د. عبد المنعم أبو الفتوح فى مقدمة الجولة الأولى للأنتخبات الرئاسية المصرية يليه الفريق أحمد شفيق لينزلا معاً فى الأعادة حيث لم يحصل أى منهما على أكثر من 50% من أصوات الناخبين فى مصر. وبفارق كبير عن شفيق يأتى د. محمد مرسى يليه كل من عمرو موسى و حمدين صباحى.

المركز الأول:

د. عبد المنعم أبو الفتوح

المركز الثانى:

الفريق أحمد شفيق

المركز الثالث

د. محمد مرسى

المركز الرابع:

عمرو موسى

المركز الخامس:

حامدين صباحى

كل ذلك ليس من التكهنات ولا مبنى على نتائج أستطلاعات الرأى ولكن هذا ما توضحه أدوات جوجل للبحث Google Trends و Google Insights for Search الذى يعكس أهتمام الناس بالبحث و متابعة أخبار المرشحين الرئاسيين.

Google Insights ُfor Search: Egyptian Presidential Elections

منذ منتصف أبريل 2012 و حتى اليوم (منتصف مايو) نستطيع أن نرى حفاظ أبو الفتوح على التقدم معظم الأوقات ألا أن شفيق يداعبه فى بعض الأوقات و خاصة بعد قرار القضاء بالسماح له بالمشاركة فى الأنتخابات. كانت المفاجأة هى تقدم شفيق على مرسى فى معظم الأوقات بالرغم من المسيرات و الأغاتى الخاصة بمرسى ولكن يبدوا أن حزب الكنبة لا يستهان بقوته.

يبدو لوهلة بأن الجميع كان قد نسى تماماً وجود عمرو موسى و حمدين صباحى حتى بداية شهر مايو والذى شهد ثباتاً لأبو الفتوح مع أرتفاع سريع لصباحى و أرتفاع طفيف لموسى.

ثم كانت المناظرة التلفزيونية بين أبو الفتوح و موسى و التى قلبت الموازين حيث زاد الأهتمام بكلاهما للقفز فى المقدمة و لكنه كان أيضاً سبباً فى زيادة أسهم صباحى بشكل ملحوظ معهما لمن لم يقتنع بأى من المرشحين بعد المناظرة.

Google Trends: Egypt Presidential Elections

لم تختلف النوقعات كثيراً فى Google Trends… حيث أصبح بعد المناظرة أبو الفتوح و موسى فى القمة يلاحقهما شفيق وثم الحصان الأسود صباحى يحاول صنع مفاجأة و بقى مرسى فى القاع.

Google Trends: Presidential Elections Demographics

المثير للأهتمام هى تأييد المرشحين حسب التوزيع الجغرافى، حيث يفضل المصريين فى السعودية  المرشح الأسلامى بين أبو الفتوح و مرسى قبل شفيق و موسى بينما لا يوجد أهتمام بصباحى.

أما فى الكويت فيفضل المرشحين كل من أبو الفتوح و شفيق.

أما فى مصر فالترتيب متسق مع النتائج المتوقعة ألا أنه فى بعض مدن الوجه البحرى و الدلتا فيزيد الأهتمام بصباحى على حساب موسى و لكن يبقى أبو الفتوح فى المقدمة ويليه شفيق.

ماذا تعتقد؟ هل تعتقد أن تلك الأحصائيات و التحاليل هى مؤشر يمثل الواقع أم أن هناك مفاجأت لا يعلمها أحد؟

They are also displaying an error id… i think that each http request that comes to them is represented by a new error ID..

a few refreshes gives the following:

Error Id: 133596971312596
Error Id: 133596977162041
Error Id: 133596979836852
Error Id: 133596990131215

On average about 1.5 million errors (or requests) in 10 seconds…
that’s 150,000 requests per second… WOW

This is what you see when linkedin is down

And now the service is coming back (4:50 PM Cairo time), but the feeds are still not working, you don’t see any feeds or new about your connections, you just see colleagues and alumni filter titles!

linkedin feeds are still down

The Google AdWords Premier SMB Partner Program enables strategic relationships between Google and companies that can deliver the power of Google AdWords to their local merchants. Small and medium-sized businesses working with a Premier SMB Partner receive professional, full-service AdWords account management, from account setup and activation to ongoing campaign monitoring and optimization.

The official announcement was made on April 22, 2012 in the Four Seasons Nile Plaza hotel with tens of attendees of technology reporters and journalists from major news papers and online news and technology portals in Egypt.

The event was held by: Marc Lambert – Managing Director of Yellow Media, Ahmed Hafez – Head of Sales in Google Egypt and North Africa, Lars Mourey – Director of Sales & Marketing in Yellow Media, and Mohamed Salah – Director of Digital Media in Yellow Media.

Marc Lambert, Ahmed Hafez and Mohamed Salah

Keynote of Ahmed Hafez - Head of Sales - Google Egypt and North Africa

Following the official launch event, a 2 day intensive training course was given to 200+ Yellow Media sales professionals by the Google Egypt team. Wael Fakharany - Regional Manager Egypt, and North Africa – Google gave a very insightful keynote speech about the success story of how he managed to transform Google Egypt from a country office that only had one individual (Wael Himself) to tens of millions of dollars in a few years.

