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A recent report by Inside Facebook highlights the interesting development of Facebook in Southeast Asia. Despite being blocked in China, East Asia’s largest and fastest-growing market, Facebook has grown phenomenally in the rest of Southeast Asia during the last few quarters.

How has this happened?

• In Taiwan, Facebook has exploded from 400,000 to nearly 7 million users in only 12 months
• Significant growth in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia
• Indonesia is now the world’s #3 country in terms of total Facebook audience size (behind US and UK)
• Facebook has overtaken hi5 in Thailand and Friendster in the Philippines (formerly the top social networks)
• …But Facebook has seen little growth in Japan and S. Korea

Taiwan’s rapid adoption of Facebook is a particulary interesting example, as it is now one of the few non-English speaking countries with over 30% penetration, joining Hong Kong and Singapore as one of Facebook’s Asian sucess stories.

Why Taiwan?

• A key driver for this growth has been social gaming apps, like Happy Harvest, Pet Society and Restaurant City
• These apps pull users away from other social sites without games, like Taiwan’s other social network Wretch.cc
• More games are being developed in or translated into Traditional Chinese, such as Mahjong by Godgames

Though perhaps Taiwan doesn’t represent a gateway to the rest of Southeast Asia,  it does show that Facebook can be successful in the region. Perhaps social gaming will also open doors for Facebook in tougher markets like Japan and South Korea…

Big In Japan: Twitter

In a market where even the undisputed heavyweight champion of SNS, Facebook, has struggled to gain traction, a little bird named Twitter now rules the roost in Japan.

According to ratings agency Nielsen Online, 16.3% of Japanese Internet users tweet, or “mumble” as it is translated in Japanese. This is compared to less than 10% of Americans. Perhaps the most stunning aspect of this story is the blazing speed which this little bird has added to its flock. Twitter Japan launched a Japanese language service in 2008, but it wasn’t until a mobile version was introduced in October 2009 that things really took off.

Having left Facebook and MySpace in the dust long ago in the Japan market, Twitter users finally surpassed the long-time king of Japanese SNS, Mixi. Following the example of Masayoshi Son, a Twitter evangelist who also happens to be CEO of Japanese mobile phone and data provider Softbank, Japanese businesses are waking up to the necessity of having an effective social media and more often than not, it is Twitter they are most interested in.

Opportunity no longer knocks in Japan. These days, it tweets.

Fast facts:

• 16.3 – Percentage of Japanese on Twitter
• 9.8 – Percentage of Americans on Twitter
• 3 – Percentage of Japanese on Facebook
• 8,000,000 – Number of tweets per day from Japanese users
• 12 – Percentage of global tweets that come from Japan
• Japan recently set the world record for tweets per second following a recent world cup game

Note: This blog entry was based on an Associated Press article by Yuri Kageyama.

I’ve come across a few interesting ideas this week. The first:

1. Mountains and Mona Lisa - Samsung >> this has limited application as an emerging media I admit, but I offer it firstly because I was bought up on Wales, but more importantly because it was the precursor to the second idea – which is much more applicable:

2. Monuments and masses – Samsung 3D projections>> 3D projection will grow and grow as a brand experience format. These two ideas  in tandem create quite an interesting space that Samsung is beginning to own – innovation with LED and lighting -  similar to the Crowdsourcing ideas in Liverpool Street and Trafalgar Square that T Mobile had so much success in. There are lots of examples of monumental 3D projections – one most recently by BMW in Singapore. I adore this sort of creative work, because it is the true fusion of physical and digital. It creates both a physical and digital Theatre for the Brand in which consumers co-exist and co-create. Developing these “sustained conversations and dialogues” is core to building brands and emotions between them and consumers.

I also really enjoyed Google Chrome’s browser speed test. In a world full of complications I think it is a good example of how to make an intangible USP, more tangible. Until your competitor, the Opera Browser,  responds with their own  repost the Opera’s Speed test. Both ideas are sort of traditional “advertising stories” but neither will ever pay for media on TV.

A week would not be a week without some passing mention of an iPad, so here are two explorations of the iPad on the left side of leftfiled – the first is the iPad magic show from Japan; the second a low tech adaptation to make the hi tech, better: Velcro + iPad

Also several bookmarks on data visualisations and info-graphics this week – helping creative and data minds meet, or not:
David Armano’s excellent visualisations of our communication and social world: and a few others from Hubspot’s 22 social media Diagrams: and finally a good collection from Nowsourcing .

During my recent trip to Singapore, I had the opportunity to grab coffee and have a chat with Ben Koe, Employee #3 of JamiQ, a new social media monitoring service which is currently in beta.

I’ve asked Ben a few quick questions about the state of social media across Asia Pacific, what companies should do first before jumping in, and how JamiQ will be different from the array of social media monitoring services currently on the market:

Q. How would you characterise the digital landscape here in Asia Pacific?
Asia Pacific contains some of the most densely connected communities in the world which makes it one of the largest opportunities for digital marketing. However, marketers are still undecided about the effectiveness of engaging online. But this is understandable, while we are certain about the large population that connect online, there is no one best way to reach them.

In order to engage successfully online, marketers need to flip their logic around. Instead of the traditional method of identifying the best media to communicate through, brands can now be their own media. Corporate blogs, community forums, YouTube channels, etc. are all affordable means for companies to establish their presence online and build communities around them. 

Q:  Across APAC, we are seeing an increased interest in social media. Before jumping in, what should organisations do in order to generate real results from their efforts?
Organisations need to take a step back from the hype and observe their brand online. Listening to what’s being said by their customers in the region is the most critical exercise one can perform. The ability to listen gives you the intelligence required to craft an effective communication strategy. Just like how you wouldn’t bother selling in-car stereos to people who take the bus, you need to know what your customers want; and most of the time your customers will not tell you directly, they’ll be telling their friends online.

Too often, marketers are communicating what’s on their agenda completely overlooking the “truth” being talked about on forums or being ranted on blogs. Once you know what your customers or the industry is talking about, you then can make better judgment and strategy for engaging them for your brand before consumer-driven perception takes over.

Q:  How will JamiQ be different from some other social media listening services?
JamiQ’s chief advantage is its reach. This is the foundation of social media monitoring. Just like a search engine, the more web pages the engine can cover the better a service it is. If you read the fine print on some social media monitoring services you’ll find that some claim to have indexed 12 million blogs, another 20 million, and others 100 million. So who’s giving you the full picture?

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Already one of the world’s most active microblogging countries, the latest data from Netratings shows that the unique users of Twitter grew to 783,000 in June alone. This compares with 200,000 users in January, a growth of four times. h/t to IT Media Japan