Sales, Social and Tech

(Pic: Friendster is no longer in these teenagers’ lexicon) I had this assumption that Friendster was every teenager’s start point into social networking. I was proven wrong when I spoke to a group of teenagers to find out if there was a new social networking site that was sprouting out somewhere. I was at the National Family Council media conference to cover the social media part of the pre announcement of the National Family Celebrations in 2010. This group of teenagers, from 16-18, were volunteers in helping out at the launch. When I asked if they were on Friendster, they gave me the stare that I was like from another generation. Yes, none of them used Friendster anymore. Their choice of social network? Facebook. The reason for not using Friendster was quite clear and simple from these teenagers. None of their friends are on Friendster. Yes it is a small sample size, the good news is that there is no new social networking site that  I need to look at. The bad news is ...

I am surprised that my three major social media clients come from government agencies as I thought it would be the business corporations who will  be my major clients. Strange but true. A friend, formerly from the corporate communications department from a government department, said she wasn’t surprised as the objective of the government PR is to let the public know what the department is doing and what it has achieved. As such, with the public reach that social media has these days, she wasn’t as surprised as me that my clients are coming from the government. I am not complaining either as I found that the government agencies are quite gung-ho about new ideas to reach out to the public. Content creation is a key component in my proposals and this has been evident in the work I  have done. Though many social media experts highlight the importance of content in social media, most of them feel to emphasis how this content be created. The content mix includes posting...

The news broke in The Jakarta Globe yesterday that Thailand has blocked US social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Thanks to syndication and RSS feeds, this news spread quickly across the cybersphere. It even appeared in the Singapore online news site Today . When I read of this on Twitter, I asked a friend in The Bangkok Post if this is true. According to this journalist friend, a fire at an Internet gateway in Thailand caused sites to be slow or even redirect users to Thailand’s Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (MICT) website and clarified with the Today journalist who tweeted about the news above in Today. Though the Jakarta Globe has clarified that the there is no evidence of censorship, the clarification has not been posted on these sites. Here lies the problem which I read in the book “ Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media ” by Nick Davies of the reliance of syndicate...