Wael Fakharany - Regional Manager Egypt, and North Africa - Google: Keynote Speech to Yellow Media Sales Force

Yellow Media 200+ Media Solutions sales consultants attending Google AdWords training

To get a free consultation now, or to sign up for Google AdWords fully managed service by Yellow Media.

The various range of Yellow Media SoLoMo offerings in Egypt include:

1. Social exposure over Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ and Dalili.com.eg (Egypt’s largest businesses and venues review site)
2. Local needs through Yellow.com.eg and Offeratak.com (Egypt’s leading daily deal aggregator)
3. Mobile platforms coverage though Yellow.com.eg mobile web, iPhone application and Blackberry application (Android and Nokia under development)

Arabic Search on the rise

Arabic continues to grow to reach 59% of the total searches done in 2011, not as fast as you might expect it to happen, that’s only a 4% increase over 2010. See 2010 Zeitgeist>>

Arabic is dominating the search phrases with 59%

One interesting fact is that many people were looking for Tahrir Square after the #Jan25 revolution! Although sounds to me like a Google search rather than a Yellow Pages search, you never know!

Searches for Tahrir Square on Egypt Yellow Pages after #Jan25 revolution

Top Categories For 2011

The following are the most searched keywords for 2011

1. Restaurant
2. Pharmacy
3. Hotel
4. Advertising
5. Bank
6. Nursery
7. Furniture
8. School
9. Hospital
10. Real Estate

You can see that advertising is going up the list while real estate is at the bottom of the top 10 list. This shows how advertising is so important to businesses in Egypt at these tough days. Real estate industry is not living its best days though.

Top Search Keywords on EYP for 2011

Most popular sectors and industries in Egypt in 2011

Banks

1. National Bank Of Egypt
2. HSBC
3. NSGB
4. CIB

Top Egyptian banks for 2011

Restaurants and Cafes:

1. Spectra
2. burger king
3. KFC
4. cilantro
5. Cook door
6. hardees
7. pizza hut
8. la poire
9. Mo’men
10. Roastery
11. gad

Top restaurants in Egypt for 2011

Telco:

1. Vodafone
2. Mobinil
3. Etisalat

Most searched mobile network operators in Egypt for 2011

Brands and stores:

1. Samsung
2. Xerox
3. Sony
4. Appliance
5. Raya
6. Toshiba
7. Egypt Air
8. Mobile Shop
9. Panasonic
10. Jotun
11. Habitat
12. Nokia

Top searched brands in Egypt for 2011

Goodbye 2011, enough is enough… Hopefully 2012 will be a glorious year and won’t see the end of the world according to Mayan calendar time prophecy

The success secrets are revealed in today’s interview with Mohamad Kaloub the Marketing Director of Hala Deals.

Mohamad Kaloub, Marketing DIrector, Hala Deals

­­Tell us about your journey to becoming the Marketing Director at Hala Deals?

My journey started in Canada when I was in my first year of university studying Business at the University of Toronto. A good friend and fellow business major approached me with a business idea that I could not turn down; an event management agency that catered to the student population. We registered our business, incorporated the mother company as First Ad Solutions Inc., and named our first brand “X Productions”. After a few months, we decided to shift gears and venture off into Direct Mail. We created our second Brand called Consumer’s First. It was a digest that catered to local businesses who wanted to increase their awareness using a cost effective approach. After two years we realized that the print industry has become very saturated with many competitors offering similar, if not the same services. We conducted a market analyses and found that the print industry was in a decline, so we decided to diversify into the realm of Digital Media.

I have to say, the transition was not easy, but the potential reward ignited our drive. Three years later, I received an offer to join the board of Directors at Hala Deals. I was excited about the opportunity, yet skeptical of the challenges that we would be facing. This was a very difficult decision to make for the reason that First Ad Solutions was on its way to breaking record profits. However, I studied my options very closely and accepted the offer. In North America, I have seen businesses under this model fail miserably, and others rise above the crowd so I began strategizing an approach that would take Hala Deals from being a small start up to now one of the leading Group Buying sites in the region. Ever since I came to Cairo, I never once looked back.

Although you launched after other group buying sites you managed to have around half a million facebook fans in a few months, how did you manage to do that?

In today’s competitive business environment, no company can survive without a strong Social Media presence and we know that fact very well. It was integrated into the Marketing Strategy from day one and I am well aware of the return it has to offer. As this industry is constantly changing, it is crucial that we adapt with it, and the key here is to take the consumer along for the ride. Before Facebook came into existence, companies had it easy. They propagated their messages to the market in a one way stream with no care in the world for what the consumer had to say about their product or service. Little did many of them know, word of mouth; the most primitive yet most powerful form of advertising, would be the missing link. Now that these online social platforms have flourished, they will be neglected no more.

You can’t play a poor football game in a full stadium, but you also can’t play a great game in an empty stadium, you have to find the equilibrium and generate attractive content to your fans.

