Facebook Credits virtual currency platform set to expand its payment options in Asia. Facebook and MOL Global just announced a strategic partnership to enable the purchase of Facebook Credits using MOLPoints, an online micropayment system developed and managed by Malaysia-based MOL, one of the largest internet companies in South East Asia.

Credits, the official virtual currency on Facebook, enables the purchase of gifts and virtual goods for games and applications on Facebook platform. Popular games like Farmville, Millionaire City, Hotel City, Petville, Bejeweled Blitz, Hotel City, Barn Buddy, Likeness and hundreds other games and applications are already accepting Facebook Credits (up-to-date list of games here). There are over 200 million unique Facebook users playing games each month. Soon, these social gamers can buy Credits using MOLPoints. And they can reload the MOLPoints through MOL’s network of over 500,000 physical (e.g. 7-Eleven, cybercafes, bookstores), online banking and mobile payment channels, in over 80 countries.

“The relationship with Facebook demonstrates MOL’s growing role as a leading payment provider for social networking sites in Asia, especially in our core countries of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and India,” said Ganesh Kumar Bangah, group chief executive officer for MOL Global.

He added, “Over the last few quarters, we have seen a double-digit increase in payment transactions and payment volume. This partnership continues MOL’s momentum to build the largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network in Asia.”

According to Vaughan Smith, director of business and corporate development at Facebook, “working with MOL means we can offer the benefits of Facebook Credits to millions of people in Asia using a payment system that is already widely used and trusted. We’re investing in the long-term future of Facebook Credits and we view this agreement as a major opportunity to broaden the availability of a simple, unified currency that can be used in games and applications across Facebook.”

Currently, Facebook users can purchase Facebook Credits using credit cards and Paypal. However, they can also earn Credits via other means, such as drinking a Slurpee.

In Asia, the availability of physical channels to pay for Credits can further spur the virtual goods economy on Facebook. The 18-to-24 is the largest age group in most Asian countries – Indonesia, Philippines, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam among others. Many in the age group don’t own a credit card. Also, Asian gamers are spending big money and today, the virtual goods market in Asia is worth $7 billion!

UPDATES
(1) Signing of strategic partnership between MOL Global and Facebook

(2) Official press release

Coming soon: Facebook Credits available at retail stores in Asia originally appeared on GreyReview on July 8, 2010.

Today is World Cup 2010 kick-off. And today’s most popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Facebook – are joining the fiesta. I’ve listed here, in order of interestingness:

1. Twitter

The microblogging social network launches a dedicated World Cup 2010 page to make it easier for people to follow #WorldCup conversations on Twitter. You can Live Tweets about each match. It also features Top Tweets, which are “algorithmically selects and retweets some of the most interesting tweets about the World Cup.”

2. Foursquare

The location-based social network partners with CNN to offer World Cup 2010 badge. People in the 32 World Cup countries can earn the badge by checking in to viewing venues. Those attending matches in South Africa can earn “South Africa Explorer” badge.

Fans in World Cup countries can earn this Super Fan badge:

3. Facebook

Sports on Facebook was launched on May 12 2010. Fans can vote for their favorite country teams. Facebook calculates Passion Index for each team – total number of Likes received by the country’s team divided by the country’s Internet population.

How Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare are joining the World Cup fiesta originally appeared on GreyReview on June 11, 2010.

At Chirp, Twitter revealed its total registered users – 105,779,710. With this ‘official’ figure, let’s take another stab at estimating total Twitter users in Asia. This is a revised estimates to the previous posting, Twitter in Asia, by Country. The estimates now is based on the ‘official’ total registered Twitter users and Twitter population’s percentage breakdown, by country (source: Sysomos).

During Chirp, co-founder @Biz also revealed that 75% of Twitter traffic comes from outside Twitter.com. So, Fred Wilson’s argument that “Twitter ecosystem is about 3x Twitter.com” seems to apply. However, comScore’s estimate of 60 million unique visitors at Twitter.com may be way off! The use of the 60-million figure in my previous estimates resulted in inflated estimates of Twitter population in Asia.

