GreyReview

Send Printed Greeting Card Without Postal Details with Foldees @ddress

Yung-Hui Lim — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:37:48 +0000

Foldees, the on-going greeting cards contest website, just released its latest feature, @ddress Directory. With @ddress, it is now possible to send Foldees greeting card without knowing the recipient’s mailing address. Also, anyone can receive printed cards from online friends or admirers, without revealing personal information like mailing address.

Foldees @ddress: Email Goes Postal

Card sender enters the intended recipient’s email address during card customization process. If the email is not listed in the @ddress Directory, Foldees will request the recipient to enter mailing address at Foldees website. Once the email is in the @ddress Directory, anyone can send her a Foldees card (of course, as long as he knows her email address).

Email addresses in the Directory are searchable but users can set the display name and choose whether to reveal city /state details or not. Full mailing addresses are always hidden.

In addition to email, Foldees should extend @ddress to social networking services. It is probably easier to ask someone for her email address or social network IDs compared to postal addresses. @ddress may be an interesting service to send printed greeting cards to friends on Facebook, Twitter, Senatus, LinkedIn, et al.

How Brandjacker @McDelivery Upset McDonald’s Customers on Twitter

Yung-Hui Lim — Wed, 13 May 2009 12:23:11 +0000

Started on April 24th 2009, many (including me) believed @McDelivery was the ‘real’ voice of McDonald’s Malaysia on Twitter. Back then, it was hard to tell whether it’s fake or not. It Interacted well with its followers and engaged them with McDonald’s-related information. In addition, @McDelivery and McDonald’s Malaysia Facebook Page launched almost at the same time, which further enhanced the believability of Twitter account. The Page is the ‘real’ voice of McDonald’s Malaysia on Facebook, the social media component of McDonald’s on-going “Have You McValue Lunch-ed This Week?” contest (At the time of this posting, the Page has over 13,000 fans.)

Clown that ‘Sheesh!’

On May 7th 2009, all came undone. It started with a tweet at 11:05 AM and its downward spiral for @McDelivery from thereon. (A little background information: May 7th is declared as ‘1BlackMalaysia Day’, related to the political stand-off in the Malaysian state of Perak. For more, read here).

The Twitter Page of @McDelivery

Insensitive to the sentiment of the day, @McDelivery tweeted “I think everyone that is so caught up with the Perak case should chill and have some McDonald’s.” Quite a number of Malaysian Twitter users were not pleased with the tweet. They responded to @McDelivery and also RT (retweet). Not willing to back-off, @McDelivery went on to deliver its lethal blow to itself by unleashing a second tweet: “Recommending some good meals vibes for everyone is tasteless? Sheesh!” Such sarcasm added fuel to the already burning bushfire and we have Forest inferno!

The following offers blow-by-blow account on what actually happened, narrated with selected Tweets posted:

The following day, McDonald’s Malaysia Facebook Page confirmed, “We’re not on Twitter yet”. The truth is out. As of the afternoon of May 8th 2009, the fake voice of McDonald’s Malaysia, @McDelivery stopped twittering and the Twitter page no longer exist.

Conclusion

Prior to the face-off, @McDelivery is doing a favor to McDonald’s Malaysia through its interesting tweets and interactions. If it weren’t for the incident, many would still think it’s the official voice of McDonald’s on Twitter.

Those who are managing the McDonald’s Malaysia Facebook Page should also need to monitor other social networks. Also, it’s a great lesson for brands is to avoid tweeting about issues that can polarize your customers and audience.

Probably, the biggest mistake of the fake voice is he/she didn’t know when to back-off. So, for social media engagements, get someone who are capable of maneuvering tense situation with finesse. And It’s always wise to stick to your brand story. On Twitter, it’s all about branding through conversations.

