Yay, the feedback to the initial launch of toot has been absolutely wonderful! Thanks to everyone for showing their support.
We thought we would share some of the feedback we got from both the Arab and international blogosphere:

Lina Ejeilat of Into the Wind said:
“When I started blogging less than a year ago, a couple of hours of daily reading were enough to keep up with the regional blogosphere, or at least what interested me in it. …. With a busier schedule this past semester and an exponential growth of blogs in Arabia, what I would’ve loved to have is a bit of help in finding those. I certainly wouldn’t have minded someone keeping an eye on good stuff and bringing them to me neatly arranged on a platter.
Now thanks to a wonderful team of creative people with a passion for everything bloggy, my daily blog reading experience is becoming richer, and less tedious.”

Haitham Sabbah of Sabbah’s Blog:
“Good luck guys/gals. This project is the second most interesting one I saw in a year (first was and still is Global Voices).
The team is dedicated, passionate, professional, inelegant bloggers, readers, designers and technologists. I know personally some of them, and I’m proud to be on their list now and hopefully in the future.”

SheWrites:
“A few weeks ago, the lovely people at Toot contacted me and asked if I would like to be featured on their website. Of course I jumped at the chance — anything to whore SheWritesQ8.blogspot.com, afterall — and today I received the email that they’re up and running. So y’all should go check it out.”

Isam Bayazidi:
“What struck me first, and many of those who I talked to about it, is the very nice interface and design, one could not expect less than that from Syntax which have some of the best graphic and UI designers in town. The other thing, is that the name “toot” is creative, meaningful, and colorful….
If toot continues to be a maintained, updated, and introduce proper arabic interface soon, I think that it will gain more and more exposure and success. With the growth of blogging in the Arab world last year, one could only expect it to grow even further this year. toot could play a role in making quality blogs and posts more exposed and featured.”

MMM of Subzero Blue:
“A while back, while checking my blog’s statistics, I found a number of visitors coming from a site called “toot” that I didn’t know about.
When I checked the site, which was still in test mode, and not even in alpha, as they put it. I really liked the site’s idea and got all excited about the project.
I also found out that most of the people behind it are good friends of mine: Ahmad, Jad, Wael and Roba.
So what is toot?
toot is a handpicked aggregator for the Arab blogosphere to provide quality reading, both in Arabic and English.
What is quality reading or not is decided through a voting system through which people show their interests.”

Serdal:
“اليوم لدينا موقع عربي يقدم خدمة مفيدة، اسمه تووت (لاحظ الواو الثانية)، اسم طريف، تصميم الموقع أعجبني، عملي وأشعر بأن يداً محترفة صنعته، الموقع يعتمد على تقنية RSS، يبدو أنه جاء في الوقت المناسب، فقد نشرت استفتاء بسيطاً ثم نشرت نتائجه ووضعت بعض الروابط التي تتعلق بالتقنية، والآن لدينا مثال حي لموقع يستخدم التقنية بشكل عملي.
الموقع اختار عدة مدونات عربية متميزة، يضع آخر عناوين هذه المدونات ويسمح للزوار بتقييم المواضيع، ويمكن للزائر رؤية آخر العناوين لكل مدونة بدون الحاجة إلى زيارتها، هناك عدة أقسام في الصفحة الرئيسية، وهي الصفحة الذي يدور فيها معظم نشاط الموقع، رأس الصفحة يحوي شعار الموقع وثلاثة روابط وكلمة تعريفية بموقع تووت، شخصياً أرى أن يكون هذا القسم أصغر حجماً لكي يعطي فرصة للمزيد من المحتويات بالظهور، كذلك أتمنى أن تستبدل الفقرة التعريفية بأخرى أكثر وضوحاً، من الجميل أن يحاول الموقع أن يكون غير رسمي لكن في نفس الوقت الوضوح مهم هنا، أعتقد أن سطراً يشرح وظيفة الموقع سيكون أفضل للزائر من أي شيء آخر.”

