THIS LIST IS OUT DATED!!! PLEASE SEE THE NEW LIST INSTEAD!!!
Twitter… Just one of those things that you hate until you get hooked on it.
Because it is indeed a bit harder to get into it than most other social media that usually just adds your FaceBook fans friends to your list. And we all remember our first tweets, throwing out a shaky sentence to our five followers, not quite understanding why you didn’t send them a text message from your phone instead. Then some people start following you, you get some mentions and retweets, and it reminds you that you’re not at all alone out there. And if you really get into it, and if you become an influential power player, you can start a revolution. It’s happened before. There is a book about it. It’s called Tweets From Tahrir.
Twitter is definitely the fastest way of mass communication out there: it gets on Twitter before it gets on your TV screen.
So, to follow up our list of Lebanon’s 40 most visited blogs with reviews, we have now created a list of the 30 most influential people on Twitter in Lebanon.
If you would like to thank us for the effort of making this list, you can follow us and share!
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(The list is based on TweetGrader, which is a tool that measures peoples influence on Twitter. It’s the power of peoples followers that matters, not the amount. Read more about the algorithm used here.)
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01 – Haifa Wehbe World Twitter Ranking: 17,606 Follow @HaifaWehbe With 163 000 followers, Haifa is the most influential person on Twitter in Lebanon. Hifa was probably the first famous Lebanese person we ever got to hear about. She is not only extremely gorgeous, a great singer and entertainer, she also takes her tweeting seriously, and often tweets with her fans. (She never tweeted with us though, no matter how hard we tried).Her style is personal and honest and she uses hashtags a lot. She also posts pics from the gym and when she meets other famous people. Haifa is totally 2famous and tweets like it! Here is one of her answers to a a question from a fan: And here two of our favorite reetweets from Haifa: As all super famous people alse Haifa get haters, and she deals with them very well! We definitely love Haifa! And guess what? She’s only been on twitter for less than six months! |
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02 – Saad Hariri World Twitter Ranking: 19,511 Follow @HaririSaad We don’t really follow all that may politicians on Twitter, though they discovered the power of this simple website a long time ago. It gives a personal touch to their work, where people feel that they get to KNOW them a little.When Saad Hariri, former Prime Minister of Lebanon, and the son of former Prime minister Rafiq Hariri – THE number one super star of Lebanon – broke his leg in a skiing accident, he could comfort his worried fans from the hospital bed with the following tweets: “A lot of you asked about my recovery it’s coming along well, I have 4 hours physio therapy everyday, the pain is diminishing thank God.” “I am sure you understand all this is preventing me from tweeting as often as I would like to.” “Thank you for tonight, I will try to be online as often as I can, going to physio now. Have a great night, God bless you all.” Saad has been tweeting for two and a half year now, and is the second most influential twitterer in Lebanon. He tweets in Arabic and English.
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03 – Zaven Kouyoumdjian World Twitter Ranking: 34,523 Follow @zaven_k On number three we have the media personality, researcher, talk show producer and host, not to mention superstar, Zaven Kouyoumdjian!He has a rather successful talk show called “Sire Winfatahet” that runs on Lebanon’s FTV. But, best of all, he is a Twitter junky – something that all his fans loves, obviously. Last year he, as many other TV programs in Lebanon, got a warning from the government stating that his show had aired unethical content, and representing a “violation of the audiovisual law”. We went back in his archive, 2000 tweets ago, to see how he responded to this, but unfortunately it turned out that October 2011 was his least active Twitter month in recent history. Guess he had some other stuff to deal with… or he might have deleted his tweets.
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04 – Elissa Zakariar Khoury World Twitter Ranking: 38,409 Follow @elissakh Supposedly Lebanese & International singer Elissa has only been tweeting for one year. (That’s what it says on favstar.fm, but rumors has it she has been tweeting for 2). The very impressing number of 185 436 followers get good morning messages and daily updates from her life. She tells small secrets, like that she only drink coffe when she is with her mum and about her exercising schedule. (Wonder if she saw the Rooftop Workout Workshop Sessions.) Elissa is quite good on interacting with her fans, and we think is is very cute that she calls her fans Lovers ☺However a lot of the more motivational tweets such as “The moment someone tells you you’re not good enough,is the moment you know you’re better than them!” and ”Don’t ever hide your feelings because someone’s willing to hear them” Sounds like their taken from a qoute book and makes us start wondering if Elissa is actually tweeting everything herself.
