We here at Arabian Bytes have of course been watching the situation in Egypt unfold with great interest, and have especially noted the growing power of social media to shape these events. Rest assured we’ll be posting more about Egypt, Tunisia and the importance of social media soon so stay tuned. In the meantime, we wanted to turn our attention to a “what not to do” case study of hijacking a hashtag.

I attended my second Tweetup last night at the Holiday Inn Abu Dhabi. My first experience with a tweetup was actually my second day in Abu Dhabi, and it was a great way to meet people in my new hometown to answer many of my “newbie” questions. When I mentioned that I was going to a “tweetup,’ I got a lot of quizzical looks from people. Yes, it sounds a little geeky, but once you get to the event, you quickly realize there’s a lot more behind the 48×48 pixel icon.

Mashable.com released a lovely infographic about the history of social media that got us here at Arabian Bytes reminiscing about the very first social networks we started using regularly. Image courtesy of Flickr, rishibando, as seen on Mashable.com Do you remember the first website that got you all excited about connecting to others across the world? Or the first chatting service you were hooked on, whilst other family members complained about how the telephone was never free to use anymore (RIP the humble dial-up modem).

An interesting study has just been released by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development arguing that the potential risk for a cyber war is over-hyped. This study, which was reported by theBBC is evidently the first in a series of reports that look at incidents that could cause global disruption. This jumped out to me as a story, as I currently live in a region where tensions run high in some countries, and and indeed the recent Tunisia up-rising has, by some, been referenced as the Middle East’s first cyber war.

Having just watched a fantastic TED lecture from cyborg Anthropologist (how cool is that job title?) Amber Case, it reminded me why I’m so intrigued and excited by technology and the digital world. Other than the magpie factor (I just like shiny new things), the anthropological impact of technology always excited me. In the late 1990s, my dissertation was on Designer Babies and the impact technology would have on our biology.

Our colleague recently posted some interesting Twitter stats and across EMEA. Based on the latest Comscore data, Twitter usage in the Middle East was up 104% from November 2009 to November 2010. In related news, a recent survey by the TRA of the UAE showed Twitter was the second most popular social network in the UAE, with 9% using Twitter (though far behind Facebook’s 97% dominance). Perhaps Twitter’s upcoming Arabic interface will help fuel even more growth in 2011, but no matter what it’s clear that Twitter is on an upward trajectory in the Middle East.

The spate of 2011 prediction articles that have been rolling out to mark the New Year make for some enjoyable reading. Below are some links to trends I’ve found particularly interesting. Of course, I couldn’t resist throwing in three of my own about the Middle East so here they are… Social buying heats up (more) in Middle East In an already crowded field including GoNabit.com and Cobone.com, the granddaddy of social buying sites, Groupon, has recently launched a UAE site at Groupon.

Ben Flanagan from The National recently wrote an interesting article about Middle Eastern social networking sites. Do you think a local website can be as big as an international one in the Middle East? Let us know your thoughts. Article Excerpt – Click here for the full article Local social networks have home advantage in taking on big boys By Ben Flanagan There are more than 600 million faces on Facebook, and the number of regular users is expected to rise to 1 billion in the next few years.

Less than a year ago, when Google was being forced out of China over censorship issues, US government officials and business leaders criticised the Chinese, supporting Google in moving its proxy server to Hong Kong in the name of freedom of speech. Fast forward a few months later and the US is acting just as bad as China thanks to WikiLeaks revealing the content of thousands of American diplomatic cables. Not only has it blocked the website and made companies such as PayPal and MasterCard stop process donations to it, the US Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department are considering criminally prosecuting WikiLeaks and Julian Assange “on grounds they encouraged the theft of government property”.

There are a few things I would like to say about Microsoft’s Kinect. Firstly, I am now the proud owner of one – yes, it was one of those impulse, suddenly-got-to-have-it, Christmas presents for the family. Secondly – and surprisingly – it wasn’t me that led the charge here. It was my wife. Note: I was a big gamer in the past, but I haven’t really touched a console for a good few years.