Recently, a YouTube channel was launched to inform society about the latest news, tweets, and hashtags popular among Saudi tweeps at the moment.
The team behind the show — called “Eash Sar fe Twitter”, Arabic for “What Happened on Twitter” — summarizes and scans the most discussed topics among Saudis and sheds light on famous people’s tweets to discuss them among each other.
Waleed Samoum is a 28-year-old Saudi and the person behind the channel. “This channel is designed to update people on the juiciest arguments and discussions that happened on Twitter,” he said. “Not everyone can be updated and follow up with the constant change of discussions and news on social media, and this program came to change that,” he added.
The YouTube show was initially a weekly blog named “Last week on twitter”. It was found by Samoum, who used to summarize the tweets and topics that happened in the whole week and post them on his blog starting from August 2011. “The idea started as a discussion between Ahmed Bakr and me, when we wanted to start an interesting blog. We thought this would be attractive to everyone, and so we started it,” he said. “The blog was very successful, but we wanted to attract more people and different markets by using the latest technology. That’s how we came up with the YouTube show.”
The blog features various writers with different interests. “I initially asked different writers every week to create the diversity of news I was aiming for,” said Samoum. “I am not a writer, but this was an experience in which I learned from those writers, and I chose who would be handling the blog with me,” he explained.
The blog had four writers, a graphic designer, and someone who handled the statistics that were needed for the posts.
What Happened on Twitter features stories that interest people with different interests, from social, sports, and politics to economy, religion, and lifestyle. “We try to offer a huge variety of stories, as we know that not all Saudis have the same mentality and we are targeting everyone,” said Samoum. “In the first episode, we spoke about different issues, such as the famous football player Messi coming to Saudi, a problem Dar Al-Hekma students faced with the public, and famous Emirati singer Ahlam’s tweets about her husband.”
The show airs every two weeks, whereas the blog is updated on a weekly basis. “We are still waiting for a sponsor for the YouTube show to make it once a week. We are also waiting for people to know about the show and attract more subscribers, so we know it will be a success,” said Samoum. “So far, the feedback is great, and we are optimistic that people will love us and support us.”
The YouTube channel was launched in November 2012 and the team joined forces with Uturn, who also handles other famous YouTube programs such as 3al6ayer with Omar Hussien. Production and filming as well as all the camera work, motion graphics, special effects, and production is done at 77 Media as part of their new partnership with Uturn. “Given our line of work at 77 Media and our focus on the digital media arena, we value and understand the importance of social media in today’s digital world. With this in mind, we dove right into the production of Eash Sar fe Twitter with an attitude of bringing something new and visually innovative to the YouTube box office,” said Oday Abid, director of the show and chief creative officer at 77 Media. “We’re really excited about this project and the chance to collaborate with the Uturn team as well as Waleed’s team to bring this show to life. This sort of collaboration is key to a successful product, where each team focuses on what they do best.”
What Happened on Twitter
What Happened on Twitter
