I'm really proud Jordan is developing into a Leader of MENA Web Industry, and being recognized as the Center of Arab Online Community. Consequently, Jordan is tuned to turn into the "Silicon Valley" of Arab Region in the near future. The Kingdom of Jordan is buzzed with lots of talks on entrepreneurship, web startups and innovations, while few products are being lunched, besides lots of meetings and discussions being held.

On the other hand, web industry and community here are not perfect yet, so I thought of some observations that I would like to share, giving insights so we might reshape certain behaviors - keeping in mind that I criticize to enhance. Observations were devised from online community members trends, entrepreneurial community, and most of that BIG list of entrepreneurship meetings, sessions and forums being held in Amman, Jordan.

Online Community Observations - Twitter in Jordan

• I don't want to sound negative but this is how it unfortunately goes: Most of Jordanian / Arabic "entrepreneurs" are busy attending meetings, discussions, and sessions rather than actually turning theories and ideas into live products! [Tip: It's not necessary to attend ALL meetings, make sure you spend more time working on your projects!]


• Some of Online Community Members have this strange ego, and they even think that owning a facebook page, and a twitter account makes one Techie, Geek and a Social Media Expert!! [bad news: this could be step number -1 to be one].


• I don't know why some bloggers and webmasters - with that strange ego - try to hide or even lie about their real web traffic statistics, and some replace unique visits with pageviews!! [Tip: don't, because they will go on the surface at the end of day]


• Most of Online Community members, especially "twitter-jeyyeh", are thinking how to tweet more, rather than actually publishing some useful tweets, feeds, outcomes, plans or products! sometimes they share articles that they didn't even read, I take it as they have not applied the great tips already included in their shared links!


• If what you are doing is so awesome then why are you updating your status?? i.e. "I'm having fun with @friend at #Place" indicates you are not having fun enough, because if you are then you won't be holding your phone publishing this useless sentence! "I'm now at #location: latitude and longitude" is not an interest of any but some online thief who would follow your published locations, find a pattern then steal you big time!!


• Even if you have thousands of followers, this is not always a good implication, especially if you made them through what I call a “follow - follow back” approach, where you follow thousands just to let them follow you back, and if they don't you just unfollow then follow again to send them another notification! You might get thousands of followers but none would be interested in your tweets, as most of them are not targeted to your business niche (if you have one). Do some test: share a link to a page you own, i.e. your blog, from your twitter or facebook page then check traffic referred by your twitter or facebook; what’s the percentage of those who actually visited your page divided by total number of followers? If your average CTR [Click Through Rate] is less than 1.2% then congrats you are a spammer!! [Tip: to Increase your Facebook Page and Twitter CTR: make followers / fans follow you just because they really want to (service / content is the king), build organic and targeted followers to your niche, and share / tweet LESS].


• "Entrepreneur" terminology is so overused and sometimes misused. I guess no one should be called entrepreneur unless he achieved a big milestone in his own business, if you think entrepreneurship is a lifestyle then every human being is entrepreneur, because everyone would like to run his own unique business!! [tip: those would be called: "wannabe entrepreneurs", until a milestone is achieved.]


• Girls tweets or feeds are being most retweeted, replied, liked and commented even it embraces couple of useless words. Guys work for hours to publish useful or extremely techie info but they receive less retweets or comments. [Tip: of course this is not always the case, but for that kind of guys i say: following and commenting girls feeds wont necessarily let you score with her LOL, so focus on contents more than gender!]


• Search Engine Optimization is NOT only about meta tags for Gods sake LOL MetaTags are step -1 to do in SEO. I can write a book on that so I'll leave to another post :)


• e-Commerce penetration: sigh!! Facebook and Twitter users spend 1.5x more online than the average internet user in the U.S .. so we should be the heroes of this, why on earth don't you buy stuff online? :)

AmmanTT

Theory Into Practice

Back to entrepreneurs meetings: we have lots of these, don't we? I'm afraid it's becoming a trend more than anything else, I can't list them ALL but I'll take the one with largest audience, AmmanTT, and make my point. AmmanTT is all about the techie community in Amman, as organizers stressed: it's about the community NOT us! So that's why I'm focusing on community and attendees; let's try to build up some real techie community so we come up with successful products and outcomes, "3shan ma tkoon AmmanTT: ro7ti metel ma jeetee"!!

I really like the idea and appreciate the efforts done by AmmanTT organizers, but as I shared couple of observations above trying to enhance community attitudes, I also thought of some suggestions to share with AmmanTT organizers below, aimed at tuning the practical level:

• Try not to make it as open as possible, classify attendees, have 30-40% mature entrepreneurs, or techie employees with documented products ideas or plans! Beside 60-70% public audience in order to let them be the new entrepreneurs in future! Focusing on university students and open public audience would not make as much benefits. [tip: you cannot be a good manager unless you were a good employee!]


• Networking is the most important part in such meetings, so we need more hardcore entrepreneurs, for wannabe entrepreneurs to network with.


• Please set some Plans and Milestones for audience, i.e. for last AmmanTT gaming edition, put some milestone for attendees like: we want to see couple of social games in 6 months, and make sure you follow up with them! You can provide a small prize (at least: if you make a successful social game in 6 months then you will stand here and tell us about it and how AmmanTT helped you making it!) as a motivation for people to actually make some products. [quote: "A goal without a plan is just a wish"]


• Let's focus less on media, press, and individuals publicization! focus more on creating meeting outcomes, milestones and action points.

I hope I delivered my message in constructive criticism style, in order to enhance and optimize criticized entities, as this is our ultimate goal! BTW you can agree and add your own observations and suggestions, or you can constructively criticize my review below too ;)