We were very keen on directing our message through a well established Facebook Fan Page, and this is where we allocated a chunk of our marketing budget towards. We launch various online marketing campaigns including Facebook Paid Advertisements and a QR integrated print campaign to enhance accessibility. This however is not the complete answer you are looking for, and this is why I want to top it off with a key point… content. We as human beings react to different things in many different ways, so the point here is to keep our fans happy with up to date content that’s fun, informative and interactive. Here is an analogy that sums this up: You can’t play a poor football game in a full stadium, but you also can’t play a great game in an empty stadium, you have to find the equilibrium and generate attractive content to your fans.

How is HalaDeal differentiating itself in the local market?

It would be a fat lie for me to say that we are doing something that no one else has done before. We are a clone of Groupon’s business model and that’s that, but it’s what we do within our organization that sets us apart from the competition. We are disciplined and creative in the marketing efforts that we run. We are establishing a network of businesses that would benefit from our services and vice versa. Unfortunately I can’t give you too much information on this topic, because if I did, we would be different no more.

What’s your value proposition for local businesses in Egypt who want to offer deals on HalaDeals.com?

Our value proposition is very simple; Brand Awareness through mass marketing. We are an online Marketing Solution that caters to local businesses who need their names heard. We feature their product or service on the website and allow our online and offline marketing tools to do the work. Our weekly campaigns receive over two million impressions and these figures are constantly increasing. When we inform our prospects that this can all be done with minimal if not zero cost associated, it’s a done deal. The key is to focus on long term gain as opposed to short term reward. It’s not about the profit that you will acquire through the deal, but the long-term client that will feed your bank account for years to come. It’s the power of customer retention that needs to be highlighted in every sales pitch. We have found that the Egyptian Merchant does not want to be sold on ANYTHING; they require an emotional engagement first and foremost. They need to trust you, and we build that trust through friendly consulting and honest business; we strive to find the needs of every business and tailor a package that works for them.

It’s the power of customer retention that needs to be highlighted in every sales pitch. We have found that the Egyptian Merchant does not want to be sold on ANYTHING; they require an emotional engagement first and foremost.

How do you guarantee customer satisfaction and that vendors honor their commitments towards the customer?

To get businesses to honor their commitments towards the customer, they first need to be convinced with the package that they are offering, and that is why we work very closely with each merchant to ensure their satisfaction. As I always say, a happy business owner equals happy customers. Having said that, you can never guarantee customer satisfaction and whoever tells you otherwise is naive. Every customer is different and that’s how God made them. Some will be satisfied with a refund along with a sincere apology, and some may ask for a Ferrari to make up for a hair strand on their plate, and I wouldn’t blame the latter, I like my food hairless.

Some will be satisfied with a refund along with a sincere apology, and some may ask for a Ferrari to make up for a hair strand on their plate, and I wouldn’t blame the latter, I like my food hairless.

The point I’m trying to make is that a company can do everything in its power to keep their customers happy but for some, this may not be enough, and that’s why it is our absolute top priority to minimize dissatisfaction amongst our customers. They pay our salaries and cover our overhead, and with the popularity of social media, we cannot afford to receive any negative feedback. We strive to ensure that our Customer Care Team is well equipped and trained to resolve any conflicts that may arise. As a new business concept in a fresh market, we will encounter many questions, but it is always a pleasure to walk the customers through the steps and ensure that their experience is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

What are your target demographics (age-gender-interests)?

Our consumer base varies, but our marketing campaigns target mainly internet users aged between 18 to 35 years old. Many of our buyers are females but we do our best to offer deals that cater to both genders.

What are you expansion plans locally and regionally?

The great thing about this business model is that it is easily duplicated once you have set a strong foundation.  We have been working very hard to build a framework that we can expand around and believe that this has been accomplished. We have expansion plans that we are going to execute in the near future, but due to confidentiality reasons, we cannot disclose when and where exactly.

What are the new things that you are introducing to HalaDeals in 2012?

Very sensitive questions, so I’ll be very brief. Our goal is to be different, but still offer our fans a great service, so we will be introducing a new addition to our business model that will allow customers to enjoy a bigger bang for their buck (More Value). We call it G².

What are your different CSR activities?

We blocked our website for two days during the violent protests near the end of November. This was to show our respects to all that have been killed during the crises. Profit isn’t everything, we have a conscience and we truly did feel for Egypt.

Hala Deals prides itself in its efforts to support non-profit organizations in various fields and has been very active in doing so. Diversity is the key to a stable and strong line of networks. It is important not to conflict with the relationships that we have established. We are proud sponsors of organizations that promote causes such as fitness, health, education, entrepreneurship and will continue to venture out into different sectors to ensure strong brand presence. Our partners include such organizations as EMSA, IFMSA, Under-ground Bands, ITLC, Cycle Egypt and AWTAD. EMSA stands for “The Egyptian Medical Students’ Association”. They are a non-profit organization that raise awareness on wide spread diseases and illnesses to the general public. They are also involved with educating parents about the prevention of pneumonia with learning aids such as coloring books for the children. IFMSA, also known as “The International Federation of Medical Students’ Association” is responsible for organizing and funding events that support causes for different types of disabilities.

