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.”
In March last year, PR, market & biz dev coordinator Jonathan Dunn reported:
YouTube has launched a channel that will broadcast videos submitted by ‘08 U.S. Presidential nominees. The goal is for the channel to act as an information hub for the hopefuls and, one supposes, offer a way to counter unauthorized, potentially damaging, videos that may be posted by other users….
So far Rudy Giuliani, Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John McCain, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, Mitt Romney and Joe Biden are on board. The videos seem to be a mix of carefully scripted campaign stops and the usual ‘on the trail/vote for me’ rhetoric. A click on the candidate’s videos on the channel home page (or on the candidate’s names above) takes you to a profile page for each candidate where other videos and info are hosted.
A few months later, in June, CBC News Today host Nancy Wilson interviewed broadcaster, researcher, and Internet evangelist Jesse Hirsh regarding the role and influence of social media on the 2008 US Presidential Election, e.g. “Why would candidates want to figure prominently on Facebook?”, intimacy on social media, dirty campaign tricks, blogging vs mainstream media, level playing field, etc.
By now, only three presidential candidates are featured on YouChoose 08: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and John McCain for the Republicans.
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?
Related Articles:
]]>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.
Afternote 13-04-2007: JUST FOUND this very interesting set of PinoyBlogosphere (”Pinoy” is equivalent to “Filipino”, I presume) sites:
- PinoyBlogosphere.Net allows you to submit a blog entry that will be reviewed by all readers and will be promoted (based on popularity) to the main page.
- PinoyBlogosphere.Org is a forum about pinoy blogging by pinoy bloggers for pinoy bloggers.
- PBS Ranking – ranks registered pinoy blogs according to average page views per week. Blog readers are also able to rate and give reviews on their favorite pinoy blogs.
- PBS Pinoy Videos is a collection of various pinoy videos uploaded by none other than by fellow pinoys.
- LiNK eXchange – using both manual and auto-links. Just enter Name/BlogTitle and URL or send requests via email.
By the way, in Malaysia, there are also several similar networks:
- Malaysia Bloggers Forum — a forum hosted by LiewCF, giving blog help and resources
- Digg Clone in Malaysia — all about Malaysian local content. Every article on digg is submitted and voted on by the digg community.
Also by the way, in Singapore, for those who might not know this, there are:
- Tomorrow.sg — Articles are submitted by the community and approved by a panel of editors.
- Ping.sg — All bloggers who ping this site have their posts displayed automatically for public reading.
Related Info:
- Asia Social Media Directory: China, Malaysia and Philippines pages
- FriedBeef’s Tech: How do you measure blog influence?