Former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim is expecting the verdict (Update: He has just been acquitted) from a sodomy trial in which he has been named defendant. Politically, the verdict is significant, no less because Anwar is the current opposition leader and a guilty verdict will have significant impact on his political career and the next general elections expected to be called soon.

It is also significant because this is arguably the most politically-charged event in Malaysian since the Bersih 2.0 rally about half a year ago where the police department (Polis Di-Raja Malaysia or PDRM) took a social media beating for what some people claimed were inappropriate action.

Which leads me to the point of this post.

Over the past hour, and as I write this, the police department’s Twitter account @PDRMsia has been terribly active live tweeting from outside the courtroom. Among the things the Tweeter account has been sharing include arrival of public personalities, pictures of those who are present (supporters of Anwar, opponents etc) and more.

Assuming that the account is legit (considering how easy it is to set up a hoax account these days, and the fact that it appears linked to the PDRM Facebook page), its tweets this morning (or night, where I am) is very interesting to me. There has also been reports that the cops were planning on a “social media blitz” today.

For one, they appear to be very casual which, to me, isn’t very consistent with PDRM’s image. If you scroll back to its tweets from a couple of days ago, you might notice that the tweets are somewhat more formal in tone.

Secondly, there appears to be a lack of formal protocol – like the reference to Anwar Ibrahim without his title of Datuk Seri.

Third of all, the tweets appear rather neutral, which is a good thing considering the perception that the PDRM is often pro-Government, or at least heavily influenced by the Home Ministry. And its apparent bias against public demonstrations in its previous social media updates.

That said, there are a few things that interests me from a social media point of view.

1. Who is tweeting?

I am fascinated to know who is actually doing the live tweeting. I am suspecting that the person(s) is actually on location because the tweets are coming from a Blackberry, instead of say, web-based (which might indicate that messages are being sent back to a central place before disseminated).

This is interesting because I feel that there are security issues with allowing just anyone to “speak” from an official channel for the police department (some people have suggested that an agency was hired to do this live tweeting). I say this especially so having dealt with the police department before, and knowing that it is not easy to get a statement from officers let alone interviews.

2. What is their social media strategy?

Why are they doing this? While it is no longer uncommon for police departments in different parts of the world to tweet from location (or at least updates about certain locations), I wonder what they hope to achieve from posting tweets about people showing up in costumes, handing out masts of Anwar and children who have been brought along.

It has been suggested that this was the PDRM’s attempt to “log” all the happenings in case they find themselves needing to defend allegations against them, such as recently when cops were accused of violent acts against a student.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were posting safety and security related updates, but I can’t seem to figure these tweets out.

3. Are they aspiring journalists?

The biggest question in my mind really is whether it is the role of the PDRM to post live tweets along the tone that news agencies and the public (or citizen journalist, as they have been popularly dubbed) do or, like what I suggested earlier, only updates related to safety and security.

Personally, I would prefer them to take that role, only because it is directly related to their jobs. Also, this means that when they have some important updates or announcements, it wouldn’t be lost among tens (or hundreds) of random tweets.

Whatever it is, though, I would agree with many people on Twitterverse who feel that this is a good move from the PDRM, especially in engaging the public (although, they don’t appear to be responding to any tweets). Truth be told, it’s also not bad live tweeting (besides some bad grammar and empty tweets with just links to photos, and as my friend @juanajaafar just noted, inappropriate posting of photos of underaged children without parents consent) – there appears to be a nice collection of tweets about different things happening on the ground, and some of the comments are entertaining.

If anything, it shows that the PDRM is trying to remain relevant and whatever issues I have with its tweets, is something they can work on (if they feel my comments are justified, that is) for the future.

I came across her account yesterday after several people on my Twitter and Facebooks treams suggested I follow her, after her public chastising of her famous husband for posting an allegedly inappropriate tweet (Rupert himself has only been on Twitter for a few days).

Several major news organisations reported on that incident, and the fact that the “inappropriate” tweet was actually removed by Rupert, made the account appear legitimate.

Indeed, even the folks at Twitter got caught up in the hype and “Verified” her account, by putting a big huge blue tick next to her username – something usually reserved for major personalities who are sometimes get confused by accounts of impostors (or spoof accounts).

As I write this, the interwebs is buzzing with the news that the account is fake. The verified logo has been removed and the person behind the account has publicly acknowledged that she (or he!) is not the real Wendi Deng.

