Only three Arabic countries made it to the Country Brand Index 2008, a global index that ranks the top 10 marketed countries in different aspects, each of United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt were ranked among some of these categories.
United Arab Emirates:
1st in Resort & Lodging Options
2nd in Shopping
2nd in New Country for Business
2nd in Most Impressive Last Year
3rd in Rising Star
7th in Fine Dining
7th in Conferences
10th in Standard of Living
10th in Advanced Technology
Egypt:
1st in History
3rd in Art & Culture
6th in Authenticity
Qatar:
5th in New Country for Business
9th in Conferences
Below is the top 10 countries worldwide, if you would like to view the full report, click this image.
It seems like Facebook is fishing for some money, Tech Crunch reports that the CFO of Facebook was in Dubai last week to explore potential investment opportunities with Dubai International Capital. I was surprised when I read this, I mean Microsoft invested almost $500 million in the site, and since they have a really good traffic, I though they are earning a lot of advertising money, apparently not.
According to the report, Facebook is hunting for opportunities outside the USA, probably because of the financial crisis, the funny part is that Facebook was blocked earlier this year in the UAE for a while, however it’s expected to witness a partial block next year, who knows, it might not if it became a Dubai-product.
But what is the reason behind this? The report suggests that the high running costs are the motive, here are some interesting numbers and facts about Facebook:
Traffic:
161 million unique monthly visitors
61 billion monthly page views ~ that is huge!
Take a look at the number of users on Facebook and other social networking sites
Expenditures:
$1 million per month on electricity ~ no way, that’s too much!
$500,000 per month on bandwidth
$100 million to buy 50,000 servers this year and next
$30 million this year on storage systems
$15 million per year in office and datacenter rent payments
$10 million per month on payroll of 750 employees ~ too much?
This Mannequin was placed last month in Bare Essentials, a lingerie and swimwear boutique, to raise awareness on breast cancer, they also placed self-exam tags in fitting rooms, and launched a micro-site for the campaign, really interesting!
Advertising Agency: Memac Ogilvy Dubai, UAE
Executive Creative Director: Till Hohmann
Creative Director: Dalbir Singh
Copywriter: Nisha Wagh
Art Director: Rafael Rizuto
Graphic Designer: Regina Groffy
Production Director: Gregory Richmann
PR: Leila Amar, Rana Awad
Interactive: Preethi Mariappan, Chaitanya Kolwankar
It seems like Facebook is fishing for some money, Tech Crunch reports that the CFO of Facebook was in Dubai last week to explore potential investment opportunities with Dubai International Capital. I was surprised when I read this, I mean Microsoft invested almost $500 million in the site, and since they have a really good traffic, I though they are earning a lot of advertising money, apparently not.
