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!

Why Twitter Is So Powerful

It hit me in the shower last night why exactly Twitter is so powerful. It’s like IRC.

No, I’m not kidding and don’t run away yet.

Today @stripedshirt and @valene were talking about why MSN (aka IM) isn’t used by them anymore, simply because it’s too distracting. On top of that, MSN mostly allows for one-to-one conversations (yes I know you can add more people to conversations), but Twitter is cool in that you can have many people adding to a conversation at different times of the day and it’ll continue on.

And that’s what I like most about Twitter and that’s why it’s so powerful. It requires a short amount of attention, but it allows you to feel connected and part of a community more than IM does (at least for me). A real example is when a few of us just got started on Twitter. Me (@uniquefrequency), Andre (@stripedshirt) and Valene (@valene). So 3 of us kinda were messaging here and there but with only 3 people, there wasn’t much benefits to reap in terms of network externalities.

Fastforward 4-6 weeks, add in Andre’s group’s great presentation on microblogging, and now we have Nabilah (@allquirknoplay), Jacqueline (@jacquelinechang), Amelia (@amsie), Lionel (@gaothebao), Peiling (@gniliep), Alaska (@alaskie), Xiao Hui (@thehsuperficies), Mark (@beatmastermark), Gladys (@gladyschock) and Christina (@tinana).

The best part is I have less than half of these people on my MSN list, and yet I talk more to most of them than to other people on my MSN list.

It’s like IRC in that we all drop in the same “room” at different times of the day and maybe I’ll know that some of them are in the library, some are awake at 5am finishing a project, who’s in a Starbucks, and the list goes on. It’s come to a stage where we even have @SMUtweets to tweet school-related stuff to all of us. How cool is that?

To me, Twitter has truly become the new social water cooler.

You might argue that 13 of us out of a school population of 4,500 is insignificant. But is it really? If you were a company and you had 13 passionate advocates following your brand on Twitter, Tweeting things to each other and spreading your brand and/or message, wouldn’t you be happy? (Wouldn’t it be great if Frujch could tell us when the queue is short? Or if portobello melts are running out so we can ZOOM down to get the last few?)

I think this is just the tip of the iceberg and here’s an experiment I want to run: All of us SMU students currently on Twitter should aim to get one, just one, other friend on Twitter by Week 14 (just lean over to the person next to you in the library and do some convincing!). We’re going to try to double the SMU-Twitter population and see just how far we can go with this in really forming a community and network, and see what comes out of it.

Post your success stories and/or great Twitter stories in the comments section so we’ll know who to follow and we’ll review this experiment in 2 weeks! Let’s keep in mind that getting new people to sign up on Twitter is just the first step, we need to make them feel welcome to get them to stick around and enjoy it as much as we do!

29th March 2008 – Social Media Breakfast: Singapore

Wow so many people have gotten excited about SMB: Singapore. Derrick and I are really excited to get it going!

Both Claud and Derrick suggested creating a Facebook event, so I did and you can find it here.

Big thanks to Nabilah from Frujch who’s helping us out with the venue and has even been kind enough to waive the venue booking fees! Do check out their food too. Porto bello mushroom sandwich is excellent.

Both Derrick and myself are contactable via Twitter: @derrickkwa @uniquefrequency

I’m going to try to do something to explain the personal tagging kit (it will be low budget I’m afraid), so look for that coming soon!

Icio Week 10

• A terrorist escaped from a Singaporean detention centre last week. Nabilah tells us how Facebook groups help to hunt him down, even if some are tongue in cheek.

• Want more subscriptions? Do what Chris Brogan does: Ask!

• Comments? Discussions? The debate continues

• Chris Clarke tells you why you should be an expert in some field to bring something special to the table. (Told you this guy only writes good stuff)

• Maybe we’re not facing Facebook fatigue? Statistics suggest there are still plenty of unique visitors on Facebook. Maybe it’s the early and/or late majority catching up?