Ahmed Essam, Some Like it Neat!

We’ve been seeing an explosion in online business in the middle east but not many mobile apps have risen, of course there are some that I cannot fail to mention such as Circletie and Backpack. But we definetly did not see a twitter client yet.

Well, Ahmed Essam, the founder and CEO of the Flat 6 Labs start up, F16 Apps, is here to change that with Neatly. I poked his brain on what they intend to do with that here, see what he has to say: –

1) So tell more about yourself, who is Ahmed Essam?

My Name is Ahmed Essam, used to be the Mobile Application Development Team Leader at Sarmady, I have been working on mobile apps since Windows Mobile (even before that, with Nokia 9110 and operating system called GeOS). Here is a quick video for one of my hacks on Windows phone. 

I have also been working on a project called E-purse, it is e-payment solution system using credit card like machines, which I developed a big part of. You can also check out my about me profile here.

2) What is Neatly App?

So far “Neatly” is a Twitter client that helps users save time by creating interest-based timelines, so there is no unrelated tweets sorted chronologically, Add to that are UI tricks that will help users find what they are looking for quickly.

Neatly is not just app, it is engine that should solve the problem of “information overloading”, our engine studies user behavior form (data source that could be solution network or interaction with the app)

Neatly for Twitter is a proof of concept for something that is way bigger than what you see, imagine having Neatly as your personal assistant, it knows a lot about you (it is your pet ) it is also very safe because it doesn’t send anything back to the server and this is what makes our engine amazing, it runs 100% on the mobile device, which makes it very “privacy friendly”

3) So how does it differ from all the other twitter clients such as Tweetbot and Echofon?

Tweetbot, Echofon are are normal apps that serve as Twitter clients, Neatly is more than that.

Neatly creates a “topics timeline” which turns your tweets into meaningful topics that can be used in many things, like you can know most of what happened in Apple keynote in Apple topics.

Neatly creates “interest timeline” based on the user’s interests, so whatever you like comes closer than the ones that you don’t care about a lot, nothing is filtered out, the same timeline just sorted for the things you like.

The App, under the least calculation will save about 30% of the time you spend on Twitter with more concentration on the things you want to know about.

It is like having these extra buttons to your Twitter Timeline “Fwd/pause/fastfwd” 😀

4) Are you planning to expand and involve Facebook and other social media into your app?

Sure, our plan is to put Neatly for Twitter everywhere then put more social networks on it.

5) Are you planning to integrate some Arabic into the app since you’re out of the Middle East?

We have done a trial to see if the Arabic will work with us or not, we have ported 15% of our engine which works great! The app Name is “Ya-Khabr”, but we didn’t see the success expected in Middle East.

Mobile users are not “early adopters”, so part of their attitude is they settle and never change, which is very hard for new comers like us.

6) What do you see for the future of social media/mobile apps?

I think in the coming years, most of the utilities in our life will need to connect to social networks to know more about us, imagine that your car will need to know more about you so it adapts, at some point you will not need to change the radio channel because with some sensors in the car and the knowledge gathered from social networks, the car will know what you need at this moment.

Machines know more about us than we know 😀 with the latest studies of brain and psychology it is truly mind blowing to know what the future has for us.

For the near future,

– brands will get more connected

– whoever will not adapt no matter how big they are, will fail and will lose, the Internet made the world very small, if you don’t like the shoe shop near to you, you can easily order “your dream shoe online” and it may cost you less!

– People will know more

– Business will be more transparent 

7) What other projects is F16 Apps involved in/or planning on working on?

We have 

– OnWall: A virtual wall app, that lets you leave notes wherever you are and it works exactly the way you do in real life, when you write on a wall and leave, same thing

– Lovote: A Location based questioning service, think of it like “Foursquare and Quora mixed together”

– Ya-Khabr: News aggregator that help users find news that is relevant to their interest (Targeting Arabic Speaking users) 

– Neatly for Nokia S60 (Released)

– Neatly for Nokia S40 (95% done)

– Neatly for Nokia iOS (80% done)

– Neatly for Nokia BB (40% done)

We have other 3 Apps that are currently in the works…

8) How many people have worked on Neatly?

We started out 8 months ago with 5 team members, 4 moths after that we became 12 members, all of them are fresh grads except the office manager and the office boy. And even our office boy is learning to become a  developer, he is learning C++ and C#.

9) When shall we expect Neatly to be out on the market?

Neatly for iOS should be out in week and will be in the market based on Apple’s Approval.

10) Any plans to expand to other platforms than iOS like Blakberry & Android?

Sure, our plan is to be everywhere!

WE SAID THIS: It seems that this one is coming to take over and introduce a new concept for us twitter obsessed fellas! So check it out and await its release soon!