A fascinating resource

Barcamp Phnom Penh is setting a standard for Barcamps in Southeast Asia. Comparing a smaller, less developed nation like Cambodia to Thailand, Malaysia or even Singapore, it is astonishing to see how active and professional the IT-Community in Phnom Penh is.

Barcamp Phnom Penh still maintains the spirit of Barcamps as it should be (although the pressure from sponsors was a bit much this year), it is all about learning from each others, sharing information and - important as well, having fun.

With two days of many sessions, it's quite exhausting. But you will rarely see no smile in the faces of the participants. Also, there are always suprises, like the "How to build a Cambodian Spaceship" session, or "Developing for iPhone." I learned a lot from Chris Brown this year, who pointed out why Cambodia is a good place for start-ups: "You can dvelop and create the product for the whole world while having low-cost office rent, lower salaries and highly motivated young developers." I totally aggree with that.

There were many job offers I saw at the Barcamp. It reflects that there is already a small community of start-ups, and my wish is that Phnom Penh develops itself as a kind of a Silicon Valley of the region, where young creative people are working on the future of the Internet generation.

My advice for the next Barcamp is: Do it as before, maybe step back from to many sponsors, keep the spirit and have fun.

If you attended this year's BarCamp Phnom Penh, please tell us what you think; what don't like most and what you like less

Great blog post from another Asian Correspondent blogger Tharum Bun on Cambodia's emerging potential for start-ups.

Visit the link for thoughts from another event attendee.

The Asia-Pacific region accounts for 39.8 percent of all Internet users in the world. Europe comes next with 27.6 percent and North America’s share is 15.9 percent in the global internet audience. This is as per August 2010 data from Comscore. We already know that Asia will be a $80 bn market by 2015. 

Coming to the global market for Twitter reach, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines and Singapore are the four Asian countries which figure in the top 10 list for Twitter. Together these four Asian countries has a percent reach of 65 percent reach in the top 10 list.

via asiancorrespondent.com

Just a brief snapshot of an interesting post from fellow Asian Correspondent blogger Sriram Vladlamani. Unfortunately the graphics haven't come out properly so I recommend visiting the link for full data and analysis.

Insight into Thai telecom law & the 3G debacle

The whole purpose of this law is to enable private companies to become licensed telecommunication operators, without having to enter into a contract with a state enterprise (i.e. concession agreement).

However, as you can see from section 79 and 80 (posted below), every effort has been made (by CAT & TOT lobbyists) to ensure that TOT & CAT can continue to gain revenue from the private sector as before, for as long as the concession agreements remain valid. If liberalization was the real goal, all concession agreements should naturally have been declared null and void, and the private companies would have been permitted to apply for a license from the regulator instead.

It's a disaster, Thailand's long awaited 3G process is further delayed.

A guest contribution to my blog outlines how Thai law can allow such a ridiculously process of challenges to derail what is now a standard worldwide technology

A great video from an official Twitter staffer packed full of stats

Click to enlarge. Source: Deagol's AAPL model

The log chart above, produced by Daniel ("Deagol") Tello, shows the revenue stream from the iPad overtaking the Mac's -- much as the iPhone did three years earlier and the iPod did a few years before that.

Just think of the knock effects across the board...

Leading the rise of social group buying and deal-of-the-day sites worldwide is U.S.-based Groupon, which practically became a household name overnight. Now, here in Thailand, plenty of clones are starting to emerge to cater to the nation’s bargain hunters too.

With the market set to take off in a major way, we’ve put together a guide to the group-buying phenomenon and the sites that are leading the pack.

Should I be worried? I'm two weeks into an in-house social media marketing role...lol

To build upon its great start and be a long-term success Spotify needs to do three things:

1. Break through the 15-20 million user bar like Pandora did
2. Convert roughly 5 percent of its user base to premium offerings
3. Build a sustainable ad business that helps shoulder the cost of its free users

Juniper's Mark Mulligan wrote the above of online music Service Spotify last year, August 2009 to be precise.

So where is the service now?

[According to data from March 2010: so true figures may be higher] It has amassed a user base of 7 million with 3.5% paying for premium service.

Not bad progress at all but I too expected better for a proposition which is essentially free music using an extensive catelogue and easy user experience.