One Brand, Two Voices on Twitter: A Case of Proton Exora

Yung-Hui Lim — Tue, 05 May 2009 03:53:46 +0000

Exora, the newly launched MPV by Malaysian carmaker Proton, has two ‘voices’ on Twitter – @ProtonExora and @YouWillBeAmazed. The former is managed by Proton with first tweet dated April 13 2009; the latter is an unofficial voice and started on April 29 2009. To date, the ‘unofficial’ one has more of Updates and Followers.

Both using different tweeting styles. @ProtonExora is tweeting from first-person perspective (tweeting as Exora, the car) whereas @YouWillBeAmazed tweeting as third-person.

Twitter Pages of @ProtonExora and @YouWillBeAmazed

Observations

@YouWillBeAmazed is a better conversationalist.
- The ‘unofficial’ tweets are far more engaging and informative. Out of 8 updates so far, none of @ProtonExora tweets starts with ‘@’. For @YouWillBeAmazed, 43% of its total number of tweets start with ‘@’. It’s broadcast versus conversation
- There’s nothing wrong of using Twitter as broadcast medium. The hugely popular @CNNbrk (and many others) are broadcastweets. But in the case of Proton Exora (as a newly launched product and new brand), conversation would be a better mode of engagement.
In the laissez-faire land of Twitter, any voice can be as loud as the ‘official’ one. Unless a brand ‘owner’ initiate and manage conversations on Twitter (or in any social networks), others will fill the void and potentially become the ‘official’ voice of the brand.
- For example, Coca-Cola Facebook Page is not originally created by the sugar water company but by two ‘fans’, Dusty Sorg (an actor) and Michael Jedrzejewski (a writer). The Page attracted 3.3 million fans and became the top brand on Facebook Page. It is only second behind Barack Obama, in terms of Fans. Now, the Page is co-managed by Coca Cola and the Page creators.
- Currently, @YouWillBeAmazed is doing a better job in evangelizing the Exora brand and engaging Followers; Proton can learn a lot from it.
Comparatively, @YouWillBeAmazed page is aesthetically more appealing than @ProtonExora. If it wasn’t for the tweet that says ‘technically’ i am not the official tweet for proton!, probably many would have thought @YouWillBeAmazed is official voice of Proton Exora on Twitter.
For Proton, Facebook Page trumped Twitter. Fans on Proton Exora Facebook Page are ‘engaging’ the brand. To date, the Page has over 900 fans. The Page is populated by Proton-contributed updates, videos and photos together with Fans-generated contents.
Lastly, both ‘real’ and ‘fake’ voices of Proton Exora need to craft better ‘bio’. With the omnipresence of URL shorteners in Twitterville, posting full Facebook Page URL looks amateurish.

Conclusion

For Proton, it seems relatively easier to assimilate Facebook Page into its brand-building infrastructure, compared to Twitter. On Facebook, fans can communicate among themselves around a brand. On Twitter, its true potential is realized once the brand starts to engage actively in conversations. It’s about building and nurturing emotional attachment to the company through conversations. And it is quite challenging to achieve such goal if companies perceive social media as short-term episodic bursts of campaigns.

Let’s continue the discourse

Is building and sustaining a community on Twitter is harder compared to on Facebook Page? In the Malaysian context, considering there are over a million Facebook users in Malaysia compared to significantly lesser number of Twitter users ~~compared to only less than 100,000 users in Malaysia (more 77,000 with with #malaysia in WeFollow directory)~~. Is number of Followers or Fans the right metric to measure the effectiveness of social web initiative? If no, what other aspects should we measure engagements on social web? Leave your thoughts here or let’s converse on Twitter @limyh.

Social Media and The Evolution Towards Simply Marketing

Yung-Hui Lim — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 09:31:44 +0000

When it comes to social media for marketing, different companies have different degree of adoption. This article is an attempt to shed some light on the path of social media adoption, in terms of sophistication in usage. The path can be segmented into five stages, as illustrated in the following diagram.

