activists can do to pressure the government to pass the law?

Nowadays, a parliament commission is studying the e-commerce draft law, pending its final approval by the members of parliament. There is the Professional Computer Association (PCA) that is preparing an action plan to push forward the draft law concerning e-commerce. But in my opinion, PCA with the help of the civil society can cooperate with several parties (Lebanese banks have huge interest in a modern e-commerce law) to create several lobbying campaigns, and make the issuance of the e-commerce law a national matter, despite all the actual political turbulence.

E-signature is a digital means for web users to carry out e-commerce and online payments. The e-signature will help online commerce and create

Where My Deals At

Black Friday & Cyber Monday

By Paul Gadallah

@paulinbeirut

If you’re a citizen of the United States or have been there, you’ve probably heard of Black Friday. No it’s not some day of mourning or some sort of superstition; it is basically every consumer’s ultimate dream and every retail worker’s deepest nightmare. Black Friday begins the start of the holiday shopping season in the States where eager consumers sleep outside in hopes to be the first people to enter a store and get their hands on the best deals. Stores are thronged with consumers and with people terrified of mothers mowing you down with their shopping carts to get their kids the best toys. Stores will even open as early as 6 A.M. just to capitalize on the madness.

If you’re more like me though, Cyber Monday might be more up your alley. Cyber Monday is when many retail outlets do online sales to spur online shopping and sell what they did not sell on Black Friday, and you can even get

online goods for up to %70 off. No lines, no need to camp out in the cold, and no fear of a mom tearing off your hand because you got the last Grand Theft Auto.

This holiday season, there are some great apps to make your holiday shopping much easier. For Amazon addicts there is Amazon Price Check, a great app for both Android and iPhone. It allows you to type, scan, snap or say a product name to see if you can find it on Amazon cheaper. If you’re not sure who’s offering the best online deal, there’s also BuyVIa which updates you with discounts in real time. If you just want to shop on your PC or laptop, Cybermonday.com lets you compare stores and brands to see who is offering the best deals. And for electronics lovers Best Buy gives you 23 pages of online deals.

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CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

Get Your Tickets!

Online Ticketing in Lebanon

By Paul Gadallah

@paulinbeirut

We all love to go to events. Unlike many countries though. we are stuck having to pick up tickets and present them at the door. E-commerce in Lebanon is still a creaky old ship. There’s no modern day e-commerce law, internet speeds are several years behind, and a non-existent address system makes delivery difficult. Let’s face it; most people still do their shopping in person. Things are starting to change though with several e-ticketing sites now available. So who are they and what are their perks?

First you have Presella.

This startup, which is not even two years old yet, has already done ticketing for major events in Lebanon such as Decks on the Beach, Creamfields, the NRJ tour, and Roger Waters. How does it work? Presella’s platform is two fold. If you’re throwing a small event you can crowd=fund it. Much like Scoopcity, if a certain amount of people buys tickets for the event the event is on, de-risking it, and customers are then charged for the event. If you’re a larger promoter who doesn’t have to worry about enough people showing up, you can easily use their online platform as a way to build an event. You can offer kickbacks such a discounted prices for early bird buyers. Event planners can withdraw their funds from what’s sold. And no need to go somewhere to pick up tickets, you just print them out and present them. When setting up an account you can choose to set up a confirmed or unconfirmed event. It takes 4 steps to create the event. Buying was very simple as well, merely asking the quantity of tickets. You only buy online and are charged %3.25 charge via the Bank Audi payment gateway.

The next major ticketing platform is Ihjoz.

Unlike Presella that aims to de-risk events, the main objective of Ihjoz is to be an events building platform for all different types of events. Events can be free, standing or sitting, with no minimum payment. Also it’s free to use for free events, a major plus for small-scale organizers. Events can be built on the web or on their mobile app. Options were far more varied then Presella. You could display the layout of the venue, show partner organizations, and if there are any discounts.

Consumers have three payment options, online with a %3 processing fee, offline with no fee, or pay at the door. There are also discounts offered to people who buy in groups.

Virgin Ticketing is still the major ticketing force to be reckoned with.

Pretty much every major event that comes through Lebanon goes through Virgin ticketing.

The online payment system shows you the venue, lets you pick seats and ticket price, and pay online with a %3 surcharge. There is an annoying catch though. You must go and pick it up, which is cumbersome. Also it is tailored for large-scale events and it does not it offer discounts for early bird buyers.

So if you’re thinking of going to or creating an event that might not draw a crowd Presella is for you, if you want to give promoters and buyers a lot options go with Ihjoz, and if you want to pick up your tickets for the 80th Tiesto concert Virgin Ticketing is for you.

COVER FEATURE

The New Technologies in E-Commerce

By Nadim Frenn, Member at Large, AUB’s Online Collaborative @NadimFrenn Do you know that feeling when you absolutely have to go shopping but you don’t want to move and you just want to stay in bed all day? And sure, you are aware that there are online stores that would definitely make things easier but you’re afraid that the clothes you want won’t fit you or that the glasses won’t suit you. Well, enough “but”s, because there are so many new e-commerce technologies that there are no reasons for you not to buy everything you want (except the limit of your credit card.)

Let’s take clothes for example. Almost all online stores have a map of their dimensions and sizes. You only need to measure your arm length, your height and a bunch of other things to know the size that would fit you. However, you won’t know how it’ll look on you. Fits.me introduces a virtual fitting room, where you only need to enter your exact measurements and you’ll get the feeling that you would if you wore that piece of clothing.

Still, you won’t know how it looks on YOU. Don’t worry about that, because Qvit.com has the answer for you. You create an avatar that has the exact same body as yours, as well as the same skin color. Then you dress him with the clothes that you want to buy and TA-DA, you get what you’ll look like in those clothes, faceless (and bottom-less in my case).

How about a new pair of glasses? First thing to do: Download the Glasses.com app on your smartphone Then create a 3D version of yourself and you can try up to 4 pair of glasses simultaneously and compare them. I’m sure you won’t believe it until you see, so here am I, trying 4 pair of glasses at home, virtually.

Enough about you now. Think about your home, your furniture.

I’m sure you need a new couch, a table maybe. And you know more than I that shopping for furniture is not easy. Even if you find a nice couch, you still don’t know if it is going to fit in your living room. What if I told you that you can see, through your Smartphone, exactly what your house will look like with this new furniture item? IKEA designed such an app: you hold your phone, and as you move in your house, you see all the new furniture you just placed.

I’ve been using these apps and websites for a while now, and I can tell you that honestly, when these services will be available in Lebanon, there’s no way that I won’t adopt them as my shopping method.

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

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COVER FEATURE

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

E-Commerce is flourishing in Lebanon: All we want is Darine Sabbagh

@sdarine

Three years ago GoNabit entered the Lebanese market as the first group buying and the first site in Lebanon offering e-commerce, so to speak, and credit card payments. They soon added the pay at our offices option realizing the Lebanese market, as well as its banks, were not ready to transact online just yet. Fast forward to 2013, even though GoNabit is now obsolete and Living Social (the company who has purchased GoNabit) has pulled out of the Lebanese market entirely, group-buying and deals websites keep on mushrooming, with one or two appearing and disappearing every month. Could it be that they haven’t gotten the message that worldwide group-buying is dying out? That there are proven case studies showing that group-buying has caused companies to run out of business and has damaged the reputation of others?

It seems not. And even if it were true, the top players in the Lebanese market have shifted beyond the concept of group buying, camouflaging their “e-commerce” stores for old stock items or “As seen on TV” products as deals. If you check these site’s social media pages, you would be surprised that despite the low rate of engagement on them they all have tens of thousands of fans. And that’s because the key success factor to any deal’s site is social media and capitalizing on friends’ referrals through financial incentives (5 dollars for a friend’s first purchase is adman good incentive).

So in case you have extra money to spend on dust collectors, “luxury” items that get delivered over a month after you’ve purchased them, or you’re feeling adventurous and want to try a new restaurant or hotel somewhere far far away (in Lebanon), read on for a list of the current market players.

• Makhsoom.com Aside from weekly deals on spas and sushi we’ve all grown accustomed to, Makhsoom offers the biggest collection of product related deals. You’ll definitely find something that will catch your eye, even though the probability of it being gold is very low. Makhsoom even has a luxury arm that aims to compete with fashion deals websites.

• GoSawa.com On my list, GoSawa would be the second runner up for quality/quantity of deals offered. GoSawa inherited all of Living Social’s users after they exited the market.

• ScoopCity.com Like our first two contenders ScoopCity offers legit deals that across the board.

• LivingLebanese.com It comes with a logo imitating that of GoSawa and storing some deals from suppliers who were featured on that site earlier.

• Deal.com.lb From spa massages to pressure cookers, you can find them all here and deals are long term most running till 2014 so take your time to decide.

• Marketwayz.com This site offers some sort of a long-term coupon type of store front • Arreb3altayyeb.com It’s a new comer to the market so far they have run very few deals so let us keep an eye if they survive.

COVER FEATURE The Benefits of Fashion E-commerce for Start-ups

By Elsa Abi-Khalil, AUB’s Online Collaborative @ak_elsa The Lebanese obsession with fashion and looks is not something new, as are the multiple young Lebanese fashion enthusiasts looking for opportunities in designing their own ideas and selling them. That’s exactly where fashion e-commerce can play a superman role in fulfilling the fantasies of a girlie girl.

The first important and obvious reason why online selling is a winning option for start-up businesses is that it minimizes costs of operating activities such as paying for rent or sales employee. YoungWilderness. com is a new fashion online retail platform that sells in-house designed and locally manufactured clothes for the daring and unconventional Lebanese woman.

YoungWilderness.com targets women who fully assume their femininity and aren’t afraid of trying new trends: the risk-taker of fashionistas. While on the phone with one of the co-founders, Hiba Kadri, she indeed explained to me that e-commerce is costeffective and more viable than launching a retail shop. According to her, selling online has enabled the brand to cut on costs and ensure affordable prices for

Got Instagram?

How Instagram can be your new e-commerce partner

By Mira Nouaihed @miranouaihed Who said you need a well-designed user-friendly website to establish an e-business?

An increasing number of start-ups are relying completely on social media, especially Instagram, to sell their products.

Personal trainers, nutritionists, antique collectors and others are using the photo-sharing social network to sell and promote their products!

The process is pretty simple: 1. Take a picture of your product; make sure the background is in contrast with its colors (some use an open book, others use their bed sheets).

2. Choose the filter wisely (as it can affect the colors and lighting of the picture hence the customer’s purchasing behavior) 3. Post picture on Instagram with a description including price, material used and phone number (potential consumers can SMS, Whatsapp or Viber the seller) 4. Fill the comments section with unnecessary and unrelated hashtags.

5. Wait for the money to rain on you.

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their products.

After Hiba has met with a broker several times along with her other partner, Yasmine Kara, both have come to a realization—and were “shocked”, to put in her own words—how expensive real estate is. She adds: “If we wanted to open a shop to sell our products we wouldn’t just have opened anywhere, we aimed at places like Hamra or Downtown.” In fact, location is a key to sustained retail success, likewise, the internet provides a wider exposure and an unbeatable traffic online—this counts as another important benefit of fashion e-commerce. Because, nowadays that everyone has access to the internet at home and even on their phone, websites have become the best location. Online retail websites can receive visits and issue orders anytime from anywhere.

E-commerce means also having the brand sell directly to its end-consumers without relying on an intermediary retailer to market the product.

Consequently, the brand reduces the cost of commission imposed on them and increase contribution margin. Moreover, by directly interacting with customers, the brand is able to track and analyze their searches and therefore, it discovers what their preferences are, what works and what doesn’t. Based on that, the brand adapts and evolves with the needs and wants of their customers and is more confident in

attracting new potential ones.

After exposing the benefits of fashion e-commerce, we cannot but come to a conclusion with the drawbacks—security trust issues while paying online and the impossibility to try out the clothes. “That is why”, Hiba explains again, “we have established flexible return policies and payment upon delivery.”

By dealing with this threat, YoungWilderness.com has turned it to a competitive advantage against its few rivals in Lebanon and made it become an additional benefit to earn consumer trust.

Truth is, even if it’s “just Instagram”, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.

Timing, description, information shared with customers, colors, and hashtags play an important role. To start with, right hashtags can generate traffic on your Instagram page and/or website. Many choose to add international hashtags such as: #NY #Dubai #Swag #Hairstyle #girl #boy #blue #floor to increase traffic, some choose the wrong timing, others bombard their followers with posts and offers.

This only reflects unprofessionalism! A post must be accompanied with related hashtags, product details, contact information, method of ordering, and of

course it must be shared during a logical time (not at 3:00am in the morning).

Large corporations might find it difficult to manage e-commerce through Instagram, but for entrepreneurs and start-up businesses it can provide them with a fast, dynamic and cheap method to boost sales and increase exposure.

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COVER FEATURE Pinterest Serving E-Commerce Websites with Now Trending Tool

By Maria Frangieh, DBA in Knowledge Management and Web 2.0 tools @mariafrangieh Pinterest is one of, if not my favorite social media platform available online. This platform is not very popular among the Lebanese online community but those who are already on board got the Pinterest fever.

I can admit proudly: I am a pinnaholic! This platform is simply very addictive.

The process is very simple, pin a photo from a website or upload a photo onto Pinterest, create a board to pin the photos of the same category into the same board.

And pin again, and again and again, well I can assure you this is very addictive, check out the online reviews.

Most popular pins are outfits, food, vacations locations, quotes, do it yourself (DIY) among others. Pinterest accounts for more than 53 million users worldwide according to comScore, is working hard on expanding into news countries and is offering local-language versions.

Abroad this website has been used to drive traffic to e-commerce websites or simply to retail shops. Recently the popularity of this platform is increasing in Lebanon

but among individuals more than among businesses.

Businesses pinned photos from their own websites and add the description under each photo with the price (in some cases price tags were automatically add to the top right side of the photo). Businesses loved this feature, since the pinned photo directs the users to the website from which the photo was pinned, leading to a direct traffic towards the original website free of charge!

Pinterest allows its partners, Amazon.com and Zappos.com among other, to use realtime Pinterest data to generate lists of the most pinned items in their online stores.

Why are e-commerce websites interested in Pinterest real-time data? Very simple!

This real-time data is the most accurate customer demand someone can get from a large international market, which serves the target of e-commerce websites.

On the other hand, businesses can use this platform to market for their hottest products. Installing this trending-product widget from Pinterest will help e-commerce websites turn their shoppers into repeat customers and therefore increase their revenues.

This tool is offered by Pinterest for free, and Pinterest confirms that it will remain free; the return on investment in the case of Pinterest is the larger exposure Pinterest is getting as more users are registering and are pinning on their website.

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

COVER FEATURE People’s Confidence about Online Buying in Lebanon

By Armen Bakkalian, President, Haigazian’s Online Collaborative @ArmenBakkalian Buying and selling has been around since prehistory. In the beginnings, the most common form of trade in the ancient world is said to be bartering, which is the exchange of goods between two people. With time, bartering was seen that it is inefficient for many reasons: the exchanged goods may not be of the same value, the other person does not have anything to return back, or the goods that one side is offering is not needed by the other. To avoid this problem, the concept of money arose. Money started as silver and gold coins to reach to our today’s concept of paper money. Money reduced the problems which were present in bartering, since you can use it any time you need it.

