Where do you go to escape negative social media attention? Well, you could try one place that Twitter and Facebook will struggle to find you: China.

Some might think that is exactly what NBA “problem child” Stephon Marbury did when he moved to China a couple of weeks ago to play for Shanxi Zhongyu.

Marbury seems to have completely moved his social media presence. He posted his last Twitter entry on January 26, having already made his first entry a day earlier on the equivalent Chinese site. Marbury, the biggest NBA star ever to have played professional basketball in China, already has 26,132 fans on the Chinese Twitter-like Sina Microblog.

Of course, Marbury hopes to do more than escape twitterers; he is partly here to promote his clothing and apparel brand, Starbury. His posts frequently link to his Taobao store, where a pair of low-cost Starbury basketball shoes retail for around RMB 150-200 (USD 20-30).

I think this could become one of the best marketing uses so far of a Chinese microblog site, perfectly combining personal branding and product promotion.

Marbury is already creating a genuine dialogue with his fans. Earlier this week, for example, he engaged in a mammoth microblog Q&A, directly answering huge amounts of questions from fans.

Of course, challenges remain. He is only able to speak to his online fans in English, and his off-court brand will largely depend on his on-court success. Last week, Shanxi Zhongyu lost their first game with their new star.

It’s happening right now - 5.00pm MYT. A flash mob — Tali Tenang – that garnered interest and attendance via Facebook group United Colours of Malaysia and promoted via Twitter (@RandomAlphabets), to advocate peace amongst Malaysians in light of the our recent religious unrest.

While many of us can’t be there in person, we can get live updates from @RandomAlphabets and #talitenang. Let’s wait and see if #talitenang will become another trending topic.

Bad news sell… or a laughing matter does.

On Tuesday, Malaysia’s Information, Communication and Culture Minister gained celebrity status on Twitter, and here’s why.

While the world is focused on the misfortune and issues in Haiti, Malaysia had its own share of the limelight at the start of 2010. We made news with our recent torching and vandalising of churches following a court ruling that allowed Catholic publication, The Herald, to use the word “Allah” to refer to the Christian God.

In the spate of events, a student was charged for posting a church attack hoax on Facebook — he was charged with threatening public safety in relation to a comment he posted about the recent attacks on churches.

Amidst all this clamour, Malaysia’s Information, Communication and Culture Minister, Datuk Seri Dr Rais Yatim, had stepped forward to advise Malaysians, especially Muslims, against being totally immersed in the Internet culture, especially Facebook and Twitter.

In recent news reports, he said that facilities such as the Internet could not be accepted wholly because it was a form of business introduced by the West and “Malaysians were just users”. Datuk Seri Dr Rais was quoted as saying that when using such facilities, the people must upkeep the values taught by Islam, Buddhism or Christianity to maintain our culture.

Following this. the local blogosphere and twittersphere were astir with comments about what he said. Twitter-ers have started making jokes about him being too old and regressive-minded, and have made #yorais a trending topic on Tuesday (moving up from no.8 to no.4 within the hour I was writing this). Thanks to the hashtag creator, too.

I was trying hard not to ROTF in stitches reading tweets about “Rais Yatim is so ancient, he…”

Now, I wonder how he (and the government) is going to influence the people to resist (being totally immersed) the powerful allure of Facebook and Twitter (and ultimately the Internet). This is especially when Pikom — the National Information and Communications Technology Association of Malaysia, expects the Internet penetration in Malaysia to grow between 10% and 20% this year, and broadband penetration to reach 50% from the current 32%.

Singapore’s Today newspaper quoted Ogilvy DI colleague Brian Giesen about Twitter and how businesses can best use it.

Chinese microblog platforms have one major thing in common with Twitter, they limit updates to 140 characters. However, since a Chinese character generally conveys much more meaning than a single letter of the Roman alphabet, a Chinese microblog update can say a lot more than one in English.

As a very rough guide, four Chinese characters (新浪微博) are used to describe one of China’s leading microblog platforms, while fourteen characters are needed to write its English translation, Sina Microblog.

Similarly, 推特 - the Chinese for Twitter, does in two characters what English does in seven.

In addition, Chinese sentences do not need any spaces to make sense, even after punctuation marks.

Admittedly, posts on Chinese microblogs are often a mixture of English words and Chinese; and the online cultures of China and the English-language speaking world abbreviate in different ways.

However, despite these qualifying factors, by offering the same 140-character limit, microblogs are being much less stingy to Chinese writers than people updating in English.

So, a company or an individual can say a lot more. And quite often, they do just that. First, look at this fairly typical Twitter update from microblog aficionados, Dell (@DellOutlet):

Below is another update, also from Dell (@delldirect), on Chinese “twitter-like” site, Zuosa.com:

In just 114 characters, this Dell microblogger had managed to say the following:

Dell’s National Day Sale will run from Sept 11 to Oct 8. To celebrate the 60^th anniversary w. the motherland, Dell Home Computers is offering 6 cool gifts & deals on 10 computer models. These exciting offers will run non-stop for 4 weeks. Also, get a free upgrade to color casing & a 512MB independent graphics card, as well as other service upgrades. All offers are on a first-come-first-serve basis. What R U waiting 4? Act now!

It doesn’t look so “micro” now, does it? By using only part of their allowance, Dell managed to say the equivalent of 430 English-language characters.

When it comes to microblogs, I am less likely to read long updates; fat blocks of characters – English or Chinese – put me off.

Of course, not everyone is as lazy as me. However, companies should think about whether they should take advantage of these slightly less “micro” opportunities by writing longer updates. Personally, I think they shouldn’t. In this case, less is definitely more.