Our involvement with underground artists comes from our core motivation to support up and coming creative talent that are primarily driven by the need to perfect their art. We strongly believe that these activities will promote positive messages to the always evolving Egyptian youth. The “International Transport & Logistics Club” is a university run organization that aids students in discovering their hidden talents with many options offered to help them find jobs in the field of business. Cycle Egypt is an organization that welcomes bikers who want to pursue an active lifestyle by hosting weekly events where a group of participants ride their bikes through a predetermined rout.  AWTAD is the newest addition to our network of partners and it is a privilege to be involved in an organization with a very clear mission; to mentor young entrepreneurs and provide them with a support system that will help them in reaching their goals to becoming a successful business man or woman.

I would also like to mention our two day Website Block during the violent protests near the end of November. This was to show our respects to all that have been killed during the crises. We did not stop operation within the company; we just didn’t sell. Profit isn’t everything, we have a conscience and we truly did feel for Egypt. Hala Deals’ CSR goals have not yet been achieved, but we have a division that specializes in these efforts and we will continue to offer our love and support to the community.

Get in touch with Mohamed Kaloub through linkedin

Visit website

Or visit hala deals facebook fans page at: www.facebook.com/haladeals

Karen Plumb, Commercial Director Business Listings EMEA, TripAdvisor

Travel review web sites and hotel reviews on online travel agencies are among the most influential forces most frequently cited by travelers when shopping. User generated content is so important and it is here to stay, it helps people to make their decisions,  TripAdvisor definitely takes the lead with more than 50 million unique monthly visitors, 20 million members, and over 50 million reviews and opinions. The sites operate in 30 countries worldwide containing 1 million+ hotel, restaurants and attractions in 90,000 destinations.

In this interview Karen Plumb shares with us in the power of TripAdvisor and the value it can bring  to businesses. Also Karen gives us insights about the new partnerships TripAdvisor is having with local search sites and directories to empower businesses.

Mohamed: Tell us a little bit about yourself?

Karen: I have a background in hotel marketing, having worked at both InterContinental and Thistle Hotels, where I held a variety of international eMarketing and International Marketing roles. I have also worked before in an online company at CheapFlights running the consumer email product and the hotel website, CheapAccommodation.com. I love working in the online travel environment and TripAdvisor is a great place to be.

Mohamed: How do you encourage users to post reviews? Do you run any sort of incentive programs that strengthen customer loyalty?

Karen: TripAdvisor has added badging to the site to recognize and acknowledge the contributions of our active community of reviewers. These badges serve as just one more way users can determine which reviews are most relevant to their trip-planning experience.

The first badge is given after three reviews and users that have contributed over 50 reviews receive a gold badge and a Top Contributor designation.

In our management centre, we provide owners with tools and widgets to encourage guests to write reviews following their stay.

Mohamed: Independent travelers value TripAdvisor as a research tool to find the best hotels that fit their needs and meet their budgets. Are you thinking about building a tool that would allow users to compare hotels to help them in the decision making?

 Karen: TripAdvisor is constantly searching for new ways to improve its websites to continue to help travellers plan and have the perfect trip. Users can search for hotels by relevant categories and read reviews by like-minded travellers to find the right hotel to suit their needs. Each review is also broken down into detail with travellers rating hospitality businesses on a number of factors, allowing users to make an informed decision during their holiday planning.

Mohamed: What’s your value proposition for the hotel owners? What types of hotels would benefit most by having a commercial business listing on TripAdvisor?

Karen: Whilst being listed on TripAdvisor is free for properties we offer the  Business Listings product to enables accommodation providers to add direct contact details on all TripAdvisor website domains as well as TripAdvisor’s mobile website to convert our highly qualified traffic into direct bookings.  . Accommodation providers can add their phone number, email address and website homepage to their listing as well as posting a special offer to gain additional attention

The benefit of a TripAdvisor Business Listing is that it is on a page where viewers come to look at guest ratings, reviews and photos of a specific property. According to a Forrester survey in 2007, 87% of consumers looking for hotels are influenced by reviews and want to read them before they book. If a hotel has put in the hard work to earn good reviews from their guests, a Business Listing will allow the hotel to capitalise on them.

Mohamed: Recently you have expanded in many new countries in the Middle East and have announced partnership with Yellow Medya in Turkey. How is this going to help both the hotel owners and the end users in Turkey?

Karen: Yellow Medya will be integrating TripAdvisor onto all of its platforms, including online and mobile. By doing so, users of Yellow Medya platforms will have access to TripAdvisor reviews and opinions for accommodations, restaurants, attractions and all hospitality businesses currently listed on TripAdvisor websites.   In addition in the coming months Yellow Medya are helping TripAdvisor populate our database to ensure that every tourism business in Turkey is represented and can benefit from the global coverage TripAdvisor can offer.

Yellow Medya will also be offering a TripAdvisor Business Listings Programme, encouraging accommodation businesses in Turkey to adopt the Business Listings product.

We believe adoption of Business Listings within the Turkish hospitality industry will help businesses gain more visibility in front of our large community of travellers.

