Social Media Breakfast: Singapore 2! 24th May 2008

As Sham has already reported, SMB:S2 will be happening in three weeks on the 24th of May, 2008. All the details can be found at the Facebook event page.

Who should come?

Anyone interested and passionate about the social media space, be it blogging, podcasting, social networks, micro blogging etc. What this event is not, however, is a blogger outing that is so popular around Singapore. Read up about the original event and check out the blog coverage if you think you might be interested!

ps: The event is open to all so feel free to invite fellow friends to the Facebook event page, hopefully people who can help move the conversation further.

There’ll definitely be more news and updates as and when it happens, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, we already have 19 confirmed guests on the Facebook event page, won’t you be one of them too? What would you like to see that this SMB? More structure? A proper format and/or discussions? Let me know and we’ll see how we can factor it in.

My First Audio Interview

I’ve been sitting on this for awhile, but this is my first audio interview with four fellow bloggers: Amelia, Jacqueline, Nabilah and Calin. They came down one sunday to be special guests on my radio show on SMU Campus Radio (very creatively called The Talk Show), and talked about social media in general and blogging in particular.

I think it’s a very open, sincere and insightful interview with four people who have just started figuring out the whole social media space together with me. It’s not as organised as I’d like it to be as I had to cut out the music due to copyright issues, but I definitely think it’s worth your time nonetheless. Do give it a listen!

I couldn’t find a way to embed it on WordPress, so listen to it here. Doesn’t take long to load!

A Starbucks Blog?

John Moore over at Brand Autopsy tells us why Starbucks Must Blog. And I’m inclined to agree with him, but I think besides the very real business concerns, there is a bigger why:

Clearly, Starbucks was ahead of the curve with tapping into satisfying the consumer need of a Third Place—a place besides home and work where people could form community. But consumers have evolved from needing a Third Place to needing a Third Space. This Third Space includes social media spaces like blogs, vlogs, podcasts, Twitter, and many more. These are spaces where meaningful online communities are forming.

I’ve had my share of unpleasant experiences at Starbucks, and I admit if I send in an email, I get an apologetic reply (and a free cup of coffee). But sometimes I really want to send an email back saying “Do you really think just that free cup of coffee is going to gain back that loyalty from me?”

Starbucks’s unwillingness to engage the public and blogosphere is unfortunate, but not surprising (Apple’s Social Media Hell, anyone?). Just two days ago I was talking about social media and blogging to an older professional, and blogs were instantly dismissed (perhaps due in part to the state of local blogging here in Singapore).

To quote John Johansen’s comment: It’s going to be an uphill battle for the foreseeable future

How sad that I’m writing this while having breakfast at a Starbucks.

Content Or Popularity?

Propelled by the fact that Xiaxue actually was deemed important enough to be included in the National Library’s archival, I checked her blog to find that there are in the region of 16,000+ visits per day.

Admittedly, I initially thought that this was some inflated number or spam or something, but looking closer at her comments, they’re in the 300+ region for a post. Given that it’s widely accepted that content is written by 1-2% of the population (so 300 comments translates to roughly 15,000 readers), it’s probably a somewhat accurate figure.

So I’m really wondering what someone like Mitch Joel or Seth Godin’s take on this would be. I wonder if it’s a local phenomenon, or if this is seen elsewhere as well. (Tila Tequila points to it being the same case, at least in the US).

I kinda think the fact that someone who literally blogs randomness about her life gets 16,000 hits a day, is probably a little hard to swallow for those people trying to really do good for the community and make the world a better place.

From a marketing point of view, it’s amazing though. I could send Xiaxue a free product of mine, and instantly generate word of mouth among 16,000 other people.

Who knew when we were learning about “gatekeepers” of communities, they might one day refer to her.