It’s been hard, though, because while big events have dedicated hashtags, smaller going-ons never do.

Because long hashtags don’t make sense thanks to Twitter’s 140 character limit, and over-general hashtags like #singapore would generate too much noise, Tommy suggested breaking up Kingston the same way Canada Post does, by postal code.

Kingston and Singapore have a lot in common. We’re both very small (although Singapore’s population is something like 45x on the same landmass), and we’re quite easily broken up into zones. The problem with hashtags like #sgtweetup and #smbsg and #openroom is that they can only be found by people who know what they’re looking for. The chance of serendiptous discovery is slim to none.

So what if we added in hyper-local hashtagging? Districts like #amk or #cck are too local (I feel) and too limiting (what’s the hashtag for Simei?). Perhaps the answer is in separating it into 5 parts:

#sgn - north
#sgs - south
#sge - east
#sgw - west
#sgc - central

An extra four characters to keep it short and sweet and easy to add on. Of course this isn’t fullproof (I don’t know where I’d put Sengkang), but if we imagine the rough outline of where the MRT trains go, we could possibly give a close to subjective hashtag to add more relevance to our tweets.

What do the Tweeters in Singapore think? Too troublesome? No one cares about local tweets? Or would it help tell you more about events, traffic, weather, news etc? I want to know what you think.

Mars & Venus

Ogilvy’s Digital Influence team held another Open Room, titled “Journalism’s from Mars, Social Media’s from Venus” and after tonight, I think it’s clear that the problem they have is the problem everyone (businesses, schools, non-profits, the music industry, etc) is having. They were sitting on a model that was working for the last 50 or so years, have been blind-sided by the sudden tidal wave of social media and not only are they not scrambling to catch up, but they’re actually holding on to the old world for all that it’s worth.

As with panels, I was fully prepared for some of the audience to be un-accepting of some young (and even worse, enemployed) punk telling them what the world is like. And it was no different this time, which is fine with me, it makes life exciting! How awfully boring would it be if everyone just nodded their heads and agreed.

I think it was a really interesting discussion. There was as much uncommon ground as there was common, and it’s painfully obvious both sides have to learn from each other. Monetisation is not a dirty word, but neither is trusting a fellow blogger. I think we have to move away from our normal worldviews that content creating is done for passion (for bloggers) or that the man on the street (or the Tweeter on Tweetdeck) is less reliable and/or credible than the journalist.

Thinking about “journalism” from the point of breaking news and real good opinion pieces is one thing. But I think we need to think about where the money comes from. Thinking about subscription models and what not is fine (even though they won’t work), but as Thomas Crampton brought up, mainstream media has enjoyed the monopoly on reaching people and advertising for a very long time, and companies are just beginning to realise that they can bypass the “middleman” entirely, thus crippling the revenue model. Will it provide them the reach? Probably not. Will it provide them the influence? Barack Obama’s YouTube channel suggests yes (yes yes I know it worked in tandem with traditional media).

As a closing comment: someone said that old habits die hard, referring to the staying power of traditional media and being used to opening that Sunday edition of the paper over a slow and leisurely breakfast. Here’s a thought: my “old” habits from the old world started changing by the time I was thirteen, and many were gone by the time I was seventeen. Radio, once a nightly listen for the dedication show,  is an afterthought, so are magazines. TV serves my purposes when I want it to, newspapers have flown out of the window, music exists in the form of mp3s, not cds. The only “old world” habit I maintain is the reading of books.

My point is this: as much as old habits die hard, to the new generation, new habits form at an alarming speed that the world has never seen before. When, if ever, has a generation been influenced so quickly and successively like from the transition to Friendster to Facebook? That’s not just the speed of platform change, but the speed of diffusion from half a world away. When and how fast did we take up texting to replace calling? The speed of change is crazy. Geographical boundaries barely exist anymore. And I would ask people who believe in the “old habits” to take a look at their children, their nephews, their nieces or anyone under 20 and tell me how many of their “old habits” they see replicated in them, and ask how different the world will be in five or ten years, and if now’s the time to think about that change, or cling on to “old habits”.

I don’t know about sales, but I bet it got a few people thinking “oh yeah, time for me to replace my Gillette razor blade”. The 195 ratings with an average of 4.5 stars since it was posted two weeks ago surely can’t hurt either.

In short: It’s fun, fairly tongue-in-cheek, actually provides some useful information and is definitely spreadable. What’s not to like? Oh and it probably came in at a fraction of buying an ad on tv.

In Seth Godin’s book “Purple Cow”, there’s a chapter called “law of large numbers” where he bought 300 million banner ads for US$600. That’s more than one banner impression for one person in the United States. The result? He made a loss. Selling $500 of merchandise in total. He doesn’t specify what merchandise, but does it matter?