Ethan Zuckerman:
“The Jordanian blogosphere is full of surprises. Following a link from my friend Haitham Sabbah’s blog, I found myself exploring Toot, a great new site that’s designed to feature blogs in English and Arabic from the Middle East. It’s clearly got some overlap in terms of mission with Global Voices, but is taking a very different technical strategy, letting people vote on which posts and bloggers they think are most exciting.
A number of the people behind Toot are fantastic Jordanian bloggers who I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person, including Jad, Ahmad and Roba, who also writes for Global Voices. ….
This is, indeed, really, really big. The opportunity to understand what people in other parts of the world are doing, thinking and feeling is critical to understanding how our interconnected world works. Congratulations to my friends and the other founders of Toot for putting together a great new tool that helps those of us outside Arabia understand what’s going on there, and lets people in the Arab world make connections across national borders. I wish you great success!”

Omar of Earth to Omar:
“I have a feeling that toot will expand very quickly, and will perhaps become one of the leading Arab blogging sites. Keep your eyes open, and mark my words.”

The Muscatis:
“I’m still trying to get my head around all the different things these guys are trying to achieve over there on toot. But I’m proud and happy that The Muscatis has been chosen as one of the 50 blogs featured in toot’s launch.”

Thank you guys for all the wonderful support and feedback! :)

During the past month or so, an interesting topic has been seeing a lot of light in the Arab blogosphere- anonymous blogging.

The first mention of Arabian anonymous blogging was in an article by Jihad al-Khazin on Dar Al-Hayat in June 2005, where he said in reference to the Jordanian blogosphere:

وكان الأردن بين أول الدول العربية التي نشطت في مجال البلوغز، خصوصاً ان الحكومة تشجع استعمال الانترنت، وهناك بلوغ باسم «جوردان بلانت» يجمع عدداً من البلوغز الأردنية. وثمة أسماء كثيرة تنشر مع البلوغز، ولكن لا نعرف على وجه التحديد إن كانت أسماء حقيقية. وفهمت أن بلوغز كثيرة مجموعة تحت سقف «جوردان بلانت» هي لناس يعيشون خارج الأردن.

Jihad al-Khazin recently wrote another article on anonymous blogging:

اكثر ما يقلقني، شخصياً، هو قدرة صاحب المدونة على كتم هويته، مما يفتح باباً عريضاً للتساؤل هل هو من يقول؟ وهل هو من البلد الذي يدّعي مواطنيته؟ وهل نيته سليمة فعلاً، أم انه يبث دعاية سوداء ضد افراد أو دولة بعينها أو دول؟ وهل يعمل منفرداً، أم انه جزء من جهاز للتشويش على بلد ما، او تحويل الانظار عن بلد آخر وما يرتكب من جرائم؟

That is the one side of the argument on anonymity. Haitham Sabbah agrees, “If a blog is anonymous, we need additional validation that it is okay to trust this blog. The more critical the issue, the more validation we need. In fact, for some really high stakes issues like our politics, religion, social issues, etc.. there may never be enough validation to trust an anonymous blog. When someone is giving you a political, religious, social, etc advice, you need some solid indices that it is okay to trust them.”

George at toot also has a similar opinion, “Why would someone blog and allow people to read her/his blog if she/he doesn’t want to be known? Wouldn’t it be better to use closed groups or forums? How can it be a personal blog with no identity? And how does this promote freedom of expression in our region?”

On the other side of the argument, both anonymous and non-anonymous bloggers disagree. Mahmood Al-Yousif of Mahmood’s Den says, “Learned gentlemen should know better than to attack all anonymous bloggers and commentors as incredible simply because he doesn’t know their names. What does it matter? Shouldn’t we just concentrate on the idea that person has brought forth and evaluate it on its own merit rather than demand to know who the person is, his lineage and religious and political affiliation before we accept that the idea proposed is acceptable or otherwise? Or even merits discussion? If this is a criteria, then aren’t almost all printed authors, especially first-time published ones, anonymous? Of course they are, but we do read their books and articles and evaluate those ideas on their own merit before we reach our own individual conclusions.”

Khalaf, a Jordanian anonymous blogger, rises up to defend anonymous blogging,  ”In real life I express the same thoughts that I blog quite freely. However, in real life I have the ability to judge what to say to whoever I am dealing with. In real life, my audience is not anonymous. On the internet, my readers are anonymous, and so am I. If people want to accept what I say, fine. If they don’t, that’s fine too. My only ambition is to make people think. They don’t need to know who I am to do that.”

