I've been a tech enthusiast ever since I can remember, I always had the habit of dedicating an hour of my day -at least- to check on tech news and read several of my favorite blogs, which now evolved to become Pocketnow, Gizmodo and ZDNet. I had a passion for technology and I was eager to involve myself in the community. Later on I discovered blogger and started writing about various things that weren't exactly related to technology, but after numbers started to go higher I focused more on Technology and I found it to be my true passion. I wanted to share my knowledge and opinion with others and in this process a pattern emerged, I was falling hard for Android OS and this is the short version of how "Android Basha" came to be.

But recently I stopped writing and shifted my energy to produce Arabic tech reviews, unboxing’s, how-to videos and not to leave you hanging for too long here is why I made the move to video content:

1 - Video content is king

This blog from head to toe is a one man operation, I never had any assistance in anything here, from the theme coding to polishing posts before publishing I have done myself, this process takes a lot of time and energy, and from my experience it took much longer to achieve decent milestones on this blog than on my YouTube channel.

2 - The process 

Video content is more fun, The process of preparing material then shooting a video and editing it is far more better than coming up with an article and revising it to the best structure for the audience to consume and interact with. Yes some people are more into written content but the general audience is quite demanding and generally has a small attention span, so unless they were really drawn into the article, they won’t stay for long, on the other hand relatively-short videos are being consumed way faster, just look at YouTube, Vimeo and Vine.

3 - Building an audience

The way I see it, video content is more personal than written content, the connection you build up with your audience is far more deeper on YouTube than the one you build up in a series of articles, when people put a face to your name and hear your voice they interact more and create a connection if the content was to their liking.

4 – Targeted audience

As you click around my blog, you will realize that pretty much 100% of my content is in English and there is a reason for that, I find myself more comfortable expressing my thoughts here in English, it’s not that Arabic doesn’t suffice, but some terms do not translate to Arabic properly and some of them even sound quite silly to me. So I write in English but the thing is… there’s no shortage of English tech blogs and certainly a small blog of someone who has a full time job and writing for the fun of it is not even close to compete, the competition is fierce.

On the other hand there is absolutely no comparison between Arabic content and English content online, there is a decent gap. And that includes video content, so before jumping into video making I gave writing in Arabic a shot but I couldn't do it, maybe my vocabulary needs to be enhanced in Arabic (my mother tongue) – yes, I realize how ironic that sounds – but I didn’t find speaking about tech in Arabic that hard, I do discuss tech related topics regularly with my friends in Arabic and in fact it’s something I can talk about for hours. 

5 – Community Recognition

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been blogging for years, 3 to be more specific. And it wasn’t until a month after I started making videos that I had my “Bieber moment”, when I walked into a place and a complete stranger came up to me and asked if I was who he thought I am, and he was so happy to meet me in person which was awesome! Yes for a moment there it felt weird but the more it happened, the more it made me happier to have benefited people with my content, after all it’s all about sharing knowledge and thoughts, so if by any chance you happened to see me somewhere don’t be a stranger, come and say hi! I love getting feedback from my viewers :)

But it’s not all about individuals, brands also appreciate content creators and support them, the Arabic tech community needs all possible resources to grow, and brands play an important role in that. YouTubers from the US and Europe always had early access to information and gadgets unlike Arabic YouTubers, but that is changing, The Arabic market is getting more attention and things are getting better for Arabic bloggers and YouTubers, but I must say; we need more people to get involved and get busy creating Arabic content, we have a lot to catch up to.

In closing, this might not necessarily be my last entry here but my primary focus is on Arabic video content creation now, You can check out my YouTube channel here, like my Facebook page and add me to your Google Plus circles and don’t forget to follow me on Twitter, Instagram and Vine for more updates on upcoming videos.

Confessions of a Tech Blogger: Why I Stopped Writing

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