Myriam Fares first Google Plus ambassador to Arab world

Lebanese singer Myriam Fares has said she is very happy to be appointed the first Google Plus ambassador to the Middle East and North Africa. “It’s a great honour to represent this international company in the Middle East and North Africa, and I wish I can live up to the expectations of the company and my supportive fans,” said the star. Google announced Fares's appointment after she got the highest numbers of searches on Google in 2011. Google Plus was launched last year as a competitor to social media behemoth Facebook. Fares added: “I will be connected to my fans through Google Hangouts, I can live-chat with them and answer their questions. There will be some exclusive news and videos of my concerts for Google Plus members.” The singer already has a channel on Google's web broadcasting service YouTube. She continued “I’m the first Arab artist who has an official channel on YouTube. Google Plus is more important than Facebook as it has many services additional to what you get on Facebook.” The singer claimed she was not a big fan of micro-blogging platform Twitter, and that she doesn’t use it to communicate with her fans. The public relations manager at Google in the Middle East and North Africa, Maha Abou al-Ainain, said during the press conference at the Metropolitan Hotel in Beirut: “The second reason for choosing Myriam is that she was the first to use the internet to communicate with her fans.” She pointed out: "Google Plus was launched by Google in July 2011and has been widely used in the Arab world recently. Its advantages include establishing contact circles to share friends and information or colleagues in a different way than other social networks." She explained that Hangouts was a live-chat service that Fares will launch in Dubai on March 30. She will be the first Arabi star to use it. Al-Ainan added" “It’s a new technique to communicate with your favorite artists and we are happy to choose Myriam as she is very popular and has many fans. We wanted to honour her by giving her this title.”