Interesting. So what is your stance on anonymous blogging?

لقد وردتنا الكثير من الأسئلة عمّا إذا كانت توت ستوفّر واجهة استخدام عربي، والجواب بالتأكيد نعم. ولكن المحتوى سيبقى ثنائي اللغة ولن يتأثر بلغة واجهة الاستخدام… إننا الآن نعمل على تطوير واجهت الاستخدام العربية والسبب في تأخر إطلاقها هو أن تجربة إنشاء موقع تووت كانت تجربة جديدة لنا جميعاً على جميع الأصعدة بشكل عام وعلى الصعيد التقني بشكل خاص. وكما تعلمون فإنه ليس من السهولة بمكان تطبيق التقنيات باللغة العربية قبل التأكد من نجاحها باللغة الانجليزية. كل ما أرغب في قوله أننا نعمل بجد لإطلاق الواجه العربية.

Mindmap summing up the memes of web2.0 with example sites and services attached. It was created by Markus Angermeier on November 11, 2005.

Web 2.0.

A term I have come to really love. A term that signals change. A term we hear often these days.

But, what exactly is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is a place where people realize that network effects should come from communities and user contributions- keyword being “participation”. It is oriented toward interaction and social networks rather than a traditional website. Thus, due to participation and interaction, an essential part of Web 2.0 is connecting intelligence, turning the web into a kind of giant global brain.

To put it more solidly, let me give you examples; , Britannica Online is Web 1.0 while Wikipedia is Web 2.0, Ofoto is Web 1.0 while Flickr is Web 2.0, personal websites are Web 1.0 while blogs are Web 2.0.

Blogging, podcasting, and dynamic photosharing are a huge part of Web 2.0. The syndication and messaging capabilities of the new web have created a tightly-woven social fabric among individuals. Sites like del.icio.us and Flickr have established a concept that some people call “folksonomy” (in contrast to taxonomy), a style of collaborative categorization of sites using freely chosen keywords, referred to as tags. Simply, the democratization of the web!

One of the things that has made a difference is a technology called RSS, which allows someone to subscribe to a page, with notification every time that page changes, sort of like a “live web”. This technology is now being used to push notices of new blog entries, stock quotes, weather data, news briefs, etc.

The technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 is also different from that of Web 1.0. For example, a new dynamic technology called AJAX which increases richness and responsiveness of web applications is a key component of Web 2.0 applications such as Flickr, 37signals, and Gmail. Other such dynamic technologies such as Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, and PHP are also finding their place in Web 2.0.

All in all, the Web 2.0 is a social phenomenon where a change in approach in creating and distributing Web content- say hello to open communication, decentralization of authority, and freedom to share and re-use.

One of the parts that I find most fascinating part about Web 2.0 though is the fact that it is right at this moment: a widespread awakening to the fact that the game has changed.

Blogging is mainly about freedom of expression, sharing of information, thoughts and ideas. This healthy phenomenon started to kick off in Arab countries, and since it requires use of internet and computers it is being driven, mainly, by the younger generation.

Since blogs are personal online journals, each blog tends to reflect its owner’s personality, from the layout design to content. Generally, older bloggers have no problems in revealing their identity, unlike teenage bloggers. In the Arab Gulf countries Arab bloggers –and mainly female bloggers- tend to conceal their identities, unlike bloggers from Jordan for example.

Why would someone blog and allow people to read her/his blog if she/he doesn’t want to be known? Wouldn’t it be better to use closed groups or forums? How can it be a personal blog with no identity? And how does this promote freedom of expression in our region?

But the most important question is why do these bloggers hide their identity? Is it because of the country/community they live in? Maybe it is because they are afraid of someone coming after them (“safe blogging” issue), or is it that they don’t want their families/friends to know about it?

I tried to follow these blogs for some time and did not find any justifications for concealing identity, some of these blogs are very good, but not knowing who wrote the post (or who commented) does not create any personal connections with that blogger.
All that I found was just a few bad words here and there and some nasty comments like “*crew you”. If the use of some bad words is the reason for hiding identity I think bloggers (and readers) should refrain from using them and at least show their first name or image.
This will also enhance the blogs’ quality.

Welcome to toot everyone!