Directeur one of Friendfeed’s active members and the developer of
Noise River decided to quit the service. Also, Mark “Rizzin” Hopkins
was dissatisfied from the guys behind the service. The issue seems
to be that Friendfeed is bias toward certain users, something
Allen Stern of Centernetworks highlighted long time ago.

Friendfeed is a very good service indeed, and the bias that some
complain about is actually vivid on other social network platforms
- twitter, digg, techmeme …etc- The fact is A-list bloggers have soldiers
who help them promote there content.

So I had this idea why don’t we collaborate -bloggers, entreprenuers,
IT geeks … etc- and help promote each other content? By leveraging
the tremendous number of internet enthusiasts we can help take you
to the first page of Digg or Techmeme.

Today, we would like to Announce SNA (The Social Network Alliance)
it is an initiative to promote your and everyone’s content on social
networks and going a step ahead. We need hundrerds of geeks and bloggers
to come on board. Feel free to change the name of the initiative, the logo
whatever. We can also create a platform to follow other people activites
and promote it. SNA is an idea you can contribute yours ideas of the best
way this will work, your vision, your ambition all constitutes what
SNA is all about. SNA is meant for Arabs but any one who is interested
is welcome too. One initiative to take all of us to infinity and beyond.

Some exciting news for us today. Today we would like to announce
that the Twffaha team has grown bigger, by adding two more members
which makes our tally four.

The new members are Asim and Linda. Asim Khalil will be our VP of Sales
and Marketing. He comes from a sales background and we are really
excited that he is a part of the team right now. He will be glad to answer
any inquires you have to contact him e-mail: asim [at] twffaha dot com

Linda Al Amin comes from a medical background, she is a social activist too
and she will be joining us as a Community Manager/Evangelist. Linda will
be helping job seekers to fit in Twffaha and will support there issues and
makes sure they are solved. She can be reached at Linda [at] twffaha dot com

Nowdays the number of Arabic technology start-ups multiply, and grow
exponentially. Numbers aside, what Arabic start-ups defy the traditional
technology scene, and add depth to the development of the Arabic
Internet? Well, here I complied five start-ups to watch. Five start-ups
that IMHO will create a difference.

So here is the list (in no order):

1. weNear

weNear is a location based awareness application. By defining your
interests it allows you to connect with people who might be sitting
next to you in a public place and have the same interests as you.
Now why is this a big deal? Its mobile-based model is no-brainer.
The penetration of mobile phones In Arabic countries is far ahead
of internet penetration which gives weNear access to far more
users than any other Arabic start-ups. weNear is developed by
eSpace in Egypt.

2. Yamli

The popular tool that translates what you type in Arabic
(using Latin alphabets) to English. We just cant stop talking
about it! It tackles a problem encountered by a vast majority
of Arabic users, who might have no access to an Arabic enabled
keyboard. Also, they have announced their API which allows
other start-ups to integrate the service in their own websites.
Need I say more? recently it won the Best Web Technology Award
courtesy of The Pan Arab WebAwards. Yamli is based in Boston
and developed by Habib Haddad.

3. EatLime

Alright, this one is unique. EatLime allows you to upload videos
and share them on different social networking outlets
(Facebook, MySpace, YouTube) or even e-mail. But wait, what is
special about that? Glad you asked, it does it in fraction of the time!
The service is based on a patent pending technology, and was
developed by two friendly guys Mohamed and Adil from Jordan
and Pakistan respectively.

4. Feedoor

My personal favorite. Feedoor allows you to mix different feeds
in one feed, to filter your feeds, add videos, photos, and even
audio into your own feed. Create a podcast from the feed or interact
with different posts. The possibilities are endless! The service makes
a dwarf of Google’s FeedBurner. It is developed by Mahmoud Mehyar from Jordan.

5. Muxlim

Muxlim is a social network for Muslims. The start-up is based in Finland,
but its Arabic (we swear)! The founder of the service is Mohammed El-Fatatry
who is an Egyptian entrepreneur living in Finland. The portal includes video,
blogs, social, images and file sharing services. A virtual space service is also
in the making. Recently, it was selected as one of the Top 100 Start-ups
in Europe by Red Herring. The service has an API and you can build you own
applications for Muxlim and it is compatible with Google’s Open Social.

Disagree with the list, Tell us who you think should make the top 5.