MAS launched its MHBuddy app in February 2011, which allows its customers to book tickets, select seats, access travel itinerary and also, flight check-ins. The app taps into users’ social graph i.e. share travel plans and experiences with family and friends on Facebook, identifying who might be sharing the same flight, among others. The app was developed for MAS by SITA Lab.

MAS is one of the prominent users of social media in Malaysia. To date, its Facebook Page has over 400,000 Likes and in the top 20 of the Most Popular Facebook Pages in Malaysia list. The MHBuddy Facebook app offers a unique convenience and effective means to engage meaningfully with its customers on Facebook.

Said MAS senior vice-president (Corporate Marketing and Loyalty Programme), Raja Datuk Nordiana Zainal Shah:

Some 80 per cent of MHbuddy users are Enrich members, and therefore this is a great opportunity for us to recognise our loyal members online with such rewards.

Malaysia Airlines Rewards Customers for Flight Bookings on Facebook originally appeared on GreyReview.com on January 6, 2012.

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.

There are now over 12 million Facebook users and possibly, hundreds of thousands of Twitter users in Malaysia. Social tools are becoming more pervasive. In 2011, the tools are a force to be reckon with.

Malaysians (and elsewhere) used social media tools to amplify their dissatisfaction about various issues – from election reform to proposed Bill to government initiatives. Not only protests though. In 2011, we also saw a high-profile Malaysian CEO posting his unvarnished thoughts/opinions on social media, a record breaking tweetup, and a marriage proposal that went massively viral worldwide!

These days, whatever happens offline, the news get propagated across social networks. Whatever happens in social media space gets attention in the physical world.

In the past 365 days, there were many interesting things happening in the Malaysian social media scene. Here are some of the most notable, memorable ones.

MALAYSIAN EMAIL PROJECT The national Email project aims to provide unique email ID to every Malaysian citizens who are 18 years and above. The total investment of the project is RM50 million by 2020. It will be spearheaded by Tricubes Bhd, in collaboration with Microsoft.

After the project was announced by the Prime Minister, a public uproar ensued. It was ridiculed by many on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.

100 APOLOGY TWEETS Back in January 2011, Fahmi Fadzil had tweeted that an acquaintance had been poorly treated by Blu Inc Media. He later apologized but Blu Inc Media demanded compensation for defamation and an apology in newspaper. Both parties however settled the case with Fahmi agreeing to apologize 100 times with 100 tweets, over three days (starting June 2, 2011).

This is probably the first time a legal settlement with Twitter in starring role.

#OPMALAYSIA End of May 2011, the Malaysian Commission of Multimedia and Communications issued a directive to all ISPs to block 10 file sharing sites. This prompted outrage not only Internet users but also Anonymous Group. The hackers group issued a warning about impending attacks on Malaysian websites. On June 16, the group launched Distributed Denial of Service attacks on 200 Malaysian websites (60% are Government’s websites).

RM1.4 MILLION NATIONAL PRICE CHECKER, HACKED On June 7, 2011, the Malaysian Ministry of Domestic Trade, Cooperative and Consumerism launched the 1Malaysia Pengguna Bijak portal which allows users to check the prices of consumer goods sold at 1,255 retail outlets across Malaysia.

Three days later, hackers exposed security vulnerabilities of the RM1.4 million portal and posted details of 2,000 accounts online.

TOURISM MALAYSIA’S RM1.8 MILLION FACEBOOK SPENDING In June 2011, a spokesman for the Tourism Ministry revealed that a whopping RM1,758,432 was spent on developing six social media campaigns to promote Malaysian tourism, drawing criticism from several quarters for flagrant overspending. On the same day the Tourism Ministry made the announcement, Malaysian netizens created a Facebook page called ‘Curi-Curi Wang Malaysia’ – a play on the Tourism Ministry’s ‘Cuti-Cuti 1Malaysia’ campaign, loosely translated as “stealing Malaysia’s money”.

In just 2.5 days, the Page got over 80,000 Likes. In less than a week, it garnered more than 122,000 fans, about three times that of the Cuti-Cuti 1Malaysia Facebook page then. The message on its homepage said: “We can prove to the government that we do not need to spend 1.8 million ringgit for a successful fan page. We want our mismanaged money back!”

The official Tourism Malaysia Facebook Page has since surpassed its target of 120,000 Likes by December 2011. The Page now has over 300k Likes.

BERSIH 2.0 RALLY #BERSIH2 The Bersih 2.0 rally was a demonstration aimed at ensuring ensure free and fair elections in Malaysia held on 9 July 2011 as a follow-up to the 2007 Bersih rally. The rally, organised by the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih), was supported by Pakatan Rakyat, the coalition of the three largest opposition parties in Malaysia, but was deemed illegal by the government. The police vowed to stop any rallies from taking place on the planned date on the grounds that all public gatherings without police permits are illegal. Estimates of the turnout ranged between 10,000 to over 20,000.

In the days preceding and following the rally, both supporters and opposers alike turned to social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as platforms to share information in a continuous virtual conversation. The combination of these three was a powerful tool to garner support for as well as to vehemently criticise Bersih.

PURE, UNADULTERATED TONY FERNANDES ON TWITTER In early December 2011, Fernades, the head honcho of low cost airline, Air Asia, traded barbs with the Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad in the press and on social media networks, with each blaming the other for new budget terminal KLIA 2’s bloated cost – from an initial cost of RM2 billion to now RM3.9 billion.

