k r i s a n d r o

Before the recording of the GennY podcast last night, I had short discussions with Brian Koh and Daryl Tay on social media amongst other things like wondering why am I part of Generation Y when I am born in 1981. Wikipedia says so okay!

My question to them was, “Are we representative of the Generation Ys in the world or even Singapore?”

I realize that I am quite the odd one out amongst my peers in the way I engage in social media for example. My peers are now discovering micro blogging/status updates through Facebook while I am already using Plurk and Twitter for almost a year. Friends are turning to blogs for reading while I am already juggling hundreds of RSS feeds in my Google Reader. The examples are endless but my point is that people like Brian, Daryl and myself are actually a minority amongst the Gen Ys even when comparing the younger end of the Gen Y spectrum.

Brian pointed out that we are probably the front runners in this aspect but I am still not seeing the curve in the graph where I should find most of my peers start joining me in my exhibitionist ways in social media.

So am I a front runner or am I running in the wrong direction?

Twitter on fire.

Twitter is seeing tremendous growth recently and it’s pretty evident that it has caught on as well on the local front. Twitter has evolved from a ’140 character or less’ status update tool to something of many uses, but there is one major usage of Twitter that I disagree with; Twitter as a tool for communication.

Threaded Plurks VS Non-Threaded Twits

Unless you are on replying to someone within a short instance upon receiving a tweet, there a high chance that your reply would make little sense to the recipient and even lesser sense to others. There is little chance for one to let’s say, reply to a tweet that is of 1 day old and still manage to have the conversation continued by a group of people who took part before. You cannot be also seen replying very often as your updates will flood up timelines of people who are following you. Other than people who tweet mundane stuffs, ‘noisy’ people are next on the list to be un-followed.

You won’t see the above happening on Twitter.

Plurk on the other hand has threaded comments and this ensures a higher chance of relevance, continuity and lifespan. Plurk threads have responses going up to 200 and seldom survive for more than 48 hours but it’s much better than Twitter. Twitter’s conversations rarely involve more than 2 users and hardly last more than a couple of hours. And the weird thing is, conversations usually get lesser as you have more friends on Twitter and conversations get more as you have more friends on Plurk.

Filtering Vast Amounts of Information

One other thing about Twitter being a bad tool for communication tool is that unless you are using a 3rd party software, there is no way of filtering the conversations that is happening unless you decide to un-follow the person/friend and thus ‘un-subscribing’ to all of his/her twits and run a chance of offending him/her.

Plurk has a function to mute each thread that is ongoing in your timeline and it serves as a great way to filter off conversations that you have no interest in. If you have a friend who is flooding your timeline and you don’t wish to un-friend him, you can simply un-follow his Plurks and he/she will be none the wiser (until he realize you stopped participating in his threads) as the both of you will still be registered as ‘friends’.

And So…

Twitter is an awesome platform of many uses and is a better choice to reach to the masses because of its immense popularity and very useful 3rd party applications. But if you are interested in building better relations through longer and continued conversations, Plurk is the better platform to engage in, despite failing to catch on as much as Twitter did so far.

I do have presences in both platforms and you guys can add me on Twitter and/or Plurk. Have fun!

It was a blast at the “Your Blog” event yesterday at the Open Room. The event is organized by the good folks at Ogilvy and the topic was on “How to market your blog Like a brand”.

Yongfook

The speakers came from very different backgrounds; we have Yongfook, the handsome-enough-to-make-me-question-my-sexuality CEO of Egg Co., who produced cult favorite projects like Open Source Food (now known as Nibbledish) & Sweetcron;  Arti Mulchand, who has spent much of her career life in SPH and probably regards words as any guy would regard porn; Design Sojourn,  a serious award winning industrial design leader who still has enough humor to tweet this; and not forgetting Andy from ToysREvil who made me laugh so hard from his Singlish and subtle hand-wanking gestures that I teared up.

All of the speakers (apart from Arti who owns a small personal blog) have very successful blogs in their own right and the amazing thing is that none of them made money directly from blogging. The success I am referring to is of course the niche traffic that they have built up over the years and it was the personal branding in their blogs that led them to other opportunities. All these happened because of their blogs; Yongfook dated a hot girl (he also got a job in a big media company in Japan but I like to emphasize the ‘hot girl’ part), Design Sojourn is working for a huge electronics giant; and Andy has… toys. (You guys will never understand how important that is to him)

The great thing about the speakers is that they shared their own experiences on how they evolved as a blogger through the years and it’s exactly what I am or what most of you bloggers are going through. I started off writing in 2004, just wanting to have a voice and not caring about what I say because who is to judge me on my own space? Soon the readers rose from one (myself) to a couple (colleagues, friends) and I found blogging tools like wordpress that relieves me of my lousy html skills. Soon, strangers started popping out of nowhere because of search engines and referrals and I found my voice becoming restricted. I could actually hurt somebody and thus hurt myself from the things I say! I came soon to accept that true opinions (the ones with FUCK YOU! ALL YOU FUCKING BASTARDS!!!) are not meant to be on the web especially when I am not very anonymous.

I soon turned to the ‘dark side’ and got into the hype of putting ads on my blog so that I can eventually strut around in my berms in Orchard during daytime, scoffing at all the stressed out peeps in suits and ties while checking out my adsense account.

It didn’t work. So now I am back to where I started, and realize that not everyone can make money through blogging directly (certainly not me).

Their blogs were a brand. People who knew of Yongfook, Design Sojourn & Andy knew what they were about and their success were built upon shaping their blogs to their strengths for a niche audience. Getting success in terms of traffic hits are not much of a secret these days considering how much information is out there. Barring bloggers who cannot write coherently or has no opinion whatsoever, we all can succeed in our own right.

So what’s my niche to work on. Humor methinks.

It’s a little on the ‘Lame’ side of humor but I’ll get whatever laughs I can get.

Don’t make me come over and tickle you.

(Check out the key take aways summarized by Brian Koh of Ogilvy)

(Oh and Arti, if you are reading this. You were shaking so bad throughout most of your speech but the points that you put across were definitely a lot of food for thought.)

It’s only two days away from Christmas, which also happens to be my birthday! Yes, I am a Christmas baby and Christmas was great until people around me realize that they should give me one birthday-cum-Christmas present instead of two separate gifts. One good thing that is still prevalent through these years is that it is so easy to remember my birthday; Kris is born on Christmas day! How hard is that? If you don’t remember my birthday, SHAME ON YOU!!! Go repent and get me a big gift! (Or make it two… )

SUBTLE HINT: iwantanipodtouch16GBthankyouverymuch

As much as I would like to believe that I am 18 years of age, I am actually turning 27 on Christmas and that thought is quite scary! I am actually inching towards the big 30 soon! And I can actually feel the age catching up on me; friends of the same age/batch getting married, more wrinkles, deteriorating stamina and most of all, the increasing hunger for a superpower to turn back time. That and X-ray vision. Heheheheheheheeee.

Despite the fallbacks that come of age, I think I am still happy with the past year. I made a lot of friends through the revival of blogging in February and through channels and platforms like wholivesnearyou.com, ping.sg, twitter, yebber, facebook & plurk. Being so active in the social media scene also gave me opportunities to attend various events that added colors to an otherwise mundane life. Most of all, thanks to Ruifang aka KuKuNehNeh aka KKNN aka the gf, for contributing the most joy for the past year.

Merry KRISmas and a Happy New Year everyone!