Mohamed: What is the most requested feature by the users that is not ready yet on TripAdvisor? What are the new things that you are introducing to TripAdvisor in 2012?

Karen: Earlier this year, TripAdvisor launched a new integration with Facebook that instantly personalizes the site for each person who visits, surfacing trusted reviews from friends, most popular destinations among friends, and an interactive social map.

Now when travelers come to TripAdvisor websites, while logged into Facebook, they will see the activities their friends have shared first, helping them to make more informed decisions when planning their own trip.

In addition our award winning mobile site and apps are becoming increasingly popular enabling travelers to research their trip whilst on the move.

Want to learn more about this subject? Visit TripAdvisor for Business Blog where there are lots of information on how accommodation providers can get the most out of TripAdvisor.

About TripAdvisor:

TripAdvisor® is the world’s largest travel site, enabling travelers to plan and have the perfect trip. TripAdvisor offers trusted advice from real travelers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features (including Flights search, TripAdvisor Mobile and TripAdvisor Trip Friends) with seamless links to booking tools.

Finally a website called Offeratak - which means your offers is offering this service for free… All you need to do is just subscribe with your name and email in 5 seconds and baaang! You’re done.

This video demonstrates how Offeratak works by collecting the daily deals from Egypt

City Stars Cinema Ticket for 9 LE:

I bought 3 tickets from coupon for one of their most selling offers in Cobone site probably one of the best selling offers in Egypt,  city stars cinema ticket for 9 LE instead of 30 LE. They have made around 3,000 sales from that offer.

Here is how the process begins; very smoothly i ordered the cinema tickets from Cobone.com, the voucher said that tickets must be collected in person from coupon office, i thought this is not the case when you pay online, and that it is related only with the pay on delivery option so i went to the cinema with my wife and tried to give the coupon to the ticketing window… who looked very strangely at it and asked me to see the manager who told me i can’t use the voucher as  is but i have to replace it with a real voucher from Cobone office… Okay my mistake…

I went to Cobone office after a couple of days and replace the tickets, they told me a hint that i can’t use the vouchers on the weekends.. although the voucher itself said that you can use on weekdays and weekends… i said okay no problem for me…

I went again to the cinema this time with the nice looking coupon that looks like the cinema ticket, not as surprised with the voucher as the previous time, the ticket window guy sent me to the manager again, who sent a guy with me to the ticket window again to replace the voucher with real ticket, which didn’t look real at all… It looked like this:

So i entered the cinema with this strange ticket after a strange look from the cinema door man… and another strange look at the ticket from the guy who shows you your way to the seat… but above all the strangest look it took on that very very weird unfortunate day was the look of the guy who issues the ticket at the parking lot, as you have to present him the cinema ticket to give you a 5 LE discount of the city stars overpriced parking… I spend 5 minutes to convince him that this is my cinema ticket… but i wouldn’t blame him to take all this time to accept that fact.

I don’t blame Cobone on this… they actually offered me what they wrote in the offer… but i blame myself for buying this offer… I still have one more cinema voucher remaining which i am not planning to use because using it is completely inconvenient for me.

Euro Deli 50 for 100 LE nightmare discount voucher:

How Euro Deli my favorite order in restaurant in Maadi became a nightmare for me after buying the 50 for 100 LE Euro Deli Voucher from Offerna and how Offerna wiped out the bad experience with their great customer service.

First thing i must say Euro Deli is one of the best options to order from at work not just for the quality of food but fora number of different reasons; There is NO added cost, NO delivery fees, NO taxes, so if you order a 12 LE sandwich, you will only pay 12 LE… and they would deliver your order even if you just order that sandwich alone! ideal budget deal and is also good if you are ordering food alone. Read more reviews about Euro Deli in Maadi on Dalili

So when i saw their offer it was like Great! why don’t i save 50% on my daily orders! but the voucher said you can’t use it for delivery so you either go and eat there or pick up your food. So i bought one of these vouchers and went for lunch with my wife and we ordered, 2 soups, a sandwich and a main dish, the total cheque was for almost 100 LE.

The ugly part is when you show the voucher, when the waiter takes it form you and goes to the restaurant manager and then the managers comes to you and says:

“I am sorry sir but the voucher can’t be used by 2 people, only one person must use it to order a full course of appetizer, salad, main dish and desert. So we are sorry again we can’t accept your voucher for the order you’ve just made. Actually this is not the first incident, sir. 3 or 4 customers came before and we had the same argument with them”

Nothing from the above terms and conditions was ever mentioned on the voucher which you can check online yourself in the above link… My response was very simple, since i don’t wanna argue, and i like this restaurant i would move my fight with Offerna instead of Euro Deli.

I called Offerna customer care which were very understanding and supportive and they offered my an immediate money back… Whether somebody can come and bring me the money, or i could add the points to my balance on the site or even they can refund my credit card. I choose the later option. What i loved about their customer service is that they wanted to know what the restaurant manager said and they never argued with me about whether he is right or wrong but just offered my my money back… Which i find great.

Anyway i think i will refrain from buying any vouchers for quite some time after the above disappointments. Let me know your customer experience with other deals that you’ve bough. Are you experience troubles redeeming them? which sites are you buying your deals from? How do you find value of money of these deals?

