The text reads:

You are invited to test a new Apple iPad! Because of the big hype around the iPad, several companies are giving away iPads for review purposes as soon as they are available.

Yes, you really can get a new iPad, but only for a limited time, so be sure to enter right now!

It’s quick and easy, just follow these 3 simple steps :

Step 1: Become a Fan. Click the button below and Step 2 will be revealed.

Out of curiosity, I clicked on “Become a Fan” and steps 2 and 3 were shown:

IN ORDER TO COMPLETE THE REGISTRATION, the new fan is asked to invite all his/her friends to become fans and to copy a piece of javascript code when doing so. Being skeptical, I refused to disturb my friends and possibly expose them to a scam.

Instead, I simply clicked on the “3″ button and a new window opens:

“Sorry, this offer is unavailable in your country. You are now being redirected to a similar offer that is available in your country.”

In a second or two, I was brought to a site with lots of smiley icons. Before the page could fully load, I closed it.

HOW GULLIBLE CAN PEOPLE GET? As of now, there are over 6,000 fans on that page - an increase of a few hundreds since I first viewed the page. One of its earlier variants iPad Research Center – Test & Keep It had over 240,000 fans. By the way, the “comments”/”testimonies” on the promo page were not real. That’s just an inserted image. And I’ve of course removed myself from being a fan of the page.

Other variations:

• Apple iPad Market Research Testing: Test and keep and iPad today
• Testers Wanted: Test New iPad, Keep It
• iPad Research Program – Test It and Keep It!
• iPad Research Center – Test & Keep It

Beware too of scams galore on Facebook that promise freebies and may end up making you pay (literally) instead. For example, “Walmartstores.com: Gift Card Sponsor Offer Scam“.

As the blogger at blog.thequonk.com put it:

Be discerning. A marketing firm that is truly offering 10,000 free iPads should have enough money in their budget to put together an attractive, well-designed, correctly-functioning website and not rely just on Facebook as a marketing tool. I admit, Facebook is a pretty good place to start but it’s not the only place to go. Why do they not have an external website? Or the more obvious, why is there no company information? Founded in 2010? I don’t know what information it’s asking you for in the ‘Become a Tester’ application but you might want to change your Privacy Settings for future ‘deals’. iPad is the new toy and phishers know that. Read between the lines before you sign your life away for a free iPad. Make sure it is legit then you can sign your life away. =D

• A man saw a photo of himself posted on the city Police Department’s Facebook fan site in connection with a robbery he didn’t commit. He went to the police station to correct the problem, and the information he gave police led to the arrest of a 30-year-old man police said they believe is the real robber. — HomeTownAnnapolis.com, 18 October 2009
• A 26-year-old fugitive was caught in Cancun, Mexico after he told his Facebook friends, including a former Justice Department official, that he was living in paradise there. — The Guardian, 14 October 2009
• A 33-year-old clubber who attacked a man with a bottle has been jailed Portsmouth, UK, after his victim tracked him down using the Facebook social networking site. — BBC News, 08 October 2009
• A 26-year-old burglar was caught in Rome, Italy because he logged onto Facebook during the break-in. — Telegraph, 03 October 2009
• A 19-year-old Pennsylvania man was arraigned on a charge of daytime robbery in Berkeley County, USA because he used the victim’s computer to check his Facebook status during the robbery. — The Journal, 16 September 2009
• [Feb 2010 update]:  The Singapore Police Force has a Police Appeal photo album entitled “Police Appeal: Do you know these people?” on Facebook. The photos were apparently added about nine months ago!

What about other social media?

“Boston police using Twitter and Facebook to track down bike thieves” — Mashable, 20th July 2009

“The next time you think about breaking and entering, you might want to consider that police departments are now savvy to social media and will use the power and reach of the web to catch you… the Los Angeles Police Department has just released surveillance video from a break-in that took place at Lindsay Lohan’s Hollywood Hills home on Sunday morning. Their method of conveyance— YouTube.” — Mashable, 26th August 2009

Recognize anyone in the video below?

See Also:

• Use of social networks in investigations on Wikipedia
  

CAUTION:

• Facebook scammers latest trend in cyber thievery — Sunday Gazette Mail, 18th October 2009
• Careless Facebook use can get you robbed too. — Mashable, 27th August 2009

Top 10 U.S. Sites, July 2009; source: comScore

Top 10 U.S. Sites, July 2008; source: comScore

To determine this relationship, the study focused on 100 companies from the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands survey and the various social media platforms they used like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, and forums… After examining the companies and their social media activity levels, the brands were ranked on an “engagement scale” where scores ranged from a high of 127 to a low of 1. Those brands that were the most engaged saw their revenue grow over the past year by 18% while the least engaged brands saw losses of negative 6%.

The study grouped the brands into one of four engagement profiles that related to the number of channels they’re involved in and how deep that involvement is. At the top of the list are “mavens,” the brands heavily engaged in seven or more social media channels – like Starbucks and Dell, for instance. “Butterflies” are like wannabe “mavens,” and are also engaged in seven or more channels but are spread too thin, investing in some channels more so than others. “Selectives” focus on six or fewer channels but engage customers deeply in the ones they’ve chosen. Finally, there are “wallflowers,” or brands engaged in six or fewer channels with below-average engagement; these include companies like McDonalds and BP.

In the Morgan Stanley report (summarized on ReadWriteWeb and available here courtesy of the Financial Times), 15-year-old intern Matthew Robson says today’s teens aren’t into traditional media (think TV, radio, newspapers).  For example, they don’t bother reading “pages and pages of text” (newspapers) when they could instead “watch the news summarized on the internet or TV”.  They watch less TV than ever before, thanks to online streaming services like BBC’s iPlayer. When commercials come on, teens simply change the channel. While they occasionally tune into radio stations, they prefer online sites like Last.fm where they can stream music ad-free and, more importantly, pick the playlist – not some unknown DJ.

Most teens are into the Internet. They use Facebook for social networking, search and research topics with Google, watch videos on YouTube, and download music for their iPods from file-sharing sites. Teens do like viral campaigns but see banner ads and pop-ups as annoying and pointless. They tend to ignore ads entirely and never click through. Teens also tend to use phones simply for talking and texting. They also share music files with friends using Bluetooth, since the service is free and most phones now support it. They do not own smartphones or engage in video messaging or calling, due to cost. They don’t bother with mobile email either.

However, despite interest in new media, most teens see no point in using Twitter. “Most have signed up for the service,” notes Robson, “but then just leave it as they realize that they are not going to update it” apparently because “no one is viewing their profile”. Besides, to update Twitter via text message takes credit (cell phone text plans) and they’d rather use that credit to text their friends. Robson’s report wasn’t based on any sort of statistical analysis, “just good ol’ fashioned teenage honesty”.

ACCORDING TO THE PMN REPORT, conducted in May among 200 Gen Y-ers (people born during the 80s and 90s)—mostly students from Pace University—only 22 percent are using Twitter although 99 percent maintain at least one profile on a social network. Of those who did use Twitter, 85% said they follow friends, 54% follow celebrities, 29% follow family members and 29% follow companies. Of the 99% of respondents who belonged to social-networking sites, 89% said they had installed an application on their profile page. Of the 38% who owned an Apple iPhone or iPod touch, 53% had downloaded games.

PMN co-founder Michael Della Penna said, “If [18-24 year olds] are texting, using social networks, what is the social value of Twitter?” To capitalize on the Gen Y demographic, marketers have to define the benefits of using Twitter, he said, emphasizing how users can make new friends and followers as well as connect with experts (and celebrities, and celebrity experts) “that you normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet.”

Meanwhile, a Nielsen Online report said that majority of Twitter users are quitting the service after one month of registration. “Currently, more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.”

By contrast, “even when Facebook and MySpace were emerging networks like Twitter is now, their retention rates were twice as high. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.”

Twitter has nearly 14 million new users in March in addition to its other clients. However, Nielsen says that “a retention rate of 40 percent will limit a site’s growth to about a 10 percent reach figure.” With this low retention and low popularity among young users, some communication experts said that Twitter’s fame may be short-lived.

Twitter is a social networking website where people can post messages of up to 140 characters – known as tweets – that can be seen by other users who subscribe to their feed. Its growth has been described as “explosive” and it has become the poster child of social networking sites, particularly among media companies.

7 AUGUST AFTERNOTE: Statistics from Nielsen’s NetView Audience Measurement Service (July 2009) confirmed that “Teens don’t Tweet: Twitter’s Growth Not Fueled by Youth“.

David Armano observed in his blog at Harvard Business Today “a fundamental truth to social media that many organizations underestimate — being social means having real live people who actively participate in your initiatives.  It’s difficult to automate and a challenge to scale, but it can also help move your business forward in ways that produce leveraged outcomes such as new/better products or services.”

