Cookiemonster82 wants to know, if your friend is visiting you in Abu Dhabi, where would you take them? This cookie monster may be based in London, but he is among the thousands whose tweets are raising the capital's profile in the online community, both at home and abroad. Among the most talked-about Abu Dhabi topics lately on the social networking site is tomorrow's inaugural Twitter Festival, also referred to affectionately by some as Twestival. Organisers recognise that while any event aimed at bringing people from an online community "offline" has the unmistakable air of something seriously geeky, this is no Star Trek convention. Twitter's increasing reach and influence, they say, should not be underestimated.
"If blogging is kind of like journalism, tweeting is more like a conversation," said Prashant Gulati, one of the volunteer organisers of the Dubai event who works as an entrepreneur during the day. "But people started realising that instead of being frivolous, the conversations could also be important." Indeed, many of the UAE's biggest businesses in the real-estate and property industries as well as media outlets use Twitter to share news and advertise for openings. Updates frequently discuss mergers, lament traffic conditions and react to news about everything from Sebastian Loeb driving at F1 to swine flu fatalities.
Gulati said people see tweeting as similar to texting - it is spontaneous and impulsive, which, of course, means there is no shortage of some of the most inane updates you can imagine ("I just bought a plastic palm tree!"). Similarly, Paris Hilton used it to announce that she would be partying at Etoiles in Emirates Palace. San Francisco tops the list of most users in the world with just under a million and a half. While numbers in the Arab world don't come close, there are roughly 12,000 users in the Middle East. At the end of 2008 less than a thousand of those were in the GCC. Now, the number is at more than 8,000, with the UAE showing the highest growth.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai recently joined, a move which, Gulati says, is significant beyond giving Twitter more credence. "It's a new method of communication that has allowed him to react publicly to certain issues, like school timings a few weeks ago, or the Metro more recently," he says, adding that the Sheikh's updates have had a humanising effect and have helped further connect him to the public.
Twitter can build a sense of community, say organisers of the festival and users. For example, the RTA donated to the Twitter Festival a golden ticket for the first ride on the Dubai Metro, which was auctioned off to the highest bidder (who paid a handsome Dh1,000) - a move Gulati says raised the profile of the festival as well the new public transit line. But more important is its democratising effect. "Look at customer service. You get bad customer service and the company is unresponsive, people write about it on Twitter," Gulati explains.
And within the Twitter community, the self-monitoring nature of the beast has the same effect on users. "Twitter can be misused, of course. But if someone is out of line, people will just stop following them." The event will be held in the Ramadan Tent at Le Royal Meridien, September 13 at 8pm. More information can be found at abudhabi.twestival.com.
