Saudi Arabia: Al Farhan Returns to Blogging  · Global Voices
Amira Al Hussaini

The Fouad is Free banner from www.alfarhan.org/
Popular Saudi blogger Fuad Al Farhan is back to blogging – to the delight of the blogging community.
Al Farhan stopped blogging for the second time after his arrest on December 10, 2007. Although no official charges were pressed, he was held in solitary confinement, and finally released on April 26, 2008. Prior to this, he had also stopped blogging for a period of time, after government officials warned him to “tone down” his commentary (see source above) – making this his third debut into the world of blogging.
Upon his return to blogging, Al Farhan, who is outspoken in favour of political reform in the Kingdom, writes a post entitled: Blogging..the Best Option, which opens up a debate on the merits and disadvantages of micro-blogging and social networks.
In this post, he says:
Al Farhan then discusses the different social media tools he was using while away from his blog. About Facebook, he writes:
جربت الفيسبوك فترة طويلة وأعجبني كما أعجب المليون ونصف سعودي المسجلين فيه، وأبرز ميزاته هي:
The speed at which you get to know and communicate with friends
The speed and intensity of participation from friends
The strength and effectiveness of planning, gathering and group work
Not bothering with the technical and technological details (all the Facebook user pages are the same and differ in content only)
The entertainment factor
But everything has its down side – and here are Facebook‘s, in Al Farhan's words:
Another medium Al Farhan toyed with during his hiatus from blogging was Twitter, where he is still actively tweeting away. He writes:
On Twitter’s benefits, he blogs:
As for Twitter‘s disadvantages, Al Farhan says:
Al Farhan also writes about his experience with Tumblr, before returning to explain why he is back to blogging:
Al Farhan used to previously blog here.