Sohaib Thiab – The Story of an Internet Entrepreneur

Wizards Productions has appeared in the Aug. edition of Venture magazine, a monthly Jordanian business magazine that discussed the Jordanian business intelligence.

The article goes on for 3 pages starting with an introduction of Wizards Productions, how it was setup, its main business (MMO Games) model and their market, some of the challenges that faced us is establishing the company as well as other operational and payment collection issues. The article then discussed some of our game features and upcoming projects.

Below is the 1st page of the story

The video of my presentation is now made available via Aramram Web TV, the 10 minute video goes through the initial 5 minutes presentation (mostly spoken in Arabic) the follow up discussion with some of the attendees, and then the quick follow up presentation after the open discussion.

Sohaib Thiab, AmmanTT

The national newspaper released an article covering the growing gaming sector in Jordan, Wizards Productions was one of the companies covered in the article, the article goes over a general over view of Arabic gamers and quotes from founders of the biggest gaming companies in Jordan.

You can check out the full article online here, below is a screen shot of how it looked in the actual newspaper. (I am the 1st person from the right)

Sa7ara one of Wizards games screen shot included in the rest of the article:

The social media edition of AmmanTT last Tuesday was a great success, this 3rd edition of AmmanTT was the most successful in my opinion, with the amazing turn up of visitors, it was a full house with many not having a seat! the speakers  did a great job conveying their msg’s and the feedback I got from some of the visitors found the event very informative.

My presentation went well, i think i was able to convey my message across of the ability of making money online in general and through social media, this has been something proven and is old news for many in the west, but it is actually news for many people here.

Affiliate marketing seemed to be the most interesting topic for most that talked to me in the networking session, I will try and post a couple of posts explaining the basics of Affiliate marketing and how people in Jordan and the Arab world can get started, with some pointers to offers that pay for traffic from our region (mostly ring tones), payments will be one of the biggest challenges for most affiliate marketers in our region due to the fact that some Affiliate networks only pay through paypal, which isnt yet available in our region, but there are others that can wire payments to your bank, I will explain all of that in my upcoming posts. I just created the Affiliate marketing category on my blog, where my affiliate marketing posts will go.

Below are some pictures from my presentation and from the event, you can view more picture here

I’ve spent most of the day online and watching the developing news regarding the shocking news of the Israeli forces storming 5 aid ships carrying medicine, food and medical supplies such as 500 wheel chairs, the attack resulted in the killing of at least 10 civilians and injuring more than 30 others.

Join us at Twitter with #freedomflotilla, latest stats as of 4:40 GMT: 21,901 tweets 8,378 contributors 3,128.7 tweets per day 2.2% come from “The Top 10″ 63.1% are retweets 69.3% are mentions 36.4% have multiple hashtags.

Below is a video of the soldiers boarding the ship in international waters conflicting with all laws!

Some friends over at Yahoo! took images of the new offices Yahoo! (the old Maktoob) moved to in Amman, the new offices are near the older location I used to work at when I was at Maktoob, the new offices are certainly a great improvement for the working environment.

Go3 Media and Wizards Productions has merged together to come up with multi-lingual games that can be easily and quickly accessible for anyone from any part of the world. This merger has concentrated mainly to the Middle East market to get benefit out of the online games available and to enjoy playing games in the Arabic language.

Amman, Jordan – 31/03/10: Wizards Productions , a 2-year old MMO Gaming Company targeting the Middle East markets,  is proud to announce a Merger with the Canadian Go3, a 3-year old MMO producing company targeting the North American and European markets.  With this merger, Wizards Productions will combine Go3’s sales, games, technology and employees.

With Go3’s vast combined experience in the Browser Based Gaming market, this relationship will allow Wizards Productions to more effectively service their existing players.  The synergy of companies will provide the online gaming community a strong, stable gaming experience that will build upon the reputation and offerings of both companies.

