Muscat – Fuelled by passion to innovate and create an indigenous social media platform for the Arab world, an Omani ICT professional has developed sufred.com, a platform like Twitter.

A graduate in business administration from the University of Arkansas, USA, Rashad bin Mahmoud al Raisi upskilled his qualifications with diplomas in IT and marketing to better understand the ICT sector and create the new platform.

Raisi described Sufred as a one-stop solution “to express opinion and beliefs on any topic, whether it is news or issues related to culture, education or entertainment”.

Sufred got its name from a wild bird, which has a distinct sharp call and brown plumage.

“Besides making friends and following people of interest,” Raisi said, “the platform can help entrepreneurs promote their products and serve as a useful business platform.”

About the features of Sufred, Raisi said, “In addition to having written conversation or chats, the platform allows further interaction with uploads of photos and videos. Sufred is a social networking and news site, where people communicate in short messages called posts.”

Sufred allows posts of up to 500 characters, as against 280 on Twitter.

Launched in August 2022, Sufred has a modest number of users – 600 at last count. “Although the numbers are less, we have great feedback. We hope it reaches a larger number of people in the Arab world to make most of its potential.”

About the challenges he faced in creating Sufred, Raisi said programming and coding were tough. “I sought professional help to create an error-free platform. Sufred is free, hassle free and available 24?7.

“I call on all to join my site and urge Omani youth to follow their passion, be innovative and never give up.”

Raisi is currently working on obtaining a patent for Sufred.

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