A recent conference, ‘Mudawanat: All About Blogging,’ brought together leading bloggers and technology enthusiasts in Qatar, with the aim of “energizing new and existing bloggers in the country,” reports Bonnie James at The Gulf Times. Awareness of the urgent need to adopt and utilize new communication technologies such as blogging and social media networks has been growing throughout the Arab world.

At the conference in Qatar, Ahmad Hamzawi, Google's head of engineering for the Middle East and North Africa, also spoke optimistically about the growth of Arab blogs. “Though only 1% of all content online is in Arabic, the interest in blogging is rising in the Arab world,” he said.

The Second Annual Arab Bloggers Workshop is another illustration of the increasing role of blogging in the Arab public sphere, according to Global Voices.

New media technologies in the Arab world face several challenges. For instance, according to The Jerusalem Post, the official telecom body in Egypt recently threatened legal action against those who texted “inappropriate words”-- a broad phrase that could be used to prosecute users who criticize public officials.

Even with these political obstacles, there have been positive developments for the Arab blogosphere. Bonnie James also reports for Gulf Times that the Qatari information and communications ministry recently launched “Digital Qatar,” the “first specialized and dedicated blog created by a government agency in the country.”

“The objective is to build an online community of tech enthusiasts and start a conversation in Qatar about technology,” James continues.

Mohamed Talal Badawi, who founded the largest online community of Arab web developers said that "the last five years have witnessed a boom in social networks, with a 250% growth every year,” reports Gulf Times.

In spite of steadily increasing interest, there is still a major disparity in internet presence between the Arab world and its Western counterparts. A leading local blogger, Ammar Mohamed Khaled, stated at the Qatar meet that, “There were only 1,141 bloggers among the 436,000 internet users in Qatar, going by the statistics for 2008.”

During his speech at the blogging conference, Hamzawi pointed out that only 16% of the population in the MENA region are active internet users, although that number is constantly growing.