Wizards Productions is committed to making sure their player’s involvement in the entire game genres of MMORPG, MMORTS and MMOFPS delivers value today and into the future.  Wizards Productions provides social online games for the Middle East market, as well as licensing, localization and white-labeling solutions.  The company provides games and gaming solutions that go above and beyond simple gaming hosting services.  As the largest game producing company in the Middle East, with over 9 titles in the market, Wizards Productions has a track record of success and expertise in understanding the gaming environment to provide the right game and gaming options.  In addition to hosting, localizing and white-labeling games, Wizards Productions is one of the few companies in the Middle East region that actually produces Arabic games from scratch.

“This merger enables us to service our gamers more effectively as well as penetrate the American and European social gaming markets.” said Afif Toukan, Chief Executive Officer, Wizards Productions.  “Today’s agreement enables us to build upon the years of experience the two companies have with social games production and management to make sure our players continue to enjoy the game play as we expand our business.”  Sohaib Thiab, Principal founder of Go3 Media agrees, “The merger of our two companies will bring extensive value to our customers.  The depth and breath of our combined experience is second to none.”

About Wizards Productions

Wizards Productions was founded in 2008 to address the gap in the Arabic Focused Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) gaming and social gaming in the Middle East. Wizards product portfolio include 9 online games that have attracted more than 300,000 registered users with more than 1,000 new users per day generating more than 40 million page views per month.

About Go3 Media

Go3 Media was established in 2007 in Ottawa to provide online social games to the North American and European markets.  Go3 has a portfolio of successful English games such as the hit title Mafia corruption, as well as numerous applications on the iPhone and over the Facebook network.

You can get more information about the merger from: http://wizardsproductions.com/press.php

It seems that Yahoo! is continuing its trimming policy and closing more of its services, Yahoo! announced closing the Yahoo Publisher Network as of April 30.
Below is the email they sent out to their publishers:
Dear Publisher,
Yahoo! continuously evaluates and prioritizes our products and services, in alignment with business goals and our continued commitment to deliver the best consumer and advertiser experiences. After conducting an extensive review of the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, we have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010. We expect to deliver final publisher payments for the month ending April 30, 2010 to publishers no later than May 31, 2010. All publishers eligible for 1099s for the 2010 tax year will have those mailed by January 31, 2011.
Because our content will no longer be delivered to your ad unit spaces after April 30, 2010, we recommend removing all YPN ad code from your pages by that date.
For the opportunity to continue earning revenue, we suggest using Chitika, a leading advertising network that syndicates Yahoo! Content Match and Sponsored Search ads. Chitika has set up a special process for YPNO beta publishers to participate in its platform. Click here for more information.
We thank you for your participation in the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta. If you have any questions regarding this announcement, please contact our Support Team at (866) 785-2636, Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PDT. Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo!
This is not the 1st service that Yahoo! closes, one of the most recent services they closed was GeoCities, and their Briefcase Online Storage Service.
Yahoo! is recommending their exciting publishers to move to Chitika which has already setup a welcome page.
This is clearly big news! allot of YPN publishers will have to remove their ad code by no later than April 30 and they have to find another alternative, I remember when YPN 1st opened and the rush to getting accepted and making big bucks with them…
Another questions comes to my mind is Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Maktoob.com, will this policy of closing secondary or non-important services be implemented over there as well?

Arabnet 2010 was indeed one of the largest internet related events that took place in the region, with more than 600+ attendees and 10,000+ tweets which made the event trend globally on Twitter in the 4th place.

The event took place on the 25th and the 26th of March, 10 startups were highlighted in the event and 10 of them were appraoched by angel investors and VC’s, I am very excited that events such as this are now taking place in the region giving entrepreneurs a great venue to present their ideas and startup companies to investors on a large scale.

There were a number of panels in the event, day 2 included the gaming panel where Wizards Productions was part of that panel represented by my colleague Afif Toukan, I was supposed to attend the event but sadly I caught a bad case of flue before the event.

Speakers at the event included Wael Ghonim, Head of Marketing – MENA  at Google, Ghassan Haddad, Director of Internationalization, Facebook, Rabea Ataya, CEO, Bayt.com, Essam Al-Zamel, CEO, Remal IT, Rashid Al Ballaa, CEO of N2Ventures and many others, you can check out the full list at the speaker page.

I should be adding some photos of the event later on when Afif or Hussam get to the office, meanwhile you should follow @arabnetme on Twitter to stay updated about the future events.