The Arab Social Media Influencers Summit, held recently in Dubai, created a ripple effect throughout the Arab media world, and cemented the concept of the influencers on a wide scale.

A few years ago, we used to call them bloggers, but today they have become the influencers to the generations using social media, and who use public platforms to propagate their personal interests through word, picture and video. More than 500 Arab influencers gathered on March 17 and 18 in Dubai to learn, share and ameliorate the methods used to making an impact on a society hooked on social media.

The summit showcased the influencers as media icons, who serve as the pillars of modern communication by affirming to large companies and entities that their small circle of the audience has a much larger audience affected by those influencers and their special ways of conveying messages. Consequently, the future of branding and marketing will primarily rely on the "nets" created by these influencers that will surely catch a larger number of customers.

A picture on Instagram or 140 characters on Twitter was all you needed to inform the world of your latest lunch or freshest thought, but soon, that won't be enough to satisfy the taste of the gourmand users for more action. Therefore, the summit concluded on the need for the influencers to focus more on the production of short videos (no longer than 15 seconds) to get even closer to their followers.