Seems to me, from a quick straw poll of friends/family in UK, that many of the target audience simply don't know about.

As Mulligan alluded in the piece the above extract is taken from, it won't kill iTunes but it offers a complimentary service. Enforcing this message could make a big difference.

This a huge topic but I hope Spotify 'makes it' as I love the service and the concept.

A great visual overview of social media channels

There is no doubt that the political protests triggered substantial growth and awareness of Facebook in Thailand, particularly reflected during March, April and May, however new growth drivers have emerged as the political situation has returned to a cooler (but arguably still uneasy, with emergency laws still active) landscape.

Yet despite the loss of this trigger, Facebook numbers have continued to grow (as the below chart from Facebaker's indicates) which suggested other factors are responsible for the spread of Facebook adoption.

Note: the Facebook Thailand data from Facebakers is not always updated on a regular basis, hence what looks like periods of stagnation but are in fact lulls in measurement.

New growth factors

There are a number of drivers which are keeping Facebook numbers growing in Thailand, my three key picks are below:

Word of mouth: Undoubtedly the strongest factor and yet the most difficult influence to measure. With increasing numbers adopting Facebook in Thailand the spread, adoption and usage creates its own promotion dynamic. For example, non Facebook users may find friends posting photos on the service tempt them to sign up, or interest in the latest social game prompts them to give it a shot. The more people that use Facebook, the more 'buzz' is created and thus the stronger the word of mouth influence.

Gaming: We already know online gaming, social gaming and mobile gaming are huge across Asia. Facebook taps into all three making its entertainment and gaming offerings a big driver of new and returning traffic.

Mobile: With increasingly sophisticated technology becoming available in more affordable mobile phones, more users are enabled to access the internet through their mobile device. In a market where fixed-line internet is immature, unreliable and available to less than 25 percent of the population, mobile is the big internet enfranchiser and the future of wider option of internet. The upcoming 3G license auctions mark a critical moment in the nation's telecommunications industry and the future of mass market internet access.

From my post earlier today though a version is also available at CNN Go here.

A week is a long time in politics, as they say, but in this internet-centric age, a week in the the web can be even longer.

To keep up with what's happening in Asia, every Monday I recap my pick of Asia's key tech/digital news and articles from the previous week, while also including a round-up of the week's posts from this blog too.

Here's the selection from last week, 23-29 August 2010.

Tencent Extends China Reach With Comsenz Buy Wall Street Journal

Why Thailand Sucks for Tech Startups and How to Fix It johnberns.com [technically from the week previous]

Hi-tech help on offer for Filipino rice farmers BBC News

Smartphones to make up over half of Asian sales by 2015 AFP

Marketing in China: go online FT Beyondbrics

Bids are in for 3G auction Bangkok Post

App World 2.0 brings paid BlackBerry apps to Thailand CNet Asia

Seedcamp comes to Asia e27

Google Scholarship program kicks off in China The Official Google Blog

Google Sites Has Largest Audience in Asia Pacific Region While Tencent Captures Highest Share of Online Minutes comScore

Indonesia, Brazil and Venezuela Lead Global Surge in Twitter Usage comScore

Japan's sumo wrestlers grapple with Apple's iPad AFP

Singaporean arrested for inciting violence on Facebook Channel News Asia

This Week in Asia Episode 66: The Worlds of Tencent & Sekai Camera This Week in Asia [podcast]

Levi’s gets social in Asia Speed PR blog

China Unicom to sell Apple iPad next month: report AFP

Facebook India Opens India Offices Mashable

Are Facebook and YouTube Fomenting Violence in Kashmir? Fast Company

Hackers attack Philippine government website AFP

Tencent: Unit To Pay $10.5 Million For Thailand Internet Firm Shares Fox Business

As posted over at my Asian Correspondent blog

On the subject of social media on Times Square billboards, how about this from Foursquare?

QR (bar code) technology on an advert in Times Square, New York, USA.

This is just one image from a post on inventorspot.com, which claims social media billboards, a common sight across Europe and Asia, have finally made their way to America.

So can anyone in North Korea actually get on the Internet?