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05 – Najib Mikati World Twitter Ranking: 48,546 Follow @najib_mikati Again, we are not so much into following politicians on Twitter, so we don’t quite understand their profiles when we check them out. However, the 5th most influential twitterer in Lebanon is the current prime minister, Najib Mikati.But we have to say that we get a bit put off when it says that this is the “Official Twitter feed for the Prime Minister of Lebanon”. We use Twitter to see peoples personal opinions – their voices – and we think that this just sounds too… official. Does he tweet or not? Some of his tweets are signed with N.M. Are these his personal tweets? Does someone tweets his tweets? Anyways, here Racha Mneimne invited him to a demo that took place in January: Racha: “@najib_mikati We Would Like to Invite You to this Demo to #FightRape http://t.co/3eDWfvkj < What would you like to say about this?” Way to go bro!
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06 – Matthew Cassel World Twitter Ranking: 53,498 Follow @justimage On the sixth place we find Al Jazeera photographer and journalist Matthew Cassel who has been based in Beirut for years. Matthew mainly tweets about news from the Middle East. His tweets are normally not so personal, but he manages to give some secrets once in a while: “Funny, I didn’t get one of these before Israel banned me in 2007 for teaching Palestinian children photography http://twitpic.com/5hbszk”We are also happy to see that his most famous tweet was about Norway: “Anyone else notice how all the so-called “terrorism experts” went mostly silent after discovering today’s terrorist wasn’t Muslim? #oslo” This tweet has been retweeted almost 300 times which show us that Cassel has really active followers.
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07 – Sayyed Ali El Amin World Twitter Ranking: 54,443 Follow @SayyedAliElAmin We don’t understand so much from his tweets, because they are all in Arabic. However, the background picture on his Twitter Profile gives some clues to what to expect. We suspect that this is a rather famous religious figure in this country. Probably one of those guys that everybody knows – and that we most definitely should know too. But it’s hard to get to know someone when you have to overcome such a language barrier. And if there is one thing Twitter is not so good at – is overcoming language barriers. So, we found ourselves in the situation where we had to use google translate to make sense of his Tweets.Here are his two most popular tweets translated by the internet: Original: إنّ الكثيرمن الممارسات التي تجري في مراسم عاشوراءأصبحت من العادات التي لا دليل عليها في أصل الشرع ولم يمارسها أهل البيت http://t.co/y2EJiZcb Can someone help us with a better translation?
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08 – Mona Abou Hamze World Twitter Ranking: 64,550 Follow @monaabouhamze Mona Abou Hamze is not only super beautiful, but she is also a real power player on Twitter. On her badge it says “TV anchor, HouseWife, Writer & a Public Figure”. TV has made her famous. You know how it works…Being a housewife and a writer, Mona most certainly have the time to live out her passion for ink… and Twitter should be the perfect tool for Mona! :) However, she is a bit too careful exposing her writing skills on Twitter, and she seems to stick to good ol’quotes and retweeting rather than composing her own snaps. But sometimes her tweets gets more personal, like this one: ”My family is the best thing I ever did ! lying about my age would be erasing them from my life! How can one hide his best achievement??“ You’re beautiful Mona :*
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09 – Imad Bazzi
World Twitter Ranking: 68,666 Imad Bazzil is the highest ranked activist in Lebanon and has probably the coolest Twitter badge. It’s simply ends up stating that he is changing Lebanon 1kb at the time! But, of course, Imad is also a social media expert, and probably knows the importance of a cool badge if you want to make it on Twitter. His tweets are political and from the streets. He’s not scared of saying what he means, and he was tweeting from Tharir Square, sharing pictures with the world. Respect bro! Sometimes he also puts in random personal tweets, like this one: ”so the rumor via that fake blog says am dating a Lebanese – Jordanian news anchor! .. damn i wish it was true! :)” |
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10 – Marie-Joe World Twitter Ranking: 72,698 Follow @OhJDBforeva So far most of the people on this list has was already famous before they started tweeting. That’s why they have so many followers. Marie-Joe is different. She is 15 years old. She is a truly devoted Justin Bieber fan. She tweets, she blogs, she’s cool, she’s hot. She’s just got it. That’s it. She broke the code, and she made it to the top ten list! Fuck yeah! Respect!Though… what does she tweet about again? Well, she tweets about Justin Bieber, and she Tweets with other Justin Bieber fans out there – about Justin Bieber. Actually, she is part of this secret underground twitter community that is becoming more and more powerful every day. There are millions of Bieber fans out there, and they seem to follow each other. It’s called BiebTwittPower (BTP). (A bit annoying that she actually has a picture of Justin Bieber as her profile picture, as we had made a secret pact with ourselves of never putting his picture on our blog. Bugger!) Here are some of her most popular tweets: “As long as I’m fucking breathing, I’ll be a fucking belieber.” “the awkward moment when you say “lol” out loud..” “OMG HAHAHA ONLY BELIEBERS!! “ @TheBieberDesire: http://t.co/8WYCnASK LMFAO HE FINALLY ADMITTED IT GUISE.”
