Dubai joins 175 cities in hosting Twitter festival

Dubai: Dubai is to join over 175 cities in a global networking meeting taking place on Thursday, February 12.

Based around the social media service Twitter, the event brings the UAE into a global community using one of the fastest growing new innovations in today's new media.

Twitter is the online service that allows people to share short messages of under 140 characters.

Usage of Twitter grew 75.2 per cent in 2008 from a total of 500,000 unique visitors at the start of 2008 to 4.43 million unique visitors worldwide in December. The UAE's Twitter community numbers just over 500 at present, but is extremely fast growing.

"We hope Twestival networking event will both help raise awareness for Twitter in the UAE and for charity: water, the charity supported by this global event," said P.K. Gulati, one of the co-organisers of the Dubai Twestival. "The event has been entirely put together using Twitter, which goes to show how powerful 140 character messages can be!"

The Twestival is organized 100 per cent by volunteers in cities around the world and 100 per cent of the money raised by these events will go directly to support the charity: water, which is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

Twestival events are also being organized around the Middle East, with events taking place in Amman, Jordan; Beirut, Lebanon; Doha, Qatar; and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.