I'm not sure what to make of the news that Saudi Arabia's first-ever "tweeters' forum" is taking place at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh today.

According to the Saudi Gazette, 500 of "the best young Saudi tweeters" will be gathering "to discuss the most pressing issues related to tweeting as well as the country’s development". 

Female tweeters will be allowed to attend too, and will "have the opportunity to listen and interact with top tweeting experts and e-business leaders". Topics to be covered include censorship and self-censorship, along with "making and disseminating ideas on Twitter".

Saudi comedians will also be doing stand-up turns during the sessions, the paper says.

A note of caution may be in order, though, since the event is described as "an initiative" of the Prince Muhammad bin Salman Philanthropist Foundation.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, this is the same Prince Muhammad bin Salman who was appointed last week as head of the Crown Prince's court and special adviser to the Crown Prince with the rank of minister – a job for which he is obviously well qualified since his father happens to be the Crown Prince.

This makes me wonder if the tweeters' convention is quite what it seems. 

The Saudi authorities have been getting in a flap over Twitter which is said to have three million users in the kingdom (and the number is rapidly rising). Last month the minister of culture and informationadmitted that censors can no longer keep pace with the huge volume of tweets and said "awareness in society must be upgraded to address the problem". 

So it will not be totally surprising if today's Ritz-Carlton event turns out to be some kind of semi-official attempt to encourage the sort of tweets that don't give the authorities a headache.

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 4 March 2013.