He also noted that seeding, feeding, and weeding all take place after any social initiative has been launched:

• Seeding. Investing to grow your effort into a healthy ecosystem that can produce data, insights or even new ideas. People will be required in order to do this.
• Feeding. Feeding the media with a steady stream of content. Some of this can be automated… but there has to be some editorial judgment made for every piece of content and functionality. People are required for that.
• Weeding. A productive social business design will require efforts to prune and weed out material that can inhibit its growth (just like a garden). In some cases, automated moderation services can do this–but in others people will be required to ensure that interactions are productive..

Hi jktan,

We’ve noticed that your slideshow on SlideShare has been getting a LOT of views in the last 24 hours. Great job … you must be doing something right.

Why don’t you tweet or blog this? Use the hashtag #bestofslideshare so we can track the conversation.

Congratulations,
-SlideShare Team

Upon checking my slideshow on this blog and on SlideShare.net, I found that the views were 50087 views as of today!

On second thoughts though, to receive a message like this on 1 April… Hmmmm…. What do you think?

In the February 2009 post, Rubel commented:

“Yet many, particularly in PR, still treat ordinary citizens, traditional journalism and branded content as distinct islands of media. Going forward, it’s best to see them as a contiguous archipelago.

“Consider that in 2008 some 58 percent of newspapers featured some form of user-generated content on their sites, according to the Bivings Group. This is up from just 24 percent in 2007. The mix includes: user-generated photos (58 percent), homegrown video (18 percent) and articles (15 percent). Meanwhile, the number of newspaper sites that are allowing readers to comment on articles has more than doubled to 75 percent.

“On the other side of the coin, we’ve seen time and again that social networks like Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter are now essential sources of news and information for millions.”

This brings us to the social media ethics question. In the October 2008 post, Rubel wrote:

“First, all things social are media and all things media are now social – so I am not sure what “social media” is any more.

“More importantly, social media marketing also implies that social networks, blogs and other like channels are advertising venues. They’re not. They’re public spaces just like our great National Parks. We must respect them as such. Otherwise we’re going to pollute the environment and make them less enjoyable for everyone - especially the citizens who thrive there, just like the amazing ecosystem that thrives in places like Yellowstone…

“Social media marketing works best when it’s integrated into the experience and takes a “win-win” approach.”

Do you know that you can turn some (if not all) the notifications off? And that you can also change your privacy settings?

THERE ARE SEVEN THINGS that users like you and I can turn off (or on again) in Facebook:

1. Privacy > Profile: Control who can see your profile and personal information.
2. Privacy > Search: Control who can search for you, and how you can be contacted.
3. Privacy > News Feed and Wall: Control what stories about you get published to your profile and to your friends’ News Feeds.
4. Privacy > Block People: Block specific people (e.g. stalkers) from being able to find you ina Facebook search, see your profile, or interact with you through Facebook channels.
5. Privacy > General Settings for Applications: Control what information is available to applications you use on Facebook.
   
6. Wall Settings for an Application (e.g. Groups): Allow or disallow an app to publish stories automatically on your wall.
7. Profile Settings for an Application (e.g. Groups): Allow only certain people to view specific groups you join on your profile.
   

Which ones do you turn on/off? What do you think are the pros and cons of turning on/off these settings?

(See also: Mari Smith’s “10 Ways to Stay Safe on Facebook“.)

AND NOW (JANUARY 2009), my blog is supposed to be “INTJ – The Scientists”:

SEE ALSO: Willowspillow’s “My Alternate Personality“.

1. Business. When Facebook crossed the 100 million member mark last year, I began to explore and experiment with its features (wall, notes, links, photos, tagging, videos, events, groups, pages, etc.) and numerous third-party apps, with the intention of teaching them during my Web 2.0 workshops at NTU’s Center for Continuing Education.
   
   As Mari Simith of WhyFacebook.com put it, it’s a great place for promoting business: “Meet your peers. Find business contacts. Instant gate opener. Build relationships. Raise visibility. Develop your personal brand. Target your niche. Get rapid top Google placement. Place targeted ads. No cost marketing.” (See also: Tom Lindstrom’s Myspace Marketing Tips.)
2. Ease of Use. Its interface is clean and uncluttered. If you know how to use Windows, you would know how to use Facebook. All you need is time (or a quick overview session) to discover its numerous features and third-party apps.
3. Usefulness. Facebook interfaces seamlessly with hundreds (or thousands?) of useful third-party apps. These include popular Web 2.0 apps such as Twitter, Slideshare, Digg, Delicious, and Skype. My current favorite is the Philosophers + Philosophy app developed by Dr John Abbate from the University of Melbourne. It’s a marvellous way to add my favorite quotes and to discover the ideas of a new philosopher everyday.
4. Lost Contacts. I found long-lost friends/colleagues (and they found me) through the “People You May Know” tool.
5. New Contacts. I’ve been connecting online with very interesting people from all over the world. For example, my new online friend today is a Spanish priest in Russia!
   

   Fr Otets Burgos with the Bishop of Moscow and two children.

6. Visibility & Transparency. What I say and do online are visible to my contacts. Likewise, what they say and do online are visible to me. What this means is I can easily introduce ideas/sites/other things to them and vice versa. This means we can co-discover (learn) about one another as well as many many ideas, sites and other things!
7. Social Mission. I can easily create a Group, Page or Cause to get support for ideas that I strongly believe in, e.g. “Faith without reason is blind. Reason without faith is lame.” (See the Faith & Reason (Fides et Ratio) cause.) I can also contribute to causes that others believe in, e.g. Beth’s Birthday cause.

The group exists as a platform for discussion, advocacy and action to uplift, improve, and perhaps solve Singapore Malay issues using New Media.

For more details on Millennials (a.k.a Generation “We”), check out this thought-provoking American video:

It’s interesting to see how problems (in this case, various crises in the USA such as the 9/11 incident, Hurricane Katrina and the recent subprime financial crisis) can be effective triggers for deeper learning and a firmer resolve to unite and to collaborate among the young. It would be even more interesting to see if a Generation “We” New Media group could be set up across race and religions in Asia, and NOT just for Malays in Singapore. Hey, Hazman, would you be game to do this?

An extract from Sarah Burris’ blog:

GenWe was Greenberg’s project to help the Millennial Generation empower itself against much scrutiny. The book also makes the case that Millennials are:

• Dedicated to improving the common good over individual gain, a sentiment that crosses all racial, ideological and partisan lines.
• Reject fundamental principles of modern conservatism – primary focus on individual rights and trickle down economics.
• Welcome innovation and are eager to establish a new paradigm.

According to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 64% of online teens ages 12-17 (or 59% of all teens) have participated in one or more online content-creating activities, up from 57% of teens in a similar survey at end 2005.

• 39% of teens share online their artistic creations (e.g. artwork, photos, stories, or videos), up from 33% in 2005.
• 33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends, or school assignments, basically unchanged from 2005 (32%).
• 28% have created own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2005, with girls leading the charge.
• 27% maintain own personal webpage, up from 22% in 2005.
• 26% remix content found online into own creations, up from 19% in 2005.
• 47% (more girls) have uploaded photos where others can see them and 14% (more boys) have posted videos online; with many restrict access to the photos/videos in some way at least some of the time. Most receive some feedback on the content they post online.
• 55% have created a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace.
• In the midst of the digital media mix, the landline is still a lifeline for teen social life.
• Multi-channel teens layer each new communications opportunity on top of pre-existing channels.
• Email continues to lose its luster among teens as texting, instant messaging, and social networking sites facilitate more frequent contact with friends.

(Photo: CC Joshua Davis.)

Over the next few weeks, Web 2.0 analyst Dion Hinchcliffe will be posting a series of articles that deeply explore a strategy for using the power of Web 2.0 ideas to move businesses into the 21st century. He’ll begin exploring each quadrant in this diagram (below, taken from Hinchcliffe’s blog), looking at how to use 2.0 to dramatically create growth, transform the customer relationship to drive revenue, drive operational costs down, improve productivity, safely restructure our business models, effect change, and leverage/harnessing innovation.

Among the many useful tips is a post entitled “8 reasons why interviews will spice up your content”. The eight benefits cited are:

1. Interviews can offer a different perspective.
2. Interviews can demonstrate a practical implementation. 
3. Interviews allow you borrow trust and reinforce your argument. 
4. Interviews allow you to borrow brand recognition. 
5. Interviews are a practical solution to your needs. 
6. Interviews inspire you to think more too. 
7. Interviews build contacts and make you smarter. 
8. Interviews enhance the quality of content you deliver. 

For more details, check out his blog.

Lead SiTF members like MediaCorp Pte Ltd, Microsoft, SingTel and ST Electronics (Training & Simulation Systems) have already expressed their interest in project domains such as interactive media, mobile digital media, broadcast, IPTV and open source development etc. SiTF will continue to market this program to gain greater interest from more corporations who see opportunity to partner with start ups. Through support from the industry, the mentorship programme hopes to make available up to $10m worth of project funding and support over a period of five years.

