Meedan

Meedan is a non-profit social technology company which aims to increase cross-language interaction on the web, with particular emphasis on translation and aggregation services in Arabic and English. Through its use of Machine Translation (MT), Machine Augmented Translation (MAT), and distributed human translation, Meedan’s goal is to increase dialogue and exchange between Arabic and English speakers primarily by launching a cross-language forum for conversation and media sharing. This service will be designed to stand as “a digital gathering place for a linguistically, culturally, and geographically diverse community of Arabic and English speaking Internet users”.

Meedan was founded by Ed Bice in 2005 and incorporated as a nonprofit charitable organization in 2006. Bice, who was formerly Executive Director of The People's Opinion Project, remains CEO with a board comprising Jon Corshen, President of GoingOn Technologies, a social media company for onDemand software, Adnan Hassan, Chairman and CEO of Mecasa Advisors and a former senior adviser and member of the Board of Directors at the World Bank, and Hanan Heakal, Senior Human Resources Manager at Procter & Gamble in Cairo, Egypt.

Meedan – whose name means ‘gathering place’ or ‘town square’ in Arabic – sees “dialogue and collaboration” as the key to creating “understanding and tolerance” between the Arab and Western worlds. A fundamental premise of the organization is that social technology on the web can play a part in enabling citizen-to-citizen diplomacy between the peoples of Arab and Western countries, thereby helping to improve cross-cultural understanding. Meedan’s vision is thus to “innovate technologies that enable dialogues across linguistic, cultural, and ideological boundaries”. The company describes itself as “multi-cultural, non-partisan, non-ideological, and supportive of diverse viewpoints”.

Meedan’s core product is a forum for cross-language conversation and media sharing in Arabic and English. Users can browse aggregated sources around world events – blogs and mainstream sources; opinion and reporting; Arabic and English writing – and help expand the news narrative by posting articles and comments themselves. All sources and comments are mirrored across Arabic and English using a combination of machine and human translation. Users can also make friends with other users and upload their profile to their My Meedan page.

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