The equivalent of “.org” or “.com”, for an ever-expanding market

(by Alessandra Antonelli) (ANSAmed) – DUBAI – After a months-long wait, the first entirely Arabic Internet domain has been green-lit. Going live in mid-December, it’s called ”.shabaka”, which means Web, and will be written in Arabic. It is the equivalent of ”.org” or ”.com”.

This debut will likely shift the communication paradigms of the Internet market in the Arab world, one that is growing exponentially and is hungry for more Arab-language content and tools.

”This is a crucial turning point in the history of the Internet in the region”, commented Yasmin Omer, manager of DotShabaka Register, the Dubai company in charge of domain registrations.

This, she added, will fill the gap between Arab content and Arab users, who are constantly growing. There are currently 120 million Arab Internet users, or about 7% of the world Internet population. Arab content, however, is just 2% of the whole.

The new Arabic domain means it will be no longer be necessary to transliterate names from Arabic into English – an often mined phonetic field when moving from one country and language to another. The first website with an Arabic URL was launched in 2010.

Just three years later, ”.shabaka” might make it unnecessary for Arab Web surfers to use domains in other languages.

It will also likely break open new, exclusively Arab markets – a potential that many have tried to tap: Yahoo! led the way with the Maktoob interface. Google+, Facebook and Twitter followed suit, each with its own Arab-language option. Though a pathfinder, ”.shabaka” will not remain alone for long. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which evaluates and approves new domains in various languages, has already received more than 50 requests from the Middle East. Of these, 36 came from the United Arab Emirates, including phone company Etisalat and the emirate of Dubai.