With SiTF, the IDMPO now has a network of 10 incubators to create support structures for the start-ups, including the platforms for regular pitching sessions and finding industry partners. Collectively, the incubators will nurture some 450 start-ups over the next few years. The existing incubators have facilitated the funding of some 90 projects to date, out of which 15 were completed. Thirty per cent of the completed projects have successfully received private investment.

How do these Internet users select their shopping sites? Nielsen’s statistics reveal some interesting facts. Over 30 percent actually bought on sites that they found through “General Surfing”, “Search Engines” and “Special offer I saw”:


MORE KEY FINDINGS: “Globally, more than half of Internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month… Internet is no longer a niche technology – it is mass media and an utterly integral part of modern life. Almost no aspect of life remains untouched by online media. As our lives become more fractured and cluttered, it isn’t surprising that consumers turn to the unrivalled convenience of the Internet when it comes to researching and buying products,” said Jonathan Carson, President, International, Nielsen Online.

“… Among Internet users, the highest percentage shopping online is found in South Korea, where 99 percent of those with Internet access have used it to shop, followed by the UK (97%), Germany (97%), Japan (97%) with the U.S. eighth, at 94 percent. Additionally, in South Korea, 79 percent of these Internet users have shopped in the past month, followed by the UK (76%) and Switzerland (67%) with the U.S. at 57 percent.

“Globally, the most popular and purchased items over the Internet are Books (41% purchased in the past three months), Clothing/Accessories/Shoes (36%), Videos / DVDs / Games (24%), Airline Tickets (24%) and Electronic Equipment (23%).”

Oct 17 update from reported by TODAYonline.com: “ABOUT SIX IN 10 PEOPLE in Singapore now use the Internet daily and weekly, according to the latest Nielsen Media Index 2008 out yesterday. A fifth of the population used the Internet to listen to music and play online games, while one in 10 said they participated in social networking sites, it added.”

Impact of Blogging on Professional Life


MORE KEY FINDINGS: The average annual blogger revenue is more than $6,000. However, this is skewed by the top 1% of bloggers who earn $200k+. Among active bloggers surveyed, the average income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than one million visitors each month). The median annual income for this group is significantly lower — $22,000.

Bloggers with advertising invest an average of $1,800 annually in their blogs. U.S. bloggers earn an average of $5,000, though bloggers in Asia earn 50% more on average and European bloggers earn an average of 75% more than U.S. bloggers. Again, high revenue bloggers skew the mean revenue. The median revenue for U.S. bloggers is $200 annually (and the median annual investment is only $50).

Blogging has also brought many unique opportunities to these bloggers that otherwise would not have been available. One in four have been invited to participate in an event as a result of their blog, one in five have contributed to a print publication as a result of their blog, and almost as many have found themselves on TV and/or on the radio.

Have you been invited to any of the following as a result of your blog?

VIDEO NOTES BY DR WESCH:
0:00 Introduction, YouTube’s Big Numbers
2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams
5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape
12:16 Introducing our Research Team 
12:56 Who is on YouTube?
13:25 What’s on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.
17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?
17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and “networked individualism” (Wellman)
18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community
19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation
21:18 YouTube as a medium for community
23:00 Our first vlogs
25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is (”context collapse”)
26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)
27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers
29:53 Aesthetic Arrest
30:25 Connection without Constraint
32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture
34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity
34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio
36:55 YouTube’s Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15
39:50 Reflections on Authenticity
41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System
43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture (featuring Us by blimvisible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxHKg…
47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV’s “The Message” and the message of YouTube
49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World
51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973
52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)

I was reminded by Ephraim that today is the second anniversary of my first blog posting two years ago. It seemed such a long time ago. Blogging and Facebook have become a part of my routine now. They help me communicate with members of a younger generation whom I don’t often meet at house-to-house visits or neighbourood get-togethers.

Writing blogs forces me to organise my thoughts into a few short paragraphs. The blogs also serve as a kind of diary. I am grateful to Ephraim and Harold for having me post on their sites. It saves me the trouble of having to maintain my own blogsite.

Facebook is an interesting new phenomenon. The interactivity gives it a certain intimacy. For those who only read, FB must function also as a kind of reality TV.

The reason? McKinsey’s findings suggest that companies are coming to understand the difficulty of realizing some of Web 2.0’s benefits. “However, fundamental changes are beginning to take place among the satisfied companies… [They] are not only using more technologies but also leveraging them to change management practices and organizational structures. Some are taking steps to open their corporate “ecosystems” by encouraging customers to join them in developing products and by using new tools to tap distributed knowledge.”

Mix of technologies used is changing: Blogs, RSS, wikis, and podcasts are becoming more common, perhaps because companies have a greater understanding of their value for business (Exhibit 1).

More technologies are in use: Overall, the respondents say that their companies are using 3.4 technologies from an expanded list, versus 2.2 in 2007. Companies use Web 2.0 technologies more frequently for internal than for external purposes, and the rate of deployment remains high for almost all kinds of uses (Exhibit 2).

Web services remains highest used: Respondents rate Web services (software that makes it easier to exchange information and conduct transactions) as the most important tool, with Europeans providing the highest marks. Companies in all regions perceive wikis and blogs as fairly important, and the use of both tools has increased over the past year.

Satisfaction varies markedly by geography: The developed countries of the Asia-Pacific region had the largest percentage of respondents expressing the highest level of overall satisfaction with Web 2.0 tools, and Latin America had the lowest (Exhibit 4).

• Privacy & Reputation: The digital reputation of people, especially those who have not opted in to that discussion (or “Conversation”). (Vijay Goel, M.D.)
• Truth & honesty: Firms who misrepresent themselves online, pretending to be a “user” (1) Gaming the SEO system to gain rank, (2) underhanded manipulation of product reviews and comments, (3) the accumulation of friends (and social groups) with the intention of monetizing them OR for promotion of business, political or personal agenda. (Albert Maruggi, SeLiNa and wayzgoose)
• Truth & honesty: Blurring of lines between “edit” and “advertising. (tmarklein)
• Security: Identity theft. (LewisG)
• Safety: Protecting children who widely use social media in ways many parents don’t know how to protect. (runnerkik)
• Spammers! (NancyMarmolejo)
  

Chris Heuer asked a good question: “How do we give bad actors in the ecosystem (exploitative, manipulative, dishonest, rude, etc…) a bad reputation that is more visible for others to know who to take seriously and who to ignore?”

Still, how indeed? Could such a penalty system (if developed and available) backfire and end up penalising the powerless and inept instead?

.

As of today, the Top 20 (most read) posts in Ping.sg (2008) are (tags appended in the list below are my comments):

1. v1.80 is Here: More Community Features | 81 pongs, 408 reads | by uzyn at Ping.sg Blog – community
2. Going into Ping.sg is now so stressful (see picture) | 79 pongs, 248 reads | by simplyjean at Simply Jean – curiosity
3. My Cousin Saw Mas Selamat! | 78 pongs, 399 reads | by jussaemon at The Original Juice – curiosity, piggybacking (post is not there anymore)
4. Xiaxue gets flamed on high-profile USA blog | 76 pongs, 222 reads | by sheylara at Sheylara.com – curiosity, piggybacking
5. Sex blogging can ruin your offline reputation | 75 pongs, 554 reads | by themediaslut at the(new)mediaslut – sex, advice
6. 15yrs old girl had sex for 300 times.. | 74 pongs, 466 reads | by ylva 2 at missYLva =D – sex
7. EDISON CHEN SEX PHOTOS: Another 200 are leaked online, with possibly more to come | 73 pongs, 1666 reads | by publiceducator on February 10, 2008 at Public Education – sex
8. Tammy NYP – Sex Scandal That Would Not Die. | 73 pongs, 597 reads | by ahpek at Malaysian Blogger – sex
9. Last blog entry | 73 pongs, 274 reads | by dk99 at Decay On Net – curiosity
10. [Living in Sin] Maia Lee is Fucked | 72 pongs, 274 reads | by nocturne at fruit of the poisonous tree – sex
11. Going to Geylang with DK… and he went too far! | 67 pongs, 462 reads | by simplyjean at Simply Jean – “sex”, curiosity
12. How to Pong Cheat Properly? | 67 pongs, 314 reads | by hendribudi at A Better Title – humor, curiosity
13. Something FISHY outside LT10, NUS. POLICE TAKING PICS. | 67 pongs, 309 reads | by estee at Geek Goddess – curiosity
14. Edison Chen sex photo scandals – latest blowjob photo leaked! | 66 pongs, 3683 reads | by jialat at Jialat dot Com – sex
15. My new girlfriend | 66 pongs, 358 reads | by adamzhang at AdamZhang.com – sex appeal
16. UPDATES on POLICE outside NUS LT10 | 66 pongs, 254 reads | by estee at Geek Goddess – curiosity
17. Very awkward Ping.sg gathering? | 65 pongs, 193 reads | by simplyjean at Simply Jean – community
18. Top 10 Singapore Babes in 2007 | 63 pongs, 899 reads | by chioeves at ChioBlog – sex appeal
19. Straits Times boo boo | pongs, 588 reads | by simplyjean at Simply Jean – curiosity, controversy
20. cute ntu girl: “oh my god” | 63 pongs, 448 reads | by chillycraps at department of crappy engineering – sex appeal

