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.

According to the letter, both Acts threaten to “give the US Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran.”

The signatories of the Open Letter include Sergey Brin (co-founder of Google), Jack Dorsey / Evan Williams / Biz Stone (co-founders of Twitter), Elon Musk (co-founder of PayPal), Chad Hurley (co-founder of YouTube), Reid Hoffman (co-founder of LinkedIn), Jerry Yang (co-founder of Yahoo!), and Pierre Omidyar (founder of e-Bay).

Sergey Brin posted on his Google+ page on why he supports the Open Letter:

In just two decades, the world wide web has transformed and democratized access to information all around the world. I am proud of the role Google has played alongside many others such as Yahoo, Wikipedia, and Twitter. Whether you are a student in an internet cafe in the developing world or a head of state of a wealthy nation, the knowledge of the world is at your fingertips.

Of course, offering these services has come with its challenges. Multiple countries have sought to suppress the flow of information to serve their own political goals. At various times notable Google websites have been blocked in China, Iran, Libya (prior to their revolution), Tunisia (also prior to revolution), and others. For our own websites and for the internet as a whole we have worked tirelessly to combat internet censorship around the world alongside governments and NGO promoting free speech.

Thus, imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States. Two bills currently making their way through congress — SOPA and PIPA — give the US government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial). While I support their goal of reducing copyright infringement (which I don’t believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.

It seems Sergey Brin considers Malaysia, China, and Iran as the most oppressive nations in the world!

In June 2011, Malaysian government directed Malaysian ISPs to block 10 file sharing sites. This prompted hacker group Anonymous to hack attacks on Malaysian websites on June 15 2011.

Open Letter to Washington – SOPA and PIPA

Image credit

Sergey Brin, Jack Dorsey, Chad Hurley, Jimmy Wales, et al. to U.S. Government: DO NOT Emulate These Oppressive Nations – Malaysia, China, Iran originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 15, 2011.

Only five events in the list were dominantly US-centric, namely Troy Davis execution, NBA Finals, East Coast Earthquake, Home Run Derby, and Superbowl. The others have more global appeals. Yet another indication of growing internationalization of Twitter.

Source: Twitter’s 2011 Year in review

Earth’s Most Tweeted Events in 2011 originally appeared on GreyReview.com on December 13, 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.

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.

The button is gone now; it only appeared for a few minutes and quite surely an accidental exposure. (And unfortunately, I didn’t manage to screenshot it.)

Location of the Shorten button

Back in June last year, Twitter outlined its direction: “It should be easy for people to share shortened links from the Tweet box on Twitter.com.” Shorten button is a step in that direction. I wish the URL shortener can behave like Tweetdeck’s, where URL is automatically shortened. But I assume such implementation will put extra burden on its servers.

Anyway, it’s about time for the appearance of the Shorten button. It makes a whole lot sense, especially for regular Twitter web users like myself.

Twitter may soon introduce a Shorten button originally appeared on GreyReview.com on May 21, 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.

The fast growing social network Twitter has just unveiled its latest homepage design. It looks neater and sleeker. Previously, it was “Discover what’s happening right now.” Now, the tagline is “Follow your Interests.”

For a little walk down memory lane, here’s a screenshots compilation of Twitter homepage designs since 2006.

April 05 2011

March 30 2010

July 29 2009

2009

2007

2006

First tweet

The Evolving Design of Twitter homepage: From 2006 to 2011 originally appeared on GreyReview.com on April 8, 2011.

Quick Bar displays Promoted Tweets and trending topics. According to Twitter:

The QuickBar was originally conceived to help users discover what’s happening in the broader world beyond people they already follow. The bar was also seen as a potential means of in-app notifications for new mentions, DMs, and other important activity.

Goodbye, QuickBar

New Look, No QuickBar

What’s next?

We believe there are still significant benefits to increasing awareness of what’s happening outside the home timeline. Evidence of the incredibly high usage metrics for the QuickBar support this. For now, we’re going back to the drawing board to explore the best possible experience for in-app notification and discovery.

If there’s an incredibly high usage metrics for the QuickBar, why removed it? Anyway, I’m for the removal, as QuickBar was an unnecessary distraction to mobile tweeting experience.

The death of Twitter’s QuickBar originally appeared on GreyReview.com on April 1, 2011.

Plurk is still popular in Asia (especially East Asia). According to co-founder Woon, Plurk is now one of the high-traffic social networks in Asia. It has over 6 million registered users and the majority of them are from Asia – - Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Japan. Plurk, which runs predominantly on a Python, JavaScript and MySQL stack, has over 400,000 active users daily and 200,000 concurrent users at any give time of a day). These users generated millions of plurks each day.

Growth of Plurks and Active Users

Google Trend for Plurk: Daily Unique Visitors, 2009 – 2011

Early this year, Plurk Labs opened its first Asian office in Taipei, Taiwan (Plurk’s other offices – Toronto, Canada and Warsaw, Poland). Currently, the company has 12 staff. Six of them are working in the new Taipei office and the others in Europe and North America. Currently, the company is actively looking to hire more developers “to solve big and challenging scaling problem in Plurk” (apply here). In coming months, Plurk plans to introduce location-based and content discovery features. Plurk app for iOS and Android also in the pipeline.

In today’s Facebook-Twitter duopoly, niche sites like Plurk can still compete by offering exciting social networking experience.

Plurk Interface

I wonder what’s up with Plurk (yeah, that microblogging site with a timeline) originally appeared on GreyReview.com on March 30, 2011.