Toronto’s ScribbleLive opens Dubai office, eyes further expansion

In June, Toronto’s ScribbleLIve raised $8 million. The company’s platform was already available in 14 languages, and used byAP, Reuters, CNN and ESPN.The GITEX Technology Forum conference, the Middle East’s largest tech showcase drawing more than 130,000 attendees from 150 countries, is taking place this week in Dubai, with Toronto’s ScribbleLive participating as a platinum sponsor, fresh off an announcement that the company is opening an office there, called ScribbleLive MENA.

“This conference is at the forefront of technology and aligns perfectly with Scribble’s offerings,” said Maged Mostafa, ScribbleLive MENA’s general manager. “With over 100,000 attendees, this is a great opportunity for us to position Scribble as an industry leader with superior real-time engagement solutions in the Middle East.”

ScribbleLive has already enlisted Al Jazeera, Emarat Alyoum, the Khaleej Times and Sport360 as clients in the region. The expansion proves that brands and news organizations alike recognize the importance of engaging with their respective audiences in real time.

“From day one, we knew ScribbleLive was going to be a global company,” said Michael De Monte, Chief Executive Officer, ScribbleLive. “Expanding to the Middle East was the next logical step for us after having built out our North American and European operations. The new office represents our commitment to bringing the best in real-time engagement solutions to world-class media companies and brands, and personally servicing the MENA region.”

The conference is featuring, for the first time, a Big Data segment, presented by Diamond Sponsor Accenture and Platinum Sponsors Commvault and Huawei. Market research firm IDS estimates that 40% of Middle Eastern CIOs are actively engaged in evaluating investments in Big Data analytics this year.

In June, five years after its founding as a primarily “live-blogging” platform, ScribbleLive raised $8 million. The company’s platform was already available in 14 languages, and used by North American and European clients, including the Associated Press, Reuters, CNN and ESPN.

ScribbleLive came to mainstream attention during their client Boston.com’s use of the the company’s platform during the Boston marathon manhunt, during which each detail of the chase was documented in real time and simultaneously picked up by almost 50 other news organizations, using Scribble’s syndication system.

The real-time nature of the event and the way it unfolded on the ScribbleLive platform signaled a way forward for traditional newsgathering operations that have struggled with how to stay relevant in an era when revenues for traditional journalism are disappearing, and furthermore provided a model for how not only to engage readers, but also to effectively harness both syndication and social media as dynamic new means of telling stories.

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