With the emergence of money, buying and selling got more popular, and is still practiced today. It is the core of every business.

During the last few decades, with the rise of the digital world, e-commerce was introduced. It is basically the same thing done traditionally, but online. E-commerce gained so much popularity since it is easy to use; you can access to the online “shop” from your laptop, tablet, or even mobile phone. Also,

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

you have a wide variety of choices to buy from, from local to international markets.

In Lebanon, E-commerce was an alien word to many, until the last decade where some businesses started to implement it.

Nevertheless, the market here is still a nascent. Some businesses are afraid to implement it because of their fear that the people will not be confident about it. Just like any change in history, people reject it at first and then gradually start to accept it. In the end, the majority of the people don’t like change.

The question here is that, is it the people’s acceptance here or is there any other factors that make them fear it? A short survey was conducted online to see their views about certain points regarding their confidence about online buying in Lebanon.

The views are different; some seem to be very satisfied with what we already have, and some not. The question here remains: Do you think the e-commerce sector in Lebanon needs to be more advanced? In my opinion, I say yes. The confidence of the people, especially the younger generation, is getting higher gradually but the confidence itself is not enough.

Rate your confidence of buying online from local companies & International companies.

LOCAL INTERNATIONAL 0

Are you generally afraid from buying online?

1 Very Confident

44% YES 56% NO

Local International

2

Confident

Neutral

3

Not Confident

Not Confident at all

4 Total

Average Rating

7%

19%

37%

22%

15%

100

3.19*

22%

47%

16%

10%

5%

100

2.29*

*A lower rating indicates more confidence.

What are some reasons that might deter you to buy online? (Check all that apply)

How ofen do you make a purchase online?

18% Very Often 29% Moderately often 45% Not very often 17% I don’t buy online

How do you usually pay for your online purchases? (check all that apply) 42% Credit Card 28% Debit Card

18% Very Often

67% Security

of the website/payment

49% Fraud 50% Shipping costs 32% Taxes 41% Condition of the Product 39% Not meeting your expectations

Would you prefer to pay with PayPal (Or websites similar to PayPal) If it was available in Lebanon?

33% Prepaid internet card 36% Cash (on delivery)

50% Yes 11% No 39% Doesn’t make a difference

Whar type of products do you buy online? (check all that apply) 40% Clothing (Shoes, shirts, dresses...)

36% Electronics (laptops, phones, tablets...)

35% Books 22% Virtual stuff 42% Services 28% Other

Do you check the terms and conditions of the website you’re purchasing from?

26% Yes 39% No 35% Sometimes

How comfortable are you from buying online from an individual you don’t know?

Do you buy goods from local online Lebanese companies or International ones?

1% Very comfortable

10% Local

25% Moderately comfortable

50% International

25% Slightly comfortable

40% Both

40% not comfortable

9% comfortable

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COVER FEATURE

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

10 Gifts Ideas to buy from Lebanese Online Stores

By Lynn Bizri

@lnlne

Like every year, you've been wondering last month where to get your Christmas gifts from. It was that time of the year again; trees adorned in decoration are everywhere, 'Last Christmas' is being played on every radio station, and Starbucks are offering coffee in their signature festive bright red paper cups... That time of the year where you've been trying to avoid your local mall, or risk looking for a parking spot for over an hour only to realize that it's easier to navigate through the parking than through the mall itself. But you should have no fear. The Internet comes to the rescue, and you can buy all your gifts from the comfort of your own couch, while enjoying a steaming cup of delicious hot cocoa (or coffee, if you had to wait for the kids to pass out).

1. Has a loved one been hinting about needing a new phone lately? Well with shopinleb.com, you can browse through a diverse range of electronics from several different merchants, check out the different brands while googling reviews and make your purchase online without even having to leave your desk.

4. You can never really go wrong with flowers on any occasion, and now with Exotica's online store, you can pick out the perfect bouquet, or even something from the Christmas Gifts category for a surprise delivery to your special someone.

7.Have your eye on a sexy electric guitar? Instruments Garage, one of the biggest music stores in the Middle East (with over 25,000 products) is online at instrumentsgarage. com! With its wide range of both instruments and brands, you'll definitely find what you're looking for.

2. Looking to help promote a Lebanese fashion designer or just a big fan of their work? Lebelik.com, launched in Spring 2011, offers a wide range of mainly Lebanese designer items for all the fashion lovers out there.

There's something for everyone!

5. Have a bookworm in the family?

With antoineonline.com (Librarie Antoine's online store) you can now buy all your books, book gifts and even DVD's without even entering a bookstore.

3. Have your eye on a certain item from a specific brand and wishing it was on sale? You may find just what you're looking for on natasawak.com with their featured daily sales events for brands such as Coach, Tommy Hilfiger, Juicy Couture and more.

6. Ashekman's Urban Wear has been around since 2001, but you can now buy their awesome stuff online as well on ashekman.com. Their designs combine Arabic graffiti, urban graphics, calligraphy and Lebanese proverbs, and their t-shirts always make cool gifts.

9. Who said Souks can't be virtual? At soukorjuwan.com, you can find a wide range of beautiful Lebanese artisan crafts from jewelry, to clothing to art created by Lebanese merchants. Want to send a gift abroad? Souk Orjuwan offer both local and global delivery.

8. Looking for the perfect gift for a fashionista? Want something unconventional and unique?

Head over to Young Wilderness (youngwilderness.com); from their crazy prints to vintage items and accessories, you're bound to find something awesome.

10. Have some great gift ideas but think they're too pricy? Make sure to check out iGRAB.me regularly (the daily deals aggregator), and you may just find the ideal gift at 50% off!

ON THE CLOUD The Ins and Outs of Brining a Phone Into Lebanon

By Paul Gadallah

@paulinbeirut

Many of us have asked friends abroad to bring us with them the latest phones.

Being a native New Yorker, I am used to getting wish lists from friends made up of technological goods to bring from the States (where they would be much cheaper and have some sort of guarantee in quality). I would be more than willing to bring in phones for them to help them escape the exorbitant prices for modern phones in Lebanon where sometimes an iPhone or Galaxy phone is almost %100 more then the price in the US. Not to mention the many counterfeits are sold in Lebanon.

It came as a shock when we heard that a new law would be passed regulating the import of phones into Lebanon.

Naturally like many laws passed in Lebanon, it is often the little guy getting screwed over in the end. And many times the law is not easily understandable.

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

As of June 1st all phones purchased from abroad must be registered with one of Lebanon’s government-owned telephone providers, Touch or Alfa. If you bring in a phone and do not register it, a Lebanese SIM card will not work in it, rendering it useless. The law also extends to all tablets and devices that use a SIM card.

So what do you have to know about registering a phone from abroad?

• Upon arrival at the Beirut airport you must declare the phone at a kiosk.

• You must present your ID, or if a foreigner your passport with a valid visa or residency permit • If you don’t register your phone at the airport, you have one month to register it at either an Alfa or Touch center. Once again you must present a receipt of purchase and your ID. • You do not pay a customs fare at the airport, contrary to popular belief (thankfully).

• If you are planning to sell your phone to somebody you must send a text to either carrier to unpair your SIM from

your phone.

• If you are buying a phone make sure the owner unpairs the SIM from the phone or you cannot use your SIM with the phone.

• If you are a tourist, your SIM card is only activated as long as your presence in the country is legal, meaning if your

Oops, we Forgot to Pay!

By Paul Gadallah

@paulinbeirut

On Saturday November 2nd last year, the Twitter timeline flashed that an impending internet apocalypse was coming our way the very next day.

Why? Well looks like someone forgot to pay the bill, literally.

Lebanon is part of the IMEWE consortium. What is that exactly? The IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) is an international cable bringing high speed Internet from France to India and the countries connected to the cable are part of the consortium. Lebanon has been connected to the cable since 2011 and the bulk of our Internet relies on the cable.

Al Akhbar newspaper had come to learn that the Ministry of Telecommunications is responsible for paying the yearly dues for being

The Family Photo is Dead! #SMLaughs

By Darine Sabbagh

@sdarine

Social Media and tech gizmos have seeped into every aspect of our lives. In this column Darine curates the curious and funny anecdotes on how these new media have transformed day to day interactions. Share your own stories with her on twitter on @ sdarine #SMLaughs or email sdarine@ cloud961.com Long gone are the posed family pictures you would get at a photographer’s studio.

Outside of events, I have personally not had any printed photos of me except for the passport photo in the last 5 years. And together with film and print, standalone cameras may be growing closer to extinction or an overhauling evolution. I didn’t take my camera to my last vacation, because I don’t need an extra gadget that can only do one thing, something all my other gadgets know how to do to some extent of proficiency. The way we take

photos is also changing. The composition is now more often at arm’s stretch, be it a selfie or a food shot. We are all enabled photographers, we all take out our phone to snap at events creating a paparazzi moment.

Here’s a joke making the rounds on social media these days: A waiter seats a group of girls at a diner and asks them: “Bethebbo jbelkon el menu walla bsawwerkon abel?” (Would you like me to get you the menu or should I take a photo first?)

And let’s not forget about our digital selves and the role our display pictures play in expressing who we are, or mainly who we want to be. We don’t just take photos of ourselves as keepsakes, we do so with social media in mind, and we don’t just post photos of ourselves anymore for the mere act of sharing, every photo is a status message to feed our digital identity and narcissism. But sometimes we do yearn for the core meanings behind the photos, the way we capture them, has though forever changed. Here’s a family photo Nabbesh. com’s cofounder Rima Al Sheikh took with her mom to remind you of that.

visa expires and you do not your renew it, your line will expire as well • You can only register up to 3 devices in a six-month period if you are Lebanese and only one if you are not Lebanese.

So welcome to the next bureaucratic nightmare.

part of the consortium. So far, Lebanon had not paid its due of $1.6 million and was threatened of being shut off from the cable, meaning our already poor Internet would virtually come to a standstill. The news caught like wildfire across social media with many tweeps commenting on the story. This prompted a tweet from the Minister of Telecom, Nicholas Sehnaoui, that he was working with the Ministry of Finance to transfer the dues to the consortium. He even went as far to say the Ministry of Telecom is the guardian of the telecom sector What’s strange though is how the Ministry of Telecom was acting like a hero coming to our rescue when its minimum responsibility is to pay the bill and provide us with good Internet.

As one popular tweep put it “People panic over possible Internet outage, ministry does its basic duties and pays, come out looking as heroes… Wlak balad!”

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ON THE CLOUD

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

5 People to Follow on instagram Selections by Mohammad Hijazi, Editor in Chief

@mhijazi Lara Zankoul @larazankoul

Salma Samaha @salmasamaha

Fouad Tadros @fouad_ tadros

Rawad Bassil @rawadbassil

George Esper @georgesper

Move over Coursera!

Lebanese Startup MenaVersity Sets to Provide Arab Open Online Courses

By Darine Sabbagh

@sdarine

November marks the Beta launch of MenaVersity which aims to provide practical courses in Arabic across a variety of professional and practical skills. During the first few months, as MenaVersity’s course’s library grows, users will be able to learn skills such as photography, cooking, 3D printing, public speaking, social media, digital marketing, arts & crafts and more by watching short seven-minute instructional videos.

Eventually, MenaVersity is planning to challenge the status quo of international open learning platforms such as Coursera by offering the same diversity of courses and level of educational experience as they do.

This venture is founded by Firas Wazneh, a telecommunications engineer, with previous startup experience with WayToSafety.com, and Hassan Kanj who is a web/mobile developer, who has extensively used open online learning sites such as Coursera to learn practical skills required for his profession. Though it is very early to judge the success of MenaVersity as few courses are available, the startup has already received a lot of interest from the press and has won several startup competitions and it is now up to the founders to recruit the right amount and caliber of instructors on the site to achieve their goal.

MenaVersity’s core focus is on bridging the gap in the lack of educational materials and content for Arabic speakers. Quality is also of the essence, as the founders are following a specific methodology in acquiring new instructor for teaching on their platform and using high tech equipment to shoot the videos. Eventually, the users will play a bigger role in ranking the materials offered on the site. Another interesting feature of the platform is the ability to recruit the services of an instructor you liked for one-on-one sessions. These sessions can be broadcast remotely or even extend to house calls. For instance, one of the ladies on the platform offers lessons in cooking traditional Lebanese food and alternatively also allows you to buy her home-made mouneh. This provides a fresh new dimension unseen in other platforms.

Menaversity is currently interviewing instructors to enrich their online courses library with new subjects and fields. If you think you are up to the challenge, apply now by contacting them on http://www.menaversity.com/ and the founders will come and shoot an instructional video with you!

ON THE CLOUD

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

we have the most interactive and loyal readership in lebanon

@ragmaglebanon

ragmagmagazine

ragmag

RAGMAG It’s Your Magazine! www.ragmag.co

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BLOGS NEWSFEED

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By Joelle Hajji

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

@joellehajji

Ghadi Darwish: The Controversial Glimmer of Hope by Gino’s Blog.

Join the Fight against Tattooed Eyebrows.

http://ginosblog.com/2013/10/31/ghadi-darwish-thecontroversial-glimmer-of-hope/ Ginosblog in addition to other bloggers highlighted one of the most important issues that happened recently in Lebanon. Khouliud Sukkariyeh tweeted the Lebanese President after her first child was born, without a sect specified on his “ikhraj 2ed”. The President replied and added the “MS” at the end which indicates that he tweeted that himself, not his PR bureau. I guess it is a really major second step towards a more liberal Lebanon. The first step was having their civil marriage last year in Lebanon.

http://ivysays.com/2013/10/17/join-the-fight-againsttattooed-eyebrows/

Citizens Reactions When Asked If They’d Donate 1,000LL to MPs by Gino’s Blog. http://ginosblog.com/2013/10/30/citizens-reactionswhen-asked-if-theyd-donate-1000ll-to-mps/

“When did it suddenly become cool to have creepy caterpillars on your forehead? Dark, moist, ridiculously thick and worst of all, supernaturally defined and straight substitutes or deformed arches of what was once, hair.”

I love this sentence said by “Ivy says” and it is true that Lebanese when a trend happens, they go with it to the extreme. Even though I am not totally against tattooed eyebrows, but I am against taking everything to the extreme.

This is a campaign being speard by LADE Lebanon, the NGO that aims to reform electoral laws and the electoral process in Lebanon. They went on the streets of Beirut and asked random citizens, sarcastically of course, if they’d donate 1000LBP (~67 cents) to the nation’s Members of Parliament to encourage them to actually do their job. These are their reactions. Tweet or instagram using the hashtag

Are We Seriously Getting Another Mall in Dbayyeh? http://stateofmind13.com/2013/10/31/are-weseriously-getting-another-mall-in-dbayyeh/ An interesting article by “A Separate State of Mind” blog about the new mall that will be built in Waterfront Dbayeh.

Do you think we really need a new mall, especially in Dbayeh where we already have two other malls on the other side facing Waterfront City?

I think that we have enough malls already and we don’t really need a new one that will cause other traffic problems and also we have other areas that should have a mall since they have no malls at all like Jbeil for example.

