Unconference Singapore is now called echelon. The annual web technology event, organized by the e27 gang, features mind-boggling combination of conference, panel discussions, pitching sessions and exhibitions. This year, topics to be covered include social gaming, cloud computing, location-based services, social networking, social media and socialTV.

Last year, I particularly enjoyed trolling the exhibition area for startups, which featured 30 awesome startups – iTwin and SocialWok – both went on to be featured on TechCrunch50 2009; iTwin, one of TC50 Finalists and SocialWok, winner of Demopit – Malaysian startups (Elevyn and Foldees), and others include Klout, eJamming Audiio, Fame, Orsiso, ThoughtBuzz and PieceHunters. The Startup Pitches session was great too and last year’s featured 8 startups – Countspin (US), iTwin (Singapore), Frenzoo (Hong Kong), Human Network Labs (Singapore), Socialwok (Singapore), Genkii (Japan), among others.

Bigger, Better Unconference SIngapore 2009, a 1-day event; echelon 2010 is going to be a 2-day event and will have 40 speakers, 50 startups, 8 case studies, 6 panel discussions, 4 keynotes! Thought leaders are Dave McClure of Founders Fund, Noah Kagan of Gambit (payment solution for virtual currency), Rex Ng of 6waves (social games publisher), Bernard Leong of Chlkboard (mobile ads delivery system), Yong Ming Guang of Socialwok (business social networking for enterprises), David Zhao of Zumodrive, Gen Kanai of Mozilla, just to name a few.

echelon 2010 will be held at Matrix @Biopolis, Singapore from 01 to 02 June 2010. Book your ticket here.

Enter the Echelon starring cool web startups and thought leaders in Asia. Coming soon originally appeared on GreyReview on April 15, 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.

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.

Ian Stewart, Head of Asia, Friendster gave a keynote address at the recent Social Media World Forum Asia in Singapore. From his presentation, we can learn that Friendster is positioning themselves as the social network for youth. That’s why his presentation is packed with data from MTV survey on online activities of young people. Some of his predictions for social networks in 2010 are more focus on teens & tweens, virtual currencies, social shopping, more monetization models and cross platform aggregation (see below for complete list).

He also mentioned Twitter in 2006 is the “last time there has been a significant web application that comes along the social media space and captivated the whole world.” Interesting observation. Anyway, here are audio snippets from his keynote, accompanied by his slides.

Overview of Social Media landscape

What’s Hot, What’s Not

How many friends do you have?

Youth and Social Networks

Age Groups and Social Networks

Web Evolution

Maturing Social Networks

TechCrunch Quote

The Road Ahead for Social Networks

The Shifts

You can view Ian Stewart’s entire presentation slides here.

What’s Now, What’s Next for Social Networking: Ian Stewart, Friendster (with audio clips) originally appeared on GreyReview on September 25, 2009.

The Malaysians Unite for Road Safety (MUFORS) website is created to raise the awareness of road safety. According to the Road Safety Department, a daily average of 18 are killed on Malaysian roads due to road mishaps!

So, the call-for-action MUFORS website invites users to submit their pledges; be the change agent. Pledges can be made in the forms of text messages (SMS), photo or videos. Those who made the pledges are expected to honor them on September 09 2009, designated as Malaysians Unite for Road Safety day. This road safety campaign comes with social media ingredients – YouTube, Facebook, news feed, rating and poll.

As the time of this posting, MUFORS garnered over 99,000 pledges. And it’s unclear who’s behind this initiative and kudos to them. Anyway, go make your pledge today (I’ve just made mine).

UPDATE: This campaign started on August 18 2009 and supported by highway operator, PLUS and its partners. Thanks @feistyflo.

This Is NOT Your Plain Old Road Safety Campaign originally appeared on GreyReview on September 3, 2009.

Facebook with 250 million users and these users are sharing over 10 billion photos. YouTube is streaming 1.2 billion videos a day, worldwide. The number of worldwide unique visitors of Twitter catapulted from 19 million in March 2009 to 32 million in April 2009 and each day, Twitter users are generating roughly 18 million updates. And according to comScore, social networking penetration rate worldwide was 65% in the month of May 2009, or 734.2 million Internet users across the globe accessing at least one social networking website during the month.

Malaysians love Social Networking too

There are about 16 million Internet users in Malaysia and IDC Research projected Malaysian Internet users will reach 20.4 million by 2012. In March this year, the number of Facebook users in Malaysia surpassed the one million mark. Recently, a brief survey by YouthSays, Malaysia’s largest youth community website with over 160,000 members, showed 95% of a total of 900 respondents have Friendster’s account, 90% with Facebook and 38% with Twitter (This survey was presented at the recent Malaysian Media Congress 2009).

