The Social Media Club Kuala Lumpur (SMCKL) Experience

The Social Media Club (Kuala Lumpur edition) has been going strong ever since it started. It’s a meetup for social media buffs and anyone else who’d like to network and learn more about social media. It’s impacts, growth, lessons and experience from involving social media in their personal life and corporation.

I missed the first 5 meetups and the 6th was one which I definitely wanted to attend. Mainly because the topic of discussion was related to the government and an Internet platform.

The speakers who were present and speaking at SMCKL this time were:

• Tina Malone (US Embassy)
• Khairy Jamaluddin (Member of Parliament, UMNO Youth chief)
• Kam Raslan (Writer & Director)
• Tony Pua (Member of Parliament)
• Asohan (The Star, Moderator)

The introductory presentation was delivered by Tina. She discussed about how the US is now moving forward by sharing government data with the public. It definitely would be something Malaysians would show interest. Especially, government spending. Just where is our taxes going this year and right now.

Once the presentation was over, the other speakers and moderator was asked to be seated at the stage for an open discussion. The topic up for the night was; government in the age of social media.

Questions were posed from Twitter and to the floor. Anonymity proved  to be a strong platform for questions to roll in. Simply because there were more Twitter questions in comparison to attendees standing up.

There were a number of mixed final thoughts but the ones which I took back:

• Government doesn’t know social media because a program isn’t available.
• Malaysia apparently lacks talent in programming pool.
• Not whole of Malaysia is ready for the social media movement.
• Social media isn’t reaching and being picked up by more conservative parties or politicians.

I had some questions in my mind during the event, but I deleted them every time I typed it in Twitter. Because I don’t think the questions would be posed to the right people.

• What’s the government doing internally to educate about social media?
• How is it lacking talent when a Malaysia company was recently acquired by Facebook?

If you’re in the industry of Web, then Social Media Club Kuala Lumpur is an event not to be missed. It’ll also be helpful for business owners.

But mind you, it’s not for the “but I don’t want people to post bad feedback/comments online“. That was yesterday.

Today, people talk about you online whether you’re there or not.

P.S.: You can view the event photos at my photoblog; Cameranoob.

Google Analytics Master Class (GAMC) 2010 Presentation Slides

I wasn’t able to attend the Google Analytics Master Class (GAMC) at PJ Hilton. But I did stumble on these slides which have been uploaded to SlideShare by Vinoaj.

Therefore, thought I’d share them here with you too.

TM UniFi High Speed Broadband Project International Comparison

Back in September 2008, MCMC awarded the High Speed Broadband Project (HSBB) of the country to none other than TM. Fast forward to March 2010, TM announced and launched their high speed broadband packages. While it was met with instant online news coverage by bloggers, its come under fire by the heavy-users of broadband.

Note, if you visit the UniFi website, make sure you’ve got the www prefix. They didn’t make it work without it. Phbt.

Okay. So here are the plans being offered for the high speed broadband project by TM.

Package	Download/Upload speed	Monthly Data	Monthly Price (RM)
VIP 5	5Mbps	60GB	149.00
VIP 10	10Mbps	90GB	199.00
VIP 20	20Mbps	120GB	249.00

Now, let’s have a look at the broadband packages in Singapore. They’re in the midst of developing their high speed broadband, but these standard broadband packages will do.

ISP	Download/Upload speed	Monthly Data	Monthly Price (SGD)
Singtel	10Mbps / 1Mbps	Unlimited	56.90
Starhub	8Mbps / 1.2Mbps	Unlimited	81.32

I took the packages which comes closest to our high speed broadband packages based on the download/upload rate and monthly price.

Next, we’ve Australia. Who’s deployed their high speed broadband as ADSL2+ packages. Though weirdly when I was looking at their packages, providers are now promoting naked broadband packages. Not sure what’s that about.

