The Facebook phenomenon has hit Amman, it’s amazing when I read and use a lot of websites/services and get turned down by my friends when I ask them to join in. “Efftt razan has sent us another invitation for another weird website yet again!!!”
I have a unique story about Facebook. I first learned about it when it was a closed network within schools late 2005. And it was instrumental for my initial idea about what I now call (Questler: a learning network) my own web startup which will beta launch soon. To check it out then, I had to ask a friend of mine at York University to sign up for an account!
After the success Facebook has acclaimed in North American schools over the past two years, it only opened up registration for its service for the general public of the world late last year. It already has over 5000 people from Amman, who started joining early this year and the effect seem to be similar in Lebanon, Egypt and the Gulf.
I joined early Nov. 2006 then, I had NONE of my friends in the network. Now I have over 26 friends this very min. Most of which joined in the past month, and most recently this week alone! The funny thing is that, some of them hate the web or think it’s too much, use email because they have to and now they are using Facebook like crazy!
I think advertisers in Jordan & the region should run and get in touch with Facebook ASAP, it’s what people are doing more than chatting these days.
While silicon valley is most excited about its new comer “twitter” (http://www.twitter.com ) wonder when will this one hit Amman?