Ras2Ras comparison site launched

Ras2Ras.com, a new Web 2.0 comparison site for the Middle East launched on Thursday.
The site, which is run from Sana’a, Yemen, allows users to post a comparison of any two items – be it people, gadgets, services, sports teams and so on – and then draw on the Ras2Ras.com community to decide which is best.

Comparison battles will be decided by community-based discussion and voting on each issue, with the idea being to provide site users with a way to get opinions and information generated by an independent audience.

Amad Almsaodi, president of Ras2Ras.com explained: “The region has seen a tremendous growth in competition; however, consumers do not have enough tools that can help them compare companies, products, or services. Ras2ras.com provides a platform that can help them compare and take decisions based on social generated content. It can also enable businesses to post battles between product features to measure the consumers’ preferences. There are unlimited ways in which this platform can be used.”

The site is only available in Arabic at present, but the company plans to launch an English version once the Arabic version is established.

The site management also plan to include ‘video battles’ using YouTube, and will also develop links to other social sites and platforms, to encourage the development of a community on the site.“We have used bleeding edge technologies to develop this project: Sharing was a high priority for us, so we teamed up with Add This to allow sharing battles on all top web platforms - Google, Facebook, Hi5, Myspace, etc. Tags and Tag Clouds were used to annotate content for accessibility and Search Engine Optimization, and AJAX was used to ensure better usability and faster loading,” said Mohamed Redwan, development manager.