This is one of the best read this past month, check their videos, theyare really good and go to their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/LADE.Lebanon and support this cause, since we all want a democratic Lebanon. This is one of the best read this past month, check their videos, theyare really good and go to their facebook page https://www.facebook.com/LADE. Lebanon and support this cause, since we all want a democratic Lebanon.

British Ambassador Tom Fletcher donated blood to the Jnah explosion victims. http://blogbaladi.com/british-ambassador-tomfletcher-donated-blood-to-the-jnah-explosion-victims/

Al Arz Tahini… Made in Israel by A Separate State of Mind.”

I guess Najib said it right when he said Ambassador Tom Fletcher should be given the Lebanese citizenship, because most Lebanese politicians would not do what he did.

http://stateofmind13.com/2013/10/27/al-arz-tahini-madein-israel/ An Israeli company is using the Lebanese Cedar to market the well-known Tahini, used to prepare dishes such as Hummus, in order to sell it in some major markets. The pictures are taken by @KhaladK. I think that this is really outrageous, since they are using Lebanon’s trademark the cedars to sell their products.

Please note that the photos are taken outside Lebanon and the product is not being sold here.

Tjarassna Officially! http://blogbaladi.com/tjarassna-officially/ I second Blog baladi when they said tjarassna! Not just the design is horrible; also a spelling mistake is not acceptable at all.

BLOGGING

Blog of the Month: Sietske in Beirut

By Paul Gadallah

@paulinbeirut

Sietske Galame’s blog http://sietske-in-beiroet.blogspot. com might not be controversial or the most popular, but she can proudly boast that’s she been in the Lebanese blogosphere longer then most. Coming from Holland as a journalist, she was only on assignment in Beirut for 3 months in the early 1990’s and yet she has stayed for over 20 years. In the past 8 years she’s taken us everywhere in Lebanon from her son’s first car to the Chouf mountains.

Your blog is really one of the first blogs in Lebanon (since 2005). What got you started?

There were a few blogs around then. There was a page with a lot of bloggers together, its not there anymore. I’d figure I’d start as well. 2005 was a significant year; it was the year of Prime Minister Hariri’s assassination. After the Hariri assassination, there was a spirit in town that we could really change things ourselves. Everyone was really into it. I felt like I was a part of history and I needed an outlet to write. That’s how I started. It was also connection with my family abroad, and my parents could see how I was living. And it was me writing and editing what I wanted, not the newspaper. There were all these adventures I wanted to share. Now I look back and wonder wow I wrote this shit?!

You’ve been going at it for so long. What still makes you blog till now?

Haha I don’t know. It’s a little egocentric. It’s fun, and I need to write to organize my thoughts. That’s one reason. While I write, I might as well publish. The main reason is that I have a drive to write. You don’t write for anything, writers write to be published. There are so many things to see in this place. No one ever really gets out of Beirut. My Lebanese friends always tell me I’ve seen more of the country then they have.

If you have a car, get out and do something! You’re Lebanese you should’ve seen this. They always tell me things are not safe. I’ve driven to the Syrian border; it’s peaceful, not dangerous. Now I can’t stop, I have to continue. We’ll see how long I can go. There are times I am not inspired and if I’m not inspired I can’t write. For weeks I won’t write. And then there are days where I could write three posts from my inspirations.

A lot of bloggers promote their blogs so much and are being commercialized, yours seems more lowkey. Is that on purpose?

I get offers to try phones; I get free books and all that stuff. It doesn’t interest me. If I want something I’ll buy it. I’m not in this for the money. I’m not tempted by it. Maybe if they let me off-road a Maserati for a day I’d do that. But it’s not my intention to plug things for companies.

You only blog from Lebanon and never from Holland, would you ever blog from there?

Other places are boring! If I would move back to Holland, I would stop blogging. Have you been there?

It’s so boring. This place is unlike any other place I’ve ever lived. It inspires me. I was supposed to stay for 3 months for this job. When I entered Beirut airport, NOTHING worked. Everything was broken and dusty. Wires were hanging from the ceiling. I even had to carry my own luggage from the airplane.

This place is real. Europe is so predictable. Nothing here is predictable. People do strange things. It’s invigorating. So no, I wouldn’t blog from Holland.

Nothing happens. Maybe it’ll rain. There’s nothing unusual.

What’s some of your favorite Lebanese blogs?

The political ones, I don’t understand standard Arabic so I don’t get the debates on TV. And some of the English newspapers are biased or aren’t so great. In the papers, you get the official line. By reading blogs, you get what’s really happening and you get all sides.

There’s The Beirut Report, Qifa Nabki and Beirut Spring. I would read the official lines and then pass by each blog and read their interpretation. This is where I get a lot of sources. It’s incredibly important for a foreigner to get the news. I read Blog Baladi because it has everything. And I’ll go through Lebanon Aggregator and LebaneseBlogs.com; whenever I like the headline, l read the blog.

What’s your opinion on the Lebanese blogosphere?

It’s great to see a lot of normal people in the blogosphere because you always see class differences on the street. When you follow people on blogs there are regular people like you and me. I’m glad they’re blogging because they’re letting their voices get heard. It’s fun. It used to be more political but now there is more fluffy stuff like fashion and food.

So why do you stay? Everyone wants leave!

This place draws you in. In Holland everything is so boring, so organized and perfect. Nothing happens.

This place makes you feel alive. It’s the weather, it’s the people. It’s how nothing is perfectly planned out and the clash of cultures. Everyday there is something new. I know so many people who leave and then end up wanting to come back, missing Beirut dearly. It really is a magical place.

Any chances of you hopping on the twitter bandwagon like so many other bloggers ?

I’m not very technologically advanced and I have a twitter account but zero tweets and 28 followers. I don’t have that much too say. I may one day but I’m a little archaic.

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Introducing Lebanon’s Top Blog Aggregator: Lebanese Blogs

By Mohammad Hijazi, Editor in Chief

@mhijazi

When Google pulled the plug on its RSS aggregator Google Reader earlier this year, we lost the most powerful tool that we used to monitor what’s going on in the blogosphere.

For the Lebanese, however, there is a resource that can provide us with the latest posts from the Lebanese blogosphere. This resource is Lebanese Blogs by Mustapha Hamaoui (also famous for his political blog Beirut Spring). It is by far the most interactive and dynamic blog aggregator dedicated to the Lebanese online community especially after its new release, as others prove to be very stiff and outdated.

When asked for the reason for creating this site, Mustapha said “blog readers shouldn’t waste their time searching for cool new Lebanese blogs and digging around for new posts. At the same time, bloggers shouldn’t feel pressured to post everyday so that readers visit their blogs. This website hopes to solve both these problems and create a space for blog readers to visit every day to find cool posts.”

Blogs that are featured in this aggregator are chosen manually by Mustapha, as he says there are certain criteria that need to be met. “The blog has to be related to Lebanon and the blogger has to have a reasonable track record of sustainable blogging.

Blogs are submitted via the website, where the editor [Mustapha] checks if they satisfy the criteria before entering them in the database.”

The site is updated every ten minutes with the latest blog post and offers the user some customization features like the ability to designate blogs as favorites, ability to save blog posts for future reference and the ability to change views: Timeline (like Facebook) and Compact (like Google Reader) in addition to the classic Card view. You can even read blogs based on different categories such as: Fashion & Style, Food & Health, Society & Fun News, Politics & Current Affairs, Tech & Business, Music, TV & Film and Advertising & Design.

So next time you are looking for something to read, log into www.lebaneseblogs.com and find the hidden gems from the Lebanese blogosphere.

BLOGGING

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CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

2famous.tv, more than just a blog

By Lynn Bizri

@lnlne

2famous.tv was founded on the 1st of December, 2011 in Beirut, Lebanon by Matias Carlsen and Jørgen Ekvoll. I first met the Norwegian pair in February 2012 at the first Lebanon Aggregator Lebanese Bloggers meeting at AltCity. Matias and Jorgen’s initial idea was to use the blog to promote their fourteen episode web series titled ‘Walk of Causes’, that documents them crossing Lebanon from North to South on foot. However, what the boys were aiming to do was build a base of followers for their future projects and ultimately become famous in the Middle East.

Since the blog was launched almost two years ago, the pair has produced around 120 professional videos that capture their adventures and experiences in Beirut and Lebanon in general. In September 2012, after redesigning the blog, the boys decided to expand their platform and invite other writers to contribute and blog on the website.

Today, you can browse through more than 300 articles on diverse subjects such as beauty, food, music, art, adventure and much more; all describing life in the Middle East from different perspectives.

The team currently consists of 9 contributors, some more active than others, that cover different topics and happenings in Beirut. Earlier this year, 2famous.tv also launched their very own radio show, currently hosted by Adrian and Matias, which you can tune to every Friday or download if you miss it. Apart from discussing interesting issues, the duo also tend to invite local superstars and talents, who they interview or feature during the episode. Their weekly radio show streams live from Radio Beirut in Mar Mkhayel from 4-6, so if you’re in the area, make sure to pass by and say hello to them.

Interview with Editor and Contributor Adrian How and why did you join 2famous.tv?

Matias and Jorgen launched 2famous.TV together as a mostly video platform in December 2011. I was hanging out with them every day and loved what they were doing while helping a little bit with editing their written stuff. So finally, in August of 2012, they strongly encouraged me to join and write with them and that’s what I’ve been doing since. It was really natural to be part of 2famous because I was surrounded by it all the time, but mostly because I’m a huge fan of the boys. Their videos are genius and funny and they inspire me. I consider myself lucky to have them as ‘my team.’

What’s your experience been like and what has it taught you?

The experience has opened me up to a world of possibilities, or more importantly, to acknowledge possibilities and explore them. So these two guys started to make a name for themselves by claiming to be famous and then actually became a bit famous. Sure, they had the talent but also this really cool attitude of ‘just going for it.’ I’ve

adopted it too and it’s taught me that I can shoot for anything I really want. I’ve met really amazing and talented people because I put myself out there without stressing over whether I was smart, famous, appropriate, or legit enough. I just did it because, why not? I also got comfortable in front of the camera which led me to pursue a lifelong dream of having my own cooking show. It’s taught me about business and working in a team.

I have to contact a lot of intimidating people for the radio and pitch my ideas to big restaurants for SCIB. It’s only taken me forward! Lastly, I’ve learned that if you want to get something done you just have to go for it.

What is the importance of social media to the blog and bloggers?

Everyone’s on social media, but not everyone is browsing the web looking for cool blogs to check out. Social media is a really important sharing tool especially regarding exposure. Tweeting and Facebooking our posts are an integral part of getting exposure. I also think it’s important because it gives us a medium to directly connect with people. I can tweet about my blog and someone will pick it up and we’ll start a dialogue and if they know me they might want to read my stories. It also gives me great ideas for content and helps gauge what’s going on everywhere.

What made you guys start the radio show and what has it added to the blog?

The radio started after Layal Hasrouni joined us. She had me on her previous audio show as a recurring guest-host and we just clicked! I had no experience whatsoever with radio but it was fun and new and another possibility. Her show was cancelled and we decided to continue it together on 2Famous but to broadcast live every Friday at Radio Beirut, the bar. Since it was just Layal and me in the beginning it captured this casual, uncensored, funny female perspective on life in Beirut. Layal has since moved to Norway and Matias and I host the show together now.

These days it focuses heavily on life and culture in Beirut with so many incredible guests coming in and out. We have local activists, artists, project makers, bartenders, engineers, EVERYONE coming on to talk about what they’re doing. And it’s always something cool. We also have lots of bands and musicians perform live on the show as well. It’s added a whole new dimension to the blog -- we’re able to show more music videos and share a lot more about who people are and what they’re doing here. Personally, it blows my mind every time we do a show because the people I get to interview and the bands who are performing for us are SO AWESOME!

HMA Tom Fletcher vs. Karl Remarks

By Joelle Hajji, News Editor

@JoelleHajji

The open letter that HMA Tom Fletcher addressed to the Lebanese on independence day was direct and straight-forward. He advised all Lebanese to stop being influenced by other countries and to never give up and to protect Lebanon the way every Lebanese should do. In the letter he gave a couple of advice, “First and most important, start ignoring advice from outsiders, including me: this is your country.” “Second, celebrate the success that is all around you – yes, the talented and inspirational athletes, thinkers, explorers and activists.” He was direct and he gave choices of what should be done to protect our country and live peacefully.

Karl Remarks reply came fast and he addressed Fletcher and Britain in a more direct and sarcastic way mocking about Britain’s history if it were in politics, football and even physical appearance.

“We didn’t mention dentistry out of tact, but seriously what’s with English teeth? Here’s our unsolicited advice to you: brush and floss daily.” He didn’t accept the open letter at all and commented on everything Fletcher talked about. Some say that Remarks post was sarcastic, but I find it serious and straight to the point. He wanted to sound sarcastic but everything he spoke about was a direct message to Fletcher and Britain.

But Fletcher’s reply also came fast and in a more sarcastic way. He spoke about three points using a video reply directed to Karl Remarks: 1. He said that British Ambassadors will no longer comment on issues that concerns the countries in which they serve because he believes that freedom of speech turned out to be a very bad idea.

2. He also said that they will be taking back the World Wide Web, because Remarks commented on Britain’s creativity.

3. Finally, he spoke about how Karl Remarks is based in Britain and how they will detain him and give him dental components to his detention, of course in an ironic way.

It is worth mentioning that this is the first time we see a diplomat in Lebanon directly responding to a blog post via a vlog (video blog) especially in a hilarious and sarcastic manner. Other politicians would have probably ended up replying in court.

Adrian On Air

Layal and Adrian's Radio Show

Matias Carlsen and Jorgen Ekvollrg

Social Media Changing Lives Donner Sang Compter Connecting Blood Donors to Those in Need

By Lynn Bizri

@lnlne

Donner Sang Compter is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that raises awareness about blood donation while encouraging safe blood transfusions through the organization of its blood drives in universities, companies, and public places in partnership with hospitals across Lebanon. I sat down with founder Yorgui Teyrouz, to find out more about the importance of social media to the NGO as well as their current and recent activities.

Was DSC originally launched offline or online?

DSC started as a Facebook group in early 2008 with the intent to respond a large need in Lebanon, as prior to DSC, there was no organization one could call to get blood.

The original use of the group was for people to post/ register their blood types on the group in order to build a database of blood donors. Although I initially depended on my own friends and acquaintances to join and register, the group quickly gained attention from the Lebanese online community as a whole. Once the group reached 3,000 likes, we began to set up stands at universities, with the help of those in the group, to register more potential blood donors. At the time we were fulfilling around 50 blood donation requests a month. In early 2010, we decided to switch to Pages, having reached around 12,000 likes, in order to establish an official profile for the organization.

What social media platforms do you use? Are they used in different ways or for different reasons?

The social media platforms we currently use are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We use our Facebook page to recruit donors as well as fulfill blood donation demands in hard cases such as accidents/bombings, midnight calls and in the case of rare blood types or the need for a large number of units. We also use it to share our events (e.g. blood drives), news and photos of people donating blood to address the fun, heroic aspect of donating blood without focusing too much on the emotional aspect of

it. We use Twitter to mainly tweet about our events as they’re happening, retweet those who mention us, and respond to blood donation requests by asking people to call the organization’s number. We also use Twitter to interact with other NGOs worldwide. As for Instagram, it is the portfolio of DSC and contains all the photos related to the NGO: photos of our products (blood type bracelet and keychain), of donors giving blood, of our stands in the different locations that we visit for our blood drives, of our mascot and much more.

