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! :)