Stages	Description
Silly Media	The Age of Ignorance. At this stage, social media is a vague concept (”Surreal Media”) and perceived as hard to tame (”Scary Media”). Mainly, lack of knowledge and willingness to understand its application to business leads to various misperceptions and many think this is just another technology hype (and this too shall pass). However, the groundswell in social media usage among customers will likely to lower adoption resistance.
Spectator Media	The Age of Silence. Companies begin to dip their toes into the social media streams. They setup presence on social networks BUT then, shut-up. The mindset here is ‘build and they will come”. Many still lock-in to traditional media mindset and treat social media as a medium for uni-lateral broadcast of marketing message. There is simply no overt and consistent efforts to build a community around its brands and actively nurturing a vibrant community to evangelize its brands.
Sponsored Media	The Age of Sponsored Conversations. Probably, the first pro-active step towards engaging the social media community. Companies begin to engage influential voices in the social media ecosystem. Here, the control over marketing messages are slowly loosen. The idea is to lead credence to the product, gain brand exposure and hopefully, the message will go viral. Its a form of advertisements, disguised as conversations in social media universe.
Social Media	The Age of Social Web. Here, things are getting fluid and dynamic. If sponsored media is countryside river rafting, social media is whitewater rafting. Getting into the act of direct conversations with the market and the medium becomes participatory. There’s a tectonic shifts from company-generated contents to user-generated contents. At this stage, companies are actively experimenting with various concepts to ’socialize’ their brands. The ultimate aim is to engage customers creatively and encourage them to evangelize brands in the social web. However, at this stage, social media initiative is still isolated and remain within a silo in organization.
Simply Marketing	The Age of Normalization. At this stage, social media becomes a widely accepted way of branding. Social media tools are perceived as just another tool in corporation’s branding arsenal. The concepts, ideas and technologies radically enrich company-market interfaces, as they become fully ingrained and embedded in marketing strategies and brand building infrastructure. Only then, we will see social media reaches its potential as the game-changer in the business world.

Let’s Continue the Discourse on Twitter

Social media is not an endgame but just a means to an end. It simply has be embedded within a company culture for it to realize its full potential. Do you agree with the above social media evolutionary path? At which stage is your company at now? Let’s chat on Twitter; find me @limyh.

Top 5 Moments of Maxis iPhone 3G Pre-Launch Day

Yung-Hui Lim — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:11:44 +0000

Maxis Communications Bhd, Malaysian’s largest mobile communication provider, yesterday announced the launch date of iPhone 3G in Malaysia. Leading up to the announcement, Twitterville is abuzz with chats on its pricing plans and other issues.

If you’ve missed the fun on Twitterville yesterday with #iphonemalaysia, here the Top 5 interesting ‘moments’ of Maxis iPhone 3G Pre-Launch Day, spotted on Twitter (and elsewhere on the Web).

TRUEmor

At 10.25 am yesterday, Twitter user @blogjunkie tweeted about an imminent iPhone 3G announcement by Maxis later in the day.

However, as early as February 23 2009, @kamal already heard from his sources about iPhone 3G launch in Malaysia.

I Saw the Sign

The iPhone 3G pages on Maxis’ website went live just after 11am. This is probably the first ‘official’ sign confirming the impending annoucement.

Oops! It’s Temporary Unavailable

However, the iPhone 3G site went offline after it went live. When it came back online in the afternoon, its pricing plan is slightly different from its earlier version.

Amusing Ads

It’s quite amusing to read the copy of this Google Ads of Maxis iPhone 3G (particularly “Malaysia Phone from Maxis.”

Opinionated Tweets

There are over 250 tweets with hashtag #iphonemalaysia; the hashtag made to the Top 10 Trending topics on Twitter Search.

