Q8Ba7th Official Blog

Waseet newspaper is the most popular ad newspaper in Kuwait, and probably the gulf as well. It has also publications in other Arab countries like Egypt. Posting your small ad there to sell a car, PC or anything else will get you large exposure. But for me, there was a bit of a problem. I tend to find it tiring to go through all those small ads, and there is a big chance I could miss the ones I want. Last year, Waseet have made a very smart move with their revamped eWaseet site. Quick loading, organized, split into categories, and include the thousands of ads that are in the weekly Waseet newspaper. Gives you everything you need and more. You can chose what you want very easily. For example, you can select real estate, lands, for sale, and specify the area. There you got it. The load and search time of the site is very good, unlike many others that crash for simple queries you make, or simply return no results always. You can also select your version of Waseet from 9 different countries.

Registration to the site is also possible, and upon authentication, and if you go an extra step to authenticate your mobile number by filling the 5 digits code you received on your mobile, you will get an extra set of useful services if you are a regular user of that service:

• Add Pages to your Favorites for future reference.
• Weekly eMail newsletters (OK, we already get lots of junk maybe)
• Ability to post your ads online and pay via credit card. See Thumbnail. For each ad type, you get a set of fields to fill up, guiding you through what you need to put, and making it easier for others to search based on different criteria, like price, area, # rooms for example.
• Get instant Email and SMS notification for your Favorite searches. I love this feature. Rather than having to worry about missing any ads, you resume your normal life until they come and tell you.

What do I still want from the site? Well perhaps against it’s own good, I would love to have an archive of old ads. From their point of view ofcourse, this may slow down new ads and decrease their profit. But if it’s in an archived section that is not directly accessible, it already has the drawback of not being presented in normal search pages. So I am thinking there could be a smart way for doing it. Q8soog is a site that has promised to post the daily newspaper ads online for you to read, but it’s still not fully live. Another service they could offer, that would create customer loyalty and encourage online use of the service is discounted renewal rate. For example, I posted my ad this week for 5 KD but no one called, or I didn’t sell the item yet. Perhaps I won’t feel like posting again in the same source, Waseet in this case. But if they give me special %50 discount for renewing the same ad, well maybe I’ll do it. This will also attract other people to use online ads rather than manual process. This is less headache for Waseet employees in the end. It saves a lot of time as I’ve seen how long those small ads take to finally agree on.

The site also has a survey on most desired type of ads, and surprisingly it’s Jobs. I thought it would be cars or real estate.

Popularity: 44% [?]

Golf in Kuwait may not be the most famous sport for several reasons. One very important is the lack of golf courses in Kuwait. Only few years back, The Sahara Golf and Country Club opened with 18 golf course built according to the PGA championship standards. The course takes on 6730 yards in length, featuring 3 lakes and around 5000 trees. The golf club is located on the 6th ring road, you can see the Contact section for a detailed map. I have never practiced or watched this type of sport. So is there a community for the golf sport in Kuwait?

Apparently there is! Q8Golf is the so-called home of golf in Kuwait. Place for all golf fans to come and see latest events, tournaments, hall of fame list and other news. Even if I don’t like it, it’s nice to see more varieties of entertainment and sport places for people to go in Kuwait. Especially foreigners who may be missing those type of sport in their own country.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Kuwait Malls is a real smart idea that started some time back, and then for some reason stopped moving forward. Kuwait Malls is designed to be the ultimate shopping malls directory in Kuwait. Malls is mostly what we do in weekends, and there are only few places where most people go, possibly missing some other good options. Consider being able to go online, selecting the mall you want to get some images from it, address, all stores inside that mall and their location + phone number. Wouldn’t that be great? quite useful. You can also start browsing by category, e.g. Banks, clothing, or by brand, Armani, Canon.. and you can even do it by store name. So you want all Next stores in Kuwait to chose the nearest to you. Isn’t that just convenient? Since the site opened up till now, only Al-Muhalab is listed. See it and I think you would want the site to be more rich with content.

Popularity: 41% [?]

Kuwait Pharmacy is an online medical information center for Kuwait. It lists the latest news, articles, medical devices, natural healings, and features a small book store as well. The website, initiative of Mohammad Al-Adwanie, alas lacks in quantity the most useful feature, which is searching for drug information by name or brand. Most of my queries did not return any results. The whole site is completely functional and seems only to be lacking more drug information to be fed into it. The site was launched in 2001. You can still see latest news being updated, but as for drug database information, it would be real good to have. Especially that no other site has this kind of information in Kuwait.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Q8igg, pronounced Kuwaitig, is a new Digg like site for Kuwait. The site, still in Beta, allows you to post news, articles, and your favorite links. The name of the site comes as you might guess from the word Kuwait + igg, which is the common trailing trend for Digg like sites these days. Why is it different than Digg? Well we noticed that if you submit Kuwait related content to Digg, there is a very small chance it will get any attention. However with this site, it’s mostly about Kuwait, and Kuwaiti community votes for the good news to bubble up.

