However, its quarterly growth has been sliding steadily in 2011, from 17% in Quarter 1 to 8% in Quarter 4. In Quarter 4 2010, it was growing at 21%.

2010 was the year when Facebook went on hyper-drive growth on users acquisition front in Asia. However, 2011 was the year when Facebook downshifted a gear or two. The decline is expected to continue as many Asian nations are reaching saturation level.

Total Facebook users in Asia increased from 168 million on October 1 2011 to 181 million on December 31 2011, a quarterly growth rate of 8%.

Indonesia continues to be the top Asian country on Facebook with 42 million users. But India will dethrone Indonesia soon. [UPDATE: India has surpassed Indonesia to become Facebook's biggest country in Asia.]

Facebook users in India has been growing by the double digits throughout 2011. On January 1 2011, India has 17 million Facebook users. By the end of the year, the country has 41 million users!

Other than India, eight other countries registered double digits growth throughout 2011, namely Thailand, Japan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Cambodia, Mongolia, Afghanistan, and Laos (see Table 3). However, only three countries are growing at rates higher in Quarter 4 compared to Quarter 3, namely Japan, South Korea and Mongolia. And South Korea registered the highest single quarter growth of 82% in Quarter 1 2011.

How accurate are these estimations? Read here.

Facebook in Asia: A Growth Story (2011) originally appeared on GreyReview.com on January 1, 2012.

These days, everybody loves Path. Tech connoisseurs and casual users alike have given the latest Path mostly positive reviews. Path 2 is definitely one of the most beautiful apps of 2011!

A little more than a year ago, Path was quite a different app. Path, which is founded by Dave Morin, ex-Facebook executive (co-inventor of Platform and Connect on Facebook) and Shawn Fanning (creator of Napster), differentiated itself from the prevailing conception of social networks by being ultra private. Today, Path is a marvelously designed app encapsulating the symbiosis of personal-public (with personal being the default). Path is one of the first high-profile apps that address privacy within the social networking context. Now, let’s look at some of the key moments of Path product evolution.

A Personal Network

Path 1.0 was launched on November 15, 2010. At its core, Path is a social photo sharing app. However, the app positioned itself as a personal network. You don’t follow or add friends on Path. Instead, you share moments (photos/videos) with your friend. If she accepts it, your moments will appear on her Path stream.

It is designed for users to share stuff with a small circle of friends. User can only add up to 50 friends. Why 50? Path explained:

We chose 50 based on the research of Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Robin Dunbar, who has long suggested that 150 is the maximum number of social relationships that the human brain can sustain at any given time. Dunbar’s research also shows that personal relationships tend to expand in factors of roughly 3. So while we may have 5 people whom we consider to be our closest friends, and 20 whom we maintain regular contact with, 50 is roughly the outer boundary of our personal networks. These are the people we trust, whom we are building trust with, and whom we consider to be the most important and valued people in our lives.

Path 1.0 was already good. The tap photo to expand vertically was an especially graceful feature. Posting photo on Path was pleasantly fast and easy. However, I disliked the idea of rigidly categorizing each posting to People, Place or Thing. And the use of relative dates (i.e. 23 days ago) rather than absolute dates (i.e. Dec 21 2010) on each photo made it hard to quickly recall when exactly the photo was taken. Then, many disliked Path including Om Malik of GigaOM.

Path 1.0 version features include:

• Capture and share “moments” (or photos) with up to 50 close friends and family.
• Tag each moment as people, place, or thing.
• Explore your friends’ moments on a map.
• See who has viewed the photos.
• Tap to horizontally expand photos.

Moments in the Stream

Share a Moment in Places

Video of Path 1.0

On Becoming More Social Friendly

In the ensuing months, Path introduced various enhancements and features on its app. Notably, in Path version 1.5, released on April 15, 2011, users can finally share photos and videos on Facebook Wall. Previously, photos can only be shared to friends and family on Path. Path 1.5 also introduced lenses for users to stylized photos and videos. Activity function was introduced to enhance greater visibility of friends’ reactions to your shared moments.

Path 1.5 version features include:

• Activity: Seeing how your friends respond to you.
• FriendRank: Guessing your top friends by analyzing your Facebook interactions.
• Lenses: Free and premium lenses to style photos and videos in real time.
• Share: Able to post photos and videos on Facebook Wall.

Private / Public Share Switch

Style your Moments with Lenses

Disruptive Path

After version 1.5 release and unimpressive uptake, the Path team went back to the drawing board and asked “Okay, what are people really using Path to do?” For the next six months, the team re-imagined Path.

On November 29, 2011, Path 2.0 was unveiled. The latest iteration is a total makeover of Path. It is now a smart journal. The app now comes with an expanded sharing capability. Users can now share status updates on popular social networks namely, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Tumblr.