.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the Top 20 posts in Tomorrow.sg (2008) are (tags appended in the list below are my comments):

1. Oppositions to be blamed for Mas Selamat’s escape | 6721 reads | by Lucky Tan – piggybacking (current issue of interest), controversy, politics, sarcasm
2. Local Comedian, MC King (???) is dead! | 5531 reads | by Alvinology – piggybacking, minor celebrity, death
3. Singapore JI terrorist leader escape = Black magic? | 3841 reads | by Slutty – piggybacking, controversy, safety
4. Singaporean girl sells her used lingerie on her website | 2944 reads | by IZ Reloaded – sex
5. Maid Abuse of 2 month old baby in Singapore! | 2856 reads | at YouTube – controversy
6. Possible Appearances of JI Fugitive Mas Selamat Kastari | 1559 reads | by AEN – piggybacking, controversy, curiosity
7. I won a battle against Nokia | 1550 reads | by xiaoyun – controversy, individual against organization
8. Ah Meng died this morning | 1535 reads | by Alvinology – piggybacking
9. My Last Post as an NSF… | 1412 reads | by farter – farewell, NS
10. MC King (???)’s Funeral Video | 1362 reads | by Alvinology – piggybacking, death, video
11. Singapore team wins Amazing Race Asia 2 | 1205 reads | at AXN Asia’s Amazing Race site – Singapore vs the world, news (community)
12. Chinese New Year exodus exposes Singapore generation gap | 1155 reads | at Reuters – Singapore vs the world, news (community)
13. size 8 – 10 = fat | 1124 reads | by sg_ljers at ST Life Forums – beauty, friendship, community (dumped for being fat)
14. Taiwanese poking fun at Singaporean English | 1010 reads | by Xiong – Singapore vs Taiwan, news (community)
15. Singapore’s Better Kept Secret – A North Korean Embassy | 994 reads | by Oikono
16. Quan Yi Feng slapped husband in public? | 978 reads | by Alvinology – local celebrity, controversy
17. Rich foreigner complains ERP is still too low | 962 reads | at ST Forum, flagged by Pavin Limanont – community, money
18. Comfort Cab – Yishun to Tanjong Pagar = $40.60!!!!!!! | 951 reads | by my secret garden – community, money
19. Singapore Toy & Comic Convention 2008 | 932 reads | by One – Singapore, toys, comics
20. Blatant discrimination in advertisements in SG | 921 reads | by Ridzwan – community, controversy, money

.

Note: Like last year, finding the Top 20 posts for 2008 in Tomorrow.sg took some effort because:

• Unlike Ping.sg, Tomorrow.sg has an archive but not a Top Posts for the Year (or Month, Week, Day) page.
• Only five 2008 posts are displayed under the Popular section on the main page. It’s curious how three posts with low reads (not any of the above 20 top posts) are displayed: namely, “First Lungless Frog” (39 reads), “scammers pick on the wrong person” (238 reads), and “NUS Hostel Problem” (315 reads).
• Two 2007 posts (”Comparison between Singapore’s and Malaysia’s Ministers”, “Singapore Escort Ads on Yellow Pages”), one 2006 post (”Swingers swap sex partners in prudish Singapore”) and two 2005 posts (”Singapore Sex Scene”, “Taking upskirt photos – and tio caught!”) are still displayed under the Popular section on the main page.
• If honesty matters, the Popular section should be renamed Featured instead.

Related Articles:

• Top Posts in Ping.sg & Tomorrow.sg (2007)
• Alexa Ranks Ping.sg Above Tomorrow.sg (2007)
• Uzyn, The Next Kevin Rose?

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:

• YouTube: US “presidents”, UK queen & now Jap PM

When I gave a talk on Web 2.0 & Its Business Impacts at COM1, NUS last month, I cited various real-life examples of how the blogosphere “chatter” could affect a company’s corporate image positively or negatively. Also discussed briefly the people (how they get younger and younger!) and the milestones behind successful Web 2.0 apps such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. This slideshow provides a quick overview, featuring famous Web entrepreneurs such as Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Kevin Rose (Digg), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)… and Ping.sg celebrity Uzyn Chua (slide 19) :

Related Articles:

• Top Posts in Ping.sg & Tomorrow.sg Reveal That…
• Alexa Ranks Ping.sg Above Tomorrow.sg!
• Live Coverage of Flea Mart On Ping.sg
• A video guide to the Ping.sg celebration – by an absentee …

This slideshow provides a quick overview. Also features a Ping.sg celebrity towards the end (slide 19).

Note: The slideshow is now featured on a similar post with a different title and intro.

As Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins has written recently on Mashable:

First, the American presidential candidates, then (reportedly) the outgoing Australian Prime Minister. Then the Queen of British Empire. Now the Japanese Prime Minister. It seems now anyone who is anyone is posting videos to YouTube.

Here are some of the most viewed videos:

• New Year’s Greetings Yasuo Fukuda_1.1.2008 (【メッセージ】福田康夫総裁新春メッセージ_2008.1.1): 14,505 views so far
• The Christmas Broadcast, 2007 on The Royal Channel (added in Dec 2007): 842,481 views
• “I Got a Crush…On Obama” By Obama Girl (added on June 13, 2007) : 4,950,736 views

Related Article:

• Insight: Will social media change Singaporean politics?

Here’s a summary of a post with a similar title by Dion Hinchcliffe:

1. OpenSocial offers the lowest common denominator, not the full richness of each platform. Like Java, write once, test everywhere is the name of the game for OpenSocial. Using the OpenSocial model, developers can create apps to run on dozens of different social networking sites, but can’t leverage the full capabilities of the site it runs on. To create a competitive product with the full richness of the underlying platform, custom coding is needed.
2. OpenSocial is largely based on open standards. OpenSocial uses the essential browser open standards of XML, HTML, Javascript, and the data formats are all ATOM and RESTful/WOA. It also supports Flash content and functionality and most of the really popular development platforms, including Ruby on Rails. OpenSocial documentation and sample code all uses the Creative Commons licensing and Apache 2.0, and everything will be open sourced at some point.
3. OpenSocial is a doorway to data portability AND potential security holes. A site that supports OpenSocial applications provides that application with all the people data in that user’s account. Their own info as well as their friends. Users can import/export their social data to/from sites and 3rd party app developers can knit together a person’s social data across other social sites that support OpenSocial. Michael Arrington has reported that the first OpenSocial app has been hacked.
4. OpenSocial is simple but also capable of full-blown, rich Internet applications. And without server-side infrastructure. Developers can innovate with a few bits of markup and procedural code and drop it into the OpenSocial ecosystem and leverage the massive audiences and scalable infrastructure of OpenSocial compliant sites. OpenSocial even supports powerful interactive Web user interface models like Ajax explicitly. Amongst a few real gems, mountains and mountains of relatively useless, uninteresting apps will also be created.
5. OpenSocial is from Google. OpenSocial will ultimately be very good for Google, if not outright bad for a few others (probably Facebook). The outcomes may not always be to the benefit of everyone playing under the OpenSocial umbrella. User beware.
6. A new era in competency in social software is being ushered. Building successful social applications is a lot different prospect from building traditional business and consumer applications. Understanding people is the key to building effective social networking applications, and that is often the hardest thing for an industry obsessed with connecting with each other via 1s and 0s.

“…have you bothered to read Facebook’s Terms of Service (”TOS”) or Privacy Policy? What legal relationship have you agreed to? Who has access to your data and personal details? I waded through their terms and policies. Here are some things I found.

1. The terms can change any time…. you’re deemed to accept those changes by continuing to use the site. Even if you didn’t know of the change.
2. Personal use only. LinkedIn is all about jobs and business. MySpace is full of profiles for companies and products. But Facebook is supposedly only for personal use.
3. A single, individual user account…. you can’t have two accounts on Facebook.
4. You’re giving up a HUGE license… did you know that posting content gives Facebook a license to do whatever they want with your content?
5. Applications are NOT guaranteed safe… “installer beware.” A malicious application developer could break through Facebook’s security protocols and expose your info… but Facebook wouldn’t have to take the blame.
6. Disputes are arbitrated under Delaware law. You’ve agreed to “final and binding arbitration” for resolving most disputes with Facebook.
7. You surrender all submissions. If you send it to them, it becomes their property.
8. Privacy is NOT guaranteed. Besides, Facebook’s own third-party contractors might misuse your information.

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Afternote 11 Aug 2007: See also: Terms of Use and Privacy Policy on NETCoachAsia.com. Most terms in these statements have stipulated and approved by TrustSg.

• The Inc. 500 companies know far more about social media than one might predict,
• Social media have arrived in American colleges, and
• The use of social in the ivory tower is outpacing even the business world.