How do you deal with blood donation requests online (either tweeted or via Facebook)?

We usually tell people looking for blood donors to call our organization’s number, where they are then connected to someone from the database that matches their need. Recently, however, we have come up with a new solution for having more blood ready on demand, which is by using our mobile blood bank to host blood drives at different locations on different occasions. The idea behind these blood drives is to ‘give, but don’t ask for who’. For each blood drive that is held, we partner up with a different hospital, and we are also trying to partner with other NGO’s as well. For example, during our blood drive at ABC, we partnered up with One Wig Stand and were able to collect 170 units of blood in two days.

I noticed DSC has a mobile application. What were the reasons behind creating it?

When we launched our mobile app, we were trying to follow the trends of the youth, as our aim is to educate them about blood donation and our cause. On the app, one can register as a donor; have access to all emergency contact numbers, all hospital numbers and you can also learn about blood testing. From the app, possible donors are then added to our database. Moreover, if you are a donor, your donation history on the app is linked to your calendar, so you can be notified when you are able to donate again. You can also share when you donate on Facebook and Twitter. Future updates for the application include the integration of maps to show where the nearest blood banks and hospitals are.

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Social Media Changing Lives

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

BUSINESS

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

Fadi Sabbagha, CEO, Born Interactive: "New products and platforms may achieve international expansion and competitiveness" Interview by Darine Sabbagh

@sdarine

Born Interactive is one of the oldest digital agencies in the region. It launched in 1996 with a strong conviction from its founders about the future opportunities that the digital realm and interactive media will impact the shaping of the future of the marketing and communication game. And today, after almost 18 years and over 2000 completed projects across the world, Born Interactive is a full servicing digital agency for all platforms - mostly web, mobile and social media. We have sat together with Born Interactive CEO, Mr. Fadi Sabbagha to learn more about Born Interactive’s achievements and the work that their team does. We have also learned that Fadi, has recently contributed in writing a Chapter about Social Media in the “Planet Entrepreneur; The World’s Entrepreneurship Forum guide to Business Success around the World” published the American John Wiley & Sons.

How did your agency evolve from Web Development to Digital Marketing & Social Media?

Digital marketing has always been at the core of what we do. Web was for a long time the main and most prominent digital marketing channel, when social media and mobile emerged, we covered them in our offering very naturally and social media has risen to stand as another vital and powerful marketing platform.

What do you consider the greatest challenge in your business field?

The greatest challenge is coping with the fast industry evolution. That is achieved through agility, flexibility, responsiveness to change as well as persistence coupled with a clear vision, a strong conviction in the future of the digital communication age and an open eye on the latest trends and opportunities to explore.

Tell us about the project that you are most proud of?

We are proud of all our projects, really. Those range from the major platforms we develop for our banking clients and other sectors to the fully integrated marketing solutions. An example of this is SACO,

the biggest hardware retail chain in KSA. We have provided them with web, mobile, as well as social media engagement and activations on all platforms resulting in large communities and extended digital platforms usage that either complemented or fully replaced the client’s traditional media activities.

It is also worth mentioning the work we have been doing for multinational clients like Mentos and Chupa Chups for which we have either fully created, or have significantly grown social media presence and reach across the Arab world for different markets through a strategic social media engagement approach as well as an array of tactical activations.

What are the most interesting things you are working on at the moment?

We are extending our services offering with some technology products and platforms that can result in successes on a global scale. I can’t disclose much, except that those are products that would ensure scalability and achieve international expansion and competitiveness.

What are your expansion plans in Lebanon & abroad?

We have been exporting our work for the past 15 years. On average, more than 50% of our revenues come from export markets. We have already sold our services to clients in 29 countries across the globe out of our main kitchen and teams located in our headquarters in Beirut.

For the past 3 years, we have launched and succeeded in developing a sustainable presence in Riyadh (KSA) from which we are covering the whole Kingdom with major clients from Jeddah and the Eastern Province area. Likewise, we launched a Dubai office this year aiming at having more proximity in serving our clients and growing our UAE portfolio.

We intend to expand for a global reach and development through our technology products which we are planning to commercialize on a more global scale.

How has the stagnation in the Lebanese Market affected your business?

We are lucky to be in an ever growing industry and to have built a fine reputation and client base in Lebanon and abroad, a strong asset that makes us really overcome the Lebanese market stagnation period.

How do you make sure your service offering and team are always up to date?

We make sure to maintain an up-to-date service offering and team capacity by allowing the proper investments on research and development, learning, training and always pitching new ideas that stretch our skills and technology knowledge and poses new challenges through which we seek opportunities to learn and expand our offering.

And through internal initiatives like then “Show and Tell” monthly internal event, we work on extending those learnings and research and innovation spirit and culture to the whole team.

Tell us a bit about your team. How do you make sure to hire & retain talent? Do you have any secrets?

Our team is our real backbone and the key to our success. At BI, we strive to attract talents, embodying an entrepreneurial mindset, and are passionate about the digital world.

Our team groups very different people profiles that smoothly and seamlessly integrate and interact together to produce great results and achievements owing to a culture and a value set that ensures the passion, energy, and expertise they bring transcends into their daily work.

You can clearly see from our management and executive teams that we privilege and base our growth on the development of our team and resources. Our middle and senior management team is all made of colleagues that have been with the company for many years now and most of them who started as fresh graduates are now handling senior positions and responsibilities. Those are no secrets; those are clear facts.

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BUSINESS Bassam Jalgha: "Lebanon is Still a Fresh Market for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Takes a Lot of Time to Pay Off" Interview by Mohammad Hijazi, Editor in Chief

@mhijazi

In an attempt to promote inspiring stories about people from the Lebanese Online Community, we, at Cloud961, have decided to dedicate a monthly column to interview an inspiring figure that has left a mark in the Lebanese online sphere. For your suggestions for this column, feel free to email me on mhijazi@cloud961.com.

Bassam Jalgha was born and raised in Beirut. Got his BE in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut and continued his Masters in the same field with a concentration in Mechatronics. His graduate research topic was in robotics, specifically in fall avoidance of embedded humanoid robots. Previously he worked as an instructor at AUB teaching Mechatronics and Control systems labs.

Bassam also has a personal devotion to music. He studied Oud instrumental music at the Lebanese National Conservatoire and spent most of my life learning and developing his musical skills. In 2009, Bassam won first prize in “Stars of Science” season 1 a Pan-Arab innovation contest. His project, “Dozan” was an automated tuning device for string musical instruments. During the three-month competition, he was able to build the device and pass all the stages from engineering to product design to business and finally marketing. Since then Bassam has been devoted to developing the product, discovering the difficulties ahead, and overcoming them.

You can find him @bassamjalgha.

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

strings and would inform users about their quality and when it is time to restring.

Two years ago, you debuted a prototype of this product at TEDxBeirut. What has changed since then?

Back in TEDxBeirut I had a prototype made of two parts: a base and a handheld tuner. Alot has changed since then, I partnered with Hassane Slaibi, a longtime friend and fellow musician, and we started the R&D for building not only a tuner but rather an assistant for the guitarists, and we moved from a prototype to a production ready product. We decided to harness the computing power in mobile devices so we dropped the base (no pun intended) and Roadie became a handheld device that connects via Bluetooth with a mobile device.

A lot of the new features came after initial contact of Roadie with musicians. So now Roadie not only will tune the guitar, it lets musicians switch between different tunings seamlessly and will even help wind and unwind the strings. The instrument doctor feature is a proprietary technology that steams from the research done during that period.

What is Roadie Turner and why are you investing so much of your time and efforts to develop it?

I have two contradictory personalities: the musician and the engineer.

Roadie’s story goes back to when I was 12 years old. I learned to play the Oud which is an Arabic instrument that is very difficult to tune. So, being the geek I was, I decided to build a robot to tune it for me. In 2009, I participated and won Stars of Science the premier panarab competition for innovation for my project Dozan and 4 years later and about 5 different prototypes, Dozan became Roadie Tuner. Roadie Tuner is an automatic tuning device for guitars; it connects to the tuning peg of the guitar and performs the tuning automatically, quickly and accurately. Roadie has an instrument doctor feature where it can also keep track of the elasticity of guitar

Our company is in fact an international collaboration.

Development is in Lebanon, design is in Europe and manufacturing is in China.

The reason international backers only have to pay for shipping is that Kickstarter doesn’t allow charging for shipment inside the US. This is something that has to do purely with Kickstarter policies.

Do you believe that the Lebanese community does not support entrepreneurs and innovators well?

On the contrary, the Lebanese community has witnessed a boom in the entrepreneurship scene in the past 5 years that cannot but give me hope for a better future.

What is really missing is the proper infrastructure for startup development: the basic needs (electricity, internet etc.), political stability, startup support from the government etc.

This is especially true for a hardware startup; unfortunately Lebanon still lacks a lot of expertise and facilities for modern manufacturing techniques. This is mainly why we moved production to China.

What was the reaction of the Lebanese Online Community to your start-up?

The reaction of the Lebanese Online Community to the launch of our Kickstarter campaign has been awesome. If it wasn’t for all the shares and tweets that we got, we wouldn’t have been featured on Kickstarter as a popular item of the week and most probably we wouldn’t have reached our funding goal in the first 4 days. I personally was overwhelmed with the reaction and it kind of made me proud to belong to such a community.

What is Lamba Labs and how are you involved in it?

Tell us a little about how you got started in the innovation field in Lebanon and why did you decide to take this track (instead of looking for a job or a master's program abroad like most AUB engineers)?

I was never satisfied with the job opportunities available for a fresh engineering graduate in Lebanon. When I finished my undergrad I was like the majority of other students: lost in the noise of what society expects me to be versus what I really wanted to be. There was this one course I took that changed all that, it was mechatronics. This was the first time in my life where I applied engineering knowledge to build (with my own hands) something intelligent that moves! I instantly knew that this what I want to do in my life, so I did my masters in robotics and at the same time I continued having fun learning how to build robots and other random electronics projects (that you can check on my unmaintained depotbassam.com blog).

I believe it was a wise choice for me not to leave Lebanon then. Lebanon is still a fresh market for innovation; innovation is highly needed and valued by our society!

As contradictory as it might sound, being in Lebanon at this very early stage opened up a lot of opportunities that otherwise would have not been available for me.

your start-up is based in the States? If so, why did you move it there rather than having it in Beirut?

Lamba Labs is Beirut’s first hackerspace, it is a community of enthusiasts that likes to build things. With the purpose of spreading open access to information and knowledge, Lamba Labs is a physical space filled with tools and equipment where people would join in not only to build their projects and collaborate but also to give/attend workshops and teach. Hassane, my partner and I, are both founding members of the hackerspace.

How was your experience with Stars of Science? Do you believe it gave you the necessary push or motivation to undertake this career track?

Why did you decide to go for a crowd-funding campaign to raise money to produce Roadie Turner? Tell us a little bit about your progress so far.

Crowdfunding is a perfect concept for hardware startup looking to bootstrap for 3 main reasons: 1- It helps determine if there is a market for the product long before bringing it to market, hence reducing the risk on the company.

2- If you can prove that there is market for the product it becomes much easier to approach potential investors, and easier even to reach distributors and retailers at an early stage.

3- With crowdfunding you are fundraising to cover for production costs without losing equity in the company and without taking any bank loans.

So far it’s been only 12 days into our campaign and we have raised more than $100K, about 167% of our initial goal of $60K.

I've noticed that on Kickstarter, most of the perks are US based, where international backers have to pay extra for shipping. Does this mean that

My experience with Stars of Science was life changing. Winning the competition not only gave me the financial means to move along in this project, but it opened up an opportunity in my life that otherwise I wouldn’t have pursued. Stars of Science taught me that if you have an idea the only thing missing is just you going ahead and implementing it.

What advice do you give to people who are interested in an innovation or entrepreneurial career track?

If you can’t find a job, it is simple: just create one. However, from my little experience I can say that the innovation path is not an easy one. Not easy at all. If you decide to be an “entrepreneur” you have to know that it will be a very long way before you can afford to have a decent meal and be able to take your girlfriend/boyfriend on a decent date. But if it works the satisfaction is outstanding. I finally felt this satisfaction after people started putting their first pre-orders once we launched last week.

Like I said before, Lebanon is still a fresh market for innovation. It is highly needed and valued by our society.

So don’t be afraid and start building your ideas, and share your experience! Personally I made it my goal to get Roadie into market and to gain as much experience doing so only so that one day I can bring this experience back home and share it with my community.

BUSINESS

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

job, the job I always wanted to do: Getting in contact with people and media and knowing what is happening in the fashion world, outings, and trends...

And here I am, 3 years later with the same passion and happiness.

What role does social media play in Beiruting’s presence? How do you use it to drive traffic to your site?

5 Minutes with the Community Manager Elsa Akiki: You should be sociable & friendly, but know how to say NO!

By Darine Sabbagh

@sdarine

Community Managers are the super heroes in the shade who shadow brand pages and twitter accounts, embodying those brands and speaking to us with their voices. They are the ones who create amazing content that makes us like and share and ultimately welcome the brand to our daily offline lives. If you have been curious to know who those superheroes are, you are in luck! Every month Darine is interviewing a Community Manager, to not only showcase their talents and wits, but also let you know the real people behind the brands. In the hot seat this month is someone all Lebanese party-goers know as the first one to share that coveted photo album from Beiruting’s page – Elsa Beiruting aka Elsa Akiki, Beiruting’s PR & Content Manager. She initially studied International Affairs, but loved magazines and used to wait for them to come out every month, dreaming of working in one, one day.

How did you get into working in the digital world?

After graduating, I started looking for jobs all around in political science, but sadly I discovered the truth about political science in Lebanon and didn't want to work in that environment. One summer I met Lucas and he asked me if I was interested in working for Beiruting. I directly related Beiruting to my dream

Social media is extremely important for Beiruting.

When Lucas Lamah launched the website 4 years ago, he bet on social media as the main channel to drive traffic. Time proved him right. Today Beiruting’s Facebook page has over 300,000 fans and represents the biggest part of the referral traffic. Posting important and exciting news allowed us to grow extremely fast and allows our Facebook page to drag traffic to beiruting.com.

On another hand, contributors and users share our quality content on social networks, mainly Facebook, which contributes to the virality of our content

What is the funniest thing that happened while you were on social media watch?

I sent a photographer once to cover an event in a theater. He covered the wrong play (both where playing at the same time in the same theater). It was the first time that this kind of misunderstanding ever happened with me. Luckily it never happened to me again.

How did working in social media affect your personal social media presence?

In social media, your image is very important since it’s, in a way, the image of your company. You should always be ready to attend events, sometimes five in a single day, and spend several nights a week insuring physical presence to some late-night events. This is extremely tough and has lots of constraints on my personal life, but at the same time, it's also part of the excitement of the job.

What was the biggest / most memorable social media crisis you had?

