United Bloggers of Arabia.com

“Do you have a caffeine hater in your life? ” I read that question on a blog as I was drinking my coffee and YES was my answer. A caffeine hater isn’t someone who hates caffeinated drinks or foods (though it might be the case) but it’s the people who keep preaching you about how caffeine is going to give you a heart attack one day or how it’s just bad for your health. Is it really? cause I just found 7 good reasons to drink coffee… in your face caffeine hater!

After you’ve had your dose of HEALTHY caffeine, are you ready to make a six figure income from blogging in two easy steps? Making money from your blog is not easy and it’s a huge commitment, and this blog has made it as simple as possible to make that money… so go ahead and learn the simplest two steps to make money from your blog.

Speaking of easy steps, how would you like to become a GENIUS in 5 steps? Turns out it doesn’t take a genius to become one, or does it?

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So, The guy who talks to Frank gave me a taste of my own medicine. I have created a tag even though I’m not a tag person, and now I’m tagged I have to do it. So here are my answers:

The Questions:
1- What kind of blog is your blog (Cat, Boss or Viral blog)? refer to this post for the definitions.
2- Out of the 111.2 million blogs in the blogosphere, what makes a blog stand out ?
3- What, in your opinion, makes YOUR blog stand out? Why should we read your blog?

The Rules:
- After you’ve posted your answers, you may tag up to 5 of your friends.
- If you were tagged, you’re not obligated to answer. But come on… don’t be a party-pooper!
- You must add a link to your blog at the bottom of this tag. Don’t remove links already added, add yours next to them.
- If you want a copy of Seth Godin’s ebook, you can download it here. (Right Click - Save Target As)
- If you like this tag, please consider adding United Bloggers of Arabia to your blogroll and subscribe to our feeds.

1- What kind of blog is your blog (Cat, Boss or Viral blog)?

Since this is a group blog, it’s definitely not a cat blog. So I would say it’s somewhere between a boss and viral blog, though I’m initial plans were to make it super viral and it will be, at some point.

2- Out of the 111.2 million blogs in the blogosphere, what makes a blog stand out?

The blogger. For me, it doesn’t matter what a person blogs about… it all comes down to how the blogger projects himself into his posts. If I find something interesting there, I’m sticking around. This is why bloggers are always advised to write with a personal tone rather than being too pro. Professionalism ain’t cool anymore

3- What, in your opinion, makes YOUR blog stand out? Why should we read your blog?

The blog is still very new, it’s still in the making so right now it might not seem very special but it will be. The fact that we have multiple authors here will help see matter from different perspectives, as well as a variation in interests. So there will be something for everyone.

I’ve already tagged others, I won’t do it again… I don’t want to die so young

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Browsing through Seth Godin’s blog, I found a copy of his e-book “Who’s There: Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and New Web” which he used to sell but now it’s free.

If you’ve been a reader on our blog from the start, you’ve probably read my categorization of blogs post. I’m not sure how accurate I was, but Seth does categorize in a much better way than I do:

Cat Blog: a blog by and for the blogger. If you find yourself always blogging about you, your work, random rants about friends and family and of course… your cat! Okay you might be a dog person, so you have the permission to rename this category to Dog Blog. Just to be more clear, it can also be a Hamster Blog, a Turtle Blog or even a Snake Blog!
Boss Blog: a blog that’s used as a tool of a communication with a circle of people. For example: you’re away from your family so you keep them updated on how your doing by sharing your news on this blog, or you’re using it to document the progress of a project you’re working on and share it with whoever is concerned about the progress.
Viral Blog: those blogs are used to share new ideas, news, or articles that are worth spreading. You read something interesting on a blog, you like it so much you decide you want to link to it and blog about it… one of your readers likes it and blogs about it as well, as so on. The purpose behind viral blogs is to spread ideas, knowledge and thoughts that are worth spreading, and to influence as many people as possible.

Those categories are one thing to keep in mind. The other thing is…

Have you ever been to Technorati.com? Technorati is the biggest blogs aggregator out there and it is currently tracking 111.2 million blogs. Last time Technorati counted, there were 120,000 blogs being created per day. With that many blogs, even if we assumed that only half of them are active, who’s going to notice my blog?

I thought I would turn this post into a tag, because it would be fun to see how people see their blogs. So here are the questions, you must answer these in your own blog.

———-> Start Copying Here <————-

The Questions:
1- What kind of blog is your blog (Cat, Boss or Viral blog)? refer to this post for the definitions.
2- Out of the 111.2 million blogs in the blogosphere, what makes a blog stand out ?
3- What, in your opinion, makes YOUR blog stand out? Why should we read your blog?