To break even on S$4,000 a week, you need to sell:

• 8 16gig iPhone 3Gs (about one a day)
• 10 Amazon Kindles (about 1.5 a day)
• 50 Xbox games (about seven a day)
• 400 movie tickets (just over 50 a day)

and that’s on revenue, not profit.

The flipside of this is of course, there’s no guarantee that some people of the 300 million saw the ad, and bought the merchandise some time later, thus making it untrackable. But isn’t it the same as any TV, radio or print ad you buy anyway?

Do you think you’re going to do better than Seth Godin’s case study? I’m going to leave the parallel of “reach” and “eyeballs” to traditional media to you.

If you’re in marketing, you’ve probably heard of the old adage “I know half of my marketing doesn’t work, I just don’t know which half”. The good news is if you’re employing banner ads in your marketing “arsenal”, they automatically fall into the half that isn’t working.

But that’s just one case study, if you’re buying banner ads, I’d like to ask you: How have they worked for you?

So what helps differentiate a laptop these days? I feel like it really comes down to physical differences, given that the inner workings are more or less identical. As a result, key aspects like weight and other dimensions as well as performance measures like battery life become increasingly more important.

It seems Acer knows this with the new Acer Inspire Timeline which is less than one inch thick, weighs 1.6kg for the 13” model, and boasts a battery life of up to eight hours. Also, they managed to fit in a dvd drive despite the size and weight, which is no easy feat!

One of the things that really made this laptop stand out for me was the Thermal Comfort technology, which uses a Laminar Wall Jet Technology, which is an advanced cooling technology used in modern jet engines. I have to admit I was reasonably sceptical that this would really work, but at the event, even after being switched on and played with for a couple of hours, the bottom of the laptop (where heat usually builds up) was almost as cool as a normal laptop is while switched off. Pretty darn cool.

What do you think are important attributes of laptops these days? What would you tell laptop manufacturers if they were looking for one key takeaway on how to improve their laptops?

The GennY Podcast

So Dorothy and I were speaking at Ad:Tech Asia yesterday at a youth panel, and there was much discussion at the panel, on Twitter and online about what was said. We decided a quick episode of GennY would be a great way to talk about our thoughts after the panel. You can check out this blog post with lots of details with what was said at the panel.

The show notes

• 00:00 - Daryl and Dorothy start us off, this is focused on the fallout after the Ad:Tech youth panel, 2009
• 00:27 - First point: Why this obssession with the distinction between “new” and “traditional” media?
• 01:55 - Daryl mentions that the tools are all the same and references Brian’s (@litford)’s comments in GennY #4 about the same tools having different usages, with different results. (GennY Podcast episode 004 - 22:34)
• 02:15 - Dorothy mentions that consistency across the different platforms is the key
• 02:55 - Is it about distinguishing the differences between them, or about how they can work together?
• 03:11 - Who do “influencers” really have to be?
• 05:34 - Down with “faceless” corporations on social media channels!! It’s impersonal and we can’t relate
• 06:55 - How about spokespeople from companies being the “faces” online?
• 07:44 - There are “stages” and “levels” in social media and the difficulty ramps up at each stage
• 08:17 - Perhaps co-ownership is the way to go. As long as there is someone available to listen
• 09:35 - Final point: Are youth really that different?
• 10:00 - Do older generations remember banner ads or TV ads?
• 10:18 - Marketers don’t like to hear that Gen Y doesn’t want to hear from “faceless” corporations, but isn’t it the same as receiving a telemarketer phone call or junk mail asking to sign up for a new credit card?
• 10:53 - Do the older generations go on websites and think “Wow this banner ad rocks I want to click on it”? Because if they don’t, why do they think we will?
• 11:10 - At the end of the day, would you be interested/excited about the ad if you were a consumer?
• 11:40 - Why would you do selective focus groups who may not even be your target group, when you could do it online with your fans and get fast feedback?

Click play to listen, or download the file here, or subscribe to us on iTunes!

Drop either of us comments, questions or feedback: @uniquefrequency or @summerisque

I’m also really excited on a personal note to be one of the media partners of the conference, and I think it says a lot that a worldwide event like this is beginning to recognise blogs as “media”, and going through the effort to partner up with them.

So what I really want to do with this blog post is highlight a few things:

1) Details of the conference: 22nd and 23rd September at the Grand Hyatt in Singapore.

2) An exclusive 15% off (on top of early bird discount) for readers of this blog and Twitter followers (get your boss to spend his/her budget!)

3) A free exhibition pass is also available.

4) You can follow the Forum on Twitter: @SocialNetworkWF

Feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions, you can find me on Twitter: @uniquefrequency

So when the media gets hold of information that

a) The H1N1 case is a student from SMU

b) She was on a business study mission to New York

What do they do? Call/email/sms/instant message anyone and everyone they know who has ever gone on the trip, regardless of which year it was. I personally was contacted for information, so too were other friends who were on the previous trips, and not this year’s. They then start asking for the phone number of the professor in charge.