It was during the NRJ 2013 tour, we finished the partnership deal 3-days before the date of the event.

We had to insure the presence of 7 professional

photographers at this concert and it was during one of the most active weeks ever this summer.

That was extremely challenging to do.

Share one tip you would give to other brands on social media?

Focus on quality and be close to your fans, this is the most important part. This requires dedicating a lot of time, but it is the cost of success in Social Media.

What is your favorite social media network at the moment and why?

On an international level, definitely Facebook is THE most important platform. But personally, I am big fan of Instagram. Locally, definitely Beiruting since it covers all social events and has other tabs such as news, movies, etc…

What do you think makes a community manager successful?

Being sociable and friendly but at the same time knowing when to be firm and say no, especially to avoid ruining the social community’s experience with spammers.

What are your tricks for posting engaging content?

I deal with my content in the simplest way: I post what I'd like to read myself. I never post about boring events and pictures and always post about the most exciting events, as simple as that!

If you could work with any brand in Lebanon what would it be?

Victoria's Secret since it's a new brand in Lebanon.

What do you say when your bosses/clients ask you "Is social media getting us clients? Prove it!"?

Among all the KPIs, I guess the number of likes and the traffic on the website is proof of success. Also, engagement is what counts in Social Media. Compared to other media channels, digital media in general and social media in particular remains the channel that tracks best conversions.

The way people use social media is always changing.

What are the latest trends that you have spotted?

Well I think people are switching from PCs to Mobiles, and are relying more and more on smartphones.

Today, people use social media on their Smartphones to know what is going on around them and to socialize with other people.

This is why we at Beiruting started with a website, and then following the global trend with a mobile dedicated website, and now we are covering smartphones through dedicated apps. We are also very active on mobile social platforms such as Instagram. Doing this, we make sure we are always available when people need us the most.

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BUSINESS

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

BUSINESS

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

“UNIBOX”, IT Cloud Services Brought by Solidere for the First Time in Lebanon In collaboration with Procomix and Microsoft, Solidere launched the “UNIBOX” service providing companies in Beirut Central District with IT solutions based on Cloud Services, during a ceremony held on Tuesday November 19th, in the Jewelry Souk- Beirut Souks.

Mounir Douaidy, Solidere’s GM, began his speech by stating, "Once again we meet together to launch another pioneering technology project by Solidere, which worked since its inception to provide an advanced digital infrastructure, as we deeply believe in the necessity of planning a future based on cutting edge electronic services, constituting an essential factor in attracting investments and projects.”

Douaidy added,” We aspire to create more technological projects in the future, as we aim to help young Lebanese entrepreneurs in establishing their own SMEs and contribute in boosting the economic growth, based on technological progress which has become the cornerstone of any successful economic model in our modern times.”

This service, the first of its kind in Lebanon, will provide integrated options for small and mediumsized businesses (SMEs), allowing them to benefit from a wide range of solutions through a host server on Solidere’s Broadband Network.

With UNIBOX, businesses can obtain a package of IT solutions, allowing them to reduce costs incurred on all of these services individually, and limit the risk of data loss, through the backup data protection option

brought by UNIBOX. With this regards, Oscar Abou Chaaya – Chief Commercial Officer of Procomix, explained, “Small and Medium companies in Lebanon will now be able to benefit from the same technologies that large corporations have been using all over the world;Unibox cloud services provide enterprise class email, contacts, calendars, CRM, document management, real time communication, virtualization and backup services, for any size company, with exclusive unique quality of experience service within Solidere area. Unibox is a next generation cloud service, hosted at Solidere datacenters, managed by a highly qualified technical team, providing high-class, 24/7, new-technology IT services to empower anysize business to realize its potential.”

On the other hand, Hoda Younan, Country manager for Microsoft Lebanon, added, “As Microsoft we're motivated and inspired every day by how our customers use our software to find creative solutions to business problems, develop breakthrough ideas, and stay connected to what's most important to them.

With Unibox Cloud Solution Businesses can consume their needed Software, anytime and anywhere, at their convenience. This joint effort with Solidere and Procomix, showcases our engagement with individual stakeholders to understand their needs and provide them with the most relevant technologies, ensuring a customized solution to companies of all sizes.”

The UNIBOX service allows employees to check their business e-mails wherever they might be, thanks to the Exchange user subscriptions services, that include email service, addresses, personal contact details (phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc…) and bring to its subscribers a spectrum of business services developed by Microsoft including CRM and Lync. It will also give them access to virtual servers and database virtualization options, in addition to remote access to their IT data.

Through UNIBOX and the connection speed offered

by Solidere, which equipped the Beirut Central District with an advanced fiber-optic network and a broadband speed up to 100 megabits per second (100 Mbps),-a capacity not available anywhere else in Lebanon-, these companies will be able to implement their vision for a “smart” technological business environment.

Solidere strives through UNIBOX and in cooperation with Microsoft and Procomix, to provide unprecedented services tailored for SMEs in Lebanon.

This support will allow such businesses to keep pace with the latest technologies in File and data management via sophisticated electronic equipment, empowering them to develop their own offerings without the need to inject huge investments in their own IT infrastructure.

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AWARDS

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

Effie MENA Best Use of Social Media Awards Launched in 2004 to encourage international best practice in marketing in the Middle East, the GEMAS were awarded on the sole premise of proven marketing effectiveness based on the clearly demonstrable, quantifiable and transparent campaign results.

The Effie Awards were founded in 1968 by the American Marketing Association, (AMA) New York Chapter, as an awards program to recognise the most effective advertising efforts in the USA each year. Since 1968 Effies has become a source of learning through conferences, judging discussion and briefs providing opportunities for insight into effective marketing communications.

In 2009 the GEMAS and the Effies joined forces as the GEMAS Effie MENA Awards.

This year’s Effie MENA Awards took place at the MusicHall, The Palm, Dubai on 20 November 2013. Below are the winners for the Best Use of Social Media Category.

1. Nike LVL UP, Nike, JWT Dubai & Mindshare MENA – Gold 2. What do you see?, DIFF, Leo Burnett Dubai – Gold 3. Stalk Your Rejectors, Nissan, Mindshare MENA – Silver 4. The Laughter Machine, Coca-Cola, FP7/DXB – Silver 5. Axe Wingman, Axe, Digital Republic UAE – Bronze Three campaigns from Lebanese agencies we nominated for this category, none of them won an award. These campaigns are: • TOUCH Rebrand - JWT Beirut, Lebanon • TOUCH Blackberry Social Challenge - JWT Beirut, Lebanon • Drink For Your Friends - Intermarkets & MEC Beirut, Lebanon For more information about the rest of the categories, check out http://effiemena.com.

The Middle East’s Marketing Awards Results Dubai witnessed the “Marketing Awards Middle East” show on November 28 and 29. This show was held by “Social Media World Middle East” at the Madinat Arena and consisted of three shows over two days: Social Media World, Big Data World and Loyalty World Middle East Event.

Below is the list of winners.

• Best Social Media Strategy: McDonalds Lebanon, Think Media Labs • Best Social Media Strategy – Retail: Visa Inc. (Dubai Shopping Festival) • Best Social Media Strategy – Financial Services: Emirates NBD • Best Social Media Strategy – Government: RTA, Dubai, McCollins Media • Best Social Media Strategy – Telecommunications: Vodafone Qatar • Best Social Media Strategy – Travel and Hospitality: Emirates Airline • Best Twitter Strategy: OSN • Best Facebook Strategy: Emirates Airlines • Best Loyalty Program: Air Miles • Best New Loyalty Program: OSN, OSN Privileges • Loyalty Leader of the Year: Randa Bdeir, Bank Audi, Lebanon • Best Loyalty Program – Telecommunications: du-Business Rewards • Best Loyalty Program – Travel and Hospitality: Body & Soul Health Club and Spa • Best Loyalty Program – Financial Services: Dubai First, Sky Miles Loyalty Program

Ayman Itani CEO of ThinkMedia Labs receiving his award.

Source: ThinkMedia Labs

CAMPAIGNS

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

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#Interesting Campaigns

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1

Wooden Bakery Share Bread Campaign

Maze Solutions Christmas competition.

Maze Solutions created this competition in order to motivate their employees to be more active on social media; and the prize is a bonus to the author who gets a combination of the most: • Twitter followers to his account.

• Readers to 1 of his/her posts here.

The accounts are: • @JeanHbeich • @muri_me • @theonlymyrrha The followers should be real and they can use whatever means they want in order to get those REAL followers. We will keep a close eye on the competition and will update you with the results in our next issue

The campaign was to upload an original picture of your homemade cake, bread, or manakeesh. The picture with the most votes wins!

Every time you share the “Share Bread” tab on Facebook, Wooden Bakery will donate 1 loaf of bread to the Lebanon Food Bank to help people in need.

It was a really interesting and aimed for a good cause competition that not only helped with Wooden Bakery’s exposure but also helped the Lebanese Food Bank and 21,000 loaves of bread were donated to the people in need.

The winners were announced last month and all the participants received a Thank You meal for participating in the Share Bread campaign.

2

5 Celebrating 70th Independence Day with 70% OFF

IDM celebrated the 70th Independence Day with a 70% off.

The offer included ADSL and Wi-Fi modem, setup & 1 month at $22. 3G including USB dongle, SIM & 1GB at $22.

The offer was from November 6 till November 30 and it was a good way to celebrate the Lebanese 70th Independence day.

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Atlantis Circus with Virgin Ticketing Box Office.

The competition was on virgin ticketing Facebook page where people had to click on the tab, like the page, and then click participate in order to get into the draw for a chance to win free tickets. The circus was from Tuesday November 20th 2012 to Sunday December 1st 2013.

After you participated, the link was shared with the following message “I just participated with Virgin Ticketing Box Office for a chance to win tickets to Atlantis Circus, the most exciting circus yet! Participate and let the show blow your mind!”

The purpose of this competition was to increase the likes on the page and to invite friends to also enter the draw.

Couqley & Reserve Out Christmas Campaign Couqley and ReserveOutBeirut have launched a Christmas campaign where they will donate $1.00 to Myschoolpulse throughout the month of December with every online reservation at Couqley through Reserve Out! Every person who reserves also gets free dessert (for each person on his/her table)! Myschoolpulse is a non-profit organization bringing schools to hospitals in Lebanon, for children undergoing treatments for life-threatening illness.

Malik’s Lebanon 25th Anniversary Campaign Bring out your best for a chance to win 100$ vouchers from #MaliksLebanon & much more! Malik’s is celebrating its 25th anniversary by this Instagram Competition. Here are the rules: 1. Follow #MaliksLebanon page on Instagram 2. Take a picture that include the number 25 or 25 things and anything around 25 3. Tag it using #Maliks25 #MaliksLebanon #Lebanon 4. Invite your friends to Like it 5. Increase your winning chances 6. Enter the Draw Winners will be chosen by a raffle draw, and each 2 weeks, there will have 3 winners: • 1st Prize: 100$ voucher from #MaliksLebanon • 2nd prize: 4 cinema tickets • 3rd prize: #MaliksLebanon goody bag+ 2 Cinemas Tickets The first draw will take place on the 14th of December, the second will take place on the 31st of December

CAMPAIGNS

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CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

Roumieh Prison on Facebook on Twitter A Facebook and a Twitter Account for Roumieh Prison has surfaced this month. These pages claimed that they are run by prisoners inside the prison full with funny and witty posts in an attempt to raise awareness about the injustice most inmates are facing especially that some prisoners have been jailed for over 7 years with no sentence. The accounts have now been suspended on both platforms.

Be Proud of Lebanon & Be the Minister for a Day

by Darine Sabbagh

@sdarine

Lebanese Netizens were once again given the chance to shadow Minister of Telecommunications Nicholas Sehnaoui. This time www.betheminister.com invited participants to discover the remarkable growth in terms of rankings and results Lebanon has achieved in the International Telecommunication Union’s ITU latest Measuring the Information Society (MIS) report.

The winner’s name was drawn live on OTV on November the 13th and he was Chris Hasbani. Chris joined the Minister in the ITU Summit in Thailand from the 18th to the 22nd of November to discover more about Lebanon’s achievements and plans in the ICT field. What is notable is that the website received over 11,000 unique visitors and 750 have answered all ten questions correctly to qualify for the draw.

This indeed continues a good streak of the Ministry’s innovative engagement with the online community and providing a better way of channeling and communicating boring numbers through highlighting the true spirit of these honorary ranking and letting them speak for themselves.

This game’s concept and development was handled by the Digital Agency COM FU while the design was handled by the Advertising Agency Clementine.

Sehnaoui explains more about the campaign: The purpose of both Be The Minister competitions is to involve the Youth in the Reform of the Telecoms sector in Lebanon. While the first version of the game launched last year communicated the progress of the Ministry in Numbers as viewed by the Lebanese Telecom Ministry, this version comes to reiterate and confirm this big leap forward also in Numbers and as viewed by the United Nations ITU committee in its yearly international report. ITU 2012 report ranked

Lebanon as first out of 157 countries in terms of its ICT Development Index progress. Through this communication, we seek to assure the Youth that progress is indeed happening and that they are invited to play a crucial role in this transformation. We also need them to regain faith in themselves and in their telecom sector so that, if they have the passion for it, they would dare take the jump into Digital Entrepreneurship.

It's only through daily practices like giving feedback, blogging, tweeting and social sharing that the synergy between the Ministry and this Young Digital Lobby can lead us to the Digital Economy we dream of.

In his interview Minister Sehnaoui has also mentioned that the upcoming year will see the launch of more innovative products and services that are sure to boost Lebanon’s development ranking further than the top 5 spot it has been given among the Arab Region in the year’s report.

CAMPAIGNS Christmas by Fiesta

By Cloud 961 Staff

@cloud961mag

Christmas by Fiesta was an activation launched by Fiesta Group on their Facebook page where fans uploaded a photo of their Christmas Decorations from Facebook, Instagram or PC, collect votes and win prizes. The prizes consist of wrapping Christmas gifts, a Santa visit to the house of the winning participant and a surprise gift on the day of the delivery.

Independence Day

The competition was open to all Lebanese residents; it will run from 25 November until 23 December 2013.

Two prizes were granted to the participants with the highest number of grades. Grades were based 50% on the votes and 50% on the marks given

by Fiesta Jury. Fans could collect votes by asking their friends to vote for them or referring their friends to play the game. For each referred friend 1 vote was added to the overall number of votes for the player.

This is how various brands celebrated the Lebanese Independence Day online. Which one is your favorite?

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

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TECH Launch of Windows 8.1

Brings together a unique and personal experience across the broadest range of devices.

Microsoft Lebanon announced last month the global availability of Windows 8.1, a feature-rich update to its popular Windows 8 operating system, enabling customers to create experiences that keep pace with their lives — at work, at home or on the go. Beginning October18, consumers with a Windows 8 device in more than 230 markets and 37 languages can download the free update via the online WindowsStore. Windows 8.1 will also be available on new devices and as a boxed software starting October18 at retail locations around the world.

Windows 8.1 evolves the Windows vision for highly personalized computing while showcasing Microsoft’s continued commitment to rapid and responsive development. It marks a wave of new, innovative devices coming for consumers and businesses—from the convenience and mobility of tablets and 2-in-1s to the productive experience expected from laptops, all-in-ones and specialized industry devices. Many of these new devices are touch-enabled and will deliver advancements in processing power, battery life and design, across a range of price points.

