When Amman-based Albawaba.com launched the new Sharekna.com photo and video sharing website for Arab users, it did not intend to create a cultural
revolution, only to make life a bit easier for Arabic speaking users who
wanted a friendly solution for sharing their pics and clips.

Within days of going online, the Sharekna.com team noticed that they were
attracting a very rapidly increasing audience of Arab girls to the site,
both as users and as viewers.

Girls will be girls everywhere - they have their favorite celebrities, they
want to share clips from their cell phones, and they want to find new
friends. But in the Arab world there are a few differences; it is not just
that girls can admire a princess instead of a pop singer, it is also the
discomfort they feel in many websites that they find to be just too
uninhibited.

It quickly became evident that the main attraction to the girls and other
users of Sharekna.com was not the technology, but the community. When it
came to sharing their photos Arab internet users were even more concerned
about who to share as with how to share. Sharekna.com has a community with
common tastes and beliefs, and it is much easier for members of a more
traditional society to make it their home.

The fast growth of postings and viewings has led some observers to suggest
that this could be the start of the Arab world\'s user generated content
revolution, but others are more reserved. They point out that an estimated
20% of male users on the site are thought to be girls hiding their identity.