Sixty-one percent of the academic respondents use at least one form of social media. Four of the six social media have similar adoption rates to those of corporations. Blogging is the most common form among academia, at a 33% usage rate — 14% higher than that of the Inc. 500 respondents! Wikis, on the other hand, are used by only 3% of admissions departments compared with 17% of responding businesses in the Inc. 500. (See figure below.)

INTERESTINGLY, “ADMISSIONS DEPARTMENTS feel that social media is “very important” to their future strategy in almost a 2:1 ratio to Inc. 500 businesses that feel the same way (51% compared to 26%).” Nevertheless, it’s significant to note as much as 66 percent of Inc. 500 businesses consider social media important to their marketing/recruiting strategy! (See figure below.)

It’s such a pity that I cannot conduct similar studies among academia and businesses in Singapore and/or Asia. Still, my gut feel, since the beginning of this year has been: The statistics are likely to be similar.

Notes:

• The first study was based on detailed interviews with 121 companies from the Inc. 500, an elite group of the fastest-growing companies within the United States. The respondents are diverse in industry, size and location. They include 4 of the top 10, 7 of the top 25, and 22 of the top 100 companies from the Inc. 500 list.
• The second study was also based on detailed interviews in the US, this time among 453 admissions departments. The responding institutions are diverse in student size (from under 50 students to over 50,000), annual tuition (from less than $1,000 to over $40,000), funding (69% private, 31% public) and location (49 states are represented). The sample includes well-known private schools like Duke, Carnegie Mellon, Vassar and Wesleyan as well as many large public universities from states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

Afternote 7 Aug 2007: According to a page on the CATLS site (Consortium for the Advancement of Teaching, Learning and Scholarship, apparently part of University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth), Dr Nora Barnes is Chancellor Professor, Department of Marketing and Business Systems, Director, Center for Business Research. She also received the President’s Award for Public Service in 2000 for contributing to a strengthening of the southeastern Massachusetts region’s business climate by providing timely and customized responses to the problems and issues faced by employers and employees.

I’ve had a twitter and a pownce. I tried both for a good amount of time, especially since I have friends on both, but none on jaiku. However, I ditched them both for jaiku in the end, regardless.

Twitter’s good points:

• it was first, thus more popular
• streamlined

Pownce’s good points:

• ability to share actual files
• attractive templates
• comments on posts

Jaiku’s good points:

• ability to stream other feeds
• their “badges”
• comments on posts

I’ve found that twitter and jaiku are actually on the same level when it comes to server hiccups. I was turned off by pownce’s apparent lack of a separate method of displaying my posts. Jaiku’s feature of streaming my other feeds eventually won the war in my eyes.

Since the poll results shows that Jaiku leads with 48% (or 193) of the votes, I decided to ignore Pownce and checked out Jaiku instead. Added my twitter and ClappingTrees blog feeds to it. Looking good. I’d probably choose Jaiku too. If I do, I may need to start using Twitterfeed so that I only need post in Jaiku once and that “jaiku” would turn into a “twitter” and then a “tumblr”. What’s your take on this?

And the Geo Locations for this blog in May were:

IN TERMS OF NUMBERS, membership in the directory, the map and the network now stands at 16, 30 and 45 respectively. Quite modest numbers really. However, I’m proud to say that we have quite a number of prominent and/or interesting bloggers among the members from various countries. For example:

• Chris Smith, whose Shambles Forest of Theme Blogs currently supports international school communities (teachers, support staff, administrators, students and families) in 17 countries in South East Asia!
• Keso, a top 10 blogger for China-related posts (according to Technorati)
• Keven Lw, founder of the Chinese Library 2.0 network and a library R&D leader in Shanghai, China
• Liew C.F., a top 10 blogger for Malaysia-related posts (according to Technorati)
• Pinoyblogosphere (Philipppines) – blog aggregator, directory, ranking, etc. for Pinoy blogs.
• And many others. (My apologies if I’ve left someone important out inadvertently. :-p)

Recently, to encourage ownership, I started inviting some of the more prominent bloggers to become admins/reps for their countries. Invariably, they also started to ask me what an admin/rep is supposed to do? I’ve no clear answer.

I know that I want to promote more exchange among social media users in Asia, possibly (especially?) in the areas of education and business. I also know that I’d like to have more visitors from Asia (other than Singapore). As for specifically where and how the network should be heading, I certainly welcome suggestions, ideas, etc. Could you give me some please?

According to a New York Times report in September 2006 (quoting Bloomberg stats), Baidu is the leading Chinese language site, with a market share of around 57 percent for search engines and around 50 percent for advertising revenue. Google, the closest second, only has around 33 percent market share for search engines and 16 percent for advertising revenue. Baidu is reportedly very strong in Chinese MP3 music content and the first to offer WAP and PDA-based mobile search in China.

Going by Alexa’s Traffic Rankings, Baidu is within the Top 10 worldwide and Number 1 in China. The other top 9 sites in China are (details extracted and summarized from Wikipedia):

1. Tencent QQ 腾讯网: The most popular free instant messaging software in Asia, and the world’s third most popular IM service. Over 160 million QQ users in China alone. Offers many subfeatures including games, pets, ringtone downloads, etc.
2. Sina.com.cn 新浪新闻中心: The largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal, with over 30 channels covering various aspects, including news, sports, technology, finance, advertising, entertainment, fashion, travel and more.
3. Sohu.com 搜狐: Offers advertising, a search engine, and other services.
4. NetEase 163.com 网易新闻: Search engine technology and massively multiplayer online gaming.
5. Taobao.com 淘宝网: A consumer-to-consumer trade site for Chinese customers. The main competitor to eBay in China for online auctions. Currently captures over 65% of the e-auction market. Part of the Alibaba 阿里巴巴 e-commerce conglomerate.
6. Yahoo! China 雅虎中国: News, information, email, and a search engine
7. Google China 谷歌中国: Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages.
8. TOM Online: A mobile Internet company, offering a variety of online and mobile services, including wireless internet and online advertising.
9. Microsoft Network (MSN): Dialup access and content provider.

WITH THIS BACKGROUND INFO, plus more details from Google Finance (added via links on the company names after this point), Keso’s articles on Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) now make much more sense:

In Baidu & Google China 《谷歌篇》, Keso considers Google China as Baidu’s strongest competitor. Both have very similar business models. Their main source of income is advertisements. However, Google is restrained by its headquarters while Baidu is constrained by the sentiments of its stock investors. In addition [taken from "Baidu & Alibaba"], Google, with its ever-expanding portfolio of productivity tools (such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Analytics, Webmaster Central, Apps for Your Domain), has been positioning itself as an economical search engine. Baidu, with its strong entertainment orientation, risk lowering its brand image, might raise costs for its advertisers and thereby lowering its value as a commercial “spine”.

In Baidu & Sina 《新浪篇》, Keso explains that Sina, with its recent launch of a music library, looks ready to compete with Baidu in the MP3 Search market. Sina, however, has quite fragile media relations. The whole situation is also likely to change with Baidu’s newly acquired news publisher license.

In Baidu & Tencent QQ 《腾讯篇》, Keso explains that Baidu and QQ (Tencent Holding) are very likely to top the charts if there’s ever a popularity contest among Internet youths in China. Interestingly, the nett value of QQ is larger than Baidu by 1.8 times. Baidu, with its huge in successes MP3 Search and Baidu Post Bar, has been expanding aggressively into social networking — moving closer and closer to QQ’s business model. The two companies look set to have a battle soon.

In Baidu & Alibaba 《阿里巴巴篇》, Keso explains that Alibaba, with its strong B2B business model, basically links suppliers to buyers. Thus it was originally not a competitor of Baidu. However, in August 2005, Alibaba acquired Yahoo! China. And once its estimated value of over 4 billions USD (超过40亿美元) was announced around the same period, people started comparing Alibaba with Baidu. In addition, more and more people are using search engines to find business partners. With increasing breadth and depth of search engine applications, the entire Internet has now been transformed into a gigantic trading platform!

At first impressions, besides the minimalist search (搜藏) interface, Baidu seems to offer many services similar to those offered in Google: e.g. news (新闻), images (图片), maps (地图), video (视频), Blogger-equivalent (空间), BlogSearch (博客搜索) and toolbar (超级搜霸). However, one key difference seems to be in the extent of integration. Unlike Google, the many services in Baidu feel like subfeatures of ONE service and not many separate services. I only need to log in once.

What do you think? Have you used Baidu and Google? Which do you prefer, and why?

See also discussion on the Asia Social Media 2.0 Forum.

• In an average week, 74% of Japanese Internet users read blogs at least once a week, compared to South Korea (43%), the UK (23%), France (22%) and the USA (27%).
• Respondents claim to have taken part in at least three (3) of the activities listed ‘Influencers’, fewer of this group (29%) were likely to do so as a result of reading a blog in Japan, compared to similar groups in other countries with 4 in 10 (41%) of Influencers interviewed in South Korea, UK (48%) and the US (49%), taking action after reading a blog.
• Less than 1 in 5 (18%) of Japanese have taken some sort of public affairs action as a result of reading a blog. 18% have signed a petition (18%), 9% by attending a public meeting.