The way it works is very simple. You just need to go through the quick registration process, and submit the link you want. Once you do so, it will appear on the Up Coming news. If enough people vote for the news (Q8igg it), it will come up in the Published News area. If you like the site, make sure you checkout the Tools section to see how you can incorporate voting widgets on your site or blog. You can easily add them to your blog post so that people submit your content to Q8igg.

That’s only half the good news though. By registering and submitting news to Q8igg, you get the chance to display your own ads on the news page that you submit. All you need is your own Google Adsense account. Provide your account number in the profile page and you’re good to go. All Google Ads revenue on the news page is yours. Why would we do that? Well, we like the concept of sharing revenue with the site content generators, who are you at the end. We gave it a thorough thought as we didn’t want money to overcome quality. We hope though that by giving you this opportunity it will encourage more and more quality posts to come. I am not %100 sure, but I think we are here the first site here in Kuwait that offers revenue sharing with it’s community.

Please note that we are still in Beta. So please bare with us, and help us improve by submitting your favorite stories, giving us your comments and feedback, and spreading the word about it. And remember, a community site is only as good as it’s members.

Happy posting.

Popularity: 26% [?]

Shipping International is a worldwide site for shipping companies to promote and educate the public about their shipping services. Submitting shipping company profile for specific country (Basic listing) is absolutely free, and only requires registration. Premium listing will cost you around $160 (not obvious for how long) and will allow you to list your company into as many countries as you like, have your site listed above basic listed sites, exposure to some marketing and legal material, and the one that amuses me is “Enhanced company profile, ability to edit/delete company reviews.”. So by paying I can actually maintain clear customer review and delete bad ones? That’s bad credibility.

The site, though overwhelming with ads, is still a good place to view what shipping companies are available in your area. Shipping companies are categorized by the shipping method, and each country has it’s own subdomain. So you can deal with Kuwait subdomain as a separate Kuwaiti site. There are currently 27 companies listed in Kuwait. Not bad for now, but hopefully it can grow a lot bigger.

Popularity: 15% [?]

The National Aviation Services (NAS) was closed temporarily in Kuwait last year for renovation. I haven’t been following them before but now I can see they have a wide range of services, and they are trying to bring those services online as well. For example, Kuwait Visa is the first online VISA Application site to Kuwait I’ve seen, and I’m not aware of any other site that does it. The site from NAS lists the VISA cost for different nationalities, and has the VISA Online application form to apply for one. According to the site, once you register and submit the form, they will take care of processing your paper and update you once finished with a serial number to quote for once you arrive at the airport of Kuwait. A tracking system for the application status is also available for the user to know where his papers are. Quite unique isn’t it? You have to be registered however to fill in the form and it didn’t make a lot of sense for me to try it being a Kuwaiti :).

Another service from NAS is Hala Kuwait, which is a hosting and services facilitation once you arrive at the airport. I am not a regular traveler, but I would love to give those people a try and see. Anyone ever tried their online VISA service?

Popularity: 14% [?]

Buying flowers is sometimes a tedious job. Occasions happen, you have limited time to go to the ship, pick the flowers you want and ask them to send it to the desired address, hoping it will come in an appropriate time. Shopping online for flowers has made that a lot easier for many, and in Kuwait, there happens to be online flower shopping sites I intend to list down here:

A worldwide flower shopping site since 1999. The site has flower shopping for Kuwait, though it’s head quarter is in US with branches in UK and India. The site maybe the first that provides online flower shopping in Kuwait, however only through Credit Card.

This could be the first online Kuwait flowers shop that is Kuwait focused, currently closed since 1st Sept. Seems for complete revamp work. The site has the option of worldwide delivery too. The domain name was registered back in 1999. When was it in actual service is something I don’t know really. Credit card is used for payment.

The most recent and first to have Knet payment. Contrary to what some people might believe however, this is not the first site that offers flower shopping online in Kuwait as we have seen. It may be the first that is fully operating inside Kuwait though, I’m not sure. With the aggressive marketing campaign, this is starting to become the most recognized brand for flower shopping in Kuwait.

Popularity: 17% [?]

EKYP (Kuwait Yellow Pages Guide) is one the fastest and easiest ways to search for corporate phone numbers in Kuwait. It allows you to search by Business Name, Category, and Phone Number. Search is available in both English & Arabic. However you must use the current page language to search. I.e., you search Arabic in Arabic page and English in English page. You can’t search Arabic on English page for example.

I think the site has some kind of arrangement with MOC or someone else for the directory of phone data. When searching however, you have to take care of the exact naming, otherwise you may miss what you want. The site also has a sign-in feature for some more customization, and a toolbar for your browser. My rule is stick to Firefox extensions and let away the toolbars :).

Popularity: 15% [?]