Matthieu Houle: Director, Mobile & Platform, Yellow Pages Group in Canada (YPG)

Matthieu Houle, Director, Mobile & Platform at YPG gives us insights about the mobile local search industry in Canada, and expectations about where this industry is going and how the mobile usage of  YPG products will surpass web usage by 2014.

Mohamed Salah: Tell us a brief introduction about yourself

Matthieu Houle: I am Matthieu Houle, Director, Mobile & Platform at Yellow Pages Group^TM in Canada (YPG), responsible for its mobile properties, with more than 3 million downloads to date and representing 30% of our search traffic (www.yellowpages.ca/mobile). I am also responsible for YPG’s Developer Platform, YellowAPI.com which now has more than 1,000 developers signed-up.

With 15 years of experience in local search, media and advertising, I joined YPG in 2000 where I held various positions in Marketing, Business Development and Operations.

I began my career inCosta Rica where I lived for six years and co-founded a design agency and two quarterly publications: a local surf magazine and a golf magazine.

Mohamed: 30% of all YellowPages.ca online searches come from your mobile apps. How did you achieve these numbers and when do you think the mobile searches will surpass the web searches?

Matthieu: Part of our success was the early adoption of the mobile platform. Our executives saw the strategic fit and as of 2009, we’ve invested significantly in mobile development in terms of resources and created a director role dedicated to mobile – which I currently hold. We launched this initiative in 2010 with a mass media campaign, that really kick-started our presence on mobile.

Moreover, there is a natural fit between our service and the context of mobile users. I often say that Yellow Pages Group is “built for mobile”. For instance, Smartphones are the ultimate tool to discovering local merchants.

And finally, we have excelled at execution. Making the apps fast and simple to use was ultimately the key to our success and what drives our thinking moving forward. We have the right internal and external partners to achieve our strategy.

I refer to Mary Meeker’s forecast indicating that mobile usage will be equal to online usage by 2014. In my opinion, that forecast for local search is on the conservative side.

“Mobile usage will be equal to online usage by 2014. That forecast for local search is on the conservative side.”

Mohamed: How is the traffic usage divided between your mobile apps (iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, WP7, Mobile Web, SMS Search)? Did you think about developing a Nokia app?

Matthieu: Applications represent roughly 75% of our mobile searches while the remainder is mobile web. Out of the app traffic, 70% comes from the iOS platforms and in large majority from iPhones.

“Out of the app traffic, 70% comes from the iOS platforms and in large majority from iPhones”

InCanada, Nokia doesn’t have a strong penetration as it has in other parts of the world so we have not yet create an app for this platform. Moreover, SMS search numbers are negligible.

Mohamed: How do you interact with your mobile users? How did their feedback shape your applications the way they are today?

Matthieu: User feedback is a critical input when we plan our releases. We acquire feedback from many different channels, including social media, customer service calls and emails, and even from employees. In my opinion, the most valuable feedback is derived from reading the reviews section on the app stores which is an excellent source of feedback. You know that if someone takes the time to write a review, it’s very likely that at least 100 people are thinking the same thing.

Furthermore, we also follow a more formal user testing protocol when we launch major updates but I find that the value added through this process is a validation of ideas and our execution…

Mohamed: What is YellowAPI all about?

Matthieu: The essence of YellowAPI is to create more value for our advertisers by allowing virtually anyone to create amazing local experiences.  Developers are building new applications and experiences right now, in areas that we would not have imagined or we would not have taken the time to develop.

YellowAPI is all about contributing to the eco-system in a way that contributes to our business model. Overall, it is about enabling developers to tap into our curated data without having to pay for it. We believe it’s a win-win for everyone.

Mohamed: It is well known that the most valuable asset for Yellow Pages is its data. Have you faced any challenges about the idea of exposing the Yellow Pages data to third parties through the API?

Matthieu: Exposing our data is very different than giving it away. The key reasoning behind this is that each time a business profile is exposed through a partner’s app, we can report that value back to our advertisers.

Mohamed: How many partners are using YellowAPI today? What’s your monetization model for the API?

Matthieu: We have more than 1,000 developers that have signed-up on the API in less than a year, representing about 30 apps and websites.

The monetization model for the API is quite simple: by adding more value to our advertisers, we support our product value proposition. Although we don’t sell pay-per-performance, once you have a good understanding of the ROI-to-Revenue relationship, you can pay partners based on performance in a way that makes sense for both parties.

Mohamed: What are you working on right now? What’s in the pipeline?

Matthieu: We’re always improving our flagship apps. That’s a big part of the pipeline. Expect more social features and more content in the next few releases of 2011.We’re also working on a new app that will hit the iTunes app store in Q4… Which I think will have a tremendous success. Stay Tuned!

On the YellowAPI side, it’s all about adding more data and more tools to help developers come up with the best apps possible!

Mohamed: What is the most valuable thing you have learned so far being in the local search, media and advertising industry for the past 15 years?