The Rules:
- After you’ve posted your answers, you may tag up to 5 of your friends.
- If you were tagged, you’re not obligated to answer. But come on… don’t be a party-pooper!
- You must add a link to your blog at the bottom of this tag. Don’t remove links already added, add yours next to them.
- If you want a copy of Seth Godin’s ebook, you can download it here. (Right Click - Save Target As)
- If you like this tag, please consider adding United Bloggers of Arabia to your blogroll and subscribe to our feeds.

Okay, so I tag: Qwaider, Rebellious Arab Girl, Chikapappi, A Pigeon Called Frank (replace with your friends!)

Blogs that have answered this tag:
A Pigeon Called Frank- ChikaPappi - TAT The Don - GreyFort - The Caller - ShoSho’s Corner - Speedo - Fadi Fairy Tales -Politikia and the Society - Add your link here

——————-> End Copy Here <——————

I’m looking forward to reading your answers! I will be regularly updating this post with links to people who have answered the tag. Have fun!

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What’s up with people exporting culture? This city confuses me. Actually, not this city, but it’s a small country - so it’s all kind of the same. I just don’t understand how can culture be bought. I know, the world is a “small village”, and that we cannot run away from this crazy melting pot - but you cannot buy culture. You cannot build a branch of a museum in your town to guarantee a spot on the hot cities list - or compete with your neighbours who are having it really, really good with their plastic architecture, and false hopes of having the city of the future.

Malls. And shopping festivals. And pop stars. And Guinness book records. And artificial islands don’t make great civilizations. Nor does buying your legacy. Or maybe that’s what the new age dictates.

Fake + Lots and lots of money + Severe lack of taste + Extreme fascination with extravagance = The way to go.

I know it is old news that the Louvre is coming to Abu Dhabi, for $520 million - makes think how far can this go?

Hmm, maybe Egypt will start selling “authentic” copies of the Sphinx! Or maybe we’ll have mini-Great Walls of China distributed to selected cities.

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I’ve tried handling two blogs at the same time but one of them always gets lost. Doesn’t sound like much but throw in a full time job, a wife and couple of kids and you got your self a handful. This is different, I’m not actually running both blogs. I have my personal blog, and I also contribute to this one here.

I’m not quite sure what United Bloggers of Arabia actually is yet but I do know that a bunch of talented, interesting people are behind it. You can’t compete with a team and why not be a part of this success? So I thought to myself, what the heck. If you can’t beat em, join em
On a serious note, I’ve always believed in “there is no I in team” and the power of working as a team. Blogging’s key ingredient is people. People have different taste, culture and backgrounds. Having multi authors means we can’t go wrong.

I’m M.Y.K from mykblog.com and I’m in!

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For the past few days, all I’ve been doing was travel across the Arabian blogosphere… all in the name of research. I was aware of very few Arab blogs so you can say that my “trip” was quite interesting… in a way.

Here are my observations:
I came across a blog called Moments of Clarity, which is somewhat new and a quite interesting blog. The author of the blog - whose name I can’t seem to find anywhere on the site - has put Arab bloggers in three categories:

1. The extremely political ‘let’s-all-go-to-the-demonstration-tonight-and-stick-it-to-the-man’ kind of people.
2. The disastrously westernized ‘look-we’re-not-all-terrorists’ kind of people.
3. The news breaking ‘I’m-not-aware-that-other-people-read-newspapers-too’ kind of people.

Boy I couldn’t have described it better!

The political bloggers seemed to be dominating, and to be honest, I couldn’t go through their blogs simply because I’m not into politics whatsoever. To many, that makes me the “look-we’re-not-terrorists” kind of blogger and if that’s what you want to call me, I’m totally Okay with that. After all, I am NOT a terrorist.

There are few other kind of bloggers that need to be added to the list:
- The Anonymous Bloggers: I suppose they choose to be anonymous because it gives them more freedom to say whatever they want without a care in the world, as in: lashing and bashing on people, or pouring their secrets into the cyberspace and utter crap like that.

Blogging anonymously is so 1995. We’re in the age of self promotion, where we all have profiles on social networks where we show off how “unique” we are, just like how everyone else is unique… which brings us to the other kind of bloggers:

- Self-promotional Bloggers: Yes, I did just say that anonymousness must die. I do want bloggers to be themselves, I really enjoy reading other people’s thoughts on life, experiences, news, music, books or whatever but I never want to read about what time you woke up, what you had for lunch, what you bought on your last shopping spree, what you and your mom fight about. Unless there’s a moral behind your boring stories…I don’t care to read them.

There’s an obvious misconception of what a blog is, what to/not to blog about and how to categorize you blog right. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on these soon but for now I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Do you think that everything should go into your blog? Is there such thing as too much self promotion and is anonymous blogging still cool?

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