Robert Pickard, President of Edelman, North Asia says, “However, our recent Edelman Trust Barometer research shows that Japanese are more likely than people in other countries to punish companies they don’t trust by taking personal actions against them, so it’s just a matter of time for this tendency – amplified by blogs – to assert itself in the marketplace and at election time.”

Related Info:

• Which are the Top 10 blogs in/on Japan? Check out the Asia Social Media Directory’s Japan page.

.

As of today,the Top 20 (most read) posts in Ping.sg (2007) are:

1. Exclusive: $99 Internet Marketing giveway including Robert Allen book (1097 pongs) <- money
2. BAK2u.com – Exclusive iPhone images (504 pongs) <- gadgets
3. Mighty N80 (430 pongs) <- gadgets
4. Make $2,000 a WEEK or your money back! (402 pongs) <- money
5. FHM Girls Next Door – No Bras Day (394 pongs) <- sex appeal
6. Why 90% of Internet Marketers fail (313 pongs) <- money
7. Miss Singapore Universe 2007 (308 pongs) <- sex appeal
8. Leah Dizon (299 pongs) <- sex appeal
9. BAK2u in Top 10 Life-Hacking Business Ideas in 2006! (268 pongs) <- money
10. Is This the End of WhoIsAndrewWee.com? (244 pongs) <- money? curiosity?
11. Misa Campo (232 pongs) <- sex appeal
12. Video Clip: BAK2u.com interview (14 Feb 2007) (231 pongs) <- money
13. Jfoll – hot girl in bikini (213 pongs) <- sex appeal
14. Ewen Chia’s crazy profitable blogging offer (204 pongs) <- money
15. Minister Pay Hike (198 pongs) <- ministers, salary hike
16. Admiralty MRT Suicide Video (188 pongs) <- community
17. Maria Ozawa (188 pongs) <- sex appeal
18. My first $908.69 Clickbank check! (184 pongs) <- money
19. Ping.sg 1st Meet-Up (Please RSVP) (180 pongs) <- community
20. Britney Spears Bikini Striptease (178 pongs) <- sex appeal

.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the Top 20 posts in Tomorrow.sg (2007) are:

1. Singapore ministers set for million-dollar pay hike (1559 reads) <- ministers, salary hike
2. 我的朋友 My Friends Kawanku (894 reads) <- community, rant, video
3. Distasteful 98.7 FM Shock Jocks* (838 reads) <- community, sex, video
4. Airport Thugs (822 reads) <- civil service, rant
5. Organ Robbery, the truth (727 reads) <- hota, police, abuse
6. You spin me right round, baby…right round..like a record…round round round round… (679 reads) <- media, propaganda
7. NMP Siew’s speech on ministerial salaries (647 reads) <- ministers, salary hike
8. Singapore in the Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time (436 reads) <- community, humor
9. Sprice.com.sg (376 reads) <- money, airfare
10. Insight to NTU’s Allocation System for Students Attachment (323 reads) <- institution, policy, rant
11. Fiscal finagling in Singapore (315 reads) <- ministers, salary hike
12. Short & Sweet 2007 Tracie Pang, KK Seet, Tan Kheng Hua, Lim Kay Tong, Samantha Scott-Blackhall, Loretta Chan (304 reads) <- theatre
13. If All People were of the Same Race, Would there be Discrimination? (298 reads) <- community, what if
14. STFU (289 reads) <- ministers, salary hike
15. MICA bans film on former political detainee (288 reads) <- government, film censorship
16. Europe MPs ‘gagged’ by Singapore (286 reads) <- government, speech censorship
17. The MPAA’s Singapore lie (269 reads) <- media, propaganda
18. Meet Singapore’s F1 representative who will be racing in Europe (257 reads) <- car racing
19. Latest Internet Surveillance System reborn in Singapore (245 reads) <- politics, privacy
20. Yahoo Answer! teaches Singapore how to reserve tables (219 reads) <- Yahoo, answer, humor, video

.

Note: Finding the Top 20 posts for 2007 in Tomorrow.sg took some effort because:

• “Distasteful 98.7 FM Shock Jocks” above is the only 2007 top post displayed under the Popular section on the main page.
• One 2006 post (”SEX Party” with 48879 reads) and five 2005 posts (namely, “Sarong Party Girl Un-saronged”, “Singapore Sex Scene”, “Legs Wide Open”, “Taking upskirt photos – and tio caught!”, “The Bloggers.SG T-Shirt Design Competition”) are still displayed under the Popular section on the main page.
• It’s very curious though how three posts with low reads (and not any of the above 19 top posts) are displayed under the Popular section on the main page: namely, “To Join or Not to Join” [the civil service] (172 reads), “bad feng shui in farrer court” (108 reads), and “Lift-Upgrading Projects in progress are dangerous” (73 reads).

Related Articles:

• Uzyn, The Next Kevin Rose
• Alexa Ranks Ping.sg Above Tomorrow.sg
• A video guide to the Ping.sg anniversary celebration – by an absentee
• Top posts in Ping.sg & Tomorrow.sg – one year later

Asia Social Media Directory is “non-competitive” in the sense that all Singaporean bloggers and social media activists are still encouraged to add relevant info on their sites on the Singapore Social Media Directory. However all, including those from Singapore, are welcome to join the Asia Social Media Directory Frappr map:

WHY AM I DOING THIS? Basically, I want to reach out to a much wider audience, especially people in Asia. Currently, about 50% of my visitors are coming from Singapore. Too few are from the rest of Asia.

However, there is no Asian directory available on the Internet right now (at least not one that I could find on the Internet via a Google search) that is:

• “Unconditional”: All bloggers and social media activists in Asia are most welcome to join and list their blogs and/or social media sites there without having to add a reciprocal badge/link to the directory from their sites.
• Community-managed: Anyone can add themselves in without being screened first. (Of course, if abuse occurs then abusers will be barred.)

In addition, I also plan to read more Asian blogs and start providing insights and roundups on how free/open-source/social technologies are being used in Asian business and education. Reasons include:

• More and more, Singapore is being used by westerners (Europeans, Americans, Canadians, etc.) as a springboard to Asia, and by easterners (Asians) as a stepping stone to the English-speaking countries.
• Over 50% Internet users will be Asians soon

So, would Asia Social Media Directory and my finetuned focus be of interest/value to you, my readers?

This is a new design challenge in this age of information anxiety and abundance of meaning. More and more people, myself included, are doing many things at the same time. However, decades of research (and common sense) have indicated that the quality of one’s output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks. For example:

• “We are under the impression that we have this brain that can do more than it often can,” says René Marois, neuroscientist and director of the Human Information Processing Laboratory at Vanderbilt University, quoted in a recent NYTimes piece about how multi-taskers max out their brains, creating neural network bottlenecks and causing confusion and mistakes (thanks, Susan Mernit).
• When people try to perform two or more related tasks either at the same time or alternating rapidly between them, errors go way up, and it takes far longer–often double the time or more–to get the jobs done than if they were done sequentially, says David E. Meyer, director of the Brain, Cognition and Action Laboratory at the University of Michigan: “The toll in terms of slowdown is extremely large–amazingly so.” (thanks, DeedsDoing 2006)
• “Kids that are instant messaging while doing homework, playing games online and watching TV, I predict, aren’t going to do well in the long run,” says Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, quoted in a CNN report last year.

IN MY EXPERIENCE FOR EXAMPLE: During Nexus 2007 last Saturday, I found myself switching among three screens on my laptop most of the time. We were using Twitter.com for message sending, Campfirenow for chatting, and Nexus Live/Interactive to view Twitter messages from everyone. I could barely pay attention to the speakers/panel on the stage. Probably listened to only half the words. One possible way to reduce distraction could be better to replace Campfirenow with a shoutbox hooked onto Twitter via its API, the way Uzyn managed to hook Ping.sg shouts into pingsg_shouts on Twitter. Open Tweetbar on the sidebar and everyone would have two less screens to distract their attention — in other words, Let everyone look at just ONE screen.

Recently, Bjorn Lee twittered: “i have ADD, maybe i shld enrol in that china camp where they reform internet addicts.. oops, thats called NS in spore.” (ADD stands for Attention Deficit Disorder here, I think.)

What other solutions are there? Listen to former Microsoft VP Linda Stone perhaps (thanks, Mike Rohde):

“Continous Partial Attention (CPA) is different than multi-tasking, where the motivation is productivity: giving equal attention to many activities. CPA’s motivation is being a live node on the network, gaining meaning from the network, being ready for new opportunities at any moment…”

“But this always on, anytime, anywhere, anyplace era has has created an artificial sense of constant crisis. The adrenalized fight or flight mechanism kicks in. It’s great when we’re being chased by tigers. How many of those 500 emails a day is a tiger? Or are they mostly mice? Is everything really such an emergency? Our way of using the current set of technologies would have us believe it is.”

