Are We Going away from Real Life By Online Social Life ?

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Hisham Sadek

It was actually an Interesting Question Got on my mind while I was on twitter and read this reply . Are We really going away from the fact of real social life By online social life ?

I’m not talking about a general view , I’m taking the example of such countries or communities like in Middle East where It’s restricted for some reasons (politically, or by the effect of community itself …etc) , It could look some kind of hard to build successful relationship in real life where at some point ,no problems can be found between people .

Everything around us affects our real life more than ordinary where youth, some journalists find in that online social life the only way to speak up and complain and make better relationships with better kinds of people than we meet and find the suitable mind to think with and to spread the truth that can be hard to publish it in newspapers.

And even if we’re going away to this online social life, Do we use it as much as we communicate in our real life !

The point is, many people who will start to join this online social life will think It will be perfect life to stay online 24/7 with The twitter thing or facebook , It could be right with some situations when you actually need it for some reason or you’re the source of spreading information most of time, and vice versa, It could be a big mistake if you go away from that real life and got yourself involved in that online social life.

An Example for The Mistake

6th April Movement (Strike) is a look to the real face of the big mistake of this social life, The whole Idea was a Group on Facebook to Stay at Home and don’t go to work on April 6th, 2008. I still say although we need a change and we need such organized events and so on, This was the stupidest idea ever which caused a great damage . Those people may have thought that It’s something easy like a trip or something and Let’s go We can do it with nothing to organize it .

While In real Life, Workers who manage strikes most of times get what they want at last, like the train drivers strike few days ago in Cairo.

We need to think more in our actions and our life and how it look like , Not everything is an easy move like a send button we click on in our online social life . We have to be fair with ourselves .

Also Read :
TECHNROLLA : Social Media Revolutions – The Egyptian Style
Embee’s Corner : Ignoring the Rule: To Support Gaza or Not to Support Gaza?

The Future of Social Media in Arab Organizations

Posted on January 16, 2009 by Hisham Sadek

This Post could be a one of series of posts regarding the condition of Social Media in Middle East & North Africa.

I’ve Been following Social Media for more than a year as I started to work with many Organizations. For some reason I could say that It’s not the responsibility of organizations to care about doing PR Campaigns but It’s also the responsibility of Communities itself .

Local Organizations ( I mean not in the capital or main city of the country ) do not even care or know what social media is however It could be a very successful organization but this does not deny the fact that using Services like Twitter, Facebook would be very helpful to allow more to get information and to help clients in the future in simple ways . The Negative point also is the companies’ websites does not offer the helpful content enough for clients or visitors .

Throughout My Experiment with UN Organizations in Egypt, Online Campaigns is a very important part to get to reach more people supporting their campaigns , for example I was responsible for launching the Online Campaign For World AIDS Campaign in Egypt for 2 years, At the first of All we focused on how to get the most out of Internet to support the online campaign, First of all We got head to Facebook . Through Facebook We Managed to create Group, Page, even An Application for WAC Egypt for years 2007, 2008 . Beside Integrating with the website of WAC Egypt, It gained more success than 2006 Campaign, and 2008 was so much better than 2007 while we got more visitors reaching to us from different ways (Facebook & Twitter Mainly) beside Search Keywords .

This was a simple thing that I learned that Our Community still did not got itself involved in more social services like Twitter which neither got Interest from Team work or even The Referrer from Facebook to Twitter.

Heading to UAE, I believe It’s more better than what we talked about in Egypt, The Community itself have involved organizations to start working on Marketing & PR Strategies and there It’s easier to know that organizations is depending on more social services to be on contact with clients and customers . We can even find More Startup companies there that works on useful social projects .

So Back to The general view of Arab Organizations and Social Media, It needs great improvements, Basically It needs more Educational Resources in Universities, It will be great of professors of Marketing started to care more about PR and how it could improve the organization and allow it to get more helpful information and reach to other points they may not did . It will be a great part to be included in the Integrated Marketing Communications.

More Info about Organizations in other Arab Countries will be helpful .

Hisham Sadek

Blogging from The Back of Town

Monthly Archives: January 2009