Twitter Sets Advertising Sights On Middle East, North Africa

Twitter has expanded to different parts of the globe in the past several months, aiming to spread its advertising tools and services. On January 27, 2013, the social micro-blogging giant announced that it will also expand to the Middle East as well as North Africa. The main reason for their decision to invest in these areas is the huge growth of users -- by 300 percent in 2012. Twitter will be collaborating with Connect Ads, which is based in Cairo, Egypt, to introduce its advertising goods. Connect Ads was chosen in November 2012 and will primarily be responsible for the sales of promoted trends, promoted tweets and promoted accounts. Before, these three main advertising products by the micro-blogging company were only sold in the United States, Latin America, Japan and the United Kingdom. Connect ads will be in charge of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. The financial details of the agreement and expansion were not divulged. However, experts noticed that Twitter made the move after the company was valued at $9 billion, following the selling of shares worth $80 million to a BlackRock-controlled fund. Some online and business experts speculate that the company may be aiming for an IPO. The proper allocation of shares will hopefully put it in a better position compared to what happened to Facebook. According to Shailesh Rao (@shaileshrao), VP of Twitter of international operations, the company decided to set its sights on the Middle East after they noticed the huge user base growth in the previous year. Having tripled in terms of active users in 2012, the Middle East has become one of the leading developing regions in the world as far as Twitter is concerned. Furthermore, North Africa has a very strategic advantage that will solidify the dominance of the micro-blogging site further in the region. Arabic is actually the fastest-growing language on the website ever.