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11 – Suzanne AlaywanWorld Twitter Ranking: 74,345 Follow @SuzanneAlaywan Suzanne Is a poet and artist that only blogs in Arabic. When the internet translates one of her tweets, it looks like this: “I apologize to Old love, new love of a transaction like the first.”It seems Suzanne is using twitter to write poetry. It makes us sad that we cant understand it.Can someone please help us translate?
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12 – Nadine MoawadWorld Twitter Ranking: 79,103 Follow @nmoawad Nadine Moawad is an activist and blogger that tweets about social and political issues in Lebanon and the Middle East. Like this one: “Amazing news! RT @deena_adel: Forced virginity testing is now officially ILLEGAL in #Egypt :) Thank you, #SamiraIbrahim.”Her style is laidback and she also uses twitter to converse and engage. |
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13 – Rania BarghoutWorld Twitter Ranking: 90,414 Follow @raniabarghout Rania is almost exclusively tweeting in Arabic, so we don’t get it. She is very cute and she must be doing something right, although it is a bit hard for us to pinpoint exactly what it is. Here is one of here very few tweets in English: “Someone said: ‘If people just listened to each other’s music, politicians will be out of a job’…We like :*
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14 – Aarifa AbedaWorld Twitter Ranking: 98,568 Follow @aarifaabeda Aarifa is one of those up and coming super stars. Why? Her badge says “I am a sexy girl, but I am very smart. “ And everyone knows that if you are both sexy and smart, well, then you will make it! Like Madonna. She actually posts a lot of interesting news articles from all over the world. And she also tweets about famous people – and she follows back. Here is one of her tweets. “I’ve learned… That when you plan to get even with someone, you are only letting that person continue to hurt you.” |
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15 – Rula AminWorld Twitter Ranking: 109,474 Follow @rulaamin Rula Amin is the Al Jazeera International correspondent in Beirut, and she tweets about news. She retweets interesting articles and from what we can see on her profile, she seems to be pretty up to date on what is going on in the Middle East. She uses her conections and sources to have cutting edge information on what is happening in Lebanon and the neighbouring countries. Like this tweet for example: “Activists confirm security forces now on foot at the Basil football field at the edge of #Baba Amr, fighting is fierce with the FSA #Syria” |
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16 – Assaad ThebianWorld Twitter Ranking: 115,931 Follow @ Beirutiyat Assad is one of those guys that does whaterver he wants. His Twitter badge looks like this: “Journalist. Blogger. Social Media Consultant. Activist. Photographer. Anarchist. Human. Actor. Lebanon & Middle East political and love affairs.” Respect! It seems like he tweets mostly in Arabic, but he has some funny ones in English too, like this one: “Uninstalling Mubarak: 100% Complete! ████████████████████████████ #egypt #jan25 #tahrir #mubarak, which he posted last year and gave him 38 retweets.” |
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17 – MustaphaWorld Twitter Ranking: 125,749 Follow @beirutspring Mustapha is one of the top bloggers of Lebanon with beirutspring.com that he started in 2005. Tweets (like he blogs) his personal take on Lebanese (and regional) news from the perspective of a Lebanese living abroad. (He is originally from Tripoli, but currently lives abroad with his family.) He is a pretty active Tweeter and engages with his readers, shares links, thoughts, and information about the Lebanese society, business and politics. He loves a good discussion on the internet ;) |
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18 – M ChaabanWorld Twitter Ranking: 133,104 Follow @ sesemic Professional internet user with a website in arabic. Don’t quite know what it’s about, but he has a very cool ad on his site where you can date Lebanese girls for free. Because in our experience, dating Lebanese girls tends to turn out to be everything but free… Hmm… maybe we should have one of those ads on our site too? What do you think?Anyways, he’s tweets are probably awesome!
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19 – Maya ZankoulWorld Twitter Ranking: 134,179 Follow @mayazankoul Maya is a comics writer, Illustrator, blogger and now also popular on Twitter. She tweets about what she is doing, local issues and stuff that she finds on the internet. In her tweets we get to know how she looks at Beirut. Here are two examples:If only Beirut souks were made of local authentic shops that we could actually afford. What a sad, discriminative area they turned out to be Yesterday the Lebanese broke the world record for the longest meat skewer. Why don’t they work on breaking the record for fastest internet? Maya probably gives her followers updates on what is going on in the Middle Eastern cartoon and design scene.
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20 – Layal KWorld Twitter Ranking: 140,398 Follow @nights Tweets both in English and Arabic. She lets her fans know when there has been updates on the Lebanon Daily, which seems to be her online publication. Sometimes she also motivates her followers: “Don’t feel ashamed if you’re sexually harassed! Feel ashamed if you don’t fight back! #endSH” |
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21 – Darine SabbaghWorld Twitter Ranking: 141,896 Follow @sdarine Passionate marketer and a firm believer in SEO, wishful thinking & chocolate. I love mixing with cool people, technology and information architecture.Darine Tweets about social media and politics. She retweets fun facts and posts stuff like this: “370 million arab speakers, our of which 20% do not know a foreign language well enough to understand content #arabnetme @Qordoba”. Being pro in SEO and a passionate marketer, Darine also gives advices on cool reports and articles she has been reading. She rarely goes personal, but she answers and invites to dialogue.
