A great video from an official Twitter staffer packed full of stats
Twitter's latest anti-spam update is a subtle one, blink and you could very well miss it.
Twitter has taken a leaf out of (Twitter and social media manager) Brizzly's book by changing shortened links into full destination URLs. The move allows users to see exactly what link they are clicking to when following a short link URL on the microblogging service.
The pictures below show one screen shot taken immediately as the page loads and another taken a second or two later once Twitter has lengthened the short URL into a full link.
With just 140 character to express oneself, shortened URLs have gained enormously popularity - so much so that heavyweights Google, YouTube and Facebook have recently joined the party releasing their own versions to compete with leaders like bit.ly, is.gd and tiny.url.
The new Twitter feature may seem minor but it is a big step towards preventing short URL abuse on the service. Currently one spamming technique draws users to what they believe to be a short link of interest, but on clicking the short URL users are directing users to a spam or unsuitable/fraudulent link.
Such links will no longer be blind, giving users the chance to avoid the spam by seeing the full link URL.
The move also highlights what an excellent Twitter client Brizzly is. There is no greater compliment than seeing your Twitter copy a third-party's innovation for its service.
If you haven't tried Brizzly yet it comes high recommend, and not just from me.
This feature is yet to be announced on the Twitter blog at time of writing.
A while back when discussing the future of technology in Thailand, an interviewee assured me that whilst the technology may be the same, the nation of Siam will develop its own, distinctive usages. One has arrived already, the Twitter wedding after @vinegargirl and @kengdotcom tied the knot yesterday, Sunday 10 January 2010.
While using the internet and social media before and after a wedding is common place these days, using it in real-time whilst the wedding is taking place is certainly less conventional.
Headlines and eyebrows were raised in December 2009 when American Dana Hana infamously 'tweeted at the altar' creating the first Twitter wedding, first instance of a twittering groom, the first 'you may tweet the bride' headline, etc, etc.
Credit to @kengdotcom and @vinegargirl, know offline as Keng and Aom, then for no cheesy tweets, they did things differently, Thai-style.
The couple used Twitter to communicate with friends and spread pictures on the day. Branding at the wedding included their Twitter handles and there was even a hashtag,#aomkeng, to follow the conversation and the rest is history, already indexed by Google thanks to the wonder of real-time search.
Some guests even checked in on FourSquare.
Having recent got married I have pretty strong opinions on the privacy of wedding pictures and other information. Whilst my wife and I regularly put our photos into the public domain of the internet we have kept our wedding collection private - sharing only a few select pictures.
For us, our photos, particularly the official pictures, are special, once-in-a-lifetime images to be treasured. For these reasons we've kept them offline, to ensure they are a little more sacred and in our control - QED see a few of Aom and Keng's wedding photos below.
Despite my disagreement and initial thoughts (a little excessive though they may have been) a part of me does understand Aom and Keng's motives.
Social media and Twitter in particular is about bringing people together and increasing communication. Putting a hashtag on Twitter encourages guests to tweet generates chatter and shares images. Hopefully not at the expense of more traditional socialising.
Guests' photos, video and accounts of wedding find their way on to social networkings in the long run just not within minutes of being taken.
Whether it is a mark that Thai people are less afraid of privacy issues online or just their total adoption of technology, it will be interesting to see if others in Thailand will follow Aom and Keng in embracing social media.
That said, were I to do my wedding again, it would stay offline and hashtag free.
The writing was on the wall back in April 2009 when Aom and Keng made a wedding presentation video which can be found on YouTube and a range of other sites which take its content.
New Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) governor Surahon Svetasreni has pledged to use social media to help boost Thailand's reputation and increase visitor numbers in the country.
The new governor is far keener to use social media and e-tools to enhance the attraction of the kingdom abroad.
“We are reshaping our web tools to integrate new media such as Twitter or Facebook. We want travelers to Thailand to be more actively involved into the shaping of our web content by updating our site with their own experiences and advices,” said Mr. Svetasreni.
Social media is also a way to make TAT promotion more effective despite a limited growth in the agency budget.
