Simple is the Reason of My Heart

Is Friendster engineering a comback? A Meeting with Jeff Roberto from Friendster

While most of the hype and buzz have been going on with Facebook and MySpace for the past two years, Friendster has been left out of the spotlight. After all, it was the first social network that came about from the web 1.0. The transition from web 1.0 to web 2.0 for this first social network has been tough. Like Twitter, Friendster lost a lot of audience to other networks from the scalability issue between 2003 to 2006. Yet, all is not lost. Recent trends seem to indicate that Friendster might be engineering a comback through other avenues. Sometime back, I wrote about Friendster's high growth against the other online social networks in Asia. That post has prompted some discussions in the background between Nicholas Aaron Khoo, Jeff Roberto (Marketing/PR Director, Friendster) and myself, since I am interested in the crossover audience between different social networks. Thanks to the Ad-Tech Conference held in Singapore and Howie and his team from The Digital Movement, I managed to meet Jeff Roberto along with several bloggers for lunch in Pan Pacific Hotel,Global Kitchen, Level 3. In that short lunch meeting, Jeff brought me the answer which I have asked in our past email discussions over the web.

From CommunicAsia 2008 to Crunch Network Meetup in Zouk

This week, Singapore hosted the CommunicAsia 2008 in the exhibition halls of Expo. Two days back, I visited the exhibition since the admission is free for anyone. The exhibition encompassed the EnterpriseIT 2008, Broadcast Asia 2008 and Interactive Me as well. Of course, Samsung took the occasion to launch their new smart phone, Omnia in this exhibition. The same day which I visited the exhibition, I managed to arrange a last minute Crunch Network Singapore meet up in Zouk. The meeting is with Greg Kumparak, the MobileCrunch Editor from TechCrunch. So, here are some of the pictures following from the exhibition to the evening meeting.

iPhone 3G - Steve Jobs' 2008 WWDC Keynote - The Good and the Bad

It has been a long wait. The iPhone 3G is finally out. Of course, this is not the best of Steve Jobs' WWDC keynotes, given that there are so many demos from the beta iPhone developers. Even that is the case, the first thing to note is that this emphasis of the keynote is totally placed on the iPhone. It started with the SDK and the iPhone 2.0 software, followed by the wave of apps developed by different companies and rounded
off with the announcement of the iPhone 3G. Don't we all already know that this is going to happen? What is really shocking, is the price of the iPhone 3G. At that moment, I was glad that I did not buy the first generation iPhone (priced at US$599) compared to now it is priced at (US$299 for the 16GB iPhone 3G). So, I will be getting mine pretty soon since Singapore is going to have them coming on the way. So, what are the good and bad of the keynotes, given that I was reading the live blogging from MacRumors and audio streaming via iPhoneValley. It is definitely not as exciting as those who are present there in the WWDC.

Favoritize - Facebook App on Social Graph Annotation

While most web 2.0 practitioners in Singapore are currently gawking at Plurk (Twitter + Timeline), I have decided to focus a bit more about a facebook application named Favoritize done by a Singaporean named Kien (who is coincidentally the entrepreneur behind the MySingapore app). The irony of the story is that it happens to be his favorite app but yet it yields the least number of users in his Facebook apps portfolio. Perhaps, to start off, I guess that I appreciate what this app is about, because it resembled a start-up named SharedCopy under my company's (Thymos Capital LLP) portfolio. In the case of SharedCopy, it is a way to allow users in the web to share and collaborate with annotations on the web without any installation. Then Favoritize is the equivalent for the social graph annotation for Facebook. Imagine that I can share my annotations about my friends and classify them under different categories, that is what Favoritize aims to do. I will take you through a walk on how to use favoritize to keep track of my friends in the Facebook (or online social network) space.

Nokia's 4th Screen Ad

I came across the Nokia "4th Screen" ad on an inspirational TED podcast. Originally, I heard the concept of the ad from Nicholas Aaron Khoo about how Nokia frame the mobile phone as the 4th screen that has evolved from the first three screens: (1) movie screen, (2) TV screen and (3) Computer screen. While it is an advertisement, the theme of the ad was interesting. I doubt that I will ever buy a Nokia phone (except for the one which I need to bring it for reservist - no phone camera allowed), but I thought the  way how the concept is presented is interesting. The ad starts from how the movie screen has brought everyone together, follow by the television allow everyone to have their own screens to look at everything and subsequently, the computer screen that allowed the interactivity and participation. The final touch is the mobile screen where people can now enjoy the interactivity and participation and come back together out, puts the whole thing in a full circle. While we retains traces of each screen, I believe increased mobility for the individual will also eases the access to information at the fastest speed possible. Anyway, I have embedded the Nokia "4th Screen" ad here and do enjoy the way how it is preseented.

