toot is the sound you make to draw attention to yourself. toot is a fruit that consists of little particles that make up a whole. toots belongs to a tree. toots is sweet. toot toot comes in different colours. No, really, what is this site?
tootlog What toot sounds like: hear it from the people behind this site
toot: newborn to toddler!
Last year, around this time, the first ideas that led to toot started bubbling up in our office..
Numerous concepts and approaches were flying around, all of which revolved around the revolution of web based self publishing and sharing.
Since then, the small toot team has really been working hard at developing ideas in several directions. In fact, what is seen today of toot, is really only the tip of the iceberg (ok, a small iceberg :).
In the coming weeks and months some of the ‘fruits’ of our labour will become visible.
As we draw closer to the first anniversary of our launch (which was on 1.1.2006) we also are working harder on making the Toot Corporation financially viable. This too will become evident soon. And just in case you’re wondering: no, it won’t mean that we’ll be giving toot memberships away to the highest bidder :) (Hey! That would be one heck of a business model).
I’d like to quote the founder of Technorai, David Sifry here, regarding ‘making money’, which is the supposed aim of any company. David says that Technorati’s mission is ‘to be of service’ and NOT to make money. But he also says that making money is, to a company, like breathing to a human being. Without breathing, human die. Without making money companies die.
But we, as humans do not exist JUST to breathe! Neither should companies exist JUST to make money.
Guy Kawasaki, another ‘guy’ I would like to quite advises startups to set out to Make Meaning. If a company makes meaning, by being ‘of service’, by empowering people to express themselves, or better their life, then the money follows.
These are standards that are hard to measure up to. I’ve been through enough ventures and have also witnessed enough companies to see how hard it is to stay meaningful and financially viable as well.
Toot has started out as a window onto the Arabian blogosphere. We’ve become a good starting point for many who want to explore the ongoing online conversations around Arabia. Other windows do exist, of course. Ours reflects our own effort to be diverse and inclusive.
As we move on with our new initiatives we will focus on three areas:
* Enable those bloggers who want to go ‘pro’ and earn part of their living via blogging to take a good step towards such goal, while at the same time, remaining wide open to those bloggers who do not want to go pro and who simply see their blogs as their independent voices.
* Enable a wider audience of people to express themselves digitally and connect with other people online.
* Give people tools to create their own cocktails of web media.
Wish us luck on this journey. We hope you enjoy it too.
11 Responses to “toot: newborn to toddler!”
Leave a Reply
October 17th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
All the best of luck, this is very exciting news! hopeing the times to come will be fruitful for toot and for its members alike :)
October 17th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Thanks a lot.. we hope you’ll see some results soon.
October 17th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
best of luck inshallah
but may i suggest that since toot may come to profit from the work and/or existance of its bloggers than it should (upon becoming wealthy) reward those members annually with a box of toot.
October 17th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
The best of luck to you people,
I hope u can achieve that hard equation…
October 18th, 2006 at 12:36 am
good luck!
I look forward to it!
October 18th, 2006 at 2:56 am
All the best! I’m looking forward to this. Toot Continue to impress me with all the great work and ideas. Ya3deekoum alf 3afiya
October 19th, 2006 at 12:54 am
Good luck, so now you’ll start asking bloggers to pay money? or what
October 19th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
thanks everyone for your cmments..
Special reply to Moey: asking bloggers to pay us money? Hmm. 55 million blogs in the world. If we could get every blogger to pay us just 1 cent a a day that would be US$ 200,750,000 a year.. nice business ha?
But no.. we’ll not do that. It’s more like, WE will be paying bloggers who want to ‘go pro’ :)
Stay tooted..
November 28th, 2006 at 4:50 am
[…] Remember Ahmad’s post two months ago “toot: newborn to toddlers!” By now you might have an idea on what we were talking about, last week we launched our photo and video sharing website www.ikbis.com and just two days ago we launched the toot advertising network […]
November 28th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
[…] Remember Ahmad’s post two months ago “toot: newborn to toddler!” By now you might have an idea on what we were talking about, last week we launched our photo and video sharing website www.ikbis.com and just two days ago we launched the toot advertising network […]
December 10th, 2006 at 3:29 am
oh now it makes sense, nice idea!