ISP	Download/Upload speed	Monthly Data	Monthly Price (AUD)
Bigpond	20Mbps / 1Mbps	50GB	109.95

Many other Australian ISPs weren’t included because most stated speeds as ADSL2+ rather than the average numbers.

Nonetheless, this is enough information for me to write my point. Are our high speed broadband packages offered by TM fair and equivalent?

I don’t want to look at Malaysia as some 3rd world country. Therefore, I would look at the prices dollar for dollar. Not to mention, you do get what you pay for, especially in Australia.

Personally, if the government really wants to push the national broadband plan, readjust all the broadband plans for crying out loud!

This is what I told my friend in the car when discussing about UniFi and current broadband plans:

The new 5Mbps UniFi plan should be RM88 (though I expected it to be no more than RM100). Then, they should make the 1Mbps packages the minimum speeds for anything below that.

Yes, there are users who don’t use the Internet as much. But, they also don’t want to waste their time waiting for a website to load. Think about it. Faster loads can get things done much faster later. Even the lady at the wet market can answer her email orders more efficiently and get back to chopping heads of fish much quicker.

Broadband internet shouldn’t be a commodity but a necessity by now.

P.S.: Why bundle something your real market knows they’re not interested in? Did the market research go wrong? Or, are you cashing in?

5 Things To Know When You Twitter

1. It isn’t updating your Facebook status

Unlike Facebook, Twitter only has 140 characters for you to express your thoughts. There’s only so much you can tweetshrink a message before it becomes something like this:

Did U know twttr has a max 140 char length 2 post unlike Facebook? & thr is only so much U cn TweetShrink the msg before it’ll ended up lk a skool kids SMS msg 2 her friend.

Did you understand that? Even that, was lengthier by 33 characters! So, keep it simple and brief.

2. It’s for my friends – ’nuff said

When I post to Twitter, it’s because I want my friends to know about it. Yes, you may have 44, 468 phantoms on your followers list but, do all of em really read what you posted? At least, my friends do.

3. There isn’t a format to follow

But I like keeping my twitter updates structured like this:

@If any Message Shortened URL #Hashtag

To me, it’s arranged based on the priority of the content. You want to communicate the message out first. Then, share the source and trend it.

4. Updates are not private

Unless you make it protected. And if you did, only followers who you approved may read your updates. Therefore, remember that if you posted personal information like your mobile/email/IC number to an unprotected account, any Internet user can read it.

5. You can’t buy loyalty

If you’re a corporation on Twitter, you can pay as much money to Twitter advertising networks but I’ll never be loyal to your brand unless I’ve used it and I was happy.

P.S.: It’ll also be more effective if you were on Twitter so we (fans and non-fans) can communicate directly to you what we think of your product. That’s branding.

Bonus:

6. Say it and mean it

After I lodged a complaint with 1901hotdogs via Twitter, they took the initiative to settle my concern and even, reward me with a free meal. The meal was a bonus but they took action to speak to the other concerning party about my feedback.

So, don’t think Twitter is only a bunch of young immature kids. Some of these kids have the power to make your kids hate you. Seriously.

RSS Numbers Schnumbers

When Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds first came, everyone pushed for subscribers like how the Internet providers and mobile providers here push during PC Fair.

Everyone did their best to draw attention to the RSS subscription. Many did (and still do) promote it via:

• Large RSS icons or buttons.
• Post headers or footers.

During this time, bloggers who gained subscribers of more than 1000 RSS subscribers were proud to publicized the figures on their blog. However, I’ve a strong feeling this movement is changing. Thanks to social media.

When I recently read TechCrunch, I noticed they’ve now humbly placed their badge of subscribers in the footer.

As I said, thanks to social media the focus now isn’t how many subscribers do you have. But how interesting and how active is content. I’m slowly seeing more Malaysian bloggers create their own Facebook fan pages now.

Is it a good thing? Maybe. Is it a bad thing? Possibly.

At the end of the day, numbers schnumbers. It’s how effectively are you using the tools.