Since its launch at the end of March 2011, Jordanian-based on-demand video site Istikana has achieved up an impressive milestone. The site has racked up 1 million visits in the 135 days since its launch at ArabNet 2011.
The announcement on Istikana’s blog read:
We started Istikana with a simple mission: To help people find and enjoy on-demand premium classic Arabic TV content through a service that users, content owners and advertisers love. We believed that if we could get the right content on the right platform, then we could really build something special.
Since that objective was set we have achieved in building a strong multi-device platform that
- Gives our viewers a seamless, high quality viewing experience across all common devices
- Gives content owners an exciting opportunity to monetize their incredible content online
- Gives advertisers an innovative advertising platform to actively engage with viewers
This achievement greatly encourages us that we are on to a winning formula. We will always keep our viewers front and centre and will continue to try our utmost to give our viewers the best viewing experience possible.
Istikana is certainly not without competition in its field, coming up against well-funded sites such as the MBC-backed Shahid.net and LinkdotNet’s Shofha.
Istikana, on the other hand, is the brainchild of Tareq Abu-Lughod and Samer Abdin, and their small team has been responsible for signing content deals with Arab Telemedia Group, and more recently, one of the Middle East’s largest content libraries, Al Anoud for Art Production and Distribution, bringing the total number of content partnership agreements to over 15.
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Istikana has set itself apart from other Arabic on-demand video sites by offering an extremely wide variety of videos, with modern and classic TV shows, documentaries and cartoons.
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