Sales, Social and Tech

An estimated 3,000 attended the protest against the Population White Paper at Hong Lim Park on 16 February 2013. This was the largest non-political gathering since Singapore independence in 1965. This, itself, is a story worthy of the cover page. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post thought it was, but Singapore's Straits Times felt Girl Guides visiting Gardens by the Bay would be more deserving of the front page. Source: Occupy Singapore Facebook Page If The Straits Times, with the circulation of 300K plus, intent was to bury the news, 75% of Singapore's population having access to the Internet (Source: World Bank ), it would be difficult any of these 75% to avoid the stories and photos posted on social networks and news sites from overseas. One commented that The Straits Times had role to play in "Psychological Defense" and thus is defending the mind of Singaporeans. But doesn't too much of good news lead to complacency that all is well, when actua...

The recent news that neither the National Environment Agency (NEA) nor the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) is responsible for the culling of mynah birds is quite a worrying sign in Singapore's preparedness for another possible and probable bird flu epidemic.   In Feb 2009,  a dead Crested Myna  found in Tung Ping Chau, Hong Kong, was confirmed to be H5N1 positive after a series of laboratory tests.  If mynah birds, in Singapore, were found to carry the bird flu or an even deadlier form of the H1N1 virus, are we to stay calm and wait for the official news release to inform the remaining surviving Singaporeans that a committee of inquiry will be set up to decide which department is responsible for the culling of the mynah birds? Wrote Ng Puay Leng, Channel NewsAsia ,  Crows come under the purview of the National Environment Agency (NEA) while the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) handles...

Print publications cannot avoid the lure of creating Facebook Pages. Her World Singapore has 5000+ fans, HWM Philippines has 18,000 fans, but the ultimate question for these publications how can you make money from Facebook Pages. Enter Taggo . SauceINK , an online print publication, has teamed up with Taggo to allow their fans to check in at theblogshop @ 35 Haji Lane in Singapore to enjoy fan benefits. Unlike other Taggo clients, SauceINK do not have a retail venue. Their advertisers, however, do have. When a fan checks-in at the theblogshop upon purchase, the fan’s wall will show a status update which promotes both the publication and the advertiser. At the end of the campaign, SauceINK can report to their advertisers to inform them how many of their fans visited their outlets with the possible value of purchase made. This extends SauceINK use of their Facebook Page, from just a communication tool to update fans on the latest in the magazine to a very simple CRM so...

Judge Richard Posner of United States Court of Appeals judge in Chicago suggested that linking to copyrighted material should be outlawed. Erick Schonfeld of Techcrunch disagreed and even felt it was unbelievable that he had to come up with a post to explain why this was a bad idea. Wrote Erick , Blogs and other sites just take content from newspapers, Posner asserts, but they share none of the costs of news gathering. Of course, that blanket assertion is simply not true. A growing number of blogs, including TechCrunch, do their own news gathering and send writers to cover events at their own cost. But even if we limit the discussion to cut-and-paste sites, the free rider argument still doesn’t hold much water. You can’t be a free rider if you are giving something back of value. A link on its own is valuable. Where does Judge Posner think all of these newspaper sites get their readers? It is mostly through links, not direct traffic. Removing the links would obliterate ...

My initial thoughts were that the English sites would top the list. I was wrong after going through the list. Here’s the list. 7. Mypaper.sg (315,953/100,000,000) Mypaper is Singapore Press Holding’s to Mediacorp’s Today free newspaper. It started off as a full Chinese daily but soon became a English-Chinese daily to compete with Today. Mypaper is at www.mypaper.sg 6. tamilmurasu.tamil.sg (295,100/100,000,000) One of the problems with Alexa is that it have problems measure second level domains. Tamil.sg is ranked but not tamilmurasu.tamil.sg so I am assuming that it is related to tamilmurasu . Surprisingly, this site comes in 2nd last behind Mypaper.sg   5. Todayonline.com (74, 037/100,000,000) A journalist who follows me on Twitter asked about the stats about the online status about his publication, Today . Based on the Alexa ranking, it is ranked 6th.   4. businesstimes.com.sg (49, 977/100,000,000) Singapore Business Times is n...