The tweet goes:

“Hello Twitter. As News International has finally come to their senses, it’s time to confirm that yes, this is a fake account. I’m not Wendi.”

There is also a lot of backlash about the person misleading the public, to which s/he is justifying as just having some “fun”.

I’m less concerned with his/her intention; rather, I wonder what implications this incident has on journalists who have in the past relied on the Verified accounts to assist in their reports?

It is not a new (well, relatively) phenomenon that journos and bloggers have relied on such accounts to write their stories (even sometimes using them as statements). In some cases, personalities have turned to Twitter to make announcements and respond to news reports about them.

How can we now trust that Twitter will get it correct considering the fact that – and this is according @wendi_deng – there was no attempt at verification from the actual person who owns the account (in this case, that is)?

S/he claimed in a Tweet:

“And you have to wonder even more why Twitter verified this account for a full day. I never received any communication from them about this.”

According to Twitter’s help page for Verified Accounts, “Any account with a Verified Badge is a Verified Account. Twitter uses this to establish authenticity of well known accounts so users can trust that a legitimate source is authoring their Tweets.”

The site doesn’t mention what the verification process is like(although, previously, though a beta programme, users can apply to be verified).

There is a big gap in that trust now, and I think journalists would have to go back to old methods of fact-checking, or at least find new ones, to prevent stories from major news organisations like this one about Wendi Deng flirting with Ricky Gervais, or this one about her ticking off her husband from being published.

The Financial Times’ Tim Bradshaw (if it really is him), just sent out a tweet that reads:

“Twitter PR: “can confirm @wendi_deng account was mistakenly verified for a short period of time. We apologize for the confusion this caused”

Nothing yet on @Twitter or the official Twitter blog. And “mistaken” is not good enough an excuse, I think. Twitter will need to explain themselves more, and well at that, to regain that trust.

p/s To be fair, some journalists did do extra fact checking, despite the Verified status. Apparently, even News International didn’t know it was’t the real Wendi Deng. BBC’s Ross Hawkins (allegedly, in the spirit of this post) tweeted saying:

“The @wendi_deng twitter account is NOT genuine. The News Intl s/person who told me it was last night has just called to say she was wrong.”

In Kuala Lumpur, you’re bound to find Internet almost anywhere in the city. If you’re walking past a row of shops, chances are you can turn your wifi on and find a connection from a nearby restaurant or store – and this is usually free. In other countries, I tend to look for the nearest Apple store to “borrow” the wifi-service when I desperately need to get online.

It would be lying if I said I never took KL’s easy access to the Internet for granted, but at the same time, I appreciate the fact that it is value-added service by the owners of restaurants and stores.

Picture taken from miniyo73 on Flickr under the Creative Common License.

Perhaps this is why I am a little uncomfortable after reading reports (or another here from TNW) that Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (City Hall) has made it compulsory from April 2012 for restaurants (larger than 120 sq m) to be wifi-equipped if they wanted to have their business license approved.

As a customer, and one who relies a lot on the Internet, this would seem like the perfect implementation. I can see some benefits – from convenience for the casual users to being a great service for people who work from outside the traditional office settings. It helps to entertain anyone who is waiting for a someone else.

However, I would like to suggest a few questions for consideration:

1. Will this encourage eating alone?

I’m starting with this because it’s the flimsiest of issues but one that I think is still pertinent. Ever since smartphones (and by extension, social media) hit the mainstream, there has been numerous arguments about how there is much less face-to-face interactions than previously.

The most common complain is from family members who have meals together, but at any point of the meal, someone or other will be on their phone – either replying emails, text messages, Tweets or updating the Facebook statuses.

Having access to the Internet so widespread would encourage this behaviour and many other “anti-social” scenarios technophobes can come up with.

2. Who’s going to pay for the service?

The reports do not mention if the services these restaurants would be free or not. This could lead to several issues, monetary wise.

First of all, if the service is free, then the burden is on the restauranteurs to pay for the service. There is a chance that this cost will be included into the price of the meals which means that people who are not using the service too would have to pay for something they do not use. It would be unfair to expect owners to take money out of their own pockets (unless, as I said earlier, if this was part of their marketing strategy to provide a value-added service).