It’s quite a challenge to create marketing buzz around iPhone 3G phone, as it’s on the market since July 2008. Maxis should instead create a buzz around what it can control, such as its pricing plan. But, based on reactions from many Twitter users, its pricing plan failed to excite. What do you think? How do you think Maxis can leverage on social media for its iPhone 3G official launch in Malaysia on March 20 2009? Share your thoughts on Twitter; find me @limyh

Shopaholic-Generated Content on Shoplette

Yung-Hui Lim — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:30:27 +0000

Shoplette is a social network for shoppers to flaunt their shopping loots to others and also discover what others have purchased. Users post pictures (together with details like price and store location) of what they bought and others can view, rate and comment on the posted items.

In addition to shoppers, Shoplette allows merchants to establish presence on its platform. Merchants can setup Shops to showcase their products. Similar to all items posted on Shoplette, community members can rate and comment on items posted by the merchants. Currently, there are over 200 Shops on Shoplette.

Flaunt It on Shoplette

With its recently launched Shopping Cart Service, merchants can now eCommerce-enabled their Shoplette Shops. Some of its key features are order taking, shopping cart for buyers, PayPal or credit card payment system and also, simple inventory control and order management features. Merchants will be charged US$15 per month for the use of the shopping cart service. Shoplette plans to introduce more pay-as-you-use services in coming months, as part of its monetization strategy.

Shoplette Social Ads?

Besides services, social ads is probably another potential income stream for Shoplette. Peek at any member’s profile page, you can see his/her purchases, preferences and ‘Wish List’ – a potential advertising goldmine. By harvesting the information, Shopholics can deliver more relevant and contextualized ads to members of its social network.

Shoplette is a flagship initiative by Mobrick Pte Ltd, a Singapore-based Web 2.0 technology firm founded by Shannon Low. Launched in May 2008, the site today has over 1200 registered members with over 3000 items posted on its platform.

8 Excellent Tools to Extract Insights from Twitter Streams

Yung-Hui Lim — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:43:06 +0000

UPDATE: This post became the Most Read article in a week, with over 11,000 views, at SocialMediaTODAY.

Twitter is now the third most popular social network, behind Facebook and MySpace (Compete, 2009). A year ago, it has over a million users and 200,000 active monthly users sending over 3 million updates per day (TechCrunch, 2008). Those figures have almost certainly increased since then. With the torrential streams of Twitter updates (or tweets), there’s an emerging demand to sieve signals from noises and harvest useful information.

Enter Twitter Analytics, or simply just Analytwits (in the tradition of Twitter slang). These analytics tools are growing in numbers; even Twitter is developing them.

Besides Twitter Search, the following 8 Analytwits are some of the more useful web applications to analyze Twitter streams. Each of these tools serve specific purpose. They crawl and sift through Twitter streams; also, aggregate, rank and slice-and-dice data to deliver some insights on Twitter activities and trends. There’s no single best analytic tool available but use in combination, they can extract interesting insights from Twitter streams.

8 Great Tools for Social (Twit)telligence

TWITALYZER provides activities analysis of any Twitter user, based on social media success yardsticks. Its metrics include (a) Influence score, which is basically your popularity score on Twitter (b) signal-to-noise ratio (c) one’s propensity to ‘retweet’ or pass along others’ tweets (d) velocity – the rate one’s updates on Twitter and (e) clout – based on how many times one is cited in tweets. Its Time-based Analysis of Twitter Usage produces graphical representation of progression on various measures. Using Twitalyzer is a easy; just enter your Twitter ID and that’s it! It doesn’t require any password to use its service. Speed of analysis is depending on the size of your Followed and Followers lists.

MICROPLAZA offers an interesting way to make sense of your Twitter streams. Called itself “your personal micro-news agency,” it aggregates and organizes links shared by those you follow on Twitter and display them as newstream. Status updates that contain similar web links are aggregated into ’tiles.’ Within a tile, you can see updates from those you follow and also those you don’t. Another interesting feature is ‘Being Someone’, which you can peek into someone’s world and see their ’tiles’; designed to facilitate information discovery. You can also organize those you follow into groups or ‘tribes’. You can create, for example, a knitting ‘tribe’ to easily what URLs your knitting friends are tweeting. In addition, you can bookmark ’tiles’ for future reference. Its yet-to-be-released feature, Mosaic, allows users to group together the bookmarked ’tiles’ and turn them into social objects – for sharing and discussion. At the time of this posting, MicroPlaza is still in private beta.