With the use new official total registered users, the new estimates of total Twitter users in each country are reduced by roughly half (compared to my previous estimates). Maybe now, the estimates are closer to reality.

Asian Countries, by % of Twitter Users and Total Users

105,779,710 users and new estimates of Twitter users in Asia originally appeared on GreyReview on April 20, 2010.

Facebook marked its 6th anniversary on February 05 2010 with a population of 400 million users. On February 11 2010, the social network hit another milestone – more than 100 million people actively using Facebook on their mobile phones. Today, there are over 3 billion photos being uploaded to Facebook each month and more than 500,000 active applications on its Platform. And recently, FastCompany magazine named Facebook, as the World’s Most Innovative Company 2010.

These days, 70% of Facebook users are from outside US. In Asia, Facebook is fast becoming the one the region’s leading social networks. Indonesia has the fourth highest number of Facebook users in the world, after US, UK and Turkey. With 18.9 million users, Indonesia is well ahead of Philippines, the country with 10.5 million Facebook users (refer to table below). This is followed by India (6.8 million), Taiwan (5.8 million) and Malaysia (5.1 million). In terms of penetration rate, Hong Kong has the highest “Facebook users per country population” rate in Asia, at 39%, followed by Singapore (38%), Taiwan (25%), Malaysia (18%) and Philippines (11%). The total Facebook users in Asia is 59.6 million, or about 15% of the global Facebook population.

(UPDATE: The % of Facebook Users over Total Online Users to provide a much richer perspective on Facebook use in Asia. Based on the suggestion by Gen Kanai – see his comment below.)

In Asia, the two dominant age groups on Facebook are “18 – 24″ and “25 – 34″ (see Table below). The youthful “18 – 24″ age group is dominant in Indonesia, Philippines, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In Pakistan, Vietnam and Bangladesh, the age group constituted more than half of the Facebook population in their respective country.

The “25 – 34″ is the dominant age group in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and South Korea and interestingly, these are all developed economies. In these developed economies, Facebook users above the age of 25 constitute more than half of the Facebook users population in each respective country. The reverse is true for the developing economies i.e. Indonesia, Philippines, India, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where more than half of Facebook population is below the age of 24.

Facebook’s Asian engines of growth: College students in developing countries and working adults/professionals in developed countries. Some possible explanations: (a) youth population in developing nations is far more than the developed ones (in other words, developed nations with relatively aging population), and/or (b) working adults are more web 2.0-savvy in developed economies. What do you think?

All the above figures were extracted from Facebook Advertising page, over a period of two hours on March 01 2010. ¶ @zhiQ

Facebook in Asia: Total Users and Age Groups [Latest STATS] originally appeared on GreyReview on March 2, 2010.

Facebook has acquired Octazen Solutions, a Kuala Lumpur-based maker of Contacts Importer software, reported on GigaOM. Octazen’s software already in-use on Facebook and helps the social networking giant to “grow by making it easy for users to invite their contacts on other services,” such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and others. This ‘old’ PDF document explains a bit more on how the Contacts Importer works.

Octazen Solutions – Contacts Importer Web API

According to the article, Facebook said the acquisition as “talent acquisition”. Octazen’s two employees will join Facebook as engineers and remain in Malaysia (Octazen with an office in Taman Melawati, Kuala Lumpur), making them social network’s first Asia-based full-time employees of Facebook.

Screenshot of the announcement on Octazen Solution’s website:

¶ @zhiQ

UPDATE: For more details, read Michael Arrington’s posting here.

Facebook Acquired A Malaysian Startup originally appeared on GreyReview on February 20, 2010.