Things to look out for in Apple WWDC 2008

A few days from now, the Apple World Wide Developers Conference 2008 (WWDC) will be happening in San Francisco, US. The usual question will be the first day keynote by Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Inc. With so much rumors going on with the 3G iPhone, the new Mac OS X 10.6 (nicknamed "Snow Leopard") and a new .Mac interface, what are the things in this coming event that we should look forward to? Here are some of my own predictions.

The Geek Goddess Show episode 3: Producer's Notes

Finally, after a week break, we finally got the 3rd episode of the Geek Goddess show out for public consumption. I have a confession to make. Don't blame Peter Du for the content of the show being too China-centric. For a general view, the producers thought that it might be easier to start off with content in China so that the show will not be Singapore focus but Asian focus from the start. We will be moving out of China soon, since I have done more work to research about web news in other parts of Asia. In fact, our poor Peter got hit by the pillow 12 times and that's because Estee often forgot what to say after the pillow flew onto him. The production set was brimmed with laughter and I thought that it was the most enjoyable episode to film and produce so far. Yeah, we still talked about virtual worlds in China: HiPiHi, NovoKing and UOneNet. do see our little tease with Bjorn Lee, one of the co-founders of E27 Singapore. To spice things up and taking audience feedback, this episode did just the opposite. We have finally sieved in a Singapore start-up (First Meta) and also the web 2.0 scene in Malaysia. I have to thank Daniel Cerventus Lim (founder of Ideapreneur.net) across the causeway who was down to give a talk in the Singapore PHP User Group May meetup.  He offered us some time to sit down and talked about the web 2.0 scene (together with the recent WCIT event there where Guy Kawasaki turned up). He offered Blinklist as an example of an interesting Malaysian web 2.0 start-up. We are still continuing our iterations for the show to ensure the quality of the show gets better and better. Anyway, I should also thank my co-producer, Michael Cheng for tolerating my perfectionist streak about making the show a high quality one and spending a lot of time doing post-editing to match what I am looking for. In any case, I should also thank Podfire for the support.

Google Health - How to implement it in Singapore (or other countries)

Recently Google has launched an new web service known as Google Health. From their entry in Google blog, Marissa Mayer outlines what the service is about: "Google Health aims to solve an urgent need that dovetails with our overall mission of organizing patient information and making it accessible and useful. Through our health offering, our users will be empowered to collect, store, and manage their own medical records online." She also offers some reasons why Google Health is different from the past ideas of using the web to store health records, namely: privacy and security, user focus, portability and platform. The service is now on trail in the US. Given that I have dabbled in the biotech & healthcare related industry, it might be interesting to think about how Singapore can complement the use of service out there.

The Geek Goddess Show 2nd Episode: Production Notes

Finally, the second episode is out for the Geek Goddess show. Episode 2 focuses on the video sharing sites and how to construct a facebook clone in China, particularly Tudou. In fact, Kevin Lim has provided us some initial feedback for the show.  Definitely, somewhere in the future, I do hope to get him come on as a guest to the show. While Michael concentrate mainly on post production and filming (which we co-share the roles), most of my time is focus on sourcing out interesting news in the Asia web 2.0 space, writing parts of the script  and also working on technical direction of the show during filming (like finding the best filming angle for Estee). As for the content, I get some assistance from Peter (one of the co-hosts of the show and I am responsible for giving him the nick of "Geeky Prince") who spends a considerable amount of time reading on the development of the web 2.0 in China. One of my favourite blogs for news is the China Web 2.0 Review which I highly recommend for those who want an introduction or some sense of the web scene in China. Before I forget, I have to start working on the next episode now. For other interesting social media shows, do check them out at Podfire. So, enjoy the 2nd episode of the show.

The Geek Goddess Show finally launched in Podfire

Finally, after a few months of procrastination, planning and production, together with Michael Cheng, Estee Teo and Peter Du, we have finally launched the first episode of "The Geek Goddess Show" into cyberspace through Podfire.sg. Geek Goddess came about through a conversation between Michael and I that we should do a tech show which features the internet trends in Asia (similar to CommandN and Geek Brief). So, we put it to test and we are thankful to have Estee and Peter to come onboard as the stars for the show. Doing a videocast is definitely more challenging because it takes usually ten times the effort to produce the amount of footage that will finally become what we made of the show. At the moment, I prefer to take a hobbyist approach on this new project (unlike what I do with investing and incubating interactive digital media start-ups in Thymos Capital LLP).  After looking at the final product, I still think that there are lots to improve. Finally I am really glad and thankful to my friends (Paddy, DK, Nicole, Gwen, Jean, Ridz, Daniel & Fairnelli from Tech65, Reuben, Daryl Tay, Min-Tea, Daphne Maia, Nadnut, Claudia, Kien Lee, Tianhong, Joanna, Shannon, Jarius, Damien, Shaun and many others whom I might fail to mention) who attend the soft launch of Podfire yesterday to offer their support and encouragement. Also congrats to the other 2 shows Blogger's Treat (Aaron and Sabrina) and Channel 65 that are featured yesterday. Oh yes, I have placed the show in this post (Check out the production notes from Estee's perspective), do check it out. :)

