Here are the latest global trends! In this issue, the UAE trends are mentioned in 3 sections – social media, technology & digital and culture. The third edition of The Quarterly is the JCPR report covering the latest trends from around the globe including social media, technology & digital, brand & marketing, culture, good purpose, fashion & luxury, retail, food & drink, health & beauty and travel. These reports come from colleagues from across the world including UK, Germany, USA, Canada, Mexico, Africa, Belgium, Netherlands, UAE, India, Singapore, China and Australia.

Little Monsters; The Social Network!? It can only mean one thing… our weekly Arabian Bytes wrap-up! Tweet-a-meet with Qatar Airways Qatar Airways are taking their Tweeters travelling! In an innovative Tweet-a-Meet campaign, the airline is offering two friends, separated by distance, the opportunity to physically meet in one of their favourite travel locations. The campaign asks followers to pick a Twitter follower to team up with, and Tweet about one of the 117 Qatar airline destinations around the world using the hashtag #tweetameet, in order to potentially win tickets to the destination.

A big shout out this week goes to Matthew Weiner, he is the prodigy behind Mad Men. This week AMC aired the season 5 finale of Mad Men. I highly, highly, highly recommend everyone (especially those that work at an agency) to watch the show. Aside from the show’s talented cast, excellent costume designer and dramatic story line, Mad Men perfectly depicts the agency life like no other TV show or movie in Hollywood – especially in terms of handling clients, staff and everyday work life.

Following a recent Arabian Bytes post looking at Facebook use in the Arab world, we have come across this rather nice infographic by Shusmo looking at Twitter use in the region: Image source: Mashable Created in March 2012 using data from a Dubai School of Government report on Arab Social Media, the infographic shows that there is total of 1,311,882 active Twitter users in the Arab world. KSA is the country with the highest proportion of Twitter users with 393,000 marked as active, followed by Kuwait with 235,000 and Egypt with 215,000 users.

MEPRA, The Middle East Public Relations Association held a social media forum at the Westin Hotel in Dubai last week to discuss the state of social media in the public relations industry. The forum featured speakers who were present to deliver introductory sessions into the world of social media and its uses within the communications industry. With a room full of aspiring social media gurus, the audience was in for a treat.

“You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their frickin’ heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here!” Dr Evil may not the greatest role model one could have but I absolutely share his passion for toys. I love technology and always have.

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in digital and social media. As always, the news and latest developments in the digital world have been overwhelming and really exciting. Here are some of the news pieces that caught my attention: Mubarak fined for information shutdown Hosni Mubarak was ousted in an uprising in Egypt in January 2011. A Cairo court yesterday fined the ousted president and two ex-ministers $US90 million for a mobile and internet shutdown during the uprising.

Oh, such a dramatic week. First, Manchester United footballer Ryan Giggs – now known to have had an affair with Welsh model Imogen Thomas – put his foot in it by attempting to sue Twitter after some of its users posted his name despite the fact he had taken out an injunction preventing UK media from naming him. The only problem is that it caused so much outrage that Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming used parliamentary priveleges to name him anyway.

If we ignore the fact that some journalists are just impossible to please – I’m not naming any names, but you know who you are; at least you should do… And if you don’t give me a call, and I’ll put you straight – there are some interesting findings in the Insight/MediaSource Middle East Journalist Survey 2011. Its aim is to establish how happy journalists are with the way they receive information from both the public and private sectors, and to provide a “snapshot” of the mood in journalism across the Middle East.

Mashable.com released a lovely infographic about the history of social media that got us here at Arabian Bytes reminiscing about the very first social networks we started using regularly. Image courtesy of Flickr, rishibando, as seen on Mashable.com Do you remember the first website that got you all excited about connecting to others across the world? Or the first chatting service you were hooked on, whilst other family members complained about how the telephone was never free to use anymore (RIP the humble dial-up modem).

Ben Flanagan from The National recently wrote an interesting article about Middle Eastern social networking sites. Do you think a local website can be as big as an international one in the Middle East? Let us know your thoughts. Article Excerpt – Click here for the full article Local social networks have home advantage in taking on big boys By Ben Flanagan There are more than 600 million faces on Facebook, and the number of regular users is expected to rise to 1 billion in the next few years.