Snapchat in the Middle East: 3 quick things to note
This is the fifth in a series of ten short extracts from my 2015 round-up: Social Media in the Middle East: The Story of 2015 (also available on Scribd, SlideShare and Academia.edu + the UNESCO Media Literacy Portal).
The ephemeral and fast growing social network saw usage grew from 3% — 12% of Ipsos MENA’s panel in 2014.
Snapchat featured Mecca on its “Live Stories” feed during Ramadan, giving non-Muslims a rare insight into the city (which non-Muslims cannot visit). The move came after 300,000 people tweeted using the hashtag #Mecca_live to get Snapchat to feature the Saudi city on their app.[i]
Figure: Jacqueline Saleh, Twitter[ii]
Earlier in the year, some Snapchat and Twitter users in Saudi Arabia used #RiyadhLife to poke fun[iii] at life in the capital and stereotypes about the country.[iv]
[i] http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-33478729
[ii] https://twitter.com/adoomy4life/status/620809813652541440
[iii] http://english.alarabiya.net/en/media/2015/04/20/Hilarious-RiyadhLife-snapchats-trend-as-users-laugh-off-stereotypes.html
Originally published at damianradcliffe.wordpress.com on February 22, 2016.