In Malaysia, the social networking penetration rate was 66.6% in December 2008 (see Table below), behind only to Singapore (74.3%) and South Korea (68%). See Table below.

In terms of Average Minutes Spent on Social Network(s) Per Visitor, Malaysia ranked second at 181.2 minutes after Korea (277.8 min) and ahead of Singapore (175.6 min), Hong Kong (127.7 min), India (110.4 min) and Japan (72.8 min).

Top Social Networks in Malaysia

Like elsewhere in the world, Facebook and Twitter are the superstars these days in Malaysia. Besides these two, what are the other popular social networks Malaysians spending their time these days? Alexa and Google Ad Planner can provide some answers. Alexa Traffic Rank measures website popularity and calculated using average daily visitors and pageviews over the past three months whereas Google Ad Planner is “based on an automated analysis of millions of search queries and site visits” and Unique Visitors refer to number of people visiting the site over a specific month.

Based on the Table below, Facebook is the top social network in Malaysia, followed by YouTube and Friendster. Twitter is the 8th most popular social network in Malaysia.

Top Malaysian Social Networks

Despite the phenomenal popularity of Facebook, etc., there are a handful of Malaysian social networks offering localized contents and services. Some of the notable local social networks are Ruumz, eKawan, GoEatOut, Circles99, FriendX, eMeiMei and Pacmee.

So, how popular are these social networks? For a starter, these social networks are nowhere near global social network brands like Facebook and Friendster, in terms of Malaysian users. Launched in February 2009, Ruumz is today’s most popular Malaysia social network, followed by eKawan (social network for Malay-speaking community) and GoEatOut (dining guide-cum-social network). See Table below.

Discussion

Facebook is replacing Friendster as Malaysian top social network; Facebook outranked Friendster in Alexa and also, Facebook with more unique visitors from Malaysia compared Friendster (Google Ad Planner). However, according to a Friendster Summary Fact Sheet posted on TechCrunch, the social network boasted a total of 2.1 million active users in Malaysia compared to 1.1 million Facebook users in Malaysia.

Malaysians are using global social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster compared to local social networks. Only a few countries are dominated by homegrown social networks, namely Mixi in Japan, Cyworld in Korea, QiQi in China, Cloob in Iran, Maktoob in Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Dubai, Kuwait), StudiVZ in Germany, Hyves in The Netherlands, iWiW in Hungary, Nasza-Klasa in Poland, and Vkontakte.ru in Russia.

How do these local social networks compete? Sites like Pacmee, Friendx, eKawan and eMeiMei tied its social networks to mobile services and deliver value-added services e.g. posting photo via MM and receive status updates via SMS.

Ruumz offers different blend of value-added services on its social network. For example, online music subscription, photo printing and photobook services. With its unique brand positioning and services, Ruumz can differentiate itself in the local social networking scene.

But will it be able to dent Facebook’s armor? Quite unlikely in short-term. Rather than competing head-on with the social network giants, local social networks can thrive by offering different social networking experiences. Facebook and Friendster, for example, are typically broad-based type social network and offer culturally relevant experience is probably not their strong suit. Herein lies the opportunity for Malaysian social networks.

And maybe Malaysian social networks can learn something from the ascendancy of Old Town White Coffee, a Malaysian-based coffee chain. Amidst the crowded marketplace dominated by global brands like Starbucks and Coffee Beans, Old Town able to differentiate its offerings and capture marketshare in Malaysia (and elsewhere in Asia).

Conclusion

This article offers a snapshot of social networking activities and the popular social networks in Malaysia. The leading social networks are Facebook, YouTube and Friendster whereas top Malaysian social networks are Ruumz, eKawan and GoEatOut. Local social networks provide diversity in the social networking landscape and offer choices to Malaysians. Possibly, local players can eventually offer more culturally relevant social networking experiences with localized contents and services.

Snapshot of Social Networking in Malaysia originally appeared on GreyReview on July 28, 2009.

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

1. @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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

One Brand, Two Voices on Twitter: A Case of Proton Exora originally appeared on GreyReview on May 5, 2009.

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.

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.

Social Media and The Evolution Towards Simply Marketing originally appeared on GreyReview on March 17, 2009.

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.

Shopaholic-Generated Content on Shoplette originally appeared on GreyReview on March 11, 2009.

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

Skittles Brand Goes Anarchy with New Website originally appeared on GreyReview on March 2, 2009.

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

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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.“

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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”).

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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.

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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

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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.

Top 10 Most Interesting Web 2.0 Use by Malaysian Brands originally appeared on GreyReview on February 25, 2009.