When Amman-based Albawaba.com launched the new Sharekna.com photo and video sharing website for Arab users, it did not intend to create a cultural revolution, only to make life a bit easier for Arabic speaking users who wanted a friendly solution for sharing their pics and clips.

Within days of going online, the Sharekna.com team noticed that they were attracting a very rapidly increasing audience of Arab girls to the site, both as users and as viewers.

Girls will be girls everywhere - they have their favorite celebrities, they want to share clips from their cell phones, and they want to find new friends. But in the Arab world there are a few differences; it is not just that girls can admire a princess instead of a pop singer, it is also the discomfort they feel in many websites that they find to be just too uninhibited.

It quickly became evident that the main attraction to the girls and other users of Sharekna.com was not the technology, but the community. When it came to sharing their photos Arab internet users were even more concerned about who to share as with how to share. Sharekna.com has a community with common tastes and beliefs, and it is much easier for members of a more traditional society to make it their home.

The fast growth of postings and viewings has led some observers to suggest that this could be the start of the Arab world\'s user generated content revolution, but others are more reserved. They point out that an estimated 20% of male users on the site are thought to be girls hiding their identity.