Today, I thought I’d check out Arabia.com, the portal that once was regarded as the jewel of Arab portals.
So much money was thrown into it, with round after round of funding, and investment after investment, the biggest being from Prince Waleed Ibn Talal of Saudi Arabia.
They got into everything from news, to free email, to instant messaging, to mobile logos and ringtones, to forums, to marketplaces, to offering internet connections… the long list goes on.
And they recruited a huge team of people from all fields, both in Amman and Dubai, making them the biggets Arab internet company.
Each new version had a cooler design and released more features making the portal bigger and bigger.
They sponsored TV shows and events, aired a bunch of ads here and there and promoted themselves like there was no tomorrow.
And then, after the internet bust in the west, things started going not too well for Arabia too, as people realized that it was costing too much without making enough money, and so Arabia started falling faster than it rised.
New versions started losing the cool design touch they used to have, as they started working on the designs in-house. The content started to shrink, the services started to dissapear, layoffs started, and well you know how it goes.
The last time before today that I checked on Arabia was a few months ago, and it was still alive with a bit of news and some services.
Anyway today, instead of the orange Arabia homepage, I found the default Apache server page asking me: “Seeing this instead of the website you expected?”
Well, yes, but I can’t say I didn’t expect this day to come.
It’s a big shame.
R.I.P Arabia.
If it makes you feel any better, PlanetArabia.com who were one of Arabia’s main competitors have dissapeared as well.
I always thought portal sites were bad ideas and having one for the arab world must have sound great in paper back in the day, but they had no way to get that many readers to serve for the revenue.
The smart money would to have phone content. Websites accessed via your phone via WAP or GPRS since most Arabs have phones more than computers it would just make sense to allow them to read news, email and such via their phone. This is how it is in Japan, they dont own computers they own phones instead.
🙁
Depressing…
It’s not, they suck
anyway I think this will help others arab portals to show up, and i’m sure most of them will face Arabia deadend.
Well, what’s sad to me is that we basically have no Arab online startup that was able to get a good business plan together and make it through the internet bust.
They all burned through a lot of cash, but in the end nothing came out of them.
Maktoob maybe the only survivors, but when you look at maktoob back then and maktoob now, there is a big difference.
Now it’s just a handful of people crammed into one room keeping the services alive, which is not such a bad thing, as they only needed that many people in the first place.
It’s good they’re still alive though.
MMM talk to Natasha(http://natashatynes.com). She’s a long standing Arabia alum from its days as Baladna.com. She knows the full story of its demise. It’s curious and sad indeed. I had a working relationship with it for awhile when I first moved to Jordan. It was way ahead of its time but IMHO died due to poor management.
Yeah, Natasha and a bunch of other friends and people I know used to work there, and even though I don’t really think they were ahead of their time, as they were just doing what the whole world was already doing before them, I do agree that poor management and planning was behind its demise.
Arabia was the only arab portal, and still no portal to date is able to acheive what Arabia was. Mismanagement and other things led to what we’ve witnessed. I’ve seen their annual budgets, they used to pay close to 3 million a year on adv. That’s insane for an internet portal.
yes its really sad …
they were the best and the only arabian gate for all arabs …
i remember how they were so organazied in the past, and how they were always the first with the new ideas …
but i think after the main team whom created arabia.com left arabia… everything changed.
its like they had they keys for this site and they took it with them.
this team were only 5 jordanians, including Khaldoon Tabaza the founder of arabia.com
whom started with BYTE Magazine, the best Magazine in the region after PCMag in that time.
also Ahmad Humeid who is now founded his own company SYNTAX Digital
which is in my openion the best company for branding & design in jordan if not in the ME.
and with him also Hassan Shahin who is working also with SYNTAX Digital
and others who i dont remember them …
but if you look at it from another angel you will realize that arabia.com was like a school for internet which graduated from it a lot of great experinces whom helped the region to raise up in the technology, design and content filed …
anyway its nice to remember this great site and those great pepole whom left their foot steps in the internet filed.
Really sad. I am German but arabia.com was my favorite mail adress.
Hey I used their free email and when the site went down I lost loads of information contact addresses etc.
Wish I could get on to my mail for just 5 minutes