ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

WILL SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVISTS CHANGE the face of politics in Singapore in one or two years’ time? Will the US Elections voting patterns correlate closely with the subscription, viewership and interaction patterns on YouChoose 08 (on YouTube) and other social media such as Facebook?

Last month (March 25), in a report entitled My Biggest Mistake, TodayOnline reported that Malaysia’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi admitted making the biggest mistake in thinking that the Internet was not important. The PM’s ruling coalition suffered its worst results ever in March 8 polls that left five states and a third of parliamentary seats in opposition hands.

Among them was 67-year-old opposition Democratic Action Party chairman Lim Kit Siang who won a parliamentary seat in Ipoh Timor. He ran three blogs, which were meticulously updated with multiple posts every day. Long-time blogger Jeff Ooi, 52, also won as a DAP candidate in Penang. Like many other opposition leaders, they were able to reach out to young urban and educated people, many who were voting for the first time. Mr Ooi added that Web users are not limited by age. “We attract many citizens above 45 years old and these are the people who are more interested in politics and the oppositions’ viewpoint.” Read the rest of this entry »

WHICH ARE THE TOP BLOGS IN ASIA? How does one measure the success of a blog?

In China, Ya.IYee came up with a list of “Top 40 Chinese blogs” based on stats given by RSS reader Zhuaxia抓虾 (apparently most popular in mainland China right now, with around 30% or 60,000+ users).

In Malaysia (thanks, LiewCF), Gaman compiled a list of “50 Most Influential Blogs in Malaysia” based solely on Technorati rankings while Blog Webmaster Malaysia Alang created a list of “Strongest blogs in Malaysia” based on Page Strength, a combination of different factors, including Google PageRank, Technorati, Alexa, etc.

In the Philippines, a few dozen companies pooled resources to sponsor and to present “The 2007 Philippine Blog Awards” in 12 categories recently (end march) — based on the evaluation of 14 judges. I couldn’t help but wonder though: Who in turn has/have evaluated the competence and objectivity of these 14 judges?

Which evaluation criterion (or ranking) is most reliable (or not reliable) to you? Why or why not?

Afternote 14-04-2007: LiewCF.com, listed on Technorati’s Top 10 for Malaysia, is not among “the strongest of strongest blogs.” Somehow, Page Strength shows no result for his Alexa Rank and listing in DMOZ. Read the rest of this entry »