“The new Windows offers you many ways to create a personal and expressive experience, it brings together everything you do on all of your devices”, said Hoda Younan, Microsoft Lebanon Country manager. “With Windows 8.1 there is a wave of new innovative products for consumers and businesses. There is something for everyone, something that is unique to you”, she added.

Windows 8.1 offers a host of increased customization refinements and functional improvements, including the following: • Highly personal. An improved and more customizable Start screen offers variable tile sizes, more background designs and colors so each Windows device looks unique and personal to the individual. In addition,

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

customers can choose how to start their Windows experience — at the Start screen or directly in the familiar Windows desktop—while all their Windows devices stay in sync with their Microsoft account.

• More familiar and easy to navigate. As an iconic part of the Windows experience, Windows 8.1 brings back the Start button as a familiar point of navigation.

An updated apps view lets users see all their apps at once for easy access and new clicks and cues, as well as a Help + Tips app that gets them up to speed quickly.

• Enhanced search. The new Bing Smart Search provides the easiest way to find what users need on the device or on the Web in one beautiful and easy consolidated view that’s built for touch. Simply swipe or type from the Start screen, and Smart Search will find it — whether it’s a document on a PC, a photo album on SkyDrive, a favorite app, a song from a website.

• Wide range of apps and services from the Start. The Windows 8.1 experience offers a range of apps and services from the Start screen, allowing customers to quickly and easily do the things they love on Windows, such as catching up with friends and family via Skype, emailing effortlessly in the Mail app, finding new recipes with the Bing Food &Drink app. Windows 8.1 also comes with the new Internet Explorer 11, which is fast, fluid and perfect for touch. Internet Explorer 11 brings enhanced touch performance, speed boosts, and synchronized browsing history, favorites and settings across all Windows 8.1 devices.

Windows 8.1 also provides native support for 3-D printing, meaning it will have plug-and-play support for 3-D printers, enable apps to seamlessly print 3-D jobs and understand 3-D file formats.

• The best for multitasking and productivity.

Windows 8.1 includes the display and use of up to four apps side by side, flexible windows sizing for each app on the screen, the ability for one app to

launch another app, and improved multi monitor support so users can view the desktop or apps from the Windows Store on any or all monitors.

• Deep cloud integration with SkyDrive. Windows 8.1 makes it easier than ever to work from anywhere and know that files are always accessible— across devices and locations. With SkyDrive, users can create, edit, save and share files anywhere, anytime, on whatever device they’re using.

• A beautifully redesigned Windows Store. The new design of the Windows Store improves how great apps are showcased and makes it easier for customers to get the apps they want. Fresh layouts and categories, such as New & Rising, make it easier to stay up to date on the hottest new entries to explore. Personalized recommendations use the Bing advanced recommendation and relevance system to help find new favorites. And with Windows 8.1, apps are updated automatically by default, so users always have the newest and best version of any app, such as Fresh Paint, which now includes watercolor, a new graphite pencil set and a new clean, modern user interface for the latest painting or drawing creations.

New and updated apps are also continually being delivered to the Windows Store, including Evernote, Facebook for Windows 8.1, , Adobe Photoshop Express, eBay.In addition to local apps like An Nahar, L’Orient le Jour, Daily Star, MTV and many others.

TECH

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

A New Kind of Digital Communication

Snapchat offers a unique personal connection with onsumers that other social media vehicles simply do not offer since users must opt-in by accepting the brand as a “friend” and opening their “snaps.”

By Dalia Ramadan, PR Manager, AUB’S Online Collaborative @dalia813

Here are some ways I believe brands can employ Snapchat in order to utilize its features to their full potential:

Snapchat is the new platform for communicating brand messaging

Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram dominate the saturated social networking world both in terms of personal and business use. Recently, however, a newcomer has emerged with a platform that steers away from the forces of big data and behavioral targeting: Snapchat.

Snapchat is a photo and video sharing mobile application with one very distinguishing feature: whatever you send will self-destruct after an expiration time of your choice. Like most successful mobile applications, its process is intuitive: the user takes a photo or video, has the option of adding a caption or drawing, and then sets a time limit between 1 to 10 seconds. The notion that one need not spend time worrying about their looks or online persona is what quickly garnered popularity among users.

Their newest update introduced Snapchat Stories, where Snaps that last for 24 hours are added together to create a narrative. This new feature has fundamentally morphed the platform. As with most other mediums, marketing has managed to harness Snapchat too; brands have begun to set up profiles and add users as friends. Snapchat is now being used to spread brand awareness as the medium addresses a consumer’s thirst for visual content by putting facial expressions front and center and telling a story with just a few words and a picture. Additionally,

• Contests & Gamification: Engage users by combining gaming and gratification to create a scavenger hunt where snaps feature clues that a user must gather to

receive a prize.

• Product Sneak Peeks & Behind the Scenes: Sharing a unique snap of a new product or the production process with your community will create buzz and excitement (however, be aware that screenshots may be taken).

• Coupons & Discounts: Send discounts on Snapchat to specific customers based on their buying habits or

App Review: SnapGuide

By Lynn Bizri

@lnlne

SnapGuide is a beautifully designed app that allows you to view hundreds of how-to guides on various subjects, as well as create your own to share.

SnapGuide has already garnered a huge community who has ranked the app with an average of 4.5 stars.

Joining the community begins with creating an account using either your Facebook, Twitter or email address. You can then explore the featured, popular and recent guides; browse through different topics (such as automotive, beauty, food and technology), request guides you’d like created or find your friends/ fellow users to follow. SnapGuide even provides you with the option of messaging them in case you have further questions about one of their guides.

As for creating your own guides, it couldn’t be easier!

SnapGuide’s slick and simple interface makes the entire process straightforward and lots of fun. The

guides follow a step-by-step format, and you can include videos, photos or plain text depending on the complexity of the subject. SnapGuide even has Dictation integration, in case you prefer to caption your steps by speech rather than writing them. Want to share your guides? SnapGuide allows you to post them straight to the web and share them via Twitter, Facebook, or via email.

The Good · Beautiful UI and UX · Great layout that makes it both easy to navigate guides and create your own · A large amount of users and guides The Bad · Lacking Google+ and Pinterest integration · Some guides aren’t very useful, are missing steps or contain many spelling errors. Moderation of guides or feedback forms for guide creators would be a plus.

other parameters.

• Employee Empowerment: Introduce new team members via Snapchat.

The following list names some of the companies that have taken the risky and creative step of utilizing Snapchat in a campaign: • Taco Bell: After tweeting of a secret that would be revealed via Snapchat, Taco Bell snapped a sneak peek to specific users of their new Beefy Crunch Burrito.

• 16 Handles: The New York frozen yogurt chain used Snapchat for coupon promotions where users were asked to snap a photo of their favorite flavor and, in return, a coupon was sent via Snapchat.

• Acura: The luxury car manufacturer built hype for their new NSX prototype by sending a 6 second snap video teaser.

• Karmaloop: The clothing e-tailer uses Snapchat to send shots of provocative models dressed in their most recent items • Co-operative Electrical: Students are sent a promotional code for discounts off of laptops.

• MTV UK: The television station promoted the sixth season of Geordie Shore by sending exclusive snaps of the actors.

• Chat Sports: Fans had to get five friends to add Chat Sports on Snapchat and send a unique snap along with a hashtag in order to win baseball tickets.

One drawback to using Snapchat as a marketing tool, however, is the fact that brand usernames are not well known and thus companies must promote their presence. Also, there is a scarcity of analytics since Snapchat does not allow you to keep records of information. Such disadvantages need to be addressed before Snapchat can be used more stably as a marketing tool.

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TECH

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CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014 features:

BBM vs. WhatsApp

A Comparison Between BBM and WhatsApp & Why You Should Have Both

By Armen Bakkalian, President, Hagaizian’s Online Collaborative @ArmenBakkalian Blackberry messenger (also known as BBM) is an internet-based messenger that used to operate only on Blackberry devices, where you could chat for free as long as you have internet access. Last month, Blackberry messenger was introduced on Android and iOS, and got a huge number of downloads from the first day of its release.

I have always wondered: Why do you need BBM when you have WhatsApp? Since BBM was only for Blackberry devices, whereas everybody else had WhatsApp, even the Blackberry users. I felt that BBM was useless, until I downloaded the app on my iPhone.

Let’s have a comparison between both messengers’

Google Glass: Vogue Approved

By Sarah Sabbagh

@sxs05

Vogue magazine is a beacon of light that guides millions upon millions of dedicated followers. Sounds like something the lead character in a fashion chick flick would say? I would beg to differ. Many in the world are very cynical of the impact fashion has on society and the role it takes in creating history and shaping the future. Many are quick to judge and belittle a multi-billion dollar industry that controls our everyday life and the way we express ourselves to the world. The social impact of a magazine like Vogue is too large to measure, so when Google Glass got a 12 page spread in the September issue it got me thinking of fashion and technology and how it has begun shaping the way we will look and dress in the future.

Fashion is truly a mirror image of society and culture, a physical portrayal of how it changes and evolves.

Clothing and trends change as we change, and as

1- Registration: Creating an account on WhatsApp needs a SIM card only; it creates your account based on your phone number. It sends you a verification code to make sure you are the owner of that number.

To make an account for BBM, you need an email address and a password unless you have a Blackberry phone, then you automatically get an account and a pin assigned to your phone.

2- Contacts: On WhatsApp you don’t have to add contacts; it automatically scans your phonebook and shows you those who have WhatsApp, and you can immediately start chatting. BBM uses alphanumeric characters to create BB-pins, which are unique for each account. You have to ask someone for their BBpin to add them, and then wait them to accept your request so that you can start chatting.

3- Message delivery: Whatsapp makes one tick when the message is delivered to the server, and a second tick when the sender receives it. Receiving it does not always mean that they read it. On BBM it marks a tick when it is delivered to the server, “D” when it is received by the receiver, and an “R” when the receiver reads it.

notes, location, & contacts. BBM allows you to send text messages, pictures, audio notes, a wide variety of emoticons, and lets you add a chat partner in an existing chat. Both messengers have the feature of group chatting, as well as message broadcasting.

Additionally, BBM has the PING feature which is a way to get someone’s attention without writing anything, somehow like the Nudge feature in the old MSN messenger days.

5- Price: WhatsApp is free the first year and followed by 0.99$ per year. On the other hand, BBM is free.

By looking to the above comparison between the two messengers, I find it necessary to have both. Why? BBM is great since you do not have to give your phone number to a stranger, because even if you block their number on WhatsApp they may annoy you by calling or by SMS. When you block them on BBM, poof! they’re gone. You can share your BB-pin on your info on Instagram, twitter, or anywhere publicly without worrying about your phone number!

The real competition is not between BBM and Whatsapp; it is between BBM and other chat platforms that do not require a phone number, for example Kik Messenger. BB-pins are replacing them on info sections (mainly on Instagram).

4- Chat features: Whatsapp allows you to send text messages, pictures, videos, emoticons (emoji), audio technology, mobile devices, Internet and social media become more and more part of our existence we can clearly see how the barrier between mobile gadget and fashion accessory is disappearing. Interesting enough the 12 page Google glasses spread in Vogue was titled “The Final Frontier” perhaps symbolizing the final transition from carried electronic devices to wearable ones (think Samsung Smartwatch). Vogue describes the photo-shoot as “beyond the blue horizon lies a futuristic vision of fashion—a beautiful minimalism tailored for the brave and the bold.”

So why is Google Glass in Vogue and why is that so important?

Google Glass has been in the making for quite some time now and while it has been making every tech magazine headline since. And their target market?

Basically anyone who uses a smartphone. But with $1,500 price tag and a product only at its “explorer” stages the only way to begin to push for long term survival would be by making the product more

appealing and worthy of an investment. Google’s effort to make the Google Glass fashionable is only logical, not to mention the fastest way to reach the masses. Steve Lee, who was involved in the development of Glass, told The New York Times, “ Glass’ developers knew that no matter how functional the gadget, it would be useful only if people wanted to wear it and it was considered “cool” to wear in public If it doesn’t meet a minimum bar for comfort and style, it just doesn’t matter what it will do,” And being featured in Vogue is the ultimate sign of approval. However, Vogue is not the only place Google Glass is gaining center stage. International fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg sent her models down the runway wearing Google Glass, recording every strut through eye level and streaming it online.

In a statement to the New York Times Von Furstenberg stated “I think to wear Glass is to show that you are engaged, you are current, you are open to new things.”

So there you have it.

DR. CLOUD As a celebrity, it is always a good idea to engage with your fans and respond to your followers, unless you end up calling each other fat. What happened to being the bigger person Haifa?

(Nevertheless, I have to admit how amusing it is to read your responses to your haters).

Speaking of celebrities, it seems that most of them think that they are the center of the universe.

Even if they try to be less selfish (by writing about Nelson Mendella or the massacres in Syria), they use their own picture to illustrate those tragedies.

Not only that! They are so full of themselves that they assure you that their 2.5 million followers on Twitter are all genuine follower. Using a quick “Faker Score” tool determines that is a lie. As you can see, only 15% of your followers are “good” followers, that’s only 375,000 followers.

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014

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Are you a social media consultant and feeling too proud about it? Create a Facebook page for yourself and ask your friends to “like you.”

It is always advisable that when your community manager screws up, tell your audience that it was a staged stunt to get people’s attention (ask Sayfco, they’ve done it before you). But, I guess, it wasn’t all bad. A brand finally stood up to self-acclaimed marketing know-it-all.

Speaking of amusing, it is always a hoot when a previous prime minister tries to proudly do a good deed but end up sounding racist. I bet till this day, he doesn’t know where he went wrong.

Now for the laugh of the month: McDonald’s Lebanon wins the Best Social Media Strategy award at The Marketing Awards in Dubai.

Without criticizing the credibility of the awards themselves, it seems highly unlikely that an account that had major flops in the last few months (such as tweeting an Israeli and tweeting about the agency’s other clients by mistake) and is an incredibly rigid community management (complete with automated tweets to everyone who writes “Good Morning” on Twitter) is the best social media account in the Middle East. I wonder how much was paid for the award.

Speaking of bad community management, you might want to check what your competitor has posted before using the same image around the same time. Also, for radio Facebook pages, I say it again, your pages should be more about your own freaking brands and less 9gag and baby/puppy photos.

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DR. cloud

It seems that our team is highly invested in discussing our managing director’s body hair on our Whatsapp group. No wonder our issues are getting delayed every month and our website is still not working properly.

How do you know if you need to take your children out of the house more? Simple: if their letters to Santa include an Amazon link).

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Trying to find productive employees but failing?

You can always try this approach:

And finally, for our blue ribbon of the month! It might not be a big deal, but we have not seen a lot of brands flirting with each other on our timelines in Lebanon yet. Kudos to Red Bull and Paliakov!

EVENTS Behance Beirut Night at AltCity

By Paul Gadallah

@paulinbeirut

AltCity once again brings the Lebanese freelancer community together. AltCity, being a coworking space open to freelancers to get together and innovate, brought in the Behance Beirut team to help evaluate freelancers’ portfolios and give them feedback.