“Our total budget is up by 1.9 percent to US$138 million for 2010. However, half of the money is affected to administration purposes, which requests us to be even more effective in our marketing expenses,” added TAT's new governor.
via eturbonews.com
As disclosed earlier this week recent tweets from Paula Abdul and Martha Stewart, two celebrities who celebrated the New Year in Thailand, reached a combined audience in excess off 3 million showing just a glimpse of the potential social media has for TAT and Thailand 'The Holiday Destination'.
TAT is not unfamiliar with the social media after using a combination of blogging, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as part of Ultimate Thailand Explorer, a competition which began back in September with winners due to be announced tomorrow, Friday 8 January.
Overview of the competition below.
The Ultimate Thailand Explorer, a social-networking competition from TAT, aims to raise Thailand tourism by attracting people to join the competition and have them publicize Thailand’s top five destinations including Bangkok, Phuket, Pattaya, Chiang Mai, and Koh Samui through digital world.
The winning couple of the Ultimate Thailand Explorer, selected by a process of online voting, will win a cash reward of US$10,000, a holiday package to Thailand, a Blackberry and a Handycam video camera. Plus, the voters are also eligible to win a holiday package to Thailand worth US$1,500, a spa voucher, a Blackberry, and a handycam video camera.
Interested challengers have to apply as a pair and film a one minute video clip telling which destination you wish to explore, why you want to go there, and how will you promote the place to other visitors. Afterwards just upload your video onto Youtube.com, you must complete your team profile registration form and encourage people to vote for your team and share their Thailand experience and stories through social media tools.
Recently stumbled upon a number of interesting statistics from Thai operator AIS from a press release announced back in early December (2009).
The reliability of the stats is questionable as there is neither a source nor a reference. Social media user data is notorious difficult to find per country, particularly for smaller markets like Thailand.
However according to AIS
There are about 1.34 million Facebook members in Thailand with over 5 million viewers.
Regarding Twitter, there are 600,000 members with over 1.2 million followers.
There are over 6 million AIS Mobile Internet users at present.
There are about 100,000 users of Facebook on mobile phones.
There are about 30,000 users of Twitter on mobile phones.
The user statistics do not seem too drastic although it is not 100% clear what Facebook's "over 5 million viewers" refers to and the mention of "over 1.2 million followers" for Facebook in Thailand is also unclear.
Using the AIS statistics the following is true:
** 7.5% of Facebook users in Thailand actively update through their mobile phone compared to 5% of Twitter users
** Facebook membership in Thailand grew by 15% September through November [or which ever time AIS statistics date from - stats 1,160,980 in Jan 2009 to 1,340,000 - see here for more)
** More than 5% of Twitter users in Thailand took part in the recent Tweeple Talk Thai-language Twitter event (with an estimated 30,000-40,000 in attendance)
More light on this is definitely required.
It seems being seven hours ahead of GMT gives Thailand advantages beyond positioning English Premiership (football) matches at 9.00 pm - a dream slot for bar owners - after the country's tourism industry inadvertently made use of the time delay and Twitter.
Details are from Access Hollywood below
The stars are celebrating New Year's Eve around the world and sending out their well wishes via Twitter.
Paula Abdul and Martha Stewart were some of the first celebrities to share their New Year's Eve moments as they both appeared to be celebrating (separately) from Thailand.
"Lighting a lantern and letting it go with a wish on New Years at Six Senses Resort in Thailand", Paula Tweeted.
Martha also shared her well wishes.
"A happy new year to all my friends in thailand it is almost midnight and we are all thinking about the possibilities for 2010."
Although these endorsement are unlikely to be response for any holiday bookings just yet, the Twitter messages had a potential audience in excess of 3.3 million (Abdul has 1.5 million followers and Stewart 1.8 million) making them, alongside the pair's other tweets from Thailand, influential.
One drawback of digital media is the difficult of quantifying such influence but the attention, alongside additional media coverage like the article, come as a boost for Thailand tourism industry and the country's reputation globally.
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.
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.
One thing is for sure, this a first for Twitter – will it catch on?
There are an enormous number of books dedicated to technology and the internet in Thailand.
Hola, I'm Jon the newly arrived Asia Editor at international tech blog The Next Web.
It has been a while but I'm revamping my Posterous while I temporarily have no space to call my own online.