And learn from Jakob Nielsen (thanks, Beth):

1. Don’t check your email all the time. Set aside special breaks between bigger projects to handle email. Don’t let email interrupt your projects, and don’t let the computer dictate your priorities.
2. Don’t use “reply to all” when responding to email. Abide by the good old “need to know” principle… send follow-up messages only to those people who will actually benefit from the reply.
3. Write informative subject lines for your email messages. Assume that the recipient is too busy to open messages with lame titles like “hi.”
4. Create a special email address for personal messages and newsletters. Only check this account once per day.
5. Write short.
6. Avoid IM (instant messaging) unless real-time interaction will truly add value to the communication. A one-minute interruption of your colleagues will cost them ten minutes of productivity as they reestablish their mental context and get back into “flow.” Only the most important messages are worth 1,000 percent in overhead costs.
7. Answer common customer questions on your website using clear and concise language. This will save your customers a lot of time — thus making you popular — and will keep them from pestering you with time-consuming phone calls and emails.
8. User test your intranet. Clean it up so that employees can find stuff faster, and make the intranet homepage their entry point for keeping up on company news and events.
9. Don’t circulate internal email to all employees; instead put the information on the intranet where people can find it when they need it. (This obviously assumes that you’ve fixed the intranet’s usability.)
10. Establish a company culture in which it’s okay not to respond to email immediately. This frees employees from the pressure of incessantly checking email and lets them get more work done.

Finally, run 5 miles or do a spin class like Beth does. She explained:

“For some reason, vigorous cardio exercise helps clear out the information anxiety Maybe it is the just the stepping away from the reflected light dancing across my eyes coming from the monitor.”

Related Posts:

• Web of Mass Distraction I

“I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn’t come through any kind of [legal/government] regulation it would come through self-regulation.”

While condemning the bloggers who issued the threats, Mr O’Reilly was keen that the whole blogosphere should not be tarred with the same brush.

“…The fact that there’s all these really messed-up people on the internet is not a statement about the internet.”

O’Reilly’s call came shortly after high-profile blogger Kathy Sierra reported feeling threatened and at risk online. Coincidentally, the Media Development Authority of Singapore has just opened some guidelines entitled Internet Code of Practice for public consultation a few days ago.

More details on BBC Technology News page, Susan Mernit’s post, Doc Searles’ post on this (based on a letter from Alan Herrell, apparently one of those who threatened Kathy on MeanKids) and a ChannelNewsAsia report.

Update 30-03-2007: See also Bjorn Lee’s Death Threats on the Blogosphere.

Update 09-04-2007: See also Blogger’s Code of Conduct at Wikia, BlogHer’s Community Guidelines and A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs at NYT.

First, Benjamin Koe, in Almost social media (Nexus 2007), had been most flattering:

“Although the speaker line up included Nathan Torkington (O’Reilly) and Cory Ondrejka (Linden Labs), I learned the most from a fellow Singaporean: the blogger known as ClappingTrees…

“This happened in a panel discussion hosted by Kevin which included Kathy Teo (CNET Asia), Jennifer Lewis (STOMP), James Seng (Tomorrow.SG). As the discussions went on about crowdsourcing the media, I began to wonder why the distributed nature of free content creation was embraced, but gatekeeping was left to a bunch of editors… Then came ClappingTrees to the mic and spoke the words that were on my mind.

“The question (paraphrased) was basically: In a world of social gatekeeping (think digg), why do the above crowdsourcing media qualify as gatekeepers of content that’s not even theirs?“

NEXT, THREE BLOGGERS who mentioned me (that I know of) had been quite factual in their reporting. For example,

Vanessa wrote:

“Question time. Josephine reminds us of Sim Wong Hoo’s old article on Singapore’s no U-turn policy, while in the US everyone can do a U-turn unless they’re told otherwise (it’s an allusion to our over-reliance on rules to limit what people can do). James responds that attempts in Singapore to form a Digg-like community has yet to really take off.

This is the point where Uzyn from Ping.sg shows himself and we give him a round of applause.”

DK wrote:

“Uzyn stole the stage for 5 minutes halfway thru the panel. It started with Clappingtree talking about tomorrow.sg’s way of selecting article and how difficult it was for bloggers to gain readership. She mentioned about ping.sg which suddenly drew lots of attention among the audience.”

Marina (a.k.a. Rinaz) wrote:

“In the middle of the session, a lady from the floor, Clappingtree, asked the panelists on why there should be a censorship. She reasonsed that everyone, as long as they are within social values, should have a voice and a chance to be heard. She mentioned that ping.sg, a blog aggregator was a site where every blog had an equal chance of being read.

“After the session, Uzyn, creator of ping.sg got hounded by fans.”

Then surprise of surprises… reading the writeup of Kevin Lim (the moderator of the session) gave me a shock and an aftershock. Initially, he wrote (the same thing) in three separate blogs on his site:

“James took the opportunity to explain how news gets published on Tomorrow.sg. He considers Tomorrow.sg as a form of human news filter, where they depend on a diverse set of editors to create balanced gatekeeping. From geeks to celebrities, conservatives to liberals, tomorrow.sg has them all. Still, this has never been enough for some bloggers (JK> Here is a link to my blog. And wow! I’ve become “some bloggers”), and tomorrow.sg has constantly come under fire for being biased given their set of editors. This issue has been beaten to death years ago, and there are always ways to get around this.”

Later, he revised this writeup in one of the blogs as follows:

“James took the opportunity to explain how news gets published on Tomorrow.sg. He considers Tomorrow.sg as a form of human news filter, where they depend on a diverse set of editors to create balanced gatekeeping. From geeks to celebrities, conservatives to liberals, tomorrow.sg has them all. Still, this has never been enough for some bloggers. Some time ago, I witnessed that the power law was developing in the Singapore blogosphere, and it was Clappingtrees (aka JK) who revitalized this idea at the panel’s Q&A, by *arguing* that popular blog aggregators such as Tomorrow.sg had *biased editors*. I do feel that this issue has been beaten to death years ago and that the more productive route would be to try new ways of getting around this.” (Note: Asterisks added by me.)

Come, come, all of you who were there and listening to me. Tell me what did I say?

Afternote 30-03-2007: Just found CoolInsights’ comments on what I said.

First, read Beth Kanter’s post on Twitter for Nonprofits: Waste of Time or Potentially Useful? where she quoted Chris Brogan’s 5 Ways to Use Twitter for Good. Now, let’s see: Quick Human Answers, Conference / News Briefings (or news flash), Friendsourcing, Micro-Attention-Sharing, Direct People to Good Causes, or Staying in touch with others without being intrusive… I could use some of these.

Was finally tempted enough to check out Twitter. Still, Twitter seemed to have greater potential for meaningless distraction than meaningful connection. On first impressions, most of the twitters looked pretty random and pointless. Also, seemed to me that Twitter works somewhat like a Shoutbox, except that it has the advantage of mobility — i.e. it can be received via IM and mobile phone.

“WHY ON EARTH would people want to tell the world what they are doing right now? … To think aloud? Brainstorm? Cry for help? Connect to some human? See something unexpected? Just plain bored? Exhibitionist?” was some of my first twitters. These question have been answered quite quickly through several happenings and/or snippets of information.

Found this interesting article, Group Messaging Instincts: How to recover them (thanks to one of tmas68’s twitters) which explains how ‘one-to-many’ broadcast messaging is part of our human instincts, just like the way ants use chemical messages, bees use dance and dolphins use sonar.

Next, subscribed to Mashable’s useful one-liner news updates on Web 2.0 happenings and I thought, “Great! A simply way to be updated on the move.”

Then, added John Edwards as a friend out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised to see that he has added me too very quickly. This illustrates to me the political potential of a tool like this. Whether Edwards actually reads my twitters is immaterial at this point in time. Perhaps his secretary’s secretary does or doesn’t. What impresses me is that virtually, he seems willing to be a follower.

Next, checked out TwitterVision because Scoble mentioned it and tmas68 too. I’m impressed though I ‘ve seen a similar version in BlogPaul’s Frappr TwitterAmI map (see below) earlier and had created my own Frappr map.

The fact that TwitterVision is a visual display of real-time messages from real people (with names and photos) contextually placed on a map makes the experience rather mind-boggling. (Educational visualization)

Just 7 hours ago, Alex King twittered that Twitter Tools 1.0b2 for WordPress has just been released. This means, I presume, my daily twitters could be published together as a post like the way tmas68 does on his Vox blog. (Mobile micro-blogging)

Finally, my Web statistics shows that this blog’s getting a good amount of Web traffic from Twitter.com.

I think I’m going to be twittering for a little while more.