Path has evolved from a personal network for photo / video sharing to become a social diary. You can now log your social activities and thoughts, in the forms of photo, video, text, song, and location check-ins on Path. Friends’ list also expanded from 50 to 150 (150 is the commonly used value of Dunbar’s number). Despite the makeover, privacy remains the bedrock of Path.

The Swiss-Army Knife of Your Online Social Life

Path launched With app in June 07 2011, which enables users to share who they are with, what they doing on Twitter. The With feature is now embedded into Path 2.

Other “old” features like photo-taking, lenses, weather (appearing on status updates, and awake-sleep postings) and Activity are still available on Path 2.0.

Path 2.0 is a successful release. Users are now sharing an average of 12 moments per second and Path is “seeing 30x the number of daily active users, going from 10K to 300K in two and a half weeks.” (Source: TechCrunch)

Path 2.0 version features include:

• Design: A totally transformed user interface.
• Share Path stories on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
• Post Check-ins on Path and also, Foursquare.
• Tell your friends what are you listening to right now.
• Post status updates.
• Increased friends count from 50 to 150.
• Photos: All photos are now in full-view mode (no longer tap-to-reveal-all).

Profile Cover on Path

An Entry in Path Journal

Status Updates Pop-up

Video on Path 2.0

Evolutionary Path from a Personal Network to a Smart Journal originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 28, 2011.

IKEA Malaysia is celebrating Chrismas on Facebook with its “It’s Time to Celebrate” app. The app is accessible via its Facebook Page. The following illustrates how IKEA currently setup its Facebook Page to welcome new fans (specifically, those who haven’t Like the Page yet):

Step 1: A new fan goes to www.facebook.com/IkeaMalaysia.

Step 2: The fan will see “Request for Permission” page:

Figure 1: Request for Permission

Step 3: Click “Allow” and land on a Likegate page.

Figure 2: Likegate

Step 4: Click “Like” to see thes “It’s Time to Celebrate” page.

Figure 3: Afterlike

Step 5: The fan clicks the Afterlike page image to go to IKEA – It’s Time to Celebrate Facebook app (apps.facebook.com/ikea_party_malaysia).

Figure 4: IKEA – It’s Time to Celebrate App on Facebook

As shown above, a new fan will see the Request for Permission first. Seriously, do you really want to welcome your new fans with a Request for Permission page? As a fan, why should I add the app without knowing anything about it other than the app’s name? Unless IKEA Malaysia is desperate to access the new fans’ personal details (name, emails, etc.), the setup simply adds friction to fan acquisition.

Instead of using the Permission page as the starting point, IKEA Malaysia should just direct its new fans to the Likegate page (as in Figure 2). This is a well established approach to increase fan count, among others (as Red Bull’s page below).

Another issue is the absence of detail about the “It’s Time to Celebrate” on the Afterlike page (see Figure 3). No clear instructions for fans. Click on the page image, it will bring the fan to the IKEA’s app (Figure 4).

Ideally, the Request for Permission page should appear after clicking the Afterlike page, before landing on the app. By this stage, fans know more about the Christmas promotion, ready to use the app, and should expect to see the Request for Permission page.

Undoubtedly, the “It’s Time to Celebrate” app is a nicely done app. If only the route leading to the app is nicely done too.

Figure 5: Likegate on Red Bull Facebook Page

The Problem with IKEA Malaysia Facebook Page originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 15, 2011.

Twitter just unveiled its latest interface iteration. It now neatly arrange into four key sections – Home, Connect, Discover and Me.

• Home The landing page where you see all the tweets of those you’ve followed. And I like the fact that photos and videos are now embedded directly in the Tweet streams.



• Connect Here you can see your Interactions and Mentions. Previously, “Interactions” is known as “Activity” and “Mentions” is known as “@[your username]” on Twitter web. These two are now available on mobile apps.



• Discover Discovery is a cornerstone for Twitter. For users to discover interesting and relevant stuff, Twitter is extending beyond “Who to follow” and Trends listing. It introduces Stories to enable users to discover interesting news and information. Stories are personalized news stream, based on user’s current location, what she follows and what’s happening around the world.



• Me This is Twitter personal profile, redesigned.

This isn’t an exciting upgrade. It mostly involves re-arranging and re-organizing Twitter features into new containers. However, Twitter is getting thumbs up from me for enabling full Twitter experience on mobile apps. Previously, the Twitter mobile apps are scaled-down version of the full Twitter web version. Now, whatever you get on the web, you can get them on the apps too.

You can now see the new Twitter design on both iOS and Android apps. The web version will be made available over the next few weeks.