What is Behance? Behance is a multi-functional platform where freelancers can network, find jobs, and give constructive feedback on each other’s portfolios. A range of freelancers can use the website, from animators to architects. The Behance Beirut team took over AltCity for a night to work with freelancers at a packed house.

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Unfortunately though, the event could have gone smoother. The event was set to kick-off at 7:00pm sharp but did not start until 7:45 with no explanation. After a small presentation on what Behance is, the floor was given to Simon Mhanna, a fellow freelancer who offered tips on how freelancers should build their portfolios and what kind of skills they should pick up.

The night improved from there though. Freelancers were split up into groups, architects, animators, photographers, and illustrators with a Behance judge heading each group. Freelancers got the chance to present their portfolios, ask the judges important questions, and receive vital feedback on their projects. Afterwards guests were allowed to give their feedback on the event, and all I’d have to say is just start on time.

Dream Matcher Experience at AltCity

By Lynn Bizri

@lnlne

An enthusiastic crowd showed up at AltCity in Hamra on Wednesday November 6th, eager to take part in the Dream Matcher Experience, a one-of-a-kind event that takes place on the first Wednesday of every month. The monthly event, which serves as an offline platform to connect people with dreams and wishes to others who can make their dreams and wishes come true, has been a regular feature at AltCity for a year and a half now.

The concept is simple; attendees are

Arabnet Devtour in Lebanon Who's Your [Code] Master Baby?

By Darine Sabbagh

@sdarine

For the second year in a row Arabnet, are launching a quest to find the best coders in the region. Starting with Beirut, where the first DevTour event for this year happened on October 26th in Beyrtech’s Digital District, Arabnet has tested the programmers through three rounds: Speed, Creativity and Competency to

find the Code Master. This year DevTour has evolved beyond just being a hackathon type competition; attendees were there not only to test their coding skills but also advance their career through a job fair and discover the latest technologies in web and mobile development through workshops given by industry experts.

Two things were also notable from this year’s DevTour in Lebanon. There was a good turnout of female coders competing and achieving good scores

given name tags upon arrival along with a table assignment and three differently colored postit notes to write their dreams on and then stick to Altcity's floor-to-ceiling windows. Attendees are then asked to discuss their skills, hobbies, interests and dreams with the other people on their table before heading to the windows and writing their name (or the name of anyone in their group) on the dreams that they think they could make come true. Finally, each person is asked to retrieve their post-its and find the people whose names are listed on them.

Whether you want to learn a new sport, meet a local celebrity, acquire a new skill or find someone to share a hobby with, Altcity's Dream Matcher Experience is the perfect opportunity to make your dreams and others' come true.

up to the final rounds, though not scoring the big prize. Also, the number of developers who filled up BDD this year around is higher than last year which shows a growing tech community spirit.

Though the cumulative prize of 5,000 dollars across four winners was a great incentive to participate, it does not stop there. The winners of the Lebanon round of the competition will go on to compete with finalists from five other country rounds for the title of best country team and best Code Master and of course more great prizes.

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Facebook for Business Workshop by Right Services

By Cloud961 Staff

@cloud961mag

Marketers who are looking to develop and execute strong digital marketing strategies using Facebook had the chance to attend the “Facebook for Business” workshop held by Right Service on November 6 and 7 at the Movenpick Hotel in Beirut.

Attendees got to learn and integrate the best practices to leverage Facebook for business applications for growth and profitability in the year ahead. The workshop trainer was Joe Ghantous, the founder of Right Services.

Courtesy of Beiruting

I See Dead Start-ups

Halloween Party at AltCity for the Entrepreneurship Community in Lebanon

By Cloud961 Staff

@cloud961mag

Entrepreneurs and their ecosystem in Beirut got to have their VERY OWN Halloween Party this year at AltCity’s Mezzanine Café in Hamra on Thursday October 31st. They even had three awards for the best costumes: Bibi Design Agency's character (Bayan Bibi) won the prize for the smartest costume idea, while a tie occurred for the couple costume prize: Pimp my Mummy and iOS + Android won.

Courtesy of Beirut Nightlife

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and complexities.

GDG Beirut Google Bootcamp

• User’s screens are getting smaller at some points and getting larger at others so companies need to make sure that their digital platforms and messages are adaptive enough for both. – Fadi Sabbagha, CEO of Born Interactive (@fadisabbagha)

By Armen Bakkalian, President, Hagaizian’s Online Collaborative @ArmenBakkalian

• There’s a new era of payments available in the Banking sphere, although Bank Audi is implementing the most innovative ones in the upcoming year, there’s a huge challenge in user and market readiness.

– Randa Bdeir, Bank Audi

The 2nd edition of DGTL#U Talks on Big Data and Local Challenges for Going Digital Full Board

By Darine Sabbagh

@sdarine

For the second time, Al Iktissad Wal Aamal hosted a two day conference in Beirut with local, regional and international speakers to discuss the future of digital for SME’s, Startups and Banks. With the conversation this year maturing and shifting to more themed talks moving away from the “Why digital?” that we heard last year to the “What to do in digital?” , “ What next in digital and the digital eco-system?”.

As government regulations in the fields of digital startups, ecommerce and e-banking being a continuous concern in Lebanon, the forum opening commenced with HE Nicolas Sehnaoui, Lebanon's Minister of Telecommunications, mentioned that the infrastructure has been the main challenge, however thanks to the ministry's efforts, this challenge has been contained in the last two years. The aim of the ministry, all along, has been to build an ecosystem that will enable Lebanon to achieve the success of the countries that it’s compared with. On the second day of DGTLU Sehnaoui also talked about the efforts being undertaken by the ministry in opening doors and providing opportunities for start-ups, innovators and entrepreneurs in Lebanon.

As the forum unraveled across the two days two things became apparent. The first is that there are still a few speakers out there in the digital realm who are unashamed of showing a 5 minute video of a two year old case study in digital with screenshots of the old Facebook layout [tsk tsk]. And the second was that the majority of those present were now seeing through that and were very savvy in differentiating good value insights from the speakers versus general text book truth which shows a true maturity in the digital scene [sigh] finally! And most importantly, across the board speakers and attendees have shifted from referring to online versus offline marketing towards integrated marketing.

DGTLU Sound Bytes from the Speakers

If you’ve missed DGTLU, instead of you going through the slides and various videos from the event we have compiled for you some key takeaways.

• Lebanese Banks lag behind in being Digital – Al Iktissad Wal Aamal (@iktissad) • A survey conducted by Al Iktissad Wal Aamal across 500 Lebanese Digital natives who actively buy goods online, use social media across the board revealed that most did not even know if their bank was on social media or had a mobile app. What is also not surprising is they admitted to not using the bank’s e-banking services often due to platform limitations

• The future of marketing is not in Digital, it’s in “Adaptive Marketing” which involves building systems and products that engage with the consumers throughout the product/service development process measuring everything they do. – Rasha Rteil, Mindshare Lebanon (@rasharteil) • Be prepared for Big Data – Elie Nasr, Foo (@elienasr) • Gamification is what will keep your stakeholder’s engaged with you. Your organization can use it both in marketing campaigns and internally. – Ziad Feghali (@wixelstudios) • Don’t just make your marketing social, make your business social. – Monica Karam, Social4ce (@mony_) • Facebook Campaigns create engagement spikes, work on getting these spikes closer and closer together to ensure wider range and engagement in the long run. – Alex Tho Seeth, Managing Director at Facelift MENA (@ThoSeeth) • You don’t need a BIG Budget, you need a Big Idea and a Long Idea to create a cost effective campaign that drives long term engagement and reach. – Hando Sinisalu, Founder & CEO of Best Marketing International (@handosinisalu) • The new Middle East is Digital and it expects new forms of communication and hashtags everything. – Tarek Miknas, CEO of FP7 MENA and Martin Yofre, Business Director at Momentum MENA • Make your visuals a centerpiece of your communication, they should be interactive, they should tell a story. This is the main thing you audience will notice. Text is secondary. – Adam Helweh, Strategic Design, Social Media & Digital Marketing Professional at Secret Sushi Creative (@secretsushi)

In partnership with Startup Weekend Byblos , GDG Beirut organized a boot-camp for Startup Weekend Beirut & Byblos participants as well as to anyone interested. GDG Beirut Google Bootcamp took place at Coworking 961 on November 9, 2013. Raghd Hamze from GDG Beirut gave a brief introduction about GDG Beirut. He stated that they are not related to the company Google, instead they are a group of people who love Google products.

After these brief introductions, Raghd Hamze started his session called “Getting started with Android”. He explained how to start a new android project on “Eclipse” step-by-step. Raghd stated that it is easy to work on Eclipse, even if you’re not familiar with Java.

Afterwards he tested the app on his mobile phone and showed it to the participants.

Donald Derek Haddad started his session called “What You can do with AppEngine”. He presented tutorials using Google AppEngine and Google Compute Engine. He ended his session by “may the source be with you!”

“Using Google Drive API” was the next session by Marc Farra, co-founder of LambaLabs. He explained how to use the Google Spreadsheets API. Fadi Bizri, Director of Bader, briefly talked about Coworking961 and stated that it is a shared-space between MIT and Bader, and reminded about some of the GEW events that took place later in the month.

The last session was by Rakan Nimer, CTO of Et3arraf, called “Building a complete app with Google Maps”.

Et3arraf.com is an online dating site with Google Maps integration. He introduced the participants to the Google Maps tools and showed what can be done with it. The event was fully recorded by Menaversity.

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‘Innovating for Life’ Conference featuring Fabrice Leclerc

By Cloud961 Staff

@Cloud961mag

INSIGHTS’ for Consultancy proudly presented for the first time in Lebanon and the Middle East the Innovation Guru Fabrice Leclerc in an event entitled “Innovating for Life”. The event took place on the 23rd of November at UNESCO palace-Beirut where Leclerc shared his experience in innovation as an advisor of top 100 companies including UN, Google, L’Oreal, Armani, Haagen Dazs, among others.

Minister Nicolas Sehnaoui talked about Digital Economy and addressed the entrepreneurs informing them about the BDL Entrepreneurship Program and the prominent Lebanese artist Georges Khabbaz illustrated the concept of innovation in his unique way.

Speakers from top Lebanese and international corporations in different industries as BLOM BANK, Alfa, SAMSUNG and Roadster diner presented their innovative approach to CSR and sustainable development in their respective industries. In addition, the Dean of Faculty of Business Administration and Finance at Sagesse University Dr. Rock Antoine Mehanna created a bridge between academia and the market place in his presentation.

This event created great exposure to the Lebanese youth and to the corporate employees and executives about the new trends in business. The trend intertwines profitability with innovation, corporate social responsibility, environmental friendliness and sustainable development.

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Networking 961: Opening party of GEW Lebanon 2013

On November 19th of last year, the entire entrepreneurship ecosystem of Lebanon celebrated Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) 2013 during Bader's flagship event Networking 961 with Investment Sponsors Berytech Fund and Investment Support MEVP, Wamda and Leap Ventures. The 3 winners of Bader Startup Cup were also announced during the event, while networking and fun followed.

The winners were: • First Place: SerVme • Second Place: Qi Juices • Third Place: Zima

Startup Weekend Beirut: No Talk All Action

By Elsa Abi-Khalil, AUB’s Online Collaborative @ak_elsa The last weekend of November has been remarkably marked by a special event, the 54-hour Startup Weekend Beirut “No Talk All Action” workshop, which has brought together entrepreneurs and developers to turn abstract tech ideas into concrete. This event was organized by the eClub (The Entrepreneurship club) and sponsored by Beirut Digital District, Cloud5 by Solidere, and Tarek Kettaneh. Over 10 teams used their best idea to compete against one another for the winning prize—funding! Each team consisted of a business member and a developer at least. Some came with the idea they knew that they were going to start with, while others were either encouraged to come up with one on the spot or join a person with an idea. Some of them came with their friends to enjoy this experience further, while others came alone.

While the teams were working on their application, website, or tech object, speeches and discussions were held in the conference room. A social media talk was presented by Dr. Maria Frangieh on Saturda who highlighted the importance of social media in promoting and raising awareness about a company, a product, or a person. Frangieh spoke about the social networks—she uses most of them if not all—and she taught the attendees what they are used for and how.

Another talk worth attending was the “Panel for Entrepreneurs by Entrepreneurs” held on Saturday as well. They discussed and exchanged their opinion and life experiences for advice with the attendees concerning entrepreneurship and

particularly the patience, persistence, risk-taking, passion, and thrive needed to succeed. They also added that curiosity is the ultimate weapon to accomplish success. They also mentioned that people getting employed in a company with which they do not share the same culture, is a waste of time, especially for someone who is keeping his dreams on hold. The experienced entrepreneurs encouraged their fellow listeners to get out there and turn business planned intentions into actions.

Passing by the work zone tables, everyone on the teams was busy working, highly motivated and giving off an infectious positive energy.

While presenting on Sunday, every team had to discuss the product and use of it with one of the developers if there are many, and then the business plan—goals and objectives setting, marketing research, estimated budget and revenue, etc—by a business people in charge of that. After a while, the judges announced the third rank winner, “Pick Me Up” application which is targeted for cab services, both the customer and the cab driver can use it. The second rank winner is “Tictag”, a website designed to collect all sort of tags in one cloud and all sort of things about each of them. And finally, the big winner is “Shakkel”, created by Amer Homaissi, Salim Mougharbel, Rita Atallah, and Mowaffak Allaham, It an application to shape the phonetic sound of every Arabic letter, “bel 7arake”. They have won 1500 $ in financial funding, an office space for a month and a Cisco training workshop among other things.

With this support, “Shakkel” is expected to continue working on the application and sell its services in the market. We wish them the best of luck!

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Online Collaborative and Converse ‘Get Loud’ in Beirut

By Cloud961 Staff

@cloud961mag

Online Collaborative, the initiative bringing together online influencers in Lebanon, celebrated its 3rd year anniversary in style on the 15th of November of 2013, taking part in Converse’s global ‘Get Loud’ Initiative. GET LOUD took over the country’s digital platform, through the hype created on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Through a series of events in Beirut, a number of the Lebanese youth were brought together and engaged in activities including street art, walking photo booths, and a rocking party until dawn.

Young uprising talents took to the streets of Hamra where they expressed themselves and got loud with their street art. Spectators around the area got excited and contributed to the drawings while the music rocked in the background. Meanwhile, sneakers got even louder in other areas of the city where people wearing them where posing for the walking photo-booth and uploading them on social media platforms, with the hashtags #GetLoud, #Converse, #OC3years.

The party then continued in the Philka Warehouse at the Dora Sea Road, on Friday November 15, where crowds raised their voices at the celebration party, featuring the rising talent Virgin Radio’s DJ MASS, and the astounding trendy band, JLP. After a lengthy interlude provided by the well-practiced DJ, the crowds cheered for JLP and their dancing got louder as they moved to the DJ’s tunes until dawn. At the event, sneaker addicts raised their voices and got to customize their sneakers with neon colored designs and stencils.