According to Sycomos latest report on Twitter, Asian countries constitutes about 7.74% of the Twitter unique users worldwide. Indonesia topped with 2.34% of unique users, followed by Japan (1.47) and India (0.97). On a global perspective, more than half of Twitter unique users (56.59%) are located in the US and followed by UK (8.09), Brazil (6.73), Canada (4.36) and Australia (2.63). This is based on analysis of active 13 million unique users, between Oct 16 2009 and Dec 16 2009.

comScore reported the total global unique users of Twitter.com has reached 60 million. However, Fred Wilson argued that “Twitter ecosystem is about 3x Twitter.com.” Twitter ecosystem refers to all interactions with Twitter APIs, via the plethora of third-party Twitter apps i.e. Tweetdeck, bit.ly, Facebook, iPhone apps, etc. Wilson went on to summarize:

You can talk about Twitter.com and then you can talk about the Twitter ecosystem. One is a web site. The other is a fundamental part of the Internet infrastructure. And the latter is 3-5x bigger than the former and that delta is likely to grow even larger.

Let’s assume that Twitter ecosystem is 3-times the size of Twitter.com. With comScore’s 60 million unique visitors worldwide at Twitter.com, the Twitter ecosystem is estimated at 180 million. The total Twitter users across the globe (Twitter.com + Twitter ecosystem) is 240 million!

The table below weaves together Sycomos’ report, comScore’s estimate and Fred Wilson’s Twitter ecosystem. The “% Twitter Users” is derived from Sycomos’ report and the total Twitter users is based on 240 million users worldwide. Indonesia with 5.6 million users, followed by Japan (3.5 million) and India (2.3 million). Malaysia with 6th largest Twitter population in Asia with estimated 1.1 million users (and this is far, far, far more than my previous estimate of Twitter population in Malaysia). And the estimated total Twitter users in Asia is 18.6 million.

Asian Countries, by % of Twitter Users and Total Users

Mashup of figures from different reports to derive estimates potentially lead to inaccurate conclusions (different reports with different sets of assumptions and methodologies). However, Sysocomos’ “% of Twitter users” gives us some ideas on Twitter use across Asia. With the percentage, at least we can derive Twitter population size by country, using the conservative comScore’s 60 million, plus-ecosystem’s 240 million or any other estimates out there. ¶ @zhiQ

UPDATE April 20 2010: See the latest estimates of Twitter users in Asia here.

UPDATE Feb 20 2010: Based on Google, the estimated, unduplicated number of people who visited Twitter.com over a 1-month period:
1. Japan: 9.9 million users
2. Indonesia: 5.1 million
3. India: 4.2 million
4. South Korea: 1.5 million
5. Philippines: 1.3 million
6. Thailand: 910k
7. Malaysia: 910k
8. China: 680k
9. Singapore: 240k

Image from textually.org.

Twitter in Asia: Total Users, by Country originally appeared on GreyReview on January 26, 2010.

According to the latest Digital Brand Index (DBI) by Edelman and Brandtology, Twitter overtook Low Yat Forum as the Malaysia’s buzziest channel (in terms of brand mentions). In the Top 10 list of Buzziest Channel in Malaysia, Malaysia’s leading social network, Facebook, is no where in sight. On methodology, the survey states it “monitors key brands.. across a list of popular online channels.” With 350 million population worldwide, Facebook is undeniably one of today’s most “popular online channels.” The absence of Facebook in the Top 10 – it’s either not covered in the DBI survey or it implies Facebook users in Malaysia converse less about brands compared to Twitter’s users. If it’s the latter, is Facebook a viable media for brands in Malaysia?

Also, the press release mentioned about 120,000 Twitter users, as of July 2009. The figure is misinterpreted. In July 2009, there were only over 200 users tagged with ‘Malaysia’; as of today, there are 377 users. The 120,000 figure is the total number of Followers of the then 200+ “Malaysia-tagged” Twitter users. WeFollow has since abandoned the display of the confusing stat, and now opted for a more straight-forward one – total number of users with a specific tag.

Nevertheless, DBI is somewhat an interesting survey to see brands people talk about online. Only 40% in the Top 10 Buzziest Brands in Malaysia are local brands – Maxis, Celcom, DiGi and Packet One (all are telcos companies). The survey monitors brands in these categories – Internet and Software, Consumer Electronics, Mobile and Telecommunications, Business and Consulting, and IT and Technology.

The DBI 2.0 was released yesterday and the full press release here

Over 3.5 Million Users and Facebook is Still Not Malaysia’s Buzziest Channel originally appeared on GreyReview on January 21, 2010.