New Twitter Design: Tightly Coupling Web and Mobile originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 9, 2011.

Facebook acquired a Malaysian startup in 2010. Facebook is the only social web company with a development team in Malaysia.

Interested to join the 800 million users social networking giant? Apply here.

Facebook Software Engineering Job in Malaysia originally appeared on GreyReview.com on October 11, 2011.

Facebook now has over 800 million users worldwide, with 168 million are from Asia. In Quarter 3 this year, Facebook added 16.8 million new users in Asia (compared to 19.5 million in Quarter 2 2011). So far this year, the social network has added some 56 million new users; it started the year with 111 million Asian users. Its latest quarter-on-quarter growth rate is 11%. However, the rate has been somewhat slowing since end of 2010 – from 24% in Quarter 4 2010 to 17% Q1’11 to 15% Q2’11 to 11% Q3’11.

1. 57% of Facebook users in Asia can be found in the Southeast Asia region.
2. Internet users in India continue to embrace Facebook. As of end of Quarter 3 this year, India has a total of 36.4 million Facebook users, which is 4 million less than Indonesia. India will very soon surpass Indonesia to become the top Facebook country in Asia (and third-largest in the world).
3. Thailand surpassed Malaysia to become the 4th largest Facebook nation in Asia.
4. Users growth in Malaysia continues to stuck at single-digit. And Taiwan is challenging Malaysia for No. 5 in the list.
5. Facebook users in Japan continue to show impressive growth rate at 26%. In Quarter 2, users population grew by 33%. On January 01 this year, there were 1.8 million Facebook users in Japan. By the end of Quarter 3, total users jumped to 4.8 million.
6. Vietnamese Facebook users grew by 51% in Quarter 3 2011 and will soon replace Singapore in 11th rank.

How accurate are these estimations? Read here.

Facebook in Asia: Latest Stats on Total Users by Country [Quarter 3 2011] originally appeared on GreyReview.com on October 1, 2011.

The new Friendster was launched on June 28 this year, with a focus on delivering more Asia-centric gaming contents. At the same time, it aims to enable games publishers and developers to tap into the vibrant Asian gaming markets. As part of the relaunch, Friendster unveiled a new logo and moved its business operations from the U.S. to Asia (operates mainly from three Asian countries namely in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore).

Since the relaunch, the pioneering social network Friendster is showing positive signs of rejuvenation. So far, the social network has attracted over half a million new users and now includes over 40 premium games and hundreds of free-to-play games and applications. More interestingly, the relaunch has breathed life into its Monthly Active Users and Daily Active Users, which have increased by 50%, to date. Other interesting latest stats:

• More than 90% of the new users are now based in Asia.
• Nearly half of the new users regularly playing between one to five games in the last 30 days.
• Top 30% of these users typically spend more than 45 mins on Friendster during the last 30 days.
• More than 10% of the users have purchased virtual credits in Friendster to enhance their gaming experiences.

Friendster’s Chief Executive Officer Ganesh Kumar Bangah said: “Social gaming is rapidly gaining momentum in Asia. The early results attest to the fact that social gaming is proving to be creating deeper engagements and interactions for these young Asian users.”

The Road Ahead

Bangah further explained that the service continues to be developed and additional features are regularly being added in. Friendster has already added in Facebook Connect, which allows users to login to Friendster using their Facebook accounts. Last week, the new site allow users to select Simplified Chinese as their main interface. Popular gaming features such as chat and forums are expected to be introduced in the coming weeks. Though social games are free to play on the social network, exclusive in-game items can to be purchased via Friendster’s virtual currency, Friendster Coins.

In addition, Friendster has also introduced a free wireless Internet services (WiFi hotspots) at popular outlets such as Starbucks and Papa John’s Pizza across Malaysia.

Judging from the impressive uptake of Google+, the traction Friendster is getting the Asian region and the rapid growth of social entertainment site IMVU (just to name a few), there are still vast opportunities for new, innovative breeds of social networks to thrive in today’s Age of Facebook. Many new ones like Unthink and Lift are gearing up to enter the social networking space with their innovations. Collectively, these players may well shape the future of social networking in the post-Facebook era.

Friendster Growth Gaining Traction After Relaunch in Asia originally appeared on GreyReview.com on September 12, 2011.

Many global brands such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola maintain both global and local Facebook Pages. For instance, the global version of McDonald’s Page and the local ones like McDonald’s Malaysia and McDonald’s Singapore.

Levi’s adopts a consolidated approach, whereby it maintains only www.facebook.com/levis as its Facebook presence. No local Pages. To enable delivery of relevance contents, the company creates a globally consolidated platform to manage the Page. Local Levi’s teams access the platform to post updates and these updates are geo-tagged. On Facebook Page, it is set to display the tagged updates based on Fans’ locations (via IP-detection). I’m assuming such implementation requires customizations on Facebook end.

