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I actually found this news a bit surprising because it’s the first time for me to read about people getting arrested for hacking e-mail and Facebook accounts in Lebanon.

The department of Public Relations at the ISF General Directorate announced that investigations were carried out by the Cyber Crime and Intellectual Property Rights Bureau Unit based on more than 70 complaints filed by citizens regarding stolen and hacked electronic accounts (e-mail and Facebook among others). The hackers blackmail the account owners and steal their identity to get large sums of money.

During inquiries, the first man admitted to having carried out acts of piracy and stolen around 600 emails, blackmailing their owners and stealing their identity to get large sums of money by transferring recharge card dollars to cellphones and selling them. These amounts reached around $200.000 and all the electronic equipment used was seized. Source

Still, the police might have chased these two because they went so far with the blackmailing they did.

Anyway, I personally know some people who do such things just for the fun of it. They go to some cafe offering wireless internet for the purpose of “stealing” Facebook session. Some tools to use in the process are widely available and are pretty easy to use if you have enough IT knowledge.

These people better know that things can turn really bad now that the Cyber Crime unit out and about. So unless you know how to really cover your tracks, just keep away from these stuff!

I found this article by Faisal Abbas in the Huffington Post quite accurate about the reasons why Facebook is much more popular in Lebanon, and why it wasn’t until lately that people here started to heavily subscribe to Twitter.

Now, Twitter was never known for photo-sharing, a feature which was significant in bringing the gossip-lovers of Lebanon to Facebook. Most probably, Mark Zuckerberg never anticipated that his free social network would serve as the new Layalina (a premium-priced Lebanese ‘society magazine’ which along with its sister publication Mondanite, is known for publishing pictures of people out and about). Evidently, the Lebanese didn’t mind the waiting time when it meant they could flick through images of Beirut’s best parties and social events. Even with the Arab Spring effect, the total number of Lebanese users on Twitter is estimated to have gone up to only 80,000. Despite the significant increase, the figure remains dwarfed by the fact that roughly one in every four Lebanese are now using Facebook in some capacity.

We just love gossip, and Facebook does great at delivering it!

You can read the full article here.

Thanks @FunkyOzzi

You don’t see an ad like this everyday!

Thank @ZuZ

If you’re like me waiting for Fuddruckers to finally open its doors in Dbayeh, then the wait is almost over. I just saw their latest announcements on facebook claiming the grand opening is going to take place on August 26th!

Too bad for me it’s going to be Ramadan and I usually avoid heavy meals on Iftar, so I won’t be trying it out until Eid comes.

There’s no smoke without fire.

And Samer Karam’s story today on Blogging Beirut comes to increase our doubts about the real intentions behind Cedarcom’s “Lebanese Want Fast Internet” page on Facebook that so far succeeded to gather more than 27,000 supporters.

What drives an ISP to suddenly make such page and call for fast internet to become a “right” for every Lebanese citizen? And since when Lebanese telecom companies care about customers? Or do they suddenly felt they should be more socially responsible?

Anyway, if you want to rally behind really transparent people demanding for better internet in Lebanon, make sure to join Ontornet page and Flip The Switch group on Facebook.

According to an article published in Byblos Bank’s issue number 193 of “Lebanon This Week“, Facebook users in Lebanon will soon reach 1 million!

As of the end of November there was a total of 968,780 users, which means 1 out of 4 Lebanese currently has a Facebook account in Lebanon! That’s pretty good given that we have the 5th slowest Internet speed in the whole universe, another proof that nothing can stand in the way of our willpower.

Figures on the usage of social networking site Facebook indicate that there are 968,780 Facebook users in Lebanon at the end of November, accounting for 0.2% of worldwide users and for 4.8% of users in the Arab world. As such, Lebanon ranks in 67th place among 213 countries and in 8th place among 18 Arab countries in the number of users of the social site. Globally, Lebanon ranks ahead of Kenya, Guatemala and Bosnia & Herzegovina and comes behind Uruguay, Albania and Costa Rica. Lebanon’s number of Facebook users is lower than the global average of 2,696,998 users and the Arab average of 1,122,076 users.

The Facebook usage penetration rate in Lebanon, or the ratio of the site’s users to the total population, is 23.4%, ranking Lebanon in 83rd place globally and in third place in the Arab world. Lebanon ranks ahead of the Martinique, Costa Rica and Hungary and behind Estonia, Bulgaria and Seychelles globally; while it comes ahead of Kuwait and behind Bahrain in the Arab world.

The article also details the user age distribution, which might be of marketers’ interest.

I was one of the people who were invited to the Smirnoff Nightlife Exchange Project launch party at B018 two days ago.

Their campaign is pretty cool, it consists of exchanging nightlife habits between 14 participating cities including Beirut, and the whole process will take place on Facebook where the residents of each of the 14 cities will be putting their ideas into a virtual crate about what makes the nightlife in their city unique.

On October 22nd, a list of the participating cities and their partner cities will be published along with the most popular idea for each location. For example, if the winning idea from Beirut turned to be “arriving in full make up, high consumption of Vodka RedBull, and lot’s of fireworks”, then Beirut’s partner city will have to party according to this idea and vice versa on November 27th, when the nightlife exchange will be happening. And it doesn’t end here, by providing your idea you’ll be getting the chance to win a ticket to go party at Beirut’s partner city!

To participate, all you have to do is to log into Smirnoff’s page on Facebook, become a fan and start submitting your ideas.

Let’s just hope we don’t end up pairing with South Africa, I’m pretty sure we will then have to party with Vuvuzela’s!!

Martha Fadel, a  fashion designer, is offering these funny tank tops through her Facebook group. I liked the one for Germany the most since it speaks the mind of the typical Lebanese! Birkenstock & Mercedes Benz? That’s SO us!

That’s one more evidence to prove that the Lebanese indeed hijack the greatness of others!

Ah no, it’s FaceLook beauty salon!

Photo taken at Bourj Abi Haidar – Beirut.

A few weeks ago I got this advertisement in my junk folder.

3anjad BRAVO! I believe it took them a lot of brainstorming to come up with the idea they’re promoting. “Advertising on your behalf on Facebook”, WOW.

These guys claim they can do what ANYONE else can do, that is using a credit card to post an ad for you on Facebook. As if we suffer of some disability that prevents us from posting an ad on Facebook on our own, and our brain cannot interpret the fields labeled “age”,  “gender” and “internet” that help us target a certain segment of users of Facebook, w AKID the buttons intended to generate reports showing the perfomance of our ads go way behind our understanding. Ya3neh alf l7amdilla allah ba3at hal 3alam ynawwrouna.

If you have a product to promote, just don’t use these guys, chances are they’re gonna rip you off, use your credit card instead and benefit from the experience of the people on the internet that have usef Facebook ads before (use google to find them), I did it and it worked for me.

… That’s unless you are running for the Lebanese elections, then do make use of their service because they’re ready to make special promotions for you as you can see below (snapshot from Al-Waseet newspaper), not to mention that you definitely deserve a ripoff at least once in your life.