Matthieu: I believe that if you focus on making things simpler and more useful, for consumers and advertisers, great things will happen. In the end, our role is to add value to both sides. Try to avoid PowerPoint Ivory Tower syndrome and recognize it when it happens and go back to the basics.

Mohamed: A few years ago, everyone said that going mobile is the next big thing. Today, what do you think is the next big thing?

Matthieu: I would say that the next big thing is still mobile. But not exclusively with “branded” applications. I see an explosion of hyper local, vertical, social mashups that will give consumers the best tools to make the best shopping decisions. Imagine a developer with the next big “local” idea, building the app with the content from Yellow Pages companies across the world…That’s where I want to be!

 “I see an explosion of hyper local, vertical, social mashups that will give consumers the best tools to make the best shopping decisions”

Twitter: @matthieuhoule

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthieuhoule

Learn more about Yellow Pages Group^TM in Canada (YPG)

Learn more about YellowAPI

That could be a big scandal for Facebook which have not officially made any response or statements to this matter. This could simply mean one of 2 things:

1. Facebook account authenticity and security layer was bypassed for 50,000 fake similar accounts under the same domain with the same password.

2. Facebook have cooperated with Caira to create these accounts or at least have white listed their domain for one reason or another.

Here are the story details:

50,000 Fake Facebook accounts have been created under the email addresses 1@caira.uk.com until 50000@caira.uk.com all of them with the same password: “123456″. A huge campaign is going on now by the Egyptian political activists to take over these accounts, by changing their passwords and/or closing them, some people have also posted some profile pictures having Egytian flag representing that they took over these profiles.

I was able to verify this information by trying out the account 26357@caira.uk.com and the password 123456 (which i already changed), here is how the account looks like:

The wall of fake Facebook account of "Ahmed Ali" or also "26357@caira.uk.com"

The profile was pretty much empty except for mandatory information like name (Ahmed is a typical Egyptian male name), birth date, gender

Caira's Fake facebook account info

Account settings:

Fake Facebook account settings

http://www.caira.uk.com itself seems like a website which is selling electronics and home appliances but except for the homepage, the rest of the site is not working.

Although you can access their contact information via the web wayback machine More to come on this topic…

Think about the effort and cost needed to maintain your own database. Thousands of businesses open, close, or relocate every month. This is the opportunity where what is offered by Yellow Pages is exactly the need of all these applications and services.

Egypt Yellow Pages is no exception, the integration between Egypt Yellow Pages database and their partners is becoming a key strength for many of these applications making use of the most complete business database in Egypt covering over 220,000 listings and 170,000 map locations.

Here is the ECO-SYSTEM of Egypt Yellow Pages

I’ll go through the details of each of these systems and partnerships in future posts.

As more and more people turn to social media sites, the idea is becoming more appealing to both the local businesses and the consumers, there are now 6 major deal sites in Egypt basically covering Cairo and trying to cover Alexandria as well but not so much success so far covering other Egyptian cities.

I’m writing reviews about all these 6 sites in order to help you know what to expect from each site, that said don’t go crazy with the deals thing and spend your money wisely!

Here is a list of daily deal websites in Cairo and my reviews about them:

Cobone. Cobone is one of my favorite deal sites in Cairo, they are a good money saver as they bring places where i usually go,  so it’s not only about going and exploring new places but rather saving money on everyday places, i bought 2 deals so far one for Trianon Cafe and another one for Grey Lounge in New Cairo. Visit Cobone.com Here >>

Pros

• Few limits and restrictions, usually deals are valid in all restaurant branches and on all menu items
• Reputable website with good experience in several middle east countries
• The offer 5% additional discount when you buy online with Master Card

Cons

• Invite your friend and win 46 LE is a kind of hoax, i invited a friend before and he purchased but i never for the money, talking to the customer service, they mentioned that the deal value should be more than 46 LE in order to redeem that money but the deal was only for 30 LE. Didn’t like that…
• The site could use little bit more work on bug fixing, displaying the right map location, importing contacts from email, …

Offerna. is the Egyptian daily deal site with a full local flavor, as the name suggests it means “our offers”.  Due to this reason Offerna is one of the easiest names to remember, as the same matter with other popular sites which has a local name such as Masrawy, YallaBina or FilGoal….

Offerna stared off the wrong foot, when they offered deal with good brand names but with so many restrictions that made the offer lose its value, for example they offered a meal in Abou El Sid with half price, however it was restricted to a certain branch, at certain weekdays and a certain dish! That said, it seems they got over this problem recently when (i got confused, it was darenadeal who made this bad abou el sid offer http://www.darendeal.com/deals/index/4-EGP-89-Instead-of-EGP-183-for-a-Delicious-Meal-of-Authentic-Oriental-Cuisine-for-Two-at-Abou-El-Sid-(Set-Menu-of-2-Salads,-an-Appetizer-and–Abou-El-Sid.mhtml) Offerna made recently a very successful Ramadan Iftar without any restrictions to days or branches, this offer sold 1,382 times! Visit Offerna.com here >>

Pros

• Most deals are available at prices less than 50 LE
• Deals are getting better over time

Cons

• Some venues that offer the deals are not well known
• Many deals discounts are 50% not more

