Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
Talking to a lot of people here in Canada, not many can understand the complete indifference we tend to have in Singapore towards politics. I’m one of those indifferent people, but ironically, not when it came to this year’s US presidential election.
Tonight, walking home from a movie, I heard loud cheering from houses along the streets. I peered in and saw the elections on TV, Obama posters on the windows, and knew he won. I made a quick detour to the business school here in Queen’s, and the student lounge was packed with people watching President Obama giving his victory speech. I heard from a friend that earlier in class, laptops all around her were monitoring the presidential ticker counter.
And all this happening in Canada, for a president not even theirs, in a demographic not usually associated with politics.
Seth Godin would say we’ve joined President Obama’s “tribe”, for whatever reason it may be. I will be the first to admit I don’t know a thing about his policies, but I identify with him because he’s involved in politics during a world of change, and is embracing that change. Just look at his efforts in social media.
I don’t think I know any people my age who aren’t part of his tribe during this election. He spoke to us where we were, online. Whether it’s race, support for his policies, embracing the American dream or any other reason, we’ve embraced this change and I truly believe the world is much better off for it.
Yes, we can.
Tags: canada, president barack obama, queen's university, US presidential election
Posted in Gen Y | 6 Comments »
Monday, October 20th, 2008
I was in Toronto to catch Jason Mraz live earlier this week, so needless to say “Jason Mraz” has been a much searched term for me on Google the past few days. Something that came up during one of the searches was a “Musician of the month” type post from Chapters Indigo (in Canada, Indigo is the equivalent to Borders or Barnes & Noble).
Jason Mraz on Chapters Indigo
So on this particular post, the author linked to a video to Mraz’s concert in Korea, which I coincidentally happened to be listening to. Obviously, that made me feel like commenting…. until I found out that I had to sign up to do so.
The problem is that I already have so many accounts with so many places that I keep forgetting my usernames and/or password, and I really don’t want to sign up again unless I really want to use the service. I’m certainly not creating an account just to post a comment. The end result? Indigo doesn’t get an enthusiastic comment and the opportunity for interaction is gone.
Now I get that businesses want personal data on web users, but sometimes it’s not all that necessary. Using essential parts of the service like purchasing a product or submitting user-generated content like a cooking recipe, sure. For small interactions like posting a comment? Maybe not so much.
I’ve mentioned this before on the Ping.sg discussion boards too, if we want to develop community and interaction, make the barriers to entry low and virtually painless for people to join in. If you’re truly offering something of value, eventually people will sign up after interacting for awhile. And who knows, maybe after they sign up, they’ll purchase something, and so on.
Tags: barnes & noble, borders, canada, chapters indigo, community interaction, creating online accounts, developing community, encouraging interaction, Google, jason mraz, ping.sg, toronto
Posted in Poor Practices, community | 2 Comments »
Friday, September 5th, 2008
I’m in Kingston, Ontario, Canada right now and it’s a very, very different change of scenery from Singapore. The landmass is (obviously) much bigger than Singapore, but yet the population is only roughly 117,000, compared to Singapore’s 4.5million people.
What does this mean? For one, of course the pace of life here is much slower. Eugene and I had a leisurely dinner on the porch of our house watching people walk or cycle by, and that’s just something you’d never see back home in Singapore.
But it also means, for a small city of 117,000, maybe social media isn’t all that necessary. Besides the hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts, I don’t really see many establishments utilising a website or adding themselves to Google Maps, having a blog etcetc. And maybe they don’t need it.
I didn’t know where the comic shops were, but walking down the main street there were already two. And while I’m hunting frantically for furniture, Google isn’t turning up much, but asking the guy at the comic store yielded four different stores just a block away. Same thing when I was finding out where to buy wine, the taxi driver was more helpful than Google. (Canada has a strange rule that doesn’t allow wine to be sold everywhere, so it’s not as easy as walking into a 7-11 or supermarket back home).
All these suggest to me that no one’s bothering with tagging or maintaining any real presence online. Does it make sense for a university town where a simple orientation can be done in half a day and there is little tourism to speak of? I think it does.
Can an establishment in other tourist-heavy cities like Singapore, New York, Tokyo and the like afford not to bother with a presence online? I don’t think so. And tomorrow I’ll give you a great example why.
Tags: bed and breakfast kingston, canada, kingston ontario, kingston population, Singapore, singapore population
Posted in social media | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008
In addition to being away last week, I also fell pretty ill, which pretty much took up any and all time and energy I had to do anything, much less blog.
One thing that I found interesting was that the Magnum advertising post generated a lot more talk than I thought it would both here and on Plurk. It surprised me not because I thought it was a bad post (though I worked on it on a weekend while away), but because it came out of nowhere, from the simple act of my colleague buying a Magnum. Just goes to show you can’t predict what people will talk about on the internet.
Working at a multi-million dollar TV channel (which is as mass media as they come) for the last month has been very interesting for me. On one hand it reminded me of my passion for music and youth, on the other hand the nature of the environment meant I was thinking a lot in the “mass media” setting than in the niche, web2.0 setting than I normally do. Is there a way to merge the two? Surely there is. I don’t have the answer to that (and maybe no one does yet), but it was definitely a very exciting month. The least “social media” month in 2008, to be sure.
Moving ahead, I’m leaving for Canada on the 24th of August and will be there till the end of the year on exchange. I’m really looking forward to checking out how their social media scene is like and meet some people, maybe attend a conference or two. If you have links to people or bloggers or companies embracing web2.0 there and wouldn’t mind sharing, do let me know. Greatly appreciate it.
And now, back to regularly scheduled blogging.
Tags: blogging, canada, short hiatus, social media
Posted in Announcements, Blogs, community | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
A regular feature on this blog, here are the other blogs I subscribed to in March which I feel should be shared with the community:
A VC - I have no interest in VC, but every now and then there’s interesting stuff on social media that I read and enjoy.
Socialmedia.biz is a great site keeping up with social media in the business setting.
I like Student Blog Project because the notion of using web2.0 in education is a curiosity of mine and I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon it on ping.sg early in the month.
Inside PR is one of the many podcasts that I’ve added to my Ipod (soon to be Ipod touch) this month. I think it’s a great listen to keep up with what’s happening in the PR scene in Canada. Their recent episode talks about interns not wanting to do admin work (?!). Dave & Terry: I will be in Canada later in the year and will be happy to do admin work on top of whatever else you require.
Pamela, who I also follow on Twitter has a great blog, and us PR/social media students have to stick together!
I also added:
bub.blicio.us and PR 2.0 by Brian Solis
Digital Influence Mapping Project by John Bell
Andy Wibbels
Influential Marketing Blog by Rohit Bhargava
Ubernoggin by Intellagirl aka Sarah Robbins.
Winextra by Steven Hodson
PR and Comms Network
As always, if you have a blog you think I should be subscribing to, please feel free to leave it in the comments section. I’m currently a little overwhelmed by my feeds, but anything that adds value will still be greatly welcome.
Tomorrow: Blogs I’m Subscribed To: Singaporean edition. Lots of good stuff, I promise.
Tags: andy wibbels, blog subscriptions, brian solis, bubblicious, canada, david jones, digital influence mapping project, influential marketing blog, inside pr, intellagirl, john bell, pr 2.0, pr and comms network, pr2.0, rohit bhargava, rss, sarah robbins, social media, steven hodson, student blog project, terry fallis, ubernoggin, vc, web2.0 in education, winextra
Posted in Blogs | 6 Comments »
