Blogging in the UAE

I've been following UAE's blogsphere closely. To me, it all started around mid 2005. The discovery of blogging, that is.


Here is how blogging in the UAE used to be like back then


There were 2 mainstreams. Primarily divided by the spoken tongue, Arabic bloggers and English ones.


Arabic UAE Bloggers

Arabic bloggers were predominantly UAE nationals. More females than male bloggers. Most were ex eforums participants. As its was well known that the emergence of blogs, contributed to the slow demise of forums.


Most of the topics Arabic bloggers covered were related to poetry, light UAE news, some UAE, gulfy and Arab pop stars news and of course, photo blogging. Following the block of flicker by Etisalat (the sole telco back then,) UAE photo blogging got a massive hit.

From a global awareness and influence perspective, UAE Arabic blogs didn't make it that well. Mainly because of relatively moderate content and to the poor presence of Arabic blogging in general. One very popular UAE Arabic blogger is Bin Kreshan, owner of the The Land of Sand blog. It is blocked by Etisalat.

UAE English blogs
English language blogging was and is still heavily dominated by expatriates living in UAE. Dubai based ones were the majority. There were a few bloggers from Abu Dhabi and Al Ain. And there are a number of Western educated UAE nationals. Most UAE English bloggers are anonymous. That is likely due to their fear of exposure, as expats, by saying something that would annoy their employers or even "big brother".

But when talking about anonymous UAE based English blogs, one can not ignore the most famous, or notorious, of them all: Secret Dubai Diary.

Secret Dubai Diary, or SD as known in the blogger world, was run by a female expat blogger who started her blog in 2003. In 2005 the blog was noticed, and consequently blocked by Etisalat when she did a post criticizing Dubai Police.

The block got the blog not only the attention of local media, but global press and freedom of speech activists. It is said that this attention influenced the unblocking of her blog to become after that the MOAB (Mother Of All Blogs) in UAE. It also jump started the inception of many of today's most popular blogs in the UAE blogosphere.

SD left the UAE earlier this year but her blog is still active. You can see it here.

2.0
Blogs in UAE have shifted to a next level of maturity. From being a big community of blogs where geography is what got them together, smaller communities started emerging and branch out.

Bloggers have formed pools of mini communities. Gathered by similar opinions, interests or themes. Ones have interest in Politics, Arts, sports or everyday current events. Though at the beginning that sort of pushed a few generic, blog-about-all, bloggers out of the game for sometime, but older UAE blogs still have a strong fan base and followers.


Do you think its time for you to have your own blog now?