Dare’n'deal. Darendeal is world class daily deal website, everyday literally you will see a new offer, sometimes two offers are released in the same day. So you will never get stuck with that Thai massage ad for one week on the site waiting for a new offer to be released. Although i have never personally bought a deal from there, you will find a few past deals with over 1,000 or 2,000 purchases like spend a day by the pool for 35 pounds. Visit Darendeal.com here >>

Pros

• Highest number of deals in terms of quantity
• The Arabic site is fun to use, it seems that they have specialized editors in Arabic section who write in the same language we speak, not the formal Arabic thing

Cons 

• You can easily miss a deal if you don’t check the site on daily basis
• Mostly restaurant deals, not much of  other lifestyle deals

GoNabit. Acquired by Living Social, you would expect the $ 1 billion daily deal giant to dominate the market in Egypt and kill the competition, well No. Unlike expected the website is poor in terms of deals and content, since the beginning of Ramadan i have seen tens of Iftar and Sohour deals on many websites… Guess what GoNabit have for us? Ice cream offer!! Visit gonabit.com here >>

Pros

• Supported by the giant Living Social

Cons

• Website and daily deals are below the quality you would expect from Living Social
• You can’t browse the older deals

eDealo. With deals targeting class A, eDealo is trying to expand the daily deal business to other verticals such as travel, eDealo have launched the vacations sections with Trips inside Egypt including Sahel and Red Sea and outside trips as well. Visit www.edealo.me here >>

Pros

• Penetrating new verticals such as travel and vacations

Cons

• Past deals are not listed
• New deals are not as frequent as other deal sites

Dealwaty. The newest member of daily deal websites, just launched about 2 weeks ago, so it is early to judge the site now. The site now probably started the same way as other deal sites but with the advantage that people know learned the concept in Egypt. Visit dealwaty.com here >>

Pros

• Upcoming deals is a good idea to present some teasers for the new deal

Cons

• The past deals don’t seem to do very well, yet it’s early to judge

Although time passes one year after another, we gain new experiences in life, it seems that we will never get rid of these ideas but my only hope is that we stop passing them to the newer generations at least not to spread the infection

Myth #10: Turn off your car headlights

Here is my list:

Tip #10: Turn off your car head lights

When there is lighting in the street, there is no need to turn on your head lights, you should switch them off and save your car battery, turning on the lights is bad for your car battery.

Tip #9:  A/C are made to turn them on 16 degrees / full fan

Summer is hot, to overcome the hotness, when you turn on the A/C make sure it is 16 degrees, to have a quick effect, you can leave it like this or you can witch it to 18 degree after a while… Make sure you have a blanket and a jacket to use… of course if you are a tough guy you won’t need the jacket.

Tip #8:  When a car comes in the opposite direction turn off your head lights

Driving is “Art, Morals, and Consideration”, when you see a car coming in the opposite direction switch off your lights, if the other driver doesn’t respond by doing the same abiding to this protocol , give him a warning sign by flashing your strong lights 3 to 4 times, if no response is seen, you are allowed to punish the driver by turning on your head lights again

Tip #7:  Take off your socks before sleeping, to save your eyes

If you sleep with a socks, your eyes will hurt you next day.

Tip #6:  When you’re sick drink lots of liquids

Although this is a true medical fact, why does we get it from everyone we see when we have a cold? is it to show compassion? Not sure about you but I would accept something like “get well soon”…

Tip #5: Gym advice, you are doing this exercise in the wrong way

Probably you’ve been going to gym for many years, but just try changing your gym, do the same excise in front of the new trainer or the guy that loves to give advices to everyone because he a has a 150 KG muscles body…. They will tell you that you’re doing it in a wrong way.

Tip #4: Turning on you’re lights before it’s completely dark (15 minutes to dawn for example) is a disgrace 

Again this is my favorite thing, people will warn you, in order to save your battery, they will signal with their hands, talk / shout to you, and/or try to chase you in order to warn you that the most valuable thing you have in your life – the car battery – is in risk.

Tip #3: El fouta el zefra (a piece of cloth wet with gas ) will just clean your car in seconds.

if you don’t know it melts you car paint slowly so it becomes blurry and loses its shine after a while.

Tip #2: Breakfast (Optional) 12-1 PM, Lunch 4-6 PM, Dinner (Mandatory) 10-2 AM

This is a pretty good advice to gain weight as fast as you can.

Tip #1: It is okay to smoke hash but it is haram to drink alcohol

Seriously, some people genuinely believe about this…

What makes our BlackBerry application unique is not only being one of the first Egyptian publishers to join the App World, it has also been developed based on the community demand on different social networking sites especially Twitter… Our twitter friends joined out application beta testing program and provided us with very useful feedback and many additional features to add. Also their ongoing support helps us to add more features and make the application better….

A big thank you to our list of honor beta testers:

Mostafa khaled Beige

Mahmoud Ahmed

Mahmoud Abdel Aziz

Ramy Temraz

Bassem Osoris

Gamal Omar

Abdou Omar

Islam Badr

Mohammad Mokhtar Eltrissi

You can download Egypt Yellow Pages BB App from App World here.