Tony Fernandes used his Twitter and Facebook to express his opinions about the bloated cost issue. He also responded to various questions raised by his followers. Of course, this is nothing new from Mr Fernandes. The AirAsia CEO is an ardent social media user for several years now and post updates regularly on his social media accounts.

8TV RAMADHAN ADS TV station 8TV posted a Ramadhan public service announcement video on August 1, 2011. The video immediately attracted criticism and complaints. It was reshared tens of thousands of time on Facebook and Twitter.

Image credit

At first, the Ahmad Izham Omar, COO of Media Prima Bhd (parent company of 8TV) shrugged off the negative reactions by the online community. Within 48 hours, the ads was pull off air.

#OCTTWTUP, THE WORLD’S LARGEST TWEETUP On October 22, 2011, telco DiGi held an OctTwtFest at their Shah Alam headquarters, and in just a short span of nine hours, the OctTwtFest managed to reach one of its main purposes – to break the previous Guinness World Record for the biggest tweetup of 1,935 participants in Boston – as more than 2,000 Twitter users made their way to the telecommunication provider’s headquarters.

COMPUTING PROFESSIONALS BILL 2011 #CPB2011 Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation is drafting a bill, called Computing Professionals Bill 2011, which registration and certification of IT workers before they can work on projects related to the “Critical National Information Infrastructure.”

Local tech community go to social networks to express their dislikes of the proposed Act. Vague and confusing details in the draft led to misinformation and misinterpretation. The Ministry issued a press release the following day and held an Open Review Day. This didn’t seem to convince the community about the need of the Act.

This prompted reactions from Malaysians – tech workers and politicians alike.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA KUNG-FU OF “YOK MAN” The Rice of Yok Man, part of a social media campaign by a Bak Kwa (dried meat) supplier Wing Heong Food Industries, is a big hit on social networks.

To date, the video has garnered more than half a million views with over 215,000 Likes and over 125,000 Shares on Facebook. It got more than 250 mentions on Twitter, more than 550 mentions on Google+. The video also received positive comments from many on Facebook and Twitter.

A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL CRAFTED USING INTERNET MEMES In what is truly a heartwarming love story, a man performed an intricate proposal to his girlfriend using of all things, Internet memes. Malaysian Timothy Tiah, co-founder of Nuffnang.com, wanted to come up with a creative way to propose to his longtime love, Audrey Ooi, so while she was dining with friends at Neroteca, a restaurant in Malaysia, he came to the restaurant window performed an intricate proposal using a series of Internet memes. To do this, Timothy displayed posters with messages using popular internet memes such as the Socially Awkward Penguin, Y U NO Guy, Victory Baby and Impossibru.

The video went massively viral across the globe. It was mentioned on many media sites like Gizmodo, Mashable, The Next Web, and also made it on “Most Viewed Today” list on YouTube.

What a lovely way to end 2011!

Here’s wishing everyone a Happy New Year 2012!

Image credit side mirror.

Review 2011: Most Notable Moments in Malaysian Social Media Scene originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 30, 2011.

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.

With a total Internet users of 17.5 million, the Facebook penetration in Malaysia is just a whisker shy of 70%.

From January 2011 to December 2011, the Facebook user base has been growing at an average rate of 26%. The growth rate is markedly reduced compared to the last year’s rate of 87% (March 2010 – December 2010). The growth rate is expected to decline further in 2012, with the increasing level of Facebook penetration in this country, continuing privacy concerns, onset of Facebook lethargy, and onslaught of emerging new online time sucks.

Source: Facebook

Image credits: Facebook logo, Kuala Lumpur skyline

Facebook in Malaysia Hits 12 Million Users, 70% Penetration Rate originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 20, 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.

It is not surprising that Google Sites (with YouTube as the key driver) is the top global online video destination, with 88.3 billion videos viewed during the month. Youku, China’s YouTube, is in distant second with 4.6 billion videos viewed and VEVO is third with 3.7 billion videos. Users of the world’s most popular social network, Facebook viewed a total of 2.6 billion videos on the platform.

Top 5 Global Video Destinations, by videos viewed

1. Google Sites: 88,278,970 videos viewed
2. Youku: 4,644,727
3. VEVO: 3,697,229
4. Facebook: 2,590,812
5. Dwango: 2,458,180

On average, each viewer in Canada watched the most videos. The country has the highest number of videos per viewer with 303 videos, followed by the US with 286 videos and the UK with 269 videos.

In Asia, the top three video-crazed nations are Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Viewers in Japan averaged the highest number of videos per viewer at 223 videos, followed by Hong Kong at 160 videos and Singapore at 153 videos.

Top Countries by Videos per Viewers

1. Canada: 303.7 videos
2. US: 286.3
3. UK: 268.6
4. Turkey: 250.7
5. Germany: 250.6
6. Japan: 222.7
7. France: 190.1
8. Spain: 178.6
9. Hong Kong: 160.0
10. Singapore: 153.2

Source: comScore Video Matrix

Image credit

Originally posted on Forbes.

Online Videos are modern day time suck too: Over 200 BILLION Videos Viewed Globally In A Month originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 15, 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.