Whatever happened to Maktoob?

I’ve known Maktoob ever since they were first born into this world as a little startup that offered a heavy java applet based free arabic email service out of a villa near the 2nd circle in Amman / Jordan.

As the Internet boom reached the Arab world, Maktoob grew and they started venturing into other fields slowly but steadily unlike others.

They started by growing their site into a portal and creating a number of other big services inlcuding an auctions site Mazad Maktoob which was very interesting and maybe the only arab auctions site that worked.

They later launched CashU a prepaid Internet shopping cards service which did really well and made the internet more usable and international services more accessible for the everyday person.

Anyway, after that, I kind of lost track of what they were doing and where they got to in their business.

So today, I thought I’d check them out and see whatever happened to them.

It seems they’re still advancing at the same steady pace. Their email service now offers 1GB of email space, Mazad Maktoob is still going on quite well, they’ve launched a match-making site called Mabrook and they have a bouquet of other smaller but interesting services.

I’m not sure about how financially successful they are, but they’ve managed to keep the company going this long.

This post is not an advertisement for Maktoob and I’m certainly not getting paid for it, although I wish I could be 😛
I just thought it would be interesting to pick a web company every now and then and trace it’s steps and how successful or unsuccessful it has been.

If you have a web startup or company you would like me to write about and you’re willing to pay, then just let me know 😉