Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Twitter: Saudi Arabia Leads Growth in the Middle East | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Dubai – Twitter’s Head of Sales in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region Benjamin Ampen said that the concept of security for the company on the platform is to maintain a system of values and criteria for the person who owns an account, whether identified or no.

Regarding to the continuous complaints from governments and regular people against the fake accounts many users create, Ampen said that Twitter does not allow users who have a record of involvement in illegal acts or hostile behaviors.

In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, he pointed out that Saudi Arabia is considered the engine of growth in the MENA region as it is among the first 10 most important countries for Twitter, yet the company’s office was inaugurated only two years ago in the Kingdom.

When asked about the future projects in the Kingdom, Ampen said that the company has two main approaches in Saudi Arabia. The first, he said, is related to entertainment and sports as it works very well during the Saudi football league.

“Most people interact on Twitter whenever there is a sport event,” Ampen told Asharq Al-Awsat, adding that the company invests so much time to develop its platform and its content to match the expectations and trends of Twitter users.

The second approach is working with developers and all local, international and regional brand names as “we are keen to connect them with important events such as Holy Ramadan, which is a very important occasion for advertisers to sell their products, by improving the content of our platform, especially the videos.”

Ampen said that Twitter considers the opinions and suggestions submitted by users and that it has a new way to help them tweet using more than the limited number of words by not counting the included links as characters.

He explained that the company also allowed users to comment on the re-tweeted tweets without counting these comments as part of the main tweet so that the users are able to express themselves more.

Twitter is one of the platforms used by ISIS and thus many governments raised complaints against the company’s slow reactions against these accounts. In this regard, Ampen said that Twitter is working so hard through its team to withhold illegal activities that are detected in a quick and direct manner.

“Because of the terrorist operations, Twitter has blocked 600,000 accounts affiliated with terrorist acts in the period between March and the end of 2016.