On the morning of December 9 2009, AirAsia became the first airline in the world with 100,000 fans on Facebook. This makes the award-winning airline the most popular Malaysian brand on Facebook; also, one of the top Asian brands, in terms of Facebook fans. The airline with less than 50,000 fans in August this year. In 4 months or so, the airline organically grew its fan base and surpassed the 100,000 mark. However, within a day, the 100,000 mark is surpassed by US-based Southwest Airlines.

Fans Growth of AirAsia Facebook Fan

On December 8, 2009, Southwest started its Fans Fly Free campaign. With less than 100,000 fans beginning of December, Southwest is currently galloping ahead and fast approaching 600,000 fans. That’s half a million new fans in about 2 weeks! Not bad for sweepstakes that offer only 100 pairs of roundtrip air tickets. With the sweepstakes ending December 31 2009, Southwest will possibly breach the 1 million mark before New Year 2010. What do you think?

Southwest’s Campaign on Facebook

Anyway, here a rundown of the top 5 most popular pages by Airlines on Facebook (as of December 20, 2009):

1. Southwest Airlines – 584,219 fans
2. AirAsia – 109,496
3. JetBlue Airways – 98,922
4. Royal Caribbean International – 89,548
5. Onur Air – 80,203

(Source: Inside Facebook)

AirAsia the First Airline with 100,000 Fans on Facebook; Southwest Will Be the First with 1,000,000 Fans originally appeared on GreyReview on December 21, 2009.

Friendster started looking for buyers in July 2009. On 10 December 2009, the once leading social network is acquired by Malaysia’s MOL Group. No financial details were announced. However, in July this year, TechCrunch estimated Friendster to worth around US$137 million. (UPDATE: TechCrunch reported Friendster valued at $26.4 Million in sales)

Why buy Friendster? According to the new MOL/Friendster Group CEO Ganesh Kumar Bangah, it’s because of its “strong South East Asia base… very focus, has a very strong following in Malaysia.” He believed “right localization,” in terms of features, contents and applications, is Friendster’s competitive strategy. Ultimately, he envisioned Friendster as South East Asia-centric community, a platform for Asian-ized contents and applications.

He also mentioned about his intention to purchase Friendster way back in 2007 but was not taken seriously by some of shareholders of the social network. When Richard Kimber became the CEO of Friendster, MOL started to establish commercial relationships with Friendster. “After a while, when we look into how we can have a deeper relationships, and that culminated into today’s MOL buying Friendster,” said CEO Bangah.

To remain competitive, Friendster already launched (or going to launch) these features on its social network:

• Microtransactions or sales of virtual goods, are particularly popular and widely adopted by the Korean (Cyworld) and Chinese (QQ.com) social networks. Friendster already launched its Wallet and Gift Shop. With microtransactions, is Friendster is merely trying to milk an aging cow?
• Social gaming: Facebook and MySpace are already the two popular social gaming platforms. Electronic Arts recent purchase of social gaming company, Playfish, in a deal worth US$400 million, underscored the upside of this segment. Friendster will soon join the party.
• Music: MySpace is still the king of the hill, when it comes to music. It is still THE preferred social network for music bands. Friendster too is eyeing to enter this space. (This is no surprise, considering Friendster’s Head of Asia, Ian Stewart is formerly from MTV).

Friendster (and other social networks) can no longer compete with Faceboook, on scale and scope. So, MySpace is carving its niche along area of interest, which is music; whereas Friendster along regional lines. The new Friendster’s goal is to be the favorite social network for youth in South East Asia through fun, simplicity and local knowledge.

Below is the full speech made by Group CEO Ganesh Kumar Bangah at a Friendster’s event last night.

To Revitalize Friendster, Just Blend Together Microtransactions, Social Games, Music and a Fair Dose of Luck originally appeared on GreyReview on December 11, 2009.

