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Lessons from The Social Network

November 18, 2010 By View Comments

I watched the movie last night and it got me thinking too. Did people need another MySpace or Friendster? It was essentially the same thing. What made Facebook a success? I don’t think it took off because it was exclusive to Harvard students. The key ingredient was “status update” so students could find out who was available to sleep with. That was what got Facebook the early traction and thus, the Winklevoss brothers didn’t deserve the $65 million settlement because this feature wasn’t their idea.

Is there anything else we can learn from this movie? My takeaway (doesn’t mean I subscribe to them):
1. There’s always a need your product can address. Psst, sex sells.
2. It’s good to have a rich BFF (best friend for Facebook)
3. Must have Sean Parker’s ego. If not, get him in as a partner.
4. When you’re CEO, you can print anything you like on you business card.
5. If you’re naturally arrogant, make sure you’re a billionaire or on your way there.

The movie was entertaining and if you want to find out how much of it is true, read What parts of the The Social Network (movie) are accurate and which are not? on Quora which by the way was started by Adam D’Angelo who was CTO of Facebook

If you’ve seen the movie, what was your takeaway? As an entrepreneur, user, programmer or film maker?

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Anti-pole dancing poles

August 1, 2010 By View Comments

In an effort to curb young women from pole dancing and other lewd activities in public, the transit authority has spent thousands to replace hundreds of vertical handrails in KL’s light rail transit trains with three-bar poles.

At a launch ceremony in Kuala Lumpur today, Mr. Deng M. Soon, spokesman for the transit authority said “We have seen young Malaysian women acting un-Malaysian on YouTube videos. This is not the image we want the world to see. What is in our backyard should remain in our backyard.” Was Mr. Deng referring to an ad created by a certain local budget airline inviting Singaporeans to check out Malaysia’s backyard? Singaporeans may be flocking to Malaysia to check out our backyards but they will not be able to find it on our LRTs any time soon.

A woman in the crowd who wished to remain anonymous expressed her disbelief “This is unbelievable, first they won’t let us practice yoga and now this. Women, pole dancers, exhibitionists and yoga practitioners pay taxes too.”

Mr. Deng could not be reached for further comment.

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Are we better off dead?

July 25, 2010 By View Comments

Has your loved one dreamt of owning that special home? Well she can, if not in this lifetime then there’s the next. Beautifully designed homes are now available through skea.com.tw that can be purchased online to be burnt as paper offerings.

▲ Thermal Green Hill House

▲ Bali Villa

Wherever your loved one’s soul may be after he has shuffled off his mortal coil, rest assured that the quality of her after-life is as good if not better than her living life. Material possessions, desires and addictions can all follow along. Letting go for the living could not have been easier too knowing the departed has been well provided for.

▲ Cancer in hell? Never happens.

The paper offerings industry is now making a killing as the objects of desire are updated to cater to today’s lifestyle. Gone are the mansions modeled after Ming Dynasty architecture unless the person had dreams of owning one while he was alive or she loved the period dramas on TVB. But to each his own. So why not park a yacht next to the ancient Ming styled villa. Is anyone going to question her taste?

▲ Luxury yacht

Today, you will find paper structures, modeled after designer homes complete with an SUV in the garage, jacuzzi, modern appliances like a dishwasher, 500 horse power air conditioner (we know it’s hot down there), LED tv, Sony PS3, Blu Ray player, jewelry from Tiffany’s, a wardrobe of branded outfits with matching accessories, Mac, iPad and stuff any living middle-class soul would envy. Is this really hell or paradise?

▲ Stuff to die for? You bet.

As a marketer, I keep an eye on what items have been added to the catalog. The items reflect the market segment’s needs, hopes or aspirations. Say you work for Apple Inc. and you see iPhone 4s flying off the shelves and into the fire, you know whatever you’re doing in marketing is working. Don’t need to question logic as to why a bill from AT&T (or any telco providing the data service) wasn’t burnt along with it. The living can always burn and send hell money for the dead to pay their own bills. This could really be a chore and lately with global warming on everyone’s mind, a better option might be an iPhone app call Hell Bank Notes.

The ritual of burning material items made of paper to a dearly departed has been an Asian practice for hundreds of years especially to Chinese who are Taoists.  The belief is that all life after death starts in hell, like purgatory rather than one giant torture chamber. The torture chamber is on the 18th level. There are many levels apparently though no one has been there and back to confirm this. In any case, it makes a great bedtime story.

If someone has been good while they were alive, their stay would be short before their number is called up for reincarnation. Otherwise their stay in hell could be longer than the life of planet earth itself. The best the living can do is to make sure their dearly departed soul’s stay below is as pleasant as possible so that everyone up here can sleep at night.