If this service is chargeable, then I see two potential issues:

a. Would the restaurants have to run their own backend payment system? Or would they rely on current providers for this service? If it’s the latter, would there just be one company (leading to monopoly issues) where it will be easy for users to sign up for just one account, or many companies which would give users the dilemma of having multiple accounts etc. I’m not even going to consider how inconvenient one time payments are going to be.

b. Will this then lead to current places that offer free wifi – restaurants, McDonald’s, Starbucks and more – to start charging? After all, if other people are charging, why shouldn’t they? After all, in the case of McDonald’s and Starbucks, Internet access is chargeable in some countries, if I am not mistaken.

3. Why doesn’t DBKL stick to it’s current WirelessKL?

The reports also mention the fact that DBKL had a two-year contract with Packet-One Networks (the people behind P1 Wimax) to provide 1,500 free wifi spots around the city which will be discontinued once the contract ends.

I wonder why DBKL doesn’t just stick to this arrangement (unless Packet-One doesn’t want to continue providing the service)? It would then make wifi available in generic areas instead of just restaurants and there would be the burden on the restauranteurs.

Then again, if you’re anything like me and have tried logging on to the WirelessKl service in the past, you would realise that it never barely works anyway, so maybe this is a good thing.

4. What about the telcos?

I also wonder what implications this would have on telcos who offer mobile Internet services. Let’s not talk about wifi-on-the-go dongles, but this policy could affect the number of people who sign up for mobile Internet on the phones.

This might be a long shot, but it could have implications on pricing and packages from telcos in the future – if there are less people signing up for the service, then competition is less stiff and current customers (like myself) might not get great deals out of it.

Granted, it could go either way, as these telcos might need to make their packages even more enticing to encourage people to keep their mobile Internet service, or to sign up for it.

5. Should we really be legislating these things? 

My final question is whether we should be legislating these sorts of things. It’s one thing to make necessities compulsory when one wants a business license (such as fire exits, crowd control policies, health and cleaniness) but I worry about what kind of precedent this might set in terms of things that can be policed by City Hall in the future.

The intention by Mayor Tan Sri Ahmad Fuad Ismail might be great – after all, technology and doing things on the Internet is all the rage at the moment – but truth be told, I would rather City Hall take care of other issues more pertinent to our daily lives. Or, if there was the need for the technology focus, how about putting access to the Internet in schools or providing the urban poor with such access so as to close the digital divide?

Note: When the plans were first discussed, some restauranteurs commented that they were fine with it, according to this report.

Just like that, 2011 has passed us by and so much has happened in the technology world. Both of us can hardly keep up with what’s been happening, given the break-neck speed at which things changed and developed all year long.

More significantly, technology has shown this year that it matters beyond the world of geeks; it has played a major role in the world at large, particularly at the intersection of technology, society and culture.

This year was where all these forces came head to head. And along that vein, each of us has picked our choices of the most significant technology-related moments of the past year.

Tablets and the Amazon Kindle Fire

Right from the start 2011 was hailed the “year of the tablet”. Google was releasing Honeycomb, and several manufacturers had already shown off prototypes of other Android tablets.

We were pretty much bound for disappointment on this count, until Amazon came out with the Kindle Fire recently.

Okay, so it hasn’t hit Malaysia yet but the Kindle Fire did what a bunch of other 2011 tablets challenging the iPad failed to do: It changed the game, faster than even Apple could.

You see, before the Kindle Fire, the tablet market was all about product specifications, faster processors, cooler Android skins and better marketing. Prices hovered near the iPad range, and the only real innovation was the seven-inch form factor first introduced by Samsung via its Galaxy Tab.

The Kindle Fire changed all that with a US$199 (RM628) price tag, and decent enough specs and a beautiful screen. More importantly, it wasn’t a tablet for the sake of being a tablet, but rather as a gateway to buying all of Amazon’s digital content and goods.

Rather than making money off selling you a piece of hardware, Amazon is selling you a piece of hardware to make money off you buying videos, music, books and any other piece of content they can sell you from their store. The best part is – this model works and Amazon is the best positioned company to take this on. Next year, I’m expecting to see lots of solid tablet options aimed at competing with the Amazon Kindle Fire instead of the iPad, and lots of folks toting seven-inch tablets. – David Lian

Year of the Protestors

Say what you like about how social media was just an enabler of revolutions but I challenge you to find a time in history when so much change (and impact) could descend upon the world in under 365