“Arabizi”, an informal dialect of Arabic typed on mobile phones and computer keyboards using the Latin alphabet took center stage in early 2011 during the Arab Spring uprisings. The writing is widely used in cellphone text messaging, social networks, chat rooms and other online media. Analyzing messages written in this dialect is a challenge for analysts in government and industry because of wide variations in spelling, grammar, and diction. This whitepaper explores the complexities of this online language and solutions to how to analyze this voluminous data source for meaningful intelligence.