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22 – NaeemaWorld Twitter Ranking: 146,611 Follow @naeema Naema is a Visual Artist & Enthusiastic supporter of open culture. She mentions a lot of people and use twitter as a place to make a dialogue. Giving a real feel of being present at the same time as she is spreading technological news from the Middle East. |
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23 – Goerge DagherWorld Twitter Ranking: 147,495 Follow @DagherGeorge George Dagher is Chief Market Strategist at estocks.com. He is into economics. A lot of tweets in Arabic and some in English. From what we can understand this guy is totally up to date on what is happening in the economical sector. I bet he thinks in % and we in 2famous could totally need some advice about the economy from Mr Dagher! “#GBP Manufacturing Production m/m in 5 min | Forecast: 0.4% | Prior: 1% http://GeoDagher.com #Forex #fx #News #AutoNews check out how $EURUSD played between our 2 Pracma levels 1.3236 & 1.3314 today #PriceAction” |
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24 – Sana TawilehWorld Twitter Ranking: 150,168 Follow @sanatawileh Sana Tawileh is an excellent photographer, and a bit of a cutie pie! If you google her name, you get a list of all the social media networks you have heard about, plus some you probably should have heard about. This girl is ON in the world of social media. She is (obviously) active on Twitter. It kind of works.He tweets this kind of stuff which is probably useful if you want to make money!?!
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25 – nourroumanyWorld Twitter Ranking: 169,805 Follow @nourroumany Nourroumany is another hardcore Justin Bieber fan: “Bieber or DIE bitch. Simple as fuck ^^..” is what she writes in her badge. She basically tweets about Justin Bieber, like: ”Arab Beliebers Are Ready For Boyfriend”. If you are someone that would cut of youre left hand to see Justin, you should follow @Nourroumany. |
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26 – Rita El KhouryWorld Twitter Ranking: 170,893 Follow @khouryrt Rita el Khory is the first pharmacist we have seen make it on twitter. She tweets geeky stuff about mobiles and the internet. Perfect to follow if you want to get updated on the phone front!Example: “Lumia 800. Shipping Now. 8 months from strategy change to shipment. That’s INCREDIBLE. #nokiaworld”
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27 – Ayman ItaniWorld Twitter Ranking: 175,491 Follow @aymanitani Ayman is a digital strategist tweeting about media and Beirut. Sharing news on the social media development in the Middle East. He also tweets from his daily life as a social media guru, like this one:“giving a training (day2) at arcenciel on how to use social media for employment assistance for people with disabilities”
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28 – Ibrahim ArabWorld Twitter Ranking: 186,058 Follow @ibrahimarab Not surprisingly the multi media journalist and blogger Ibrahim tweets in Arabic. But during the revolution in Egypt, he switched to English to share his expertise: “to open facebook, type 69.63.189.34 twitter type 128.242.240.52 Google, type 72.14.204.99 #jan25 #egypt #censorship #mubarak plz RT” |
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29 – Omar ChristidisWorld Twitter Ranking: 190,277 Follow @omarchr The Founder and CEO of ArabNet. Tweets about social media events and internet stuff. Like this one: “800 Million Facebook users / 2.1 Billion internet users worldwide = 38% of people on earth with internet have #Facebook” |
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30 – Liliane AWorld Twitter Ranking: 197,073 Follow @ibrahimarab Somehow the Big Mama of Lebanese blogging, as she runs the Lebanon Aggregtor, a website that lists 700 Lebanese blogs. Pretty cool girl (and very pretty)! Tweets cute things from her life, and are often having public discussions with her followers.On her badge it says: “Why so serious? A software developer / SEM womo sapien. I worry if I travel back in time, what will I work then? My tweets = my opinions. RT != Endorsement.” |
There might be other powerful people on Twitter in Lebanon that should have been on the list, but as long as they haven’t put “Lebanon” as their location they were not considered in this ranking. If you know someone that should have been on the list, we are more than willing to rank them in! Please help us stay updated!
Some of our favorite Tweeps are the Lebanese pop star Slutterhouse. He has some pretty cool tweets, and he writes his lyrics on the go on Twitter so that his fans can be updated. Hyperchickaisha is also a cool girl that we would recommend to follow. We would also like to promote Lynn. She is very cool, a great Tweeter, and definitely a star to come!
Follow @slutterhouse Follow @hyperchickaisha Follow @ lnlne .
At the very end, we would like to present ourselves. We are Matias & Jørgen, two Norwegians that tries to become famous actors in Beirut. Here is a video trailer for our blog 2famous.TV