While consolidating the management of its Facebook Page, Levi’s is still able to deliver highly engaging localized contents. This is one of the best setup of Facebook Page I’ve seen.

Levi’s Facebook Page, as seen by Malaysian Fans

UPDATES: Levi’s transitioned to the globally consolidated platform in early July 2011. Also, Levi’s did work closely with Facebook for this implementation.

Levi’s Facebook Page: Globalized Platform, Localized Updates originally appeared on GreyReview.com on August 17, 2011.

Previously, users have to use third-party photo upload apps like Twitpic, Twitgoo, yfrog and many others. Now, users can directly upload image on Twitter.com interface. Images are hosted on Photobucket and appear as links – “pic.twitter.com/…”. The maximum size of each image is 3MB. Twitter will remove Exif data of the uploaded photo to address privacy concerns.

There will be a gallery soon where your followers can see all the images you’ve shared on Twitter, including those posted via services such as Twitgoo and Instagram.

Image Posted via Twitter Image Sharing

Twitter is delivering 350 billion tweets a day and millions are sharing pictures. Twitter is rushing to tap into the rising popular of photo sharing, particularly on mobile. In coming weeks, users no longer need third-party services to post images on Twitter mobile app.

The creation of Twitter experience ultimately involves a total control of user experience and assimilation of features (previously offered by third-party services). During its early days, it was hard for Twitter to figure out what work, what doesn’t, what’s promising. By adopting the platform strategy, it can use the ecosystem of third-party services as the company’s R&D labs. Based on the various ‘experimentation’ in the ecosystem, Twitter assimilate the successful and useful features, either through acquisition i.e. Summize (search) and Bagcheck (lists) or integration i.e. auto URL shortener.

The high concentration of innovation in the ecosystem are seeping through the membranes of corporate Twitter. This leads to the extinction of some services within the ecosystem. As long as Twitter continues to grow its user base, the ecosystem will rejuvenate by attracting new breeds of services. Symbiosis, virtually.

Twitter’s Image Sharing Service, Yet Another Nail in Third-Party Services’ Coffin originally appeared on GreyReview.com on August 10, 2011.

Malaysian second largest car maker, Perodua, is heavily leveraging Twitter in its ongoing initiative Tweckbot, which is Malaysia’s first tweet-based car check service. The service is free for all Perodua car owners.

Tweckbot team moves from one location to another in Klang Valley, between 28th July 2011 and 10th August 2011. The current where-and-when of the Tweckbot team will be posted on Twitter @MyPerodua. Those within the vicinity of the team’s current location can request for the free car check service. Car owners are required to tweet @MyPerodua their address and mobile number. Effectively, people are publishing publicly their home addresses and mobile numbers.

An Example of User Tweeting Address, Mobile Number to MyPerodua

First of all, I think Perodua should be applauded for the interesting use of Twitter to deliver value to its customers. The unintended consequence of this good intention is the violation of privacy. The car maker needs to further refine the implementation of this initiative. A simple solution (maybe): Perodua follow those who requested for the car check service and thus, allowing them to Direct Message their address / telephone number.

On Facebook, Perodua marketing tag says “Now The Price of A Car Check: A Tweet.” Or more aptly, “Now The Price of A Car Check: Your Privacy.”

Tweckbot Promotion Message on Perodua Facebook Page

UPDATE: It is now necessary for users to Direct Message their addresses and telephone to Tweckbot, as commented by Perodua below. Kudos!

Tweckbot Helps to Expose Personal Information of Perodua Car Owners on Twitter originally appeared on GreyReview.com on August 2, 2011.

• Inclusion of What’s on Twitter right now, which highlight three current trending topics. Trending topics were featured prominently in the design layout introduced on July 29 2009. From March 30 2010 onwards, trending topics ceased to appear on Twitter homepage. (I’m wondering if the return of Executive Chairman / Product Lead Jack Dorsey has anything to do with this tweak.)
• Suggested Users photo collage is gone.

Twitter also introduced a new after logout page:

Past Twitter homepage designs:

April 05 2011

July 29 2009

For a complete chronology of Twitter homepage designs, see here.

UPDATE: The “events’ have disappeared. No, it’s not a rollback, replied Doug Bowman, Creative Director of Twitter. Now, we know that the appearance of trending topics is part Twitter’s on-going experimentation.

I posted a blog about the disappearance of the events two days ago (and suggested a rollback). After receiving Doug’s tweet, I deleted that post.

Trending topics making a comeback on new Twitter homepage originally appeared on GreyReview.com on April 30, 2011.