TWIST offers trends of keywords or product name, based what Twitter users are tweeting about. You can see frequency of a keyword or product name being mentioned over a period a week or a month and display them on a graph. Select an area on the graph to zoom into trend for specific time range. Click on any point on the graph to see all tweets posted during a specific time. One can also see the latest tweets on the topic. Twist also allows you do a trend comparison of two (or more) keywords. Its graphs are embeddable on any website. A simple but effective tool for trending, similar to what Google Trends is doing for search queries.

TWITTURLY tracks popular URLs tracker on Twitter. With Digg-style interface, it displays 100 most popular URLs shared on Twitter over the last 24 hours. On Digg, people vote for a particular web content, whereas on Twitterurly, each time a user share a link, it is counted as 1 vote. This is a good tool to see what people are ‘talking’ about in Twitterville and see total tweets that carry the links. Its URL stats provides information on number of tweets in last 24 hrs, last 1 week and last 1 month. It also calculates total estimated reach of the tweets. Another interesting site is Tweetmeme, which can filter popular URLs into blogs, images, videos and audios.

TWEETSTATS is useful to reveal tweeting behavior of any Twitter users. It consolidates and collates Twitter activity data and present them in colorful graphs. Its Tweet Timeline is probably the most interesting, as it shows month-by-month total tweets since your joined Twitter (TweetStats showed Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter, started tweeting since March 2006; 80 tweets during that month). Twitterholic can also show when a person joined Twitter but not in graphical format. Other metrics include (a) Aggregate Daily Tweets – total tweets, by day (c) Aggregate Hourly Tweets – total tweets, by hour (d) Tweet Density: hourly Twitter activities over 7 days period (e) Replies to: top 10 persons you’ve replied and (f) Interfaces Used: top 10 clients used to access Twitter. In addition, its Tweet Cloud allows you to see the popular words you used in your tweets.

TWITTERFRIENDS focuses on conversation and information aspects of Twitter users’ behaviors. Two key metrics are Conversational Quotient (CQ) and Links Quotient (LQ). CQ measures how many tweets were replied whereas LQ measures how many tweets contained links. Its TwitGraph displays six metrics – Twitter rank, CQ, LQ, Retweet Quotient, Follow cost, Fans and @replies. Its interactive graph (using Google Visualization API) can displays relationships between two variables. In addition, you can search for conversations between two Twitter users. This app seems to slice-and-dice data in more ways compared to other applications listed here.

THUMMIT QUICKRATE offers sentiments analysis, based on conversations on Twitter. This web application identifies latest buzzwords, actors, movies, brands, products, etc. (called ‘topics’) and combines them with conversations from Twitter. It does sentiment analysis to determine whether each Twitter update is Thumms up (positive), neutral or Thumms down (negative). Click on any topic to display opinions on the topic found on Twitter. In addition, it allows people to vote on topics via its website or mobile phones. The idea behind this app is good but still has some kinks to work out.

TWEETEFFECT matches your tweets timeline with your gain/lose followers timeline to determine which tweet makes you lost or gain followers. It analyze the latest 200 tweets and highlights tweets that coincides with you losing or gaining two (or more) followers in less than 5 minutes. This application simplistically assumed that your tweet is the sole factor affecting your gain/lose followers pattern. But, in reality, there are many other factors involved. Nevertheless, TweetEffect is still a fun tool to use; just don’t take the results too seriously.

