Op-ed from Isriya Paireepairit, Analyst at the Siam Intelligence Unit in the Bangkok Post evaluating technology, the internet and social media in Thailand over 2009.
Few points to make following some of the analysis.
[Filed under technology winners]
Social Media Marketing Thanks to Twitter and @PM - Abhisit and his cabinet, @Thaksinlive, @Suthichai and The Nation focus on hyping up social media, everyone is now aware and social media marketing events are popping up all the time. 2009 was the year of the social media gold rush for the marketing and PR industry. The marketers have just realised the power of social media and believe it to be a magic wand that will reverse the decline in the advertising industry. Next year, reality will hit when they will realise it is not all it was hyped up to be.
I don't see this rush for gold though Twitter and social is beginning to catch on. As it stands, there are too few business making use of Facebook, Twitter et al in Thailand - the hype is likely to occur once business start flocking to the medium next year.
[Filed under technology losers]
A year ago, Hi5 was the social network of Thailand. Then the girls learned of Facebook's quizzes and games. They switched, and the boys followed.
Whilst Hi5 has seen Facebook close the gap it is still important to stress (see here and here) that Hi5 remains Thailand's most popular social network for now.
[Filed under technology losers]
Citizen journalism It was the big thing of 2008 but ultimately it failed to live up to the hype. After a year of blogs and citizen journalism, the Thai media scene is still the same, dominated by only few big papers. I cannot see any local parallels of the Huffington Post or Perez Hilton in this country.
Add to that the 2009 launches of Asia Correspondent, a network of independent current affairs/political blogges across SE Asia, and CNNGo, a trans-Asian travel and lifestyle website out of the CNN umbrella, and it is clear that citizen journalism and blogging enjoyed a strong 2009 growing into an essential part of Thailand's media which many turn to ahead of the 'established' media.
Yozzo, a Bangkok-based mobile content firm launched in Lao last week in partnership with the country's third largest mobile operator calling the service "mobile social networking".
The Thai software developer company, Yozzo Co.,Ltd and mobile operator, Tigo Lao Millicom, has launched the first Mobile Social Community in Lao People's Democratic Republic.
Bangkok, Thailand, December 25, 2009 --(PR.com)-- Yozzo Co., Ltd, provider of the Mobile Social Network and Mobile Content Platform "Yozzo" has launched the service in Laos, together with the popular Laotian mobile operator, Tigo Millicom Lao.“We are very proud and excited to expand our reach in Southeast Asia by launching in Laos," says Allan T. Rasmussen, Managing Director of Yozzo Co., Ltd. "We hope the community can help to bring a positive social impact in the daily life of the Lao user."Yozzo is a combination of a social networking platform paired with a mobile content sharing portal, users can use their mobile phone browser to get access to Yozzo and download free mobile content directly to mobile phone.
Here is the company's entry on CrunchBase (an index for start-up company and internet business).
Yozzo.com is a social community with focus on Thai and international members accessing the mobile web with their mobile phone and the mobile internet browser; Opera Mini.
Yozzo calling itself a mobile social network is a somewhat misleading as it is an operator-exclusive portal for sharing and viewing content rather than a Facebook on mobile.
Mobile social network is yet to really take off in Thailand or Lao but, with services like Twitter and FourSquare providing a compelling reason to access social networks through mobile consumer attitudes and behaviour may suit the arrival of mobile social networking, which would likely come from existing social networks pushing their mobile credentials.
Yozzo will have a difficult job establishing itself in Lao as it is only available on through the country's third largest operator and on deck. Through the business model its success will be based on the success of content (accessed, downloaded and paid for by subcribers) rather than subscriber numbers and advertisers which true social networks rely on.
Seems Lao will have to wait a little longer for real mobile social networking.
With influential politicians (including Thaksin, Abhisit, Korn and others) using Twitter to make announcements such as the above, more and more Thais are will likely be drawn to the service - regardless of their political allegiance - simply because dialogue is taking place on Twitter.
Some have predicted that Twitter's rate of adoption in Thailand will slow down but, with more people - particularly celebrities and politicians - using the service numbers seem likely to continue to rise
Fitch has assessed the telecom regulatory risk
environment across seven markets that it covers in South and
South East Asia, as part of an Asia-Pacific wide study.
The total regulatory risk score for each market is derived
based on three major sub-categories, namely Political & Social
Policy Risk, Industrial Policy Risk, and Inability of
Ownership/Management to Offset Regulatory Risk.
The risk scores for second-entrants in India, Indonesia and
Thailand are also high, weighed down by relatively high
Political & Social Policy Risks as well as the lack of state
ownership in these operators.
Some clarity and explanation of the results is provided by Fitch senior director Matt Jamieson.
"A high regulatory risk score of 6 or above [ed: as with Thailand] denotes that the regulatory environment has a significantly negative impact on the operator’s ability to generate Free Cash Flow (FCF) and in contrast a low score below 3 denotes a potentially positive impact on FCF.”
The research form Fitch suggests that Thailand's mobile regulators are amongst the most negative in Asia.
Using Sri Lanka as an example, here is the rationale behind the country receiving the highest risk score (making its regulatory body the most negative in the region).
- The non‐transparent process under which the fifth mobile operator licence was issued in 2007.
- A further non‐transparent process for the award of WiMax licences in 2007 - SLT was not awarded a licence while some other established telecom operators and applicants were licensed; no reasons have been identified for the omission of SLT.
- A directive was issued in 2008 prohibiting telecom operators from charging interconnection fees for a year until November 2009. The timing of this directive is highly questionable.
