Growing Omani blogosphere?

Back in 2005 (I was still not a blogger back then, but I was a regular reader to many blogs), the Omani blogosphere had its own taste. There were many active Omani blogs, and blogging was just getting more and more popular in Oman. In 2005 there was even the Oman Blogs Award where The Muscatis got the first place. However, by the end of that year or maybe in mid-2006, these blogs suddenly became inactive for some unkown reasons. More and more blogs became inactive, and the hype of blogging was just lost and the Omani blogosphere became very dead. In 2007 and 2008 new blogs started appearing, especially in 2008. I think there is a very good number of Oman-based blogs today, especially blogs of expatriates who live in Oman and blogging about their experience in Oman. You might not agree with the "way" things are blogged in these blogs, but I think it's still good that the Omani blogosphere is growing again and now we have a fair number of active Omani blogs.

I have also seen a number of new Omani blogs in Arabic. In the Internet, there are only three major Omani forums in English and countless of Arabic ones. But for blogs, it's the other way around. About 15 months ago in our first bloggers gathering, Kishor asked me how does the blogging scene look like for Arabic Oman-based blogs, since he is a non-Arabic speaker and obviously will not know about Arabic blogs or forums. I told him that there were only a handful of Oman-based Arabic blogs, but countless of Arabic forums. Now, many Arabic blogs from Oman started appearing, and they're very active, to some extend. I think most of these bloggers used to be active writers in big Omani forums and they just saw that it was better to document their thoughts in their own blogs rather than forums! Either that's the case or not, it's very good to see a growing number of Arabic Oman-based blogs. Everyday I discover a new Arabic blog from Oman, and that's the very first reason why I'm typing this post.

Is the Omani blogosphere growing again? I think yes. And there's even a new flavor in the Omani blogosphere today, something that was not there back in 2005. Now we have expatriates blogging about their experiences in Oman, and we also have Arabic blogs that are very active. This is a new flavor, and a nice one if I may add. Below you will find links to some of the Arabic blogs from Oman. Since English blogs are easier to discover and they're pretty much known to almost everyone, I'm not including them in the list below. Whenever I discover a new Oman-based blog, I try adding it to the Blogroll of this community blog. But for the growing number of Arabic blogs which is a new thing to the Omani blogosphere, I'm creating this post for them. I hope we remain having these active blogs and have more active blogs in the Omani blogopshere so it becomes as effective as the blogosphere of neighboring countries in the Gulf region.

Links (in absolutely no particular order):

- Hamad Al-Ghaithi

- Muawiyah Al-Rawahi

- Oman name (عماني ممنوع من الكلام)

- Omani1970 (ليت لي جناح)

- Bin Mrhi

- Said Reviews (Said Al-Maskari)

- alwarda

- Fashkool2008

- Wahiba Sands

These are just the ones I discovered recently. Each day I discover more blogs, and someday I will try adding all these blogs to the blogroll here. I will even try separating the Arabic blogs from English ones, for those interested.

By the way, Blue-Chi blogged about a similar topic a couple of days ago, talking about his love with Arabic literature today due to the growing number of Arabic blogs from Oman. You can find it [here].