Look. If you want to do responsible reporting, do responsible reporting. Call the hospital, ask the doctor how she is, ask the ministries if we’re prepared for the flu, whatever. Don’t sensationalise reporting by finding out facts that don’t matter, and don’t harass people who have nothing to do with it!

You know the rules. You want a comment, call the school, not the students.

And for goodness sake, leave the poor girl alone to recover in the hospital. It’s bad enough she has to go through the trauma for having the virus, the last thing she needs are vultures circling around her door, phone and anywhere else to get every juicy tidbit of information that matters.

By the way, Channel News Asia, there’s no point being on Twitter which is meant for instantaneous messaging, if you break the news almost five hours after it’s out.

The GennY Podcast

The show notes

Total running time: 29:49

• 00:00 - Yin starts us off - introductions all round
• 00:36 - The tumbleweed crosses the alamo
• 01:17 - What do we expect of brands if they are involved in social media?
• 01:28 - Brian’s expectations are low, he just wants someone to talk to him
• 03:06 - If brands decide to be online, then they owe it to the customer to interact with them
• 04:10 - The minimum expectation is at least and acknowledgement or a reply, even if the concern or question isn’t immediately answered.
• 05:23 - Maybe sometimes brands shouldn’t be on social media?
• 06:12 - Yin suggests there’s a difference between big brands and smaller brands in terms of the scale of reaching out and interacting with customers
• 07:01 - Yinqi says with the resources that big brands have, she feels they should experiment more
• 07:29 - Brian mentions the flip side, which is that big brands have more to lose in terms of reputation online, despite the relative ease to get involved
• 09:17 - Brian clanks his beer bottle against the table leg for effect, before saying that brands don’t own brands, customers own brands
• 10:53 - Daryl brings up the local example of Starhub on Twitter and whether it opens up the opportunity to solve minor issues
• 11:54 - Brian brings up the reverse of that to announce anticipation of minor issues in advance so that at least consumers know
• 13:08 - Kris says one to one relationships aren’t always possible, especially with many consumers
• 16:13 - The issue really is about being painfully aware that your actions online (if you choose to be online) is broadcast to everyone
• 16:54 - The customer is now empowered to keep brands in check
• 20:59 - Yin wonders why brands still repeat mistakes, despite many opportunities for them to learn
• 22:04 - The tools are of equal access to everyone, it’s how your choose to wield the tools
• 22:24 - Brian says “nerfed”
• 22:56 - Daryl has the expectation (realistic or not) that brands should know the general “rules” of the platform they choose to engage consumers in
• 23:58 - What about companes’ expectations of consumers?
• 26:41 - Maybe companies need to make it clear what to expect from their online engagements
• 27:00 - Brian tells his Zappos story as an example of positive engagement
• 29:20 - Yin calls for feedback and questions and more interaction!

Click play to listen, or download the file here, or subscribe to us on iTunes!

If you’d like us to talk about anything and hear Gen Y’s perspective, leave a comment and we’ll definitely record it if it’s within our collective sphere of knowledge.

For the first time in a long time, I could listen to people who actually knew their stuff go up there and tell us about their social media efforts, demonstrate some form of ROI, and hold up under scrutiny. I admit I was all ready to roll my eyes in cynicism when a speaker went up and said he was well-versed in digital marketing with an advertising agency, but then he actually knew what he was talking about. Very different from some speakers who just talk a lot, but don’t really say anything.

So my highlight was really speaking at the youth panel with four other people from the other universities, and I have to give Graham Perkins (@grayperks)props for really revving up the crowd even though it was the last session of the day. It was by far the most interactive session I’ve had the chance to speak at, and I think the smaller size of the conference helped people get used to one another and ask questions.

One thing that I “feel” intuitively at this conference, is that people understand more about social media than they did a year ago. The types of questions I had to answer a year ago and the types of questions I had to answer today, were quite different, and basic knowledge of what Facebook is, what Twitter is, what iPhones can do, can be pretty much be assumed, which makes a lot of difference when you’re trying to answer questions without leaving anyone behind.

As always, my favourite topic of newspapers came up again (which I will blog about soon), and I did have to answer one question about the effectiveness of advertising, and whether youth actually notice them. The room gave a slightly audible gasp when I told them Gen Y is pretty much trained to “ignore” interruptive marketing and advertising, but I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that.

When one other attendee asked if anyone of the five of us saw a physical ad (print, tv, outdoor) and went online to do research on that product or service based on the ad, the answer was a resounding no. So there you have it.

Lots of other stuff I want to talk about, a few great case studies that I really enjoyed listening to, I hope to blog them soon. It’s going to be Youth Connect! Week on the blog this week, but I think you’ll enjoy reading about it.

I will say this about the organisers: It’s not a big event, but I think they brought in great speakers. Companies who paid money to attend this (especially in this recession), should be very satisfied with the value they got out of it.