Afternotes (2007-03-22):

• More useful tweets: Slashdot, BBC, TechMeme, Chris Brogan, Scoble and other celebrity bloggers are in Twitter too. Many, however, also send out lots of personal/useless/distracting tweets. I truly hope Twitter would make it possible for users create two separate channels — one for business and the other for friends/fans. E.g. tmas68 added a business line at 1news4tm yesterday.
• Just found a list of Twitter scripts and plugins. Use at your risk!
• Beware of addiction! See Amy Jo Kim’s explanation of How Game Mechanics Can Make Your App More Fun and Kathy Sierra’s post Is Twitter Too Good?

1. Find out some more about the audience of this weblog
2. Find out other webloggers with similar interests
3. Find out about some other weblogs by digging further into their own communities
4. Identify common communities from my visitors
5. Find out more about my readership with their extended contact details
6. A picture is worth a 1,000 words
7. Have quick conversations with those who read off this weblog
8. Find out other communities and webloggers who have not yet visited this weblog (potential audience)
9. Ability to keep track of some stats
10. Increase Web traffic to this weblog (says Yours Truly)

So now, on my Followers page, I have the honor (perhaps) of seeing this:


ACTUALLY, I DON’T understand politics in Singapore or in the USA. However, it’s really interesting to read and observe a few things:

• Scoble’s post, Political use of social media: Edwards (1); Obama (.5); Clinton (NA)
• Social media on John Edwards’ website (see right)

Also, Scoble’s interview with Elizabeth Edwards:

And Scoble’s interview with John Edwards:

Nexus promises to be “a highly interactive conference where we discuss fundamental changes happening in business and technology, and how you can take a lead in them!” AND to make the event better, Nexus organizer is now using a WYSIWYG wiki to elicit and compile ideas (for example, on Session Discussions and Community Gatherings) from everyone.

What sets this event apart from prior local events seems to be the strong government, stat board and industry backing that this one managed to harness — sponsorship by StarHub and Accenture, partners from NTUC Youth and TiE Singapore, advisors from IDA, NUS, ISS, SMU, etc. and speakers from Microsoft, Salesforce.com APAC, Yahoo! SEA, Google, CNET Networks Asia Pacific, Intel China, IDC Asia/Pacific, Insead, etc. Local Web 2.0 representatives include Tomorrow.sg and Stomp.com.sg.

HOW DID The Digital Movement manage to gartner so much sponsorship and support from so many industry players? What’s their secret weapon? When asked, one of the organizers laughingly wrote: “Haha, we got no secret. Just hardwork, a lot of leveraging on windows of opportunity, and a garang just do it spirit. ”

Anyway, the topics to be covered include:

• Asia Pacific 2.0: Regional Technology Leaders on Emerging Opportunities
• Crowdsourcing The Media: Mainstream Media and Bloggers
• Future of the Web: Web Giants Google, Amazon, Yahoo, Salesforce.com
• The Mobile Web Explosion: Opportunities ahead in the convergence
• Open Source Communities: Innovation Unlimited
• Global Startups: Share Their War Stories

Really geeky Web 2.0 speakers include:

• Nathan Torkington, OReily Radar, Perl Foundation Board Member
• Andreas Weigend, Former Chief Scientist, Amazon.com

In fact, there will be a Geek-Out session on 22 March evening where local technologists can show their products/services to Nathan and Andreas if it is:

• A technological innovation
• Related to the web, mobile or the latest technologies out there
• Or just damn cool.

Will you be there? I know I will. Will Nexus 2007 become an effective catalyst and leader for Web 2.0 in Singapore? What do you think?

Although I’ve been a LinkedIn member since August 2006, I’ve not published my LinkedIn profile to the Web NOR tried to connect with anyone there. That is, until Lunar New Year’s eve three days ago. Now that I’m running a business, professional networking has become important. Furthermore, my curiosity was piqued (again) upon reading Hinchliffe’s “Best of Web 2.0 in 2006″ article, where LinkedIn was highlighted for the “Professional Social Network” category. So, on Feb 17, I really tried connecting to people whom I know via LinkedIn.

After 3 Days of “connecting”, this is what I get on LinkedIn:

“OH NO! NOT ANOTHER SOCIAL NETWORK!” Don’t you get this feeling nowadays? Social networks seem to be sprouting like wild grass every week. Perhaps you even get tired looking at the numerous icons in the GoToWeb20 website (screenshot below), or simply reading the news? Are you like me, wishing that these legions of social networks (almost like towers of Babel) would simply consolidate into a few major players? OR at the very least, open up and make it possible for users to sign-in, post to, and maintain profiles easily from just one (or if desired, just a few) source?

“HOW DO WE KEEP UP?” is a question that has been bugging me over the past few years ever since I got hooked onto the fantastic potential of Web 2.0. So, this morning, was truly gratified to read Robert Scoble’s post (also entitled How do we keep up?):

“I got up early to read feeds and do email. I started at 5:45 a.m. and it’s now 7:26 a.m. and I still didn’t get through all my feeds. But, worse, is what I did find: dozens of new products, new companies, new phones… how do we keep up with this flow that is coming through the blogs? It’s much easier to build a company now than it was in the 1990s, plus access to capital is there again, so that leads to tons of new companies and a LOT of news. What does this lead to? Risk for new companies because the chances that a new company will be able to get adoption/build audience and community is very small. There’s simply too much out there to pay attention to.”

Following Scoble’s “flow”, I found that at Slashdot (in the “Typing it all again” category), kdawson wrote:

“mrspin offers the opinion of ZDNet blogger Steve O’Hear that users may soon tire of social networks — if they don’t open up and embrace standards allowing greater interoperability among the different networks. O’Hear writes: “Unless the time required to sign-in, post to, and maintain profiles across each network is reduced, it will be impossible for most users to participate in multiple sites for very long. In an earlier post he went into more detail on the same subject, with extensive opinions from four creators of social networks.”

Following O’Hear’s “flow”, I found some weariness amidst the exciting 2007 Web predictions on the Read/Write Web blog:

“While social networks dominated 2006, we wonder if the amount of time an average user spends online will start to negatively impact on their social lives in 2007 and lead to a downturn. Could social networks prove to be anti-social? At the same time, social networks will probably also become more open – and data portability will start to occur, although MySpace will hold out…”

This is the beauty (and “ugliness”) of social networks: One article leads to another, yet another and another. After an hour or so, I believe I’ve done a quick survey, especially after doing a Google search on “fatigue, social networks, tired”. Even found a comic at Blaugh entitled “I Hate Social Networks”! I can safely infer that there IS indeed widespread social network fatigue.

Data portability had been on my mind. So, I couldn’t agree with O’Hear more. However, I wonder: Couldn’t ZDNet and the four social network leaders interviewed have set the ball rolling and start leading by example? You see, just to cast a vote and to add my opinion at ZDNet, I had to sign up and create yet another profile. Likewise, whenever I’m invited to join a new social network. As a result, I feel less and less inclined to join new social networks nowadays.

If only someone would create an easy-to-use standard-based app or widget that would enable users to keep their profiles and content on a single-source (say, on their desktop or website)! And if only all social networks would have a simple linking feature that works according to that standard!

For example, at Elgg.net, I can reap all the benefits of being in a social network while maintaining my current blog here. Reason: I can publish publish the same posts in Elgg through a feed. I can also have different levels of access restrictions for postings within Elgg. Although Elgg has/had some teething issues (e.g. duplicate/triplicate posts and disappearing media just because I tried to edit a published post), I’m sure they could be resolved eventually.

Truly looking forward to the day when I could join as many as social networks as I want with minimal effort: owning and maintaining all my profile(s) and content in one space, and merely linking them to various networks. Of course, my comments on different networks could be different…

Speaking of this, wouldn’t it be great if one could get wiki-like overviews of original information and the associated “enrichments” (Dion Hinchcliffe’s term for tags, ranks, reviews, comments, revisions, etc.) all on the same page?

Then, we the readers wouldn’t be wasting time reading Babel babble (rehashes, duplicates, triplicates, etcetera). And we the “publishers” wouldn’t be wasting time building towers of Babel — trying in vain to make a name for each of “us” separately. (Indeed, the proliferation of social networks has collectively and literally made us anti-social!)

Hopefully, by then, we’d be truly socializing and collaborating on a Valentine Day, and every other day!

(See also Google Drive: Cure for Social Network Fatigue.)

• The first reactions of many people towards RSS, blogs, wikis, Elgg, Elluminate, Furl, Moodle, etc. seem to be, “Gasp! How overwhelming!”, “Are writings in blogs (or wikis, etc.) academically rigorous?”, “Can one really use these tools to teach a real course? How?”
• Wow! I’m already quite familiar with almost all the tools that are being explored in this course — thanks to several fortuituous turns of events in my life. In fact, I now use many routinely in my daily knowledge gathering and management activities.
• However, having conducted several learning experiments among real students over the past two years, it’s still not very clear to me what the model answers are. One thing that does stand out is this: Students who already meet one another face-to-face often have very little motivation to do things online with one another. On the other hand, distance learners who study alone are very likely to be keen to interact socially, cognitively, etc. with one another. Therefore, Dr Anderson’s paper, Distance Learning — Social Softwares Killer Ap?, certainly struck a chord in me.