MENA Broadband Subscribers To Reach 27 Million By 2014According toInforma Telecoms & Media’s newMiddle East & North Africa Broadband report, the MENA region will continue to experience some of the world’s highest growth rates in broadband subscriber numbers.The report states that the 66 percent growth that the region witnessed in 2008 will be leveling out at around 24.9 percent (compound annual... [read more]

The IV Holdings team offers a huge congratulations to Talasim's founders, Zeid Koudsi and Sabri Hakim, and their exceptional team on their being selected as a winning startup at Seedcamp in London.  The week has been moving at lightspeed for them at Seedcamp, and it has certainly paid off, with their achieving a phenomenal feat, going into the heart of Europe and walking away as one of this year's... [read more]

An Interview with Amjad Tadros from ShooFeeTV can be viewed on http://www.aramram.com/episode/395 [read more]

Content Syndicate wins top award at Silicon India's Startup City. After two successful editions of Silicon India's Startup City event in Bangalore, the third edition was held on September 12, 2009 in Mumbai. Startup City 2009 is an open platform for startups to showcase their innovative technology, meet potential investors, business partners and customers. The day-long event drew... [read more]

  Participating at SeedCamp Week, Talasim got special recognition, including this wonderful quote from James Bilefield, one of the mentors at the event who is now the current president of Condé Nast International's new media division and former executive for Skype and Yahoo.  Bilefield thought the startup with the biggest potential to change the world was Talasim, a comedy community for... [read more]

Jeeran Story Is No Different Than The Story Of The Typical Silicon Valley Startup.Jeeran is an interesting Arab internet company because its story resembles the stories you hear about in Silicon Valley (USA): A Tech startup that starts from the founders’ garage or dorm and then makes it big (example:HP,YahooandGoogleto name a few.)Jeeran was founded in 2000 by then two Jordanian students and entrepreneurs... [read more]

Jeeran Takes On Yahoo!, Launches Jeeran Research Along With Nazarti: A Reward Based Online Survey Community.Jeeran one of the popular social media communities in the Arab world has recentlylaunched a new subsidiary calledJeeran Researcha research agency tailored to the Arab world (they callit MENA !) that competes directly with Yahoo’sMatoob Research.The new company is using a new reward based Arabic/English... [read more]

Quirkat playing to an Arabic tuneOur friends at Quirkat have released a new game, very worthy of mention.  Here's the press release which explains all.  Congrats from us here to Mahmoud, Candide, and the Quirkat team on another milestone achievement.______________________________________Al-Moosiqar game released exclusively on Fuzztak Jebel Ali – Dubai, UAE - 6th September, 2009: Leading... [read more]

TALK BACK: Building Hope: Yahoo! Acquires Maktoob.comThese are the views of Faisal Ghori, Principal at Middle East Ventures, a strategy consultancy focused on the greater Middle East and North Africa, on Yahoo buying Maktoob.com:Hope is often in short supply in the Middle East, but that may be quickly changing, at least for the region’s entrepreneurs. On Aug. 25, Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), the Internet... [read more]

Yahoo's Maktoob deal opens door for Arab tech sectorThe technology entrepreneurs of the Arab world have long played the supporting role to the region’s higher-profile property developers, traders and merchants.But when Yahoo announced last week that it would acquire the Jordanian web portal Maktoob, for a sum believed to be more than US$75 million (Dh275.4m), this small but important community enjoyed... [read more]

Jeeran's Fresh New Look!We all know that Jeeran has recently been adopting a more content-centric approach, with the introductions of content channels, expansion of language support (French), and other exciting products and features.  This morning, we woke up to a new homepage at www.jeeran.com, which the IV team frankly loved.  The ease of assessing Arab user generated content has been significantly... [read more]