Let’s Continue the Discourse on Twitter

Which of the abovementioned Twitter analytics you like the most? How can these tools generate revenue? Have you discovered any other interesting Twitter analytics? Share your thoughts on Twitter; find me @limyh

Skittles Brand Goes Anarchy with New Website

Yung-Hui Lim — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:14:59 +0000

Skittles candy from Mars has taken its brand to a level where many brands have not gone before. Instead of delivering controlled brand messages on its website, it is transforming the site into a navigator for its social media universe. Particularly impressive is its home page shows chatter about ’skittles’ on Twitter Search. In such laissez-faire environment, real-time updates streaming on Twitter Search can be both positive and negative mentions.

Here are its social media outposts linked from its navigation menu:

Product Information links to Wikipedia
Chatter to Twitter Search
Friends to Facebook Page
Videos to YouTube

Skittles on Flickr

This branding initiative will certainly go ‘viral’, based on its novelty and possibly, PR mileage. It will be an interesting case study on branding in today’s conversational web. It is an experiment on how far a brand can push the social media envelope to engage its customers; also, understanding its challenges and how to best deal with them. Well, let’s see how far this rabbit hole goes.

Let’s Continue the Discourse on Twitter

What do you think this Skittles marketing stunt? Come chat on Twitter; find me @limyh

The Edge on the Fringe of Web 2.0

Yung-Hui Lim — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:13:44 +0000

Tag cloud. Podcasts. RSS feeds. These are some of the new features of the all-new The Edge website and the new website is a significant step forward. Additionally, it is the first major news media organization in Malaysia to use Twitter @edgemy. Also, the new website provides a more organized interface to its readers compared to other major Malaysian news sites – The Star, New Straits Times and The Sun.

The Evolution of The Edge

OLD	NEW

What’s Next

The Edge needs to discover ways to orchestrate the use of its new tools to engage its readers and socialize its news contents. To build a community, it requires readers to sign in to search news content and comments on articles. However, The Edge needs to do more to entice readers to register themselves. Maybe it should leverage Facebook Connect to tap into the Facebook community and incorporate the discussion tool like Disqus.

The New York Times should be a good case study on how a mass media organization can stay relevant in today’s age of social media.

Let’s Continue the Discourse on Twitter

What do you think of The Edge’s new website? How can it be used to engage with its readers more effectively? Come chat on Twitter. Find me @limyh.

Top 10 Most Interesting Web 2.0 Use by Malaysian Brands

Yung-Hui Lim — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:03:26 +0000

This list offers a glimpse of some of the more interesting use of Web 2.0 by Malaysian brands. It is created after sifting through hundreds of social media ‘initiatives’ listed on the Social Media Malaysia. However, as with any list, there are limitations and this one is no exception. Some of the shortfalls are:

Investigation is based on initiatives listed on the Social Media Malaysia.
No ’scientific’ measurement is used to derive the ranking.

Caveats aside, the list is a baby step towards a better understanding of the use of Web 2.0 in businesses in Malaysia and hopefully, can inspire more Malaysian companies use them more creatively.

TOP 10 Web 2.0 Use by Malaysian Brands

1. Just Plane Thoughts AirAsia blog

Interestingness: Dynamic concoction of the Good and the Bad

AirAsia blog contains travel-related stories and announcements, posted by its readers and staff. Started on July 28 2008, the blog now has over 200 postings. Although the blog is moderated, one can read critical feedback about the carrier’s services. Examples: Inaugural Flight to Perth: The Good, The Bad, the Ugly, On Time Performance, Not Again!, Areas for Improvement for AirAsia and Long queue & LCCT.

The predicament faced by blogger KY during his recent ride on AirAsia, for example, should be posted on Just Plane Thoughts. It provides a golden opportunity for AirAsia to respond and as PR consultant David Lian pointed out, a company can earn its customers’ respect when it is “giving them deep, honest, factual and frank answers and explanations.”

