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.

Twitter posted an interesting stat today. In 2007, there are 5000 tweets per day (TPD). From the graph below, we can see a sharp increase in the second half of last year and TPD reached 35 million tweets by end 2009. Today, the figure is 50 million – or 600 tweets per second! Twitter users growth maybe slowing, but existing users are tweeting more than ever. ¶ @zhiQ

Vrroom! Vrroom! At 600 Tweets Per Second originally appeared on GreyReview on February 24, 2010.

This morning, Twitter Local Trends is activated on my Twitter profile. Twitter officially roll-out the feature to limited users on January 22 2010. By now, the feature is already available to most users. Users can choose to set Trending, by Country or City. Unfortunately, none from Asia. For now, only 6 countries are available for selection – US, UK, Mexico, Brazil, Ireland, Canada. There’s a total of 15 cities, all US cities except two (Sao Paulo and London).

Local Trends is a natural evolution for the Twitter’s Geotagging, which “attach a longitude and latitude to all of your tweets” and was released in August 2009. Prior to Twitter’s geotag APIs, there’s already an application (one of a handful) called TwitterLocal that filter tweets by location, by “caching all tweets with valid location.” Now, Twitter goes meta with Trending topics for each location.

With its API, Twitter is already making it easier for people to publish status and follow updates. To date, there are 50,000 apps have been developed around Twitter platform. These days, it’s about organizing and making sense of streams of chatters, rants, etc. Google’s goal is “to organize the world’s information to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” For Twitter, it’s about enabling the emergence of the real time web and now, organizing the real time web’s information and making them useful. ¶ @zhiQ

Twitter “Local Trends” Not Localized for Asia Yet originally appeared on GreyReview on January 27, 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.

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.

Using Twitter List, Packet One Networks (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, or P1, created ‘a complete list of everyone on P1 and GP‘ who are using Twitter. This is one of the interesting uses of List by a Malaysian company. For P1, it is probably a first step for something more interesting. This reminded me of Zappos’s Employee Tweets page. Like Zappos, P1 can start leveraging on its employees to engage and sustain relationships with customers and prospects. Malaysian mobile service provider, DiGi too is already doing it. In Social Media Club – Kuala Lumpur meeting #1, Azizi Jennis (Head of Online Services, DiGi) mentioned about DiGi leveraging on its employees to evangelize its brand name.

When it comes to building a community of evangelists, most companies naturally start by going ‘outside’ the corporate wall i.e. engaging with influencers, bloggers, etc. Why not start with employees? Use them as seeders and spreaders of your brand story. After all, there’s a blurring of work and play in the social media space. Leverage on what you have and can control. Organic evangelism, it is!

A Good Use of Twitter List by P1 originally appeared on GreyReview on November 20, 2009.

On November 5 2009, Twitter blogged about the limited roll-out of its Retweet feature. Yesterday, the feature is activated on my Twitter page. Each update now comes with Retweet button, in addition to the Reply and Favorite buttons. Previously, it was cumbersome to retweet on Twitter web – copy-and-paste the tweet into the update box, add ‘@’ to tweet author, type ‘RT’ and finally, click the update button. Twitter clients like Seesmic, Tweetdeck and Orsiso already made the retweeting process easier with their single click Retweet button.

Twitter reconceptualized the way one views a retweet. Previously, when you retweet, you bring a particular update into your timeline and you can freely edit its text. With the new Retweet feature, Twitter froze the text and tightly coupled the update text with its author. Click the Retweet button, the entire quote (as is) and profile pic of the originator will appear on your timeline. Pro: Original author of retweeted update will remain clearly visible, even after a long chain of retweets. Con: With the new Twitter Retweet, it is not possible to add comment or shorten an update before retweet. However, one can always revert back to the old ‘RT’ way.

On Twitter web, there’s also a new page dedicated to Retweets. There, retweets are organized into three tabs, Retweets by Others, Retweets by You and Your Tweets, Retweeted. In ‘Your Tweets, Retweeted’ section, you can track who retweeted your updates. In ‘Retweets by You,’ a list of people who have also shared the updates you’ve retweeted. And yes, in the Facebook world, Retweet is called Like.

Update: You can’t retweet update of your friend with protected profile.

Retweet on Twitter, Like on Facebook originally appeared on GreyReview on November 20, 2009.

Orsiso (or Organize, Simplify, Socialize) offers a functional approach to manage the deluge of your social networking and messaging online. It acts like a social streams dashboard, which aggregates and organizes status/photo streams (from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Bebo, Friendster) and messaging (from popular IM networks like Messenger, Yahoo!, Google Talk). In the past weeks, Orsiso has been quick in releasing new version; each version update with new interface design and performance. Previous versions, buttons were lumpy, design was noisy and user-interface was not so, shall I say, spritely. Using it for the past 4 months, I must say the latest version 1.1.36 spot a more organized interface, more minimalist and much more perky.

Orsiso version 1.1.26 (screenshot dated August 21 2009)

Orsiso version 1.1.36 (screenshot dated October 23 2009)

Albums section is where you get to view your friends photos, from both Flickr and Facebook. This is probably the stand-out feature and it does feel as if Orsiso is designed for this purpose. No other client, so far, allow user to search and view photos. You can search photo with keywords. You can share each photo easily on your social network e.g. Twitter and Facebook. View photo of friends, based on user-defined closeness filter.

Search and View Photos on Orsiso

Kinks and The Road Ahead

Orsiso is ambitious in scope but still far from perfect. Grouping is relatively inflexible. You can only group your friends, based on Closeness (using 1 to 4 scale). It would be great if it can offers the flexibility like Twitter List. I also find the updates streaming is not as real-time, as I want it to be. Although I set ‘check for updates’ to 1 minute, the updates stream (at times) doesn’t seem to refresh automatically. And no, it doesn’t have a refresh button. Orsiso’s Friend Merge feature enables you to combine the multiple ‘social’ profiles of your friends. This only work for some of my friends, but not others.

Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to more improvements in coming weeks, for it to seriously challenge social streams aggreggator like Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop. On commercialization, Orsiso has banner ads on its Contacts’ profile page (although, I think, this is still in experimental stage).

Orsiso Is Getting Good At Aggregating Status and Photo Streams originally appeared on GreyReview on October 24, 2009.