Google Apps Engine and it's Web 2.5 significance

Last week, during the Singapore PHP User Group, the developers from Ruby, PHP and Python groups were brimmed with excitement of a news from Google. The  story is that Google has launched a preview release of the Google App Engine.  Of course, the news and blogs are littered with comments on the significance of this new move. It also further boosts the idea of the web as a platform paradigm (some have coined this as web 2.5).  The idea of a platform-as-a-service providers is to allow developers in creating and distributing Web applications via the cloud and for users to consume them on any digital device (that can connect quickly to the web), anytime and anywhere. Google has been late on this, given that Facebook (and other social networks such as Friendster) and Apple (with the iPhone) have already started moving into the space quickly. How will this impact the developers and consumers out there?

Interesting Thoughts on Friendster higher growth vs other Online Social Networks

Nicholas Aaron Khoo wrote an interesting post about Friendster growing faster than any other top social networks such as Facebook, Myspace, Hi5 and Bebo. He has brought up a couple of interesting points in his post in his CNET blog, Geeknomics. He demonstrated interesting statistics that Friendster is growing faster than her two major competitors, Facebook and Myspace. He pointed that the new features and the opening of the platform coupled with the fatigue in Facebook and MySpace are responsible for this sudden surge. In fact, during the last Facebook panel discussion I conducted, Kien Lee, one of the  panelists has pointed out if he has to move his application to the next place, it must be Friendster followed by MySpace. I will sketch out my own thoughts about this resurgence of Friendster.

My Thoughts about the Co-Space Initiative & Virtual World

Yesterday, the Media Development Authority of Singapore (under the IDM office) has launched a new initiative that plans to create the interface and link between the real and virtual worlds known as the co-space initiative. The initiative will pull together the various stake holders, for example, the private sector and research institutes in the IDM space to submit ideas for services, tools, technologies and applications that creates the nexus between physical and virtual worlds. In my days when I first learned HTML, I constructed my website (now defunct) in a concept of a fantasy world, and my eventual dream is to have a virtual reality interface that can allow the audience to view my web site like walking around a virtual world. That reality is still light years away, although the virtual worlds industry has emerged in the Internet. Companies like Second Life and HiPiHi are now vying to be the new frontier of the Internet. I will outline some reasons why I have not been keen into investing in any company that are in the virtual worlds and some thoughts about the co-space initiative and how the vision should go beyond the present form.

The Future of Social Networks by Charlene Li

I have found Charlene Li's interesting presentation on The Future of Social Networks, from her keynote @ Graphing Social Patterns West. The synopsis of the talk are as follows: Social networks are taking over the Web and changing how we interact with other people and businesses. With over 1 billion people around the world now online, the future of marketing and technology will depend on the social graph that maps our connections to each other, the patterns of interaction with businesses and services we use, and the distribution and visibility of our shared social activities. See where social networks are headed in the future, and how business and technology is adapting. I have placed the slide show in this blog post for my own future reference on social networks.

Random Musings about iPhone Software Roadmap

After a long wait, the iPhone software roadmap is finally revealed. For those who have been waiting for the iPhone software development kit (SDK), the keynote presentation today by Apple today has been interesting, particularly the launch of the iFund (US$100M) by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has totally blown me away. While some of us might be ogling at the Facebook applications after the Developer Garage in Microsoft last Wednesday, the iPhone software roadmap has now triggered a new wave of applications coming out from entrepreneurs pretty soon. The full release will come out in June that will be during the Apple WWDC 2008 event. For now, you have to contend with a beta as a developer. Here are some of my random thoughts after watching the presentation of the keynote.   

