Web Wednesday - Two Year Anniversary

Whilst wandering around the hills of Hong Kong last weekend (on Buddha's birthday), it suddenly dawned upon me that Web Wednesday is about to turn two years old! Our next social mixer on 6th May will be Version 24.0, which translates to 24 months of Web Wednesdays!

I'm not sure if it was the sudden intake of fresh air (not a common occurrence in Hong Kong)...or just being distracted by other pressing concerns, like swineflu. Nevertheless, I felt the urge to step back and assess where we've come.

From a small gathering of five digital marketers back in June 2007, our community of Asian Digerati has now reached over 1,800 members: 1,169 in the Hong Kong Facebook Group, 426 in the Guangzhou FB Group, 57 members in the Beijing FB Group and 28 in the Halmstad, Sweden FB Group. And the networking continues, our recently launched group on LinkedIn has 166 members (perhaps a sign of the times?).

In celebration of reaching this milestone, I have the pleasure of announcing that we will be offering an extra round of drinks to the first 100 guests who attend tomorrow's social mixer, courtesy of our new sponsor, DediPower - the UK's leading provider of managed hosting services.

Unless you've been working in a big bank, where the local telcos dote on your expensive use of their air-conditioned data centres, I guarantee that you've had to suffer shoddy and often unstable local web hosting services. Nearly every web developer that I know has had to turn to North American suppliers for his/her hosting needs.

I'm hoping that DediPower's self-proclaimed "support with passion", humanly-managed hosting and on-call technical advice will shake up the industry here and finally provide us with good quality, reliable and affordable hosting services.

In the UK, DediPower supports established corporations like iTV, First Great Western and Sony, as well as rapidly growing social media start-ups, such as TweetMeme and SlicethePie.

Swineflu - An Infectious Use of Social Media

Last weekend, Twitter was abuzz with the news of swine flu hitting Hong Kong. You could feel a palpable surge of panic but, thankfully, it rapidly calmed down. Compared to the awful days of SARS, where over 250 new infections were being announced each day, there is still only one infected case here in Hong Kong. (Read the latest updates on the WHO's official pandemic outbreak website).

What interests me about the way this "outbreak" is being handled is the prolific use of social media. In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has even set up it's own social media guide at www.cdc.gov/socialmedia. On Twitter, savvy users are using the hashtags, "#swineflu" or for Hong Kong news specifically "#swinefluhk". There's a local blog on the topic in English (swinefluhk.blogspot.com), Technow has a good web 2.0 guide in Chinese and a doctor i snot managing to keep his domain H1N1.hk up to date.

But by far the best visual tool is the crowd-sourced "2009 H1N1 Flu Outbreak Map" on Google Maps. It was created by "Laurel" on April 25th, has 25 collaborators, has been viewed 1,844,629 times and has 2664 comments!

They've even come up with a catchy URL, "swinemap.org"! The map is embeded below so that you can play around with it yourself.

View 2009 H1N1 Flu Outbreak Map in a larger map

Facebook Stats - Revealing stuff

Per chance - thanks to a little dip into twitter - I came across a useful link to the official statistics page on Facebook. Some figures that really hit me:

• 3.5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
• 20 million users update their statuses at least once each day
• 4 million users become fans of Pages each day
• 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
• 850 million photos uploaded to the site each month
• 8 million videos uploaded each month
• Every month, 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications
• 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
• People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are almost 50% more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

Web Wednesday - Social Mixer V24 (May 6)

Calling All Hong Kong Digerati! (Dai Loh!)

For our next social mixer on Wednesday 6th May, we've invited Rex Ng, Co-Founder & MD of 6Waves, a highly successful local start-up who in just one year has become the 4th largest Facebook app developer by reach, just behind RockYou, Slide and Zynga.


The topic is "Gangster Wars (義氣仔女) - How to Make Money on Facebook?" and Rex will share the secrets of how to generate over 22 million users and HK$500,000 per month from social gaming.