This Blog clinched the top spot not for its out-of-the-box approach, but for what it symbolizes. Social media is not about unilaterally expressing chiseled and refined brand image to the market. It’s more about engaging customers and prospects in richer interactions. @dannybrown wrote it well on Twitter: “Your brand is your voice but don’t be afraid to let others shape it.“

2. Secret Recipe Facebook Application

Interestingness: Brand goes viral on Facebook

Based on corporate website, this send a vitual gift Facebook application is not created by Secret Recipe, a lifestyle cafe chain, but most likely by its fan. At the time of this posting, it has monthly active users of 25,993 and is Fan’ed by 4,711 people on Facebook. Users use the application to send virtual cheesecakes to their friends (cheesecakes are Secret Recipe’s signature dish). Send to more friend to unlock more gifts. Customer evangelism in action.

3. @Cziplee on Twitter

Interestingness: A small bookstore using Twitter

Cziplee, a book and stationary retailer, uses Twitter to converse with its customers, announce new product arrivals and other tweet-worthy messages. Since started on March 31st 2008, it regularly post Twitter messages. Its much larger competitors – MPH, Times, Popular – have yet to use Twitter. Probably, how Cziplee uses Twitter would excite Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter. During his interview in Churchill Club last December, he said he was more excited about small coffee shop posting daily specials on Twitter, rather than what Starbucks is doing.

4. Foldees

Interestingness: Crowdsourcing greeting card designs

Foldees’ business model depends on user-generated content. This Designer Greeting Cards online store harnesses its community for card designs, ratings and comments (read more about Foldees here).

5. AirAsia Facebook Fan

Interestingness: Good use of Facebook Fan page

With over 13,000 Fans, AirAsia is creating its own micro-community on Facebook. The page is packed with up-to-date content, from contest to photo to video. It also holds activities specially for this community. For example, Its on-going “Tianjin” contest require participants to submit entries on Facebook.

6. AirAsia Travel Wish List Facebook Application

Interestingness: Igniting the viral effect on Facebook with a contest

The “AirAsia Travel Wish List” is a contest jointly organized by AirAsia and Citibank Malaysia on Facebook. Between July 14 2008 and December 25 2008, users who installed the Facebook application can win free tickets; also, if a user managed to get 30 people to install the application on their profile, he received a free return ticket to Langkawi.

7. all-new, all-you Maybank2u.com blog

Interestingness: To facilitate the transition to online banking site Maybank2u.com version 2.0

On October 16 2008, Maybank launched the latest iteration of its highly popular online banking website, Maybank2u.com. Any transition period is difficult. So, the largest bank in Malaysia uses blog to communicate with its online banking users and avenue for them to post their opinions and gripes. It also conducted a preview session to selected customers, bloggers and partners, prior to the launch. Not particular active in terms of postings (to date, only a total of 17 blog postings) but the idea behind it and its purpose is good.

8. BFM 89.9 Podcasts

Interestingness: Making podcasts social

BFM 89.9 releases interviews on its radio show as podcasts and allows listeners to comment and rating of each podcast. It makes the audio clips embeddable and anyone can take any audio clip and post it on website or blog.

9. iExpert by iProperty.com

Interestingness: Q&A platform for real estate matters

iExpert is used by iProperty.com to complement its property and real estate listings and search services. There are over 500 questions in its database. Anyone can be a resident iExpert and earn points to move the iExpert Rank (each answer can get “thumb up” or “thumb down”).

10. The Star Citizen Blog

Interestingness: User-generated news

The Star, Malaysia’s largest circulated newspaper, provides a blog for anyone to post stories and opinions.

NOTABLE MENTIONS
Action City Facebook Fan : Building a community of toys collectors (specifically Be@rburick and Kubrick figurines) on Facebook
Malaysia Airlines on Twitter: Malaysia’s largest airline on Twitter
The Edge Malaysia on Twitter: The first Malaysian Newspaper Actively Using Twitter

Let’s Continue the Discourse on Twitter

Do you agree with the Top 10 list? Which is your favorite Web 2.0 use? Have you seen more interesting examples by Malaysian brands? Use the #myweb2 hashtag to provide feedbacks and answer the questions on Twitter. I’ll be following and responding to all feedback with my Twitter account, @limyh.