Very few of them can. A small number of people -- almost all of them government officials -- are permitted to access the Internet in North Korea. Because the country has no commercial Internet service providers, they typically get on the net through dial-up modems connected to special phone lines or with mobile phones via satellite. Around 20,000 North Koreans have access to cell phones, but most are forbidden from accessing the Internet.

Interesting insight from an article on internet usage in North Korea, a country in the news after setting up a presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube - though it emerged these were set-up by foreign supports of Kim Jong Il.

Research from comScore has concluded that Indonesia is the planet's most Twitter-addicted nation. According to the data, 20.8 percent of Indonesians online visited Twitter during June 2010, with the country scoring the highest percentage rate of Twitter usage amongst of any nation's online population.

Indonesian isn't the only Asian nation recognised as strong, from the continent Japan (5th with a 16.8% reach), Philippines (6th with a 14.8% reach), Singapore (9th with a 13.3%), South Korea (16th with a 9.3% reach), India (18th with a 8.0% reach) and Malaysia (19th with a 7.7% reach).

 

Asia Pacific is also credited as being the second fastest growing region with 243 percent growth and 25.1 million users visiting the social network, a growth figure bettered only by South America.

An analysis of the five major global regions revealed that Latin America experienced the strongest audience growth, surging 305 percent to 15.4 million users. Asia Pacific ranked as the second-fastest growing region, climbing 243 percent to 25.1 million visitors. The Middle-East Africa jumped 142 percent to 5 million visitors, while Europe soared 106 percent to 22.5 million visitors. North America, where Twitter has reached a higher maturity level than other regions, saw a growth of 22 percent to nearly 25 million visitors in June.

 

This one's from me over at Asian Correspondent, but is one of those rarely-occurring news pieces providing insight into the influence of social media in Asia, as well as illustrating Asia's influence (particularly in the form of Indonesia) in a global context.

I like to think my own natural usage of a new service is a pretty good barometer of how well it will do. And I’ll be honest, like seemingly everyone else, I wasn’t using Google Wave. But the weird thing is that I wanted to use Google Wave, I just wasn’t presented with a compelling reason to do so. And that’s on Google.

This sums up EXACTLY how I feel about the death of Google Wave.

The comment is taken from MG Siegler's excellent TechCrunch post on Wave's demise, less than a year after its initial invitation-only, closed launch.

From the beginning of the year until April 20th there was no shortage of talk going on around BP. Looking at this time period we can see that BP was mentioned in almost 93,000 blog posts, over 202,000 forum posts and in about 244,000 tweets. In this time period we also can see that BP was in good favour of those discussing them with a 76% overall favourable sentiment rating.

Then the day of the explosion came. On April 20th Deepwater Horizon sank and oil started to pour out of the well into the Gulf of Mexico until it was finally plugged up almost three months later. During this time the world couldn’t stop talking about the British oil giant. In the course of this period there were around 602,000 blog posts, 860,000 forum messages and a whopping 4.6 million tweets. This time period also saw their favourable sentiment percentage drop more than 20%. The most drastic change here comes from the negative sentiment around BP rising from 22% to 46%.

Now that the leak has been capped and the oil has stopped flowing into the ocean, there might be speculation that talk and criticism of British Petroleum may have calmed down. Our analysis shows that this not the case. Granted, the leak was only capped a week ago, but talk about it has not seemed to slow down. In the past week there has been over 55,000 blog posts, 42,000 forum mentions and almost 528,000 tweets about BP. Most interesting is that there were more tweets about the company in this last week than there were in the first four months of the year. Also, despite the worst being over (the actual leaking), the overall sentiment of BP has not changed much. The overall sentiment rating still stands at 54% favourable. However, while negative sentiment has not gone down, we did see a slight rise in their positive sentiment from 16% to 19%.

With their positive sentiment on the rise it will be interesting to look again at these numbers in a few months to give a roughly equal time period of measurement and to let the clean up of the spill take it’s affect on both the Gulf of Mexico and the general public talking about it. If BP handles the next few months properly, they may be able to swing the public’s opinion back in their favour. Only time will tell.

Great insight from Sysomos showing how the global nature of the BP crisis is demonstrated in conversations on the web.

This is evidence alone for any business to consider a social media policy.