Arabnet 2012: Wikipedia Calls on Arab Community to Boost Arabic Content on The Website in

Following the Opening Ceremony for the Arabnet 2012 Summit held in Beirut, an interesting panel on hot trends in web and mobile kicked off Thursday with TechCrunch editor MikeButcher, National Net Ventures CEO Rashid AlBallaa, Angel Investor Hussein Khanji, CMEA’s Saad Khan and Hummingbird Venture’s Pamir Gelenbe.

According to AlBallaa, mobile youtube in Saudi Arabua is the second worldwide. “The Middle East market is hugely growing and most of start-ups tend to evolve around entertainment or e-commerce, entertainment because a huge percentage of the population in the Middle East is young.”

Kanji highlighted the issue of Arabic content, and said that it was the lowest indexed despite the huge demand.”

Khan described the consumption in the Middle East as “mobile driven”.

“iPhone penetration is growing in the MENA,” AlBallaa added. “Mobile penetration in Saudi Arabia is 200%, with 26% of phones being smartphones, a percentage higher than the UK (25%)”.

“However, we need more local applications related to the region, instead of copying international applications.”

According to the panel, Facebook has more than 35 million users in the Middle East, but has no region.

Regarding e-commerce, Pamel said the boom in e-commerce in Turkey happened in 3 years.

Khan explained that enthusiasm and creativity have unlocked in Egypt following the Arab spring. “If you support one another, you will achieve success in the next 5 years,” he added.

Barry Newstead, Chief Global Development Officer at Wikimedia Foundation explained why Wikipedia is important for future of Arabic language.

Wikipedia, according to Wikimedia stats, is the 5th most visited website worldwide. 10 million visitors per month come from MENA. Only 154,000 articles on Wikipedia are in Arabic, despite the fact that there are 374 million Arabic speakers.

Newstead spoke of a strong Arabic Wikipedia community, with over 600 active editors. “Half of the site’s Arabic content comes from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. There other half comes from the rest of the world,” he said.

According to Newstead, Arabic is ranked at number 27 in terms of volume, with 280 languages available on Wikipedia. “We are excited about the potential for growth here, as more people come on to the Internet, to build an Arabic Wikipedia,” he said.