Here’s some of observations about the use of social media (and as shortcut, social media is myopically defined as Twitter and Facebook):

• Twitter, a water cooler chat. Facebook Page, a community canvass. On Twitter, people want to interact with you e.g. complaints and ideas for product improvements. Unless you are a news organization like CNN and The Economist or a celebrity like @Alyssa_Milano, @The_Real_Shaq and @BritneySpears, it’s hard to get away with just tweet-casting without being called inept user of social media. On Facebook, your community want to interact with you AND among themselves. So, it’s relatively easier to get away by not interacting with your fans. Facebook Page can be used by fans as a community wall, for public display of affection towards a brand. In essence, it provides user-created online context for fans to connect with one another, share thoughts and propagating the allure of the brand.
• Social media is interactive. So, be inventive. Toys r’ Us uses its Facebook Page to “to distribute coupons, announce unadvertised deals and solicit feedback.” Others used social media to announce arrival of new products e.g. fresh bakes from oven @AlbionsOven. Some use it effectively as a broadcast tool e.g. @cnnbrk. Depends on needs and context, social media can be used to support your brand building infrastructure or obtain customer feedback or source for talents or ..
• Easier to grow community on Facebook than Twitter? It depends. Coca-cola has the most popular Page on Facebook, with over 4 million fans; on Twitter, Coca-Cola is followed by only over 12,000. It’s the reverse for JetBlue Airways. It has over 1.4 million followers on Twitter and its Facebook Page with over 60,000 fans only. The world’s best low-cost carrier, AirAsia with 15,000-plus followers on Twitter but its Facebook Page is fast approaching the 100,000 mark.The EveryoneConnects campaign by TM started its Twitter and Facebook Page on 19th October 2009. Today, its Facebook Page with more than 23,000 fans but Twitter with just over 500 followers.
• Social media can energize both established and new brands. Blockbuster and niche brands alike can use social technologies for various purposes. Blockbuster brands refer to established brands like Coca-Cola and Nike and usually established over the years via traditional media. Niche brands usually with its band of evangelists. These brands can be either already established offline or those nurtured solely on social media space. It is common for companies to use traditional media to direct people to their social networks.



• Community Size Matters. Like it or loathe it, number of fans/followers is the overt indicator of ‘status’ in social media sphere. Those with low fan-base will tell you that they prefer quality and relevant people following us. But I bet they won’t mind if their fan-base grows thousand-fold, overnight. Also, look at the many ‘follow us to win’ contests out there! On social media, you have richness, in terms of engagement and interaction with your community. Reach, a.k.a. community size, matters too!

Images: Both Coke bottle and Carl’s Jr. burger images are used without permission.

5 Things You Probably Already Know About Social Media Use originally appeared on GreyReview on December 3, 2009.

Vocanic Pte Ltd., Singapore-based company, is behind Project 500. Vocanic is a company specializes in word-of-mouth marketing, which “harness and amplify the conversations that consumers have about your brand, and use them to create highly effective marketing campaigns” (Source: Vocanic’s website). It started as a website, requesting social mediaphiles to sign-up for a secret project. A briefing was held to reveal the ‘product’ and it’s a social media streams aggregator. Think Ping.fm and Orsiso. Is this the aggregator referred to as “the next big thing to explode in the social media scene”? I’m doubtful. There’s nothing spectacular about the product, features-wise. It’s unimpressive that blogger Niki Cheong, wrote “it’s not ready for Beta even.”

Instead of using OAuth, Project500 requires users to key-in username and password. Despite its assurance “Don’t worry, it’s safe with us”, I remain skeptical.

In the Share Video page, this error appeared:

So, why the application developer bother to launch another social media aggregator? OR the project by Vocanic, to build a database of social media users (and yes, my contact details are in the database too). Such database is certainly useful for a word-of-mouth marketing company. In addition to database, the company can also harvest conversations of its users using the aggregator.

I think the application launch is NOT the primary objective in this campaign. It’s what will happen next once there’s a pool of users on Project500 matters. The company is probably aggregating social media users, like NuffNang and Advertlets aggregating bloggers. We’ll see!

Oh yes, I just deleted my Project 500 account.

Project 500 by a Word-of-Mouth Marketing Company (ALARM!) originally appeared on GreyReview on November 30, 2009.