On November 21, the southwestern province of Yunnan launched China’s first official government microblog feed.

 
Among the first entries, which are published on the “Twitter-like” Sina microblog platform (新浪微博), was a post about a recent protest in the city of Kunming. The 130-Chinese-character response to the incident was rapid and relatively open.

Since its first post two weeks ago, the Yunnan government has updated its microblog 27 times, using the service to make various announcements, from manufacturing safety records to a drinking song competition in the province. At the time of writing, “Yunnan Microblog” (@云南微博) had 13,087 followers.

Governments use microblogging platforms to achieve various goals. A good microblog, for example, can allow governments to present a more “human” face. Yunnan Microblog, however, is currently little more than a news feed. Posts are written by “Yunnan,” rather than a person with a real name; and, with a couple of exceptions, the language used is dry and official sounding.

Governments can also use microblogs to monitor public sentiment. One of the ways Sina’s microblogging platform is different from Twitter is that it allows comments under each post. The Kunming protest entry, for example, received 41 comments. However, since Chinese social media platforms engage in self-censorship, Sina Microblog is unlikely to provide opportunities to speak out against government. As one person joked, “No comment… too afraid.”

This same feature could also have been used to create more interactive dialogue between netizens and the government. Yunnan Microblog, however, is yet use the platform to respond to any of its comments.

While conservative use of the platform, combined with China’s Internet restrictions, may limit the platform’s potential for meaningful engagement, Yunnan is certain to benefit in some way from this involvement in the online conversation. The provincial government and the public have a new direct link to one another. This, at the very least, is a step in the right direction.

The very name of India brings to our mind a country known for rich culture and heritage. Though India is progressively moving towards higher standards of professionalism, the human bonds that bind the culture are still ingrained in the life of average Indian. This is even reflected in the way Indians use the social networking space. The social networking site which have been popular in India( like Orkut, Face book , Bharatstudents,Hi5, Myspace, etc)are the ones which have been able to create a difference in the life of the average Indian online user by bringing professional and personal worlds together. Recently I came across a survey by Plugged in done for a period of 3 weeks (across 1100+ members) . It has interesting statistics that reveals the general awareness about Twitter in India:  16% use Twitter to stay updated with news  11% prefers to stay in touch with Friends using Twitter.  11% enjoy updating their status (gives them Ego boost)  10% use Twitter for Research  17% are not at all sure of Twitter usage.  14% of the members polled are not on Twitter  12% of the usage happens on work related areas.  Only 10% use Twitter to meet interesting people Even this survey points to the fact that friendship drives this social media space. It seems that Indians use social media mainly to stay connected to people for strengthening personal relations to drive the professional network.

Next week we are hosting the third Webinar in our “Executive Guide to Social Media” series, which is a partnership with the Wall Street Journal.

The session is going to be focused on what to do when a crisis hits and we’re fortunate to be joined by John Bell, the global managing director for Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence and Jamie Moeller, who heads up our global public affairs practice.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Sydney / 11 AM to Noon Hong Kong
REGISTER HERE

Here is a quick overview of what will be covered during the Webinar:

The best time to respond to a crisis is before it happens. That is a communications fundamental. Now in age of Twitter, mobile phones, blogs and Facebook, the speed and style of our response has changed dramatically.

Brands that are used to tightly controlled messages are thrust into the back and forth of social media. Detractors are savvy with the ways of YouTube and inciting crowds. Customers and stakeholders often demand that their brands be more transparent and engaging than ever before.

This webinar will include concrete examples and action plans answering numerous questions, including:

• How can you prepare for a crisis today?
• How do you rally your Marketing and Communications team to use all of the resources of the social Web and effectively manage a crisis?
• How should you assemble a plan?
• What NOT to do in a crisis

So get your crisis questions ready and register now as space is limited and we’ve had more than 2,000 registrations for previous sessions!

I recently setup an Ogilvy Asia-Pacific Tweeters list using a handy service called TweepML. In case you’re not familiar with it, TweepML is in its own words “an easy way to create, manage, share and find lists of interesting Twitter users to follow.”

Very easy in fact, it took only a couple of minutes to copy-and-paste in all the Ogilvy Asia-Pacific Twitter users I could find. All there was left to do was tell everyone about it.

But then of course Twitter rolled out its new lists feature, giving us all the functionality we could ever want, and pretty much rendering the TweepML service and my blog post obsolete – or did it?

One thing is for sure: Twitter lists are rapidly becoming the new currency in social media with traditional follower-metrics on the way out and list-baiting already well under way.

But after having used both, I can say that Twitter lists are still missing some key features. For the Ogilvy Asia-Pacific list it came down to 2 things which TweepML lists let you do that Twitter lists don’t:

1. Users suggestions
   The Ogilvy Asia-Pacific Tweeters list will most likely grow and chances are not everyone that should be on it was there from day one. So allowing users to suggest additions is key to keeping the list relevant and up to date.

2. One-click following
   Twitter lists are a great discovery mechanism as they essentially allow you to subscribe to a feed of users without directly following anyone. But what if you actually want to make a connection with everyone on a list? With a Twitter list you would have to go through the entire list and manually follow each user, TweepML lets you follow everyone in a list with just one click.

So if you want to connect with fellow Ogilvy thought leaders in the Asia-Pacific region, make sure you check out the Ogilvy Asia-Pacific Tweeters list.

Today we held the second of our trainings done in cooperation with The Wall Street Journal and GoToWebinar. Here is the full deck and click here to see a video. Our next training, taking place in early December, will be about Social Media and dealing with crisis. Please join!