Marketing & Monetization of Facebook: Hype or Gold Mine - Post Thoughts after the Panel

It has been an interesting and enjoyable experience moderating an interesting panel for the Facebook Developer Garage II: Face Two  event in Singapore. A collection of live blogs and photos can be found here. To conclude from my last post, I will post some of the interesting lessons which arise from the panel discussion with Leonard Lin (managing partner, Tyler Projects), Andrew Wee (Internet Marketer) and Kien Lee (founder, SENATUS). Two things I do want to say, is that the Singapore PHP User Group and Garag3 (E27) have done a great job in making the event (even though flyers came like a week before the event) and also kudos to Chris Ismael to helping us to host the event in Microsoft. (Updated with the video of the panel in this post)

Marketing & Monetization of Facebook: Prologue

The Facebook Developer Garage event: Face Two, co-organized by Garag3 (Entrepreneur 27) and Singapore PHP User Group will be happening on 5 March 2008 in Microsoft Singapore (21st Floor). The event is happening, thanks to NUS Enterprise (cash sponsor) and Microsoft Singapore (event sponsor). I am invited to moderate a panel discussion on the following topic: Marketing & Monetization of Facebook - Hype or Gold Mine? Here are some of my initial thoughts to set off as a prologue to the event, and offer some questions for both the audience and my fellow panelists to think about in the upcoming panel.

Online Advertising on Blogs in Singapore & Malaysia

If you are a blogger in Singapore & Malaysia, you have a myriad of choices in deploying online advertisements other than the standard Google Ads. Most people who have deployed google ads on their blogs will know that they don't earn much from that system for good reasons. First of all, the Singapore market is small and that naturally leads to a small audience unless your blog can penetrate the markets beyond Singapore. Besides, to earn the money on Google Ads, the click through rate must be high. To get a good enough click through rate, you need to get a lot of traffic. That comes to my next point, Asians don't do a lot of click throughs. An interesting article on TechCrunch by Erick Schonfeld recently revealed that click fraud has raised by 15% in 2007 and interestingly one in three clicks is click fraud. In this blog article, I will review the online advertising trends in Singapore and Malaysia based on my observations from the blogosphere. In addition, I will talk about the three companies (Advertlets, Blog2u and Nuffnang) which specialize on online advertising in Singapore and Malaysia. I have experimented each one of them on my blog and will offer some feedback and how these companies can improve.

Best Practices in Corporate Blogging

Corporate blogging is now a phenomenon in which the employees of the company blogged about different aspects of their company. Recently, I have started consulting for a technology company on corporate blogging and how to deploy web 2.0 and online social networks to achieve value in spreading the word for the company. In this article, I will summarize the best practices and perhaps, in the hope to generate more interest in corporate blogging.

Rules of Engagement for Internet Entrepreneurs starting up in Singapore

Last Tuesday, I was invited by Dr Jack Jiang from NUS School of Computing to deliver a guest lecture for his honours year course CS4260: E-Commerce Business Models. Through a meeting and several email discussions, I decided to break the one and half hours lecture into four parts: (i) The general concepts which are driving the current internet economy - the long tail, wisdom of crowds, direct micro financial transactions and a new phrase I coined for the students to remember "Cash is King but Information is Queen for Internet Businesses"; (ii) the emerging trends looking at the differences between internet companies coming out from Silicon Valley (California, US) and Zhongguancun (Beijing, China); (iii) two case studies I prepared to get the students into thinking: (i) Baidu and (ii) Second Life and HiPiHi and (iv) How to set up an internet business in Singapore. I decided to blog about the few pointers for internet entrepreneurs which I have invested, encountered and also talked to, and perhaps it might be of help for those who are thinking of setting up an internet business.

Why Microsoft is gunning Yahoo for US$44B

The news that Microsoft bids US$44B for Yahoo! has rocked the world of technology today.  It  is perhaps the most hostile move ever made by the software giant. The best part is that Yahoo! retorted the Microsoft bid as "unsolicited" but did not reject it. It means that they are seriously considering the sale. Why is Microsoft making such a big purchase on their shopping trip for technology companies? Here are some of my guesses for this big acquisition of US$44B.

The Google Story

With some free time, I have spent more time to read up the biography of several top internet companies. Treading across the various biographies in the bookstore, I have decided to check out the history of Google. After all, everyone in the world is reliant on Google to find the answers of their daily queries. With the company's expansion towards online enterprise tools (Google Docs/Spreadsheets/Presentation),  innovative new APIs (OpenSocial, GWT and Android) and  fun applications like Google Earth, the company is now touted one of the most innovative companies in the world. The book "The Google Story" by David A Vise and Mark Malseed provides a good description of the company who rocked the world with their search engine a decade back. Interestingly, I was one of the few early adopters of the Google search engine, when it was first launched as a Stanford project. Since my first use, I totally gave up my favourite search engine then, Altavista and never turned back. I found a few interesting lessons that I learn from Google with regards to management and venture funding.