- Reaction to anti‐competitive/predatory pricing has not always been equitable.
- Transparency relating to the universal service obligation (USO) fund managed by the TRCSL has been very weak. No refunds have been made to operators on account of eligible capex.
Mashable has details of a cutting edge campaign, the Star Wars Death Star Super Laser, to promote its new products and definite a new level of interaction for social media campaigns.
“The Adidas Originals application uses Facebook Connect to personalise the application experience, even granting you power over the Death Star control deck so you can blow up your Facebook friends’ streets with help from Google Maps.”
In combining Facebook and Google Maps, Adidas is offering a compelling application with huge potential to spread virally.
Tapping into Facebook is perhaps the key aspect to this campaign as it takes advantage of established networks of friends built into the site (an average user has 130 Facebook friends) to pass the campaign around to those who have been blown up and those who see the application being used on a contact’s news feed.
And icing on the cake? Where it is supported, Google Street View can be used to pin point the exact location the laser will hit.
Your target has no chance of surviving, on Facebook at least.
As proof, here is a shot of me taking out the Director offices...it’s ok, I’m safely working from home today.
Hi5 has also seen Facebook take over most of the territories where it was leading, and has only been able to stop the social network from dominance in Peru, Portugal, Romania, Thailand and Mongolia.
Though 2010 is likely to be the year this changes.
As said before...
"Given the enormous surge of Facebook users in Thailand this year (user numbers rose 588%, to 1,160,980, between January and September) it appears to be a case of when not if Facebook topples the incumbent leader."
A little last week (dated 17 December) but nevertheless worthwhile highlighting news from Twitter of a new SMS service in Indonesia, in addition to the AXIS service announced in November.
[Indonesia and Ireland] both have carriers that launched Twitter's Text Messaging service today. We are excited to announce that our friends at 3 Indonesia and O2 Ireland have both made the Twitter SMS service available to their subscribers without any additional fees. Sending and receiving text messages with Twitter is just like sending and receiving them with your friends. It's a simple way to tell the world what's happening while out and about by quickly sending a text message to Twitter. Additionally, users can turn on text notifications for individual people they follow as well as, direct messages.
Customers of 3 Indonesia have exciting additional functionality available. 3 is the first carrier in Indonesia to support sending photos to Twitter via MMS by incorporating TwitPic. Give it a try today on your 3 Indonesia phone by sending "START" to 89887.
Indonesia is one of a handful of count
ries, sole representative of Asia, supporting SMS to Twitter service.
Statistics on usage would be interesting.
This service is designed to tempt existing users into mobile as the service is cumbersome and inflexible compared to user experience of third party apps used by existing mobile Twitterers on high-end devices/smartphones.
The deal is also noteworthy as an example of Twitter working with mobile operators as it continues to investigate ways of monetising the service.
[A little late on this once but...] This video is talk of the web after its director, Fede Alvarez, was offered a $30m Hollywood contract less than a week after posting it to YouTube.
The video, reportedly made on a meagre $300 budget, has attracted an enormous amount of interest with more than 9,000 comments and has been viewed more than 4,000,000 times.
Social media is changing the way the world works and this example will further inspire a new generation of film makers many of who already go direct to the web to follow their dreams.
If you haven't seen it already it is well worth a look.
Twitter Suffers Major Outage A Week From Christmas
The world’s most popular microblogging platform Twitter suffered a major outage Thursday night US time, Friday everywhere else.
At the time of writing (5:15pm AEDT Friday, 10:15pm USPDT Thursday) Twitter remains uncontactable both via the web interface, and the API used for third party clients.
The outage is a rarity in recent times for Twitter, who has mostly overcome a series of outages in its early days to provide a highly reliable platform for global communication.
The Twitter status blog is down also at the time of writing, so we have no way of confirming a particular issue, although the downforeveryoneorjustme.com site confirms that Twitter is down in the United States as well.
It's funny how Twitter can become so central to the internet experience, it feels and looks strange to see the site down along with all third party apps.
Amuses me somewhat that news site rush to pick this news up, that an outage on one website can be such big news - but it is.
I'll fancy there are a lots of frustrated people across Thailand hitting the reload button this afternoon.
We all know that, when Twitter is down, the smart kids head over to FriendFeed, unless like me they forget their password - FAIL.
He is editor-in-chief of The Nation and one of Thailand's most followed Twitter users with a shade over 22,500 followers at time of writing. It is a safe to say that with his large captive, Suthichai Yoon is one of the country's most influential Twitter users.
With such a large following it is logical to assume his profile page receives a sizeable amount of daily traffic.
No need for assumption, Khun Suthichai’s page speaks for itself.
The background of the page is space-to-rent, with an advertisement from Nok Air – "Thailand's domestic airline based in Don Mueang International Airport, Bangkok" – currently occupying the space.
As a country, Thailand is fairly tolerant to advertising - just filling up a car with gas an advert is placed on the bonnet while seemingly any space, anywhere can carrying ads.
That said selling out a Twitter page, a personal space online, takes advertising to a new level.
Is it too idealistic to say that social media should be free from advertisements and endorsements? Does everything and everyone have a price?
I’d like to invite Khun Suthichai to
provide more information about the Nok Air placement.
How much money does Nok pay for it?
How many hits does it register per day and how much custom does Nok receive from it?
Is it ethical for the editor-in-chief to carry an advert on a personal web page?
One thing is for sure, this a first for Twitter – will it catch on?