The night kicks off at 6:30pm and ends around 9:30pm, so you'll have plenty of opportunity to mix with the movers and shakers of our local Internet industry...and hopefully meet some real gangsters (or at least, their lady friends)!

There will be an entrance fee of HK$100, unless you're a bona-fide student, in which case it's HK$50. This includes one complimentary drink. All other drinks are at Happy Hour prices. (We will issue a receipt, if you require one). As per our last event, we will donate 10% to The Library Project.

Do invite fellow Dai Loh and social gaming addicts to join the Asian Digerati on Wednesday 6th May at Volar, Basement, 38-44 D'Aguilar Street, Lan Kwai Fong, Central.

You can sign up for the event on this blog, Facebook or LinkedIn. (We like to offer you choices!)

Looking forward to seeing old faces and meeting many more new ones,

Napoleon Biggs
Founder & Host - Web Wednesday
Internet Business Specialist - Palava Digital Ltd

A new library for Lian Er Ping Kids

A message from Tom Stader, founder of The Library Project, thanking Web Wednesday members for their contribution to help fund a new library (see my previous post) for school kids in Shaanxi province, China:

"Please find the photos of the library donation at Lian Er Ping Elementary School that the previous Web Wednesday made possible. This school received 300 Chinese language children's books, 1 book shelf, a globe, plant, paint for their classroom to brighten it up and Librarian Training. You all made a huge impact at Lian Er Ping Elementary School. Thank you!"

I uploaded the photos to Flickr and then used Vuvox to turn them into the collage below. It needs some music but I just didn't have time.




Read Tom's full blog post here. Our next donation will be going to help fund a library at Jin Ping Elementary School, also in rural Shaanxi Province.

WordPress - Matt Mullenweg on Video

Now that we've graduated into the realm of video, here is the latest interview with Matt Mullenweg, Founding Developer of WordPress at Web Wednesday Hong Kong's 23rd Social Mixer on 7th April.



Alternatively, you can download the full version from MotionBox here. YouTube doesn't allow me to upload more than 10 minutes or even link to the file, although we do have a Web Wednesday Wideo channel there.

Once again, we relied on the steady hand (and background laughs) of Aaron Farr of Jade Tower to record this on my Flip MinoHD. Thanks, mate!

Music Matters Sponsors Web Wednesday

"The Future of music is about to be turned on its head, are you ready?", Avril Lavigne's former manager Terry McBride, January 2009.

What a great opening line on the Music Matters 2009 website!


In it's fourth year now, this conference for the music industry will be addressing the controversial issues, challenges and opportunities facing the music business today. Topics covered in the jam-packed three day event (2-4 June 2009) taking place at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Wanchai include "Monetising Social Networks" and "From Content to Context - the Future of Music Composition and Performance".

Branded Asia, the company behind Music Matters, have yet again managed to attract a list of star speakers from the global and local music communities, including the founders of China's two leading music websites - Allen Guo, CEO of China's Yobo.com and Gary Chen, CEO of Orca Digital which runs top100.cn. (Download the full programme here).



So why do we care? Because Music Matters has teamed up with Web Wednesday to promote the link between the music business and the internet community. Apart from cross-promoting each other's events, Music Matters is:

• Offering our members 10% off the registration fee (a saving of US$85). You can mention "Web Wednesday" on the form to get the discount or call Amy Laing on (852) 2167 8040,
• Generously donating a complimentary 1-day pass (worth US$425) as a prize for tonight's SMS contest (if in HK, text "ww quiz" to "508507" to enter), and
• Inviting Gary Chen, CEO of Top100.cn to speak at our 25th Social Mixer on 3rd June 2009. Gary will be giving us the insight into why Google has teamed up with his music search engine and is now positioned as "Google's Exclusive Partner for Chinese Music" (Google中国音乐服务独家运营商). All Thing's Digital and PaidContent both have good articles covering Google's strategy, namely catch up with Baidu!

On top of this blog posting, here are some examples of the noise we are making for Music Matters across our various social media channels:

Facebook


LinkedIn

Twitter.com/webwednesday

And if you're feeling really social, then you can join the Music Matters Group on Facebook.