(This article was written by Carolyn Chan in collaboration with Chew Lin Kay – fellow explorer of life, and death?).

Filed Under: Feature, Humor, Marketing, Tech Tagged With: ,

The Khoo Kongsi

May 2, 2010 By View Comments

This is the Khoo Kongsi. It’s a community for anyone with the surname “Khoo” or those who came from the Khoo village in China. Khoo are you? A Khoo? OK, Khoo casa is su casa.

Not too long ago, the Khoo Kongsi was the largest and most successful social network in the straits. The Khoos would live together in a compound with apartments, its own temple (above), an open air theatre (where drive-ins got their inspiration) and a building honoring their Khoo ancestors. If the British occupation did not get children off to school, a regular Khoo had no good reason to leave his Kongsi. It was his home, office and theme park. Not too different from the religious sect compounds of today. Khoo men back then also had many wives.

Not many Kongsies are as rich, elaborate and dedicated to one community as the Khoo Kongsi in Penang. There were many small clans of the same surname or originating from the same province in China. Usually, you’ll find clans going into ‘joint ventures’ with other clans.

The Kongsies were very important in the old days. Without a community to find other people with the same interest and background, a young migrant from China would find it hard to survive. The island’s economy was controlled by Kongsies (imagine the Gotti family). The bigger the family, the bigger the bulk discounts and thus higher margins from sale of surplus goods.

Seduced by the successes of the Khoos, other startups began to spring from joint-ventures among smaller clans. However, JVs rarely succeed due to their inability to agree on who’s name should come first on the ginormous plaque out front. The handful that have survived like the Kongsi below owe their success to a strict policy of marrying only members of their Kongsi so the business will ultimately stay in the family. It was very difficult at first since everyone on the island wanted to marry a Khoo.

A 5-family start-up from the Cheah, Si, Hock, Haw and Kong families.

Today, the Kongsi system is all but abandoned but thankfully the clues to their way of life are not. The evidence of their once great presence in Penang is now recognized by UNESCO as a heritage site.

Kongsi (Chinese: 公司; pinyin: gōngsī) or “clan halls”, are benevolent organizations of popular origin found among overseas Chinese communities for individuals with the same surname. This type of social practice arose, it is held, several centuries ago in China. The Chinese word Kongsi is used in modern Chinese to mean a commercial “company”.

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A Twitter Up-’Rais’ing?

January 20, 2010 By View Comments

Laugh now. Laugh while you can because the Minister of Information, Communications, Culture and Arts will ban Twitter and Facebook tomorrow. Soon, say goodbye to tv, radio and newspapers also. Mobile phones might go too. These are all western inventions – very bad.

All of you who tweeted with the #yorais hashtag will be sent to prison (including those innocently asking “what is #yorais ah?”) and put on the receiving end of hard labour and a few strokes of the cane, one stroke for each tweet. That will teach you to drag Rais’ reputation through the twitter mud.

Wonder if the PM is in on it or is he having a word with Rais about thinking before talking.

One can only wonder if they had a chat or what in the world possessed Rais Yatim to make a statement like this. In any case, welcome to Malaysia. Hope your stay is a pleasant one. If you need room service, please send a smoke signal.

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Who is getting rich off the iPhone?

December 11, 2009 By View Comments

so-just-where-does-all-that-iphone-money-go

Now let’s look closer to home. Malaysians pay Maxis (the only telco offering the iPhone) US$714 for a 32GB iPhone 3Gs with a 1 year contract. Let’s assume Maxis pays Apple the same $550 per unit, Maxis still makes $164 just from selling you the phone and you pay the entire sum upfront, Maxis doesn’t have to subsidize a thing and they’ll make even more money from your voice and data plan. There is nothing to lose and all to gain for Maxis. Brilliant.

Did you say “This is so unfair. To think I’ve stayed with them all these years, through good reception and no reception and I get jack”? Well, if you’re the only player in the market, the rules are yours to dictate.

Want to pay nothing or close to it for a Maxis iPhone? Their corporate customers get the iPhone for free. So if you know anyone who’s a corporate customer, you can buy it off her for cheap or convince her to give it to you. Keep telling her it’s a bitch to type with a touch screen keypad – this is the bain of many new iphone owners in the first week of playing around with the device. With a hint of urgency in your voice, tell her to get rid of it (and give it to you) before technology becomes obsolete and she has to pay people to take it off her. Check ebay and she’ll see how many unsold first generation iphones there are. If she has no patience for touch screen, she won’t search ebay and will just take your word for it. Score! Congratulations and welcome to the iPhone owners club.

