Mohamed El Dahshan mentioned our Watwet ever so briefly in the Guardian a few days ago. —A bit too fleetingly for what Watwet was at the time, I would add! Be that as it may, it reminded me that I wanted to say a few things about Arab social media at the time when we shut down Watwet. The question that came up then was why hasn’t there been a runaway homegrown networking / social media success in the Arab world? It also touches on the question of “cloning” that was bandied about sometime around June 2011.
As a participant in this category, this is not an easy question for an organisation like ours. But here is a highly preliminary attempt at a few detached and fair-minded observations on this phenomenon:
- Localisation is usually the key play in “cloning” – and this assumes that there are dimensions to what we define as local that a business can be organised around. This, it turns out, is particularly difficult for a proper platform business unless specific barriers can be identified, reinforced quickly, and protected (all by virtue of providing something that users really appreciate over the long-term… All this while you are trying to feed yourself, compete with the likes of YouTube, and bootstrap without much funding or strategic support.)
- In cultural products, there is the expectation that the local revolves around the language and the product. Arabs want to see Arabic content, in Arabic, on an Arab platform, where they can comment amongst themselves. Hmm… Not so simple, it turns out. It works in certain contexts (forums, e.g.) but less so in the newer platforms. And there are the specifics: at first there was little Arabic content, early adopters cared less about Arabic content because they were westernised, and ultimately the draw of the global community overwhelms that of the inhabitants of smaller countries with as little as 5 million people.
- Our assumptions about cultural products being “more local” were mistaken. Given that they are digital, they are even more remotely serviceable than, say, unsold black boots with velcro straps that exist in 8 sizes in 20 to 30 each in a warehouse in Dubai which a vendor wants to sell at any cost (without publicly showing a discounted price). Compare that to a video by an Arab singer that a teen-ager in Dhahran wants to watch. The former requires payments, shipping, etc. and is not so efficiently served by Google. The latter requires building a platform/network fast enough to achieve escape velocity or really getting SEO down pat. When it comes to media platform, barriers are weak in the Arab world.
- So, why does China and Russia boast their own highly powerful social media/network sites, and not the Arab world? Partly it is an assortment of contingent facts (better luck, entrepreneurs, etc.), but probably more structural features play big roles: (a)censorship clearly helps some in China, (b)huge markets with large private capital accustomed to risk-taking, (c)local elites that are more local and less anglophone owing to a “modernised” culture that has deeper links to its own identity (this is a far more subtle point than it sounds which I am happy to elaborate later), (d)sheer size means that what happens in the country is probably a lot less determined by American or global opinion, (e)lower adoption of English – even though this is changing rapidly of course, (f)deeper academic bodies and traditions that create not only local enterprises but home-grown technologies, (g)more vibrant non-digital cultural anchors and public spheres that connect these platforms with a tougher local cultural fabric. And so on…
- As important as the above structural factors is probably “path dependence”: the early adopters of Watwet were early adopters of the digital life in the Arab world, and they were overwhelmingly the savvy lot who had one eye watching Silicon Valley from the age of 12. They invariably used English heavily, were anglophone, and were interested in connecting to the West both to be in touch with their own abroad but also with westerners. And the masses almost always follow the elites, according to a marketing guru I know. But the counter example may be (this needs to be verified) Saudi forums. These are super local, occur in Arabic, and garner respectable traffic. Might there be something to do with the history of how they evolved, the user base it happened to pull in, and traditions they created?
- Ultimately, there is just one conclusion to all this: it is simply not easy to clone/localise in social media. The global first-mover advantage of network businesses have a pretty incontestable logic when it comes to platforms. Nevertheless, there are niche plays, and there is always room to be number two or three. The rewards of the former are interesting, of the latter rather more complicated to assess. But in either case, the emphasis becomes very deeply on execution. The team will have to out-execute to remain number two.
Incidentally, on a global level, I think this state of affairs will continue for half a decade or so. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube/Google, Amazon, Apple – all will dominate the platform/network and will continue to go vertical in pursuit of profits. But then probably some serious regulation will come in to play, though probably with less effect in the poorer countries, such as the Arab world. The monopoly power being accumulated is becoming so huge that their vertical moves will eventually become intolerable for democratic societies. But that is another blog entry.