My Tech Predictions for 2008

Recently, I appeared as a guest contributor to the 65bits podcast, done by the Tech65 team. After the podcast ended, NTT (a core member) went around to ask all of us what our predictions in technology for next year would be. One can conclude that 2007 is the year for online social networks, given that the rise of Facebook brought upon by the release of the APIs for developers. So, in the realm of interactive digital media, what will be the next big thing? I will be offering three interesting predictions and would be interested to do something on one of them if any innovator or technologist would like to work with me.

OpenSocial: Opening Another Front in Online Social Networks

I have been following the news of Google's launch of OpenSocial the last three days. If you are involved in the web 2.0 space, it looks like the online social networks are now moving towards opening up their platforms for programmers to develop new applications. What is OpenSocial? According to Google, it provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. In some sense, it is to create a common standard among developers to build applications that tap into the online social networks. It reminds me of Java, where you can develop applications that are platform independent. the real interesting bit is that three online social networks are now involved in this new project (even Google claim that this project does not belong to them). The three major social networks which are involved in this project are Orkut (Google), Linkedin and Ning. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds. Marc Andreessen have shown some screenshots and screenshots on how to deploy OpenSocial. The real issue now is what Facebook and MySpace will do to counter or embrace this new open platform.

Books on the Virtues and Follies of Internet

A intense back pain has forced me to stay at home this weekend. Since I am bedridden most of the time, I take this time to read intensely or surf the web, as compared to my daily habit of reading one hour before sleep. While I am currently working with founders in web 2.0 start-ups, I am surveying for new ideas from the cyberspace and known literature. So, as a matter of those who are interested in the web 2.0 space, I have decided to recommend two books which illustrate two different perspectives (from the good to the bad) on the phenomenon of the current internet (web 2.0, new media and virtual worlds) and its impact on our culture and economy.

Much Ado about Pownce

Thanks to Peter Du, I got myself an invitation to one of the latest web 2.0 craze in town, namely Pownce. Of course, I checked out the system, both the desktop client and the web browser edition of the application. Earlier last week, TechCrunch talks about the comparison between Pownce and Twitter. So, I am going to offer my own personal review about the Pownce, after trying out the application. One thing for sure, I exhausted my six invites pretty quickly for the Singaporean web 2.0 community.

You Know How Tech Savvy a Country is by Their Internet Connection

Yesterday, a conversation with Michael Cheng prompted me to write about the state of Wireless@SG in Singapore. To me, there is still a long way to go, and if the government is really serious about getting a technology culture growing in Singapore, the first thing they really need to do is to fix Wireless@SG. Yes, I am joining the group who are complaining about Wireless@SG.

Finding the Golden Path: Can Singapore be a Silicon Valley?

This revised article is published last year in a special edition of Innovation Magazine [6(3):62-63] about technology entrepreneurship in Singapore. I have previously published an earlier version of this article in SG Entrepreneurs blog. Lately, I have been thinking about how things have evolved one year ago till now mainly in the emerging industries of Web 2.0, New Media and Virtual Worlds. So, I have decided to place the revised version of this article in my own blog. If you have not read this article before, I hope that you enjoy some of the thoughts in my own personal favourite pieces.

Bloggers' Code of Conduct II

Recently, because of the Kathy Sierra death threat incident, Tim O'Reilly, the man who coined the famous term "Web 2.0" decided to suggest a code of conduct for the bloggers. The debate is now propagated into the mainstream media, for example, BBC reported the story and offered the view that this might be the time to start thinking whether the blogosphere should be completely uncensored. What really struck me as I traced through the whole debate with a summary post from Tim O'Reilly entitled "Code of Conduct: Lessons learnt so far". He talked about the various viewpoints brought up from his earlier point, particularly arguing against the detractors' view that it is censorship. In some sense, by starting the debate going, he attracted different feedback and criticism that can now help to frame the issue better, for example, do we want to have a badge for a blogger code of conduct? do we need civility in the way how the bloggers and the commentators hold their discussion?

Sometime back last year, in Singapore blogosphere, the topic on a bloggers' association and a code of conduct is discussed. I earlier argued that  even if someone draws a code of conduct, not everyone will adhere to it. That's the beauty of the blogosphere which a lot of people do not appreciate. Even if something is drawn up, every blogger has the freedom to choose whether to follow the code of conduct. The Creative Commons license is a good example of how people decide to follow a code of conduct pertaining to copyright in the internet. Hence the argument that having a code of conduct equates to self-censorship is not a valid one. What the code of conduct really does is to ask the individual blogger to decide whether freedom of speech should come with responsibility.