Filed Under: Business, Feature, Humor Tagged With: ,

I dreamt of sugar-free typography

November 9, 2009 By View Comments

I dreamt last night that I discovered a way of coding subliminal messages into typography. When people look at the words using my typography (which looks very similar to the Museo font) they would instantly go into a hypnotic trance, absorbing every binoptic (the cousin of binaural) suggestion coming through their computer screens or TV. It was a brilliant idea that only I could think of.

I was making a killing selling my serif typography to global brands. One of them was a cola brand (no name shall be mentioned) who wanted people to believe that it should replace everyone’s water intake. But the binoptic suggestions in the code will only work through my fonts and in a specific point size which means the cola brand has to ditch their san serif bold typography and change their entire brand identity. Are they about to do it? Let’s see. Times are tough. Brand personality and brand values haven’t brought in the numbers, their foray into social media has landed the brand in hot soda causing global-scale backlash (they wished they could blame the agency but final approval did come from their own offices). The cola generation from ten years ago are now diabetic. And the new diet formula is using an ingredient that isn’t FDA approved (the public doesn’t know this yet). Sales is dropping . So? New typography it is.

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Are you twisted? (that’s tweetspeak for twitter listed)

November 2, 2009 By View Comments

twitter

Twitter introduced the list feature a few weeks ago and announced it on their blog on October 30. I saw it on my twitter profile some time around October 20 and was adding people to lists I’ve set up until it became tedious. Please excuse me if I have not gotten you into a list. I’ll get around to listing everyone soon.

I like that I can put the people I follow into lists so whenever I needed answers to technical question, I could look up my “geekeratti” list and tweet them, for example.  I would like it even more if I could send @ messages or DMs only to the people on one list. Can’t do it yet but until then, it’s still a good tagging system. If you’re unsure of what lists to create, perhaps I can help. Here’s what I have:

For people I think everyone should follow in October, they are in my @thechannelc/vip-october:

vip

For people who would likely not add me back, I put them into my @thechannelc/follow-back-chance-is-nil:

chrisbrogan

BTW, Chris B is not on my follow list anymore but the tag I have set up for him is still there. I really don’t care whether he follows me back.

For people who usually don’t reply  tweets, I have them in my @thechannelc/doesnt-reply-tweets:

doesn't reply

Lists can be a lot of fun. When you add someone to a list or two, it shows up on their profile. They can also see which of your list/s you’ve put them into:

god5

god6

And did you know you can add yourself to your own list?:

me

Finally, lists can be set to private and no one but you can see them. This is good if you want to create a private “pain-in-the-ass” or a “jerk” list.  Remember though that if someone who could make your life difficult is on the PITA list, triple check that it’s set to private.

Filed Under: Apps, Feature, Humor Tagged With: , ,

Let’s play ball.

October 12, 2009 By View Comments

This is a blog response to: Where have all the good people gone?

It doesn’t matter what your background is. In fact someone from a different background can bring new ideas or new ways of doing things that can often work out very well. I’ve seen successful engineers in marketing, accountants in HR, lawyers in publishing.

Look at Jeff Bezos who was a banker turned bookstore technopreneur. Closer to home, Tony Fernandes was a bean counter who went into music and then started an airline. Moral of the story, your foundation should be in finance. No I’m kidding. I believe success lies in their ability to see opportunities and have the balls to get out and do it. But don’t get ballsy unless you’re hired for a top job with “Chief” as a prefix. Ballsy junior execs are almost always shown the door. Exceeding expectations don’t work for you when you’re working for someone in your first job after college. That is why Bill Gates took his balls elsewhere and started Microsoft. He would have been sacked at Commodore for sure.

If you don’t have balls, never mind. As long as you’re related (by birth or marriage) to someone with balls or has a lot of money. You know, you’re lucky you’re in Malaysia. Here it’s often who you know, not what you know – if you want things to move fast. But to stay ahead, you will need to know your stuff or have the money to hire people who know their stuff (make sure they don’t have balls so you don’t have to worry about getting stabbed in the back).

OK, Shazali isn’t really an entrepreneur he’s a corporate general. Does the above apply? Hell yeah. Even though he didn’t startup Celcom with this own money, his job is still very challenging, he has to take Celcom forward – which is like steering QE2. You make one mistake, you can take forever and a day to make a u-turn. If there’s an iceberg straight ahead, all the very best to you. So it takes a lot of balls to tell everyone where the boat should be heading.

Change seems to be the buzzword this year. The magic ingredient for progress. I strongly believe the telco industry has to change the way they operate, how they serve their customers and who they hire for the job. If the industry hasn’t made progress or innovated in awhile, does it make sense to continue poaching from within? To me, what’s coming out has been pretty “sei pan”. Time for a change. While we’re at it, time for 4 day work weeks and more transparency in the workplace also. ©

Filed Under: Business, Humor Tagged With: ,
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