“The whole team was excited about being part of the Get Loud initiative. This fits perfectly with our audience and image. The Online Community is glad to have Converse on board for this event and we, as Online Collaborative, are glad that we are celebrating our third anniversary in this manner,” commented Mohammad Hijazi, Chief Collaborator of the Online Collaborative.

Get Loud is an initiative taking place in many major cities around the world, inspired by the Converse seasonal brand expression “Shoes Turn It Down Sneakers Get Loud.” The Get Loud music series celebrates the rebellious and gloriously chaotic spirit of rock ‘n’ roll, an unorganized religion with generations of followers. It is leather and studs in a world gone soft. It’s about getting loud, and never doing anything in life quietly.

Courtesy of Patrick Sawaya

Courtesy of Beirut Nightlife

Courtesy of Beirut Nightlife

Courtesy of Beirut Nightlife

Courtesy of Patrick Sawaya

Courtesy of Patrick Sawaya

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Courtesy of Beirut Nightlife

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Courtesy of Beirut Nightlife

Courtesy of Patrick Sawaya

Courtesy of Beirut Nightlife

Courtesy of Patrick Sawaya

Courtesy of Patrick Sawaya

Courtesy of Patrick Sawaya

Courtesy of Patrick Sawaya

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Startup Weekend Byblos

By Lynn Bizri

@lnlne

Startup Weekend is a global network of leaders and entrepreneurs who are on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities. Startup Weekend Byblos took place on the weekend of Nov. 15-17 at LAU Byblos and was powered by the Kauffman Foundation.

The event began on Friday at 4:00 pm with registration, followed by a dinner and networking before the pitching of ideas at 7.30 p.m. Once attendees had voted for the top ideas, the rest of the night was spent formalizing the teams depending on the resources and skills needed. On Saturday, the morning was spent setting up the workspaces for the weekend as well as getting one-on-one help from the mentors available throughout the day.

Finally, Sunday's activities concluded the event, with teams getting last-minute guidance from the mentors and preparing their final presentations to present to the jury prior to the announcement of the three winners.

By the end of the Startup Weekend, 10 great ideas had been created and were ready for the final pitch on Sunday night. They included: SmartOutlets, UWallet, BaladiMenBaladi, antArchitect, YallaImages, Saily, Tyoun.in, Bloody, Clapp and InkLink. The teams pitched their ideas before a panel of professionals/ potential investors that included Marc Dfouni (CEO of Eastline Marketing), Brahms Chouity (CEO at At7addak.com), Roger Khater (Chairman and General Manager at BuBleik SAL), Elie Akhrass (representing Kafalat SAL) and Fadi Sabbagha (Founder and CEO of Born Interactive and Co-founder/Director of Travel Systems). The ideas were judged by the panel and the winners according to three important criteria: Business Model Validation, Product Execution and User Experience Design. First Place went to Saily who were later disqualified, followed by BaladiMinBaladi in Second Place and Clapp in Third.

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Saily*

• Team: Jihad Kawas • Prize: $3000, 3 months incubation at Berytech Digihive BDC, 6 months of working space at Neopreneur in Byblos, Yearly Subscription to T3 Magazine, 70% discount on how you start your business training from Cisco Entrepreneurship Institute, Coffee Machine and 50% discount on coffee from Frida Coffee • Idea: A mobile app that provides garage sale services in a social network environment, doesn't charge people for the interactions or take commissions. You can search for goods being sold either according to a specific category or within a specific radius that you define.

• *Saily later lost first place due to the disqualification of Jihad Kawas as the idea behind the startup had been developed prior to Startup Weekend

BaladiMenBaladi

• Team: Cosette Saliba, Firas Darwiche • Prize: $1500, 3 months incubation at BDC, T3 Magazine Subscription, 50% discount Cisco Training • Idea: An e-commerce website made for the Lebanese community whereby people can buy local or 'baladi' products produced in villages. The sellers who makes these products can have profiles on the website which allows the buyer to know more about the maker of the product.

Clapp

• Team: Mario Achkar, Kifah Daher, Osama AlJamal • Prize: $1000, 3 months incubation BDC, T3 Magazine Subscription • Idea: A mobile app that you can use to control your phone based on a sequence of certain sounds such as claps or whistles. In standby, the app listens to the sounds in the environment and only triggers certain actions when specific sounds are heard. The phone can start recording, reply with 'I'm here' if you're looking for it, unlock and perform almost any function simply in response to a specific personal sound.

TEDx Azmi Street: Connecting Dots.

TEDx Azmi Street took place in Safadi Cultural Center in Tripoli on November 23. Check out the photos from the event below.

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TEDxBeirut Salon 7.0: Shifting Perspectives The TEDxBeirut team hosted their 7th edition of TEDxBeirut Salon on November 28 at Minus 5 in Mkalles. The venue inspired the theme for the event which was Shifting Perspectives. Set in a film production studio, the organizers wanted this salon to explore different perspectives and invite the audience to shift their own.

The event highlighted Team Lebanon, fresh back from their latest expedition in Oceania, and Segundo Bloco who rocked the salon with their incredible Brazilian beats.

The videos that were watched during the event were: Rory Sutherland – Perspective is everything and Raghava KK – Shake up your story.

Inaugurating the Mount Lebanon Startup Weekend For BAU Students.

Bahia El Hariri: Let us Invest in the Dreams of our Youths

The Center for Entrepreneurship at Beirut Arab University with the collaboration of Kauffman Foundation organized the “Mount Lebanon Startup Weekend Competition 2013” which was inaugurated by an Opening on the 15th of November, 2013 and culminated on the 17th of November, 2013 at Debbieh Campus.

The Opening Ceremony was held in the presence of the President of the Parliamentary Commission of Education and Culture, MP Bahia El Hariri, Prof.

Dr. Amr Galal El Adawi, President of BAU, Mr. Issam Houri, BAU Secretary General, Dr. Leila Abboud, Director of the CFE at BAU, Mr. Nabil Itani, CEO of IDAL, Ambassador Abdel Mowla El -Solh, Eng. Mohamed El Baba, Member of the Municipality of Sidon, a number of deans and professors, as well as a crowd of students participating in the CFE competition and their parents.

The event included the launching of the best students’ projects competition and was opened with the Lebanese National Anthem, followed by the BAU anthem. Dr. Leila Abboud, Director of the CFE, then, delivered a speech in which she pointed out that the aim of the competition is to provide young people with an opportunity to demonstrate their talents and creativity.Prof. Dr. Amr Galal El Adawi, President of BAU, remembered late Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, who was the first Lebanese to consider education and its importance for the youth. He had thus sent over 35 thousand students to study abroad, who consequently attained distinguished higher degrees. Prof. El Adawi added, “The creativity and ideas of the youth are plentiful, but they need someone willing to study and adopt them. The youth need someone to help them realize these ideas. Thus this competition enables the youth to be creative and present ideas that will see the light. Since it is team-work that is successful, the competition is based on the idea of group-work”. The President further pointed out that the CFE was launched two years ago with the aim to develop the abilities of the youth. The philosophy behind it was that no individual should await a job, but rather that we should contribute through our ideas to the creation of jobs.

Next, Mrs. Hariri gave a speech emphasizing on this

distinguished weekend, and wished there had been more similar programs for them, the people who work in the public arena. She hoped that all people could cooperate and collaborate towards the good of Mankind and of the homeland, to achieve its progress and prosperity. She said that we live in a country which, rather than investing in the dreams of young men and women, their lives are filled with nightmares and crises. Advanced societies did not achieve progress except through the dreams of their members. She therefore, extended her thanks to the BAU Administration and the Kauffman Foundation for their kind invitation – an invitation that has revived hope in her, as she explained.

The participating students, then, proceeded to elaborate on the projects they had innovated, which focused mainly on issues of energy conservation and the preservation of the environment. Some projects offered solutions to difficulties faced by people in their daily lives, some of which were dedicated to people with special needs.

The jury, who selected the final winners, consisted of: • Mr. Adam Holwa, USA Silicon Valley • Mr. Amer Tabosh, Future TV • Mr. Marwan Faroun, BLOM Bank Branch Director • Mr. Roget Melky, Economic Expert and Consultant • Mr. Ziad Shaaban, IT consultant

The three winning projects were: • First Prize: $5000, presented by Beirut Municipality to the Morshid Project.

• Second Prize: $3500, presented by BLOM Bank to the Left-Right-Hand Chair Project.

• Third Prize: $2000, presented by Audi Bank to the High Advanced Wheel Chair Project.

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Three Startups Representing Lebanon in the Web Summit in Dublin!

The Web Summit is a global gathering of the world's leading thinkers and doers in technology. It hosts over tens of thousands of the brightest minds every year and allows people to network, meet with journalists and connect with potential investors. The Summit is without a doubt the most awaited event of the year by entrepreneurs and anyone with a great tech idea or business will benefit from attending in many ways.

Among the 10,000 other attendees arriving from the four corners of the world, the Arab world - despite all the political tensions reigning the region - was still represented by several startups coming from the Gulf, Middle East, and North Africa. From Lebanon, six startups attended the event of which three had a stand in the exhibition area.

Sociatag, eTobb, and Lebtivity, three Lebanon-based startups, who launched between 2011 and 2013, were selected among thousands of worldwide applicants to exhibit as part of the Summit’s Alpha program. This program identified and invited a limited number of incredible early stage startups to exhibit for free! These three companies, along with et3arraf, Maze Solutions and Seeqnce who independently attended the conference, all packed their bags for Dublin this October 2013 to showcase their products and meet some of today’s most renowned tech companies such as Evernote, Google, Facebook, Box & many more.

All had different expectations, but for the most part, this was new ground.

Thus, the main goal was to explore. The Web Summit opened new doors for these startups and placed them under an international radar. The benefits of such a gathering are numerous! “We encourage all entrepreneurs to go next year because there is no way they won’t get something out of it” said CEO of Sociatag, Wassim Hakim.In Lebanon, the opportunities for startups are still limited. Although this is slowly changing with new funds being created to help grow these businesses, the motivation and culture of starting your own tech business is not widely grasped and supported by our society and government.

“Entrepreneurs must get out there and seize every opportunity that presents itself in order to represent Lebanon and learn from other countries in order to make Lebanon a better place”, stated co-founder of Lebtivity, Randa Farah.

Paul Saber, CEO of eTobb added “Our testimonial today of the Web Summit is the exact message we are trying to deliver to the Lebanese people; and that message is: Get moving, do something! Don’t wait for things to come to you because they won’t”.

Nike Running Club Beirut Blogger’s Run The Nike Running Club is an initiative from Nike Beirut that aims to motivate people in order for them enjoy fun activities for free. The run with the bloggers and influential people took place on November 5 at the Nike store at 6:30 pm, which is the usual time for the run that happens twice a week. The runners were divided into two groups based on how far the run is and were accompanied with coaches.

The Web Summit 2013 - Dublin, Ireland - Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ websummit/sets/

eTobb Team in a business networking event during the Night Summit

The Web Summit 2013 - Dublin, Ireland - Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/websummit/sets/

Sociatag Team stand in the Web Summit

Lebanese Entrepreneurs in the Web Summit

Lebtivity Team stand in the Web Summit

VAN DAMME’S 1. JEAN-CLAUDE EPIC SPLIT FOR VOLVO Volvo has teamed up with the famous Jean-Claude Van Damme for an ad designed to demonstrate the company trucks’ “Volvo Dynamic Steering” feature.

.com

The 53 year old action star pulled one of his epic splits but this time in between two Volvo trucks to promote the brand’s new dynamic steering system. The ad has become a YouTube hit. If you haven’t seen it yet, go on YouTube & check out the video entitled: Volvo Trucks The Epic Split feat. Van Damme.

Online journal bringing you the latest digital, web, user insights & social media news!

DOMINATES 81% OF 2. ANDROID WORLD SMARTPHONE MARKET

OF ME’, SELFIE APP 3. ‘SHOTS

CUSTOMIZED 4. TWITTER TIMELINES

Android has reached more than 80% market share for smartphone shipments worldwide. The new Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker released by IDC details third-quarter numbers for all smartphone shipments worldwide. A total of 261.1 million smartphones were shipped during this quarter, 81 percent of which run Google’s operating system, Android.

Shots of Me, a selfie sharing iOS app that’s funded by Justin Bieber was launched by RockLive this month.

In short, “Shots of ME” is a social network entirely for selfies where users only take photos of themselves and share them with friends and their other social profiles such as Twitter.

Great news for Twitter addicts! Twitter has recently announced that its users are now able to create their own customized timeline as a step to separate relevant tweets from the clutter in a fast-moving feed.

5. TapTap WRISTBAND

SMARTPHONE TO 6. HeadsUP: YOUR WINDSHIELD

INVISIBLE BIKE 7. THE HELMET

A new technology by Woodenshark that targets couples has hit the market. TapTap offers couples a way to communicate via taps. One user taps the wristband and the other feels the vibrations. For $130, you will receive two TapTaps that can run up for a maximum of seven days on one charge, get to download the app, connect both parties’ emails and tap away.

HeadsUP is a new product by tech startup NeXt that projects frequently-used smartphone features like texting, voice calls, and email, onto a user’s car windshield.

Hövding is a revolutionary invisible bike helmet that can save your life if a road accident occurs.

It’s not actually invisible. It’s a helmet shaped airbag that pops out of a fashionable neck pillow when its sensors detect a crash.

So far, the company’s Kickstarter Campaign has gathered $75,000 of its $130,000 goal.

To enforce the selfies-only rule, you have to take photos using the front-facing camera. No uploading - meaning the emotions you see in a new uploaded Shots Of Me is how that person is feeling right now.

The Indiegogo campaign has set a $50,000 fundraising goal for a device that “significantly reduces reaction time while driving”, as it gives users access to their phone without the hassle of looking down or reaching out to get it.

However, TweetDeck users will only be able to organize a stream of selected tweets from a single event, hashtag or topic.

The helmet passed European inspection and has succeeded in a Swedish insurance company’s test, beating 12 other more-standard bike helmets.

MOBY’S 8. REMIX TRACK

NEW MEASURES 9. GOOGLE, AGAINST CHILD PORNOGRAPHY

A KARAOKE 10. SINGTRIX, LOVER’S DREAM

Moby has recently released his 11th studio album, Innocents, and if you’re looking to remix it, BitTorrent is your destination.

Google has announced that it will start blocking links to child pornography within the next six months all over the globe.

The electronic music veteran has offered his new album as a BitTorrent Bundle for anyone who wishes to download and remix the music, as he considers it an opportunity to release music in a new way. With more than 2 million downloads and 50 remixes on SoundCloud, Moby’s definitely on to something here!

The company has assembled a team 200+ experts who are working on a new technology to tackle this issue. It consists of preventing child pornography links from appearing in the search results pages, along with warnings that accompany over 13,000 search results and explain that child sexual abuse is illegal. The warning also offers advice on how to get help.

From the creators of Guitar Hero comes Singtrix, a well designed modern karaoke machine that lets you sing any song from your mobile device. Plug your iPhone, Android, Kindle or any device with a 3.5mm jack into Singtrix and just watch it do its magic.

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The machine detects vocal tracks from any song, removes them and replaces them with your own voice. Singtrix can even make your voice sound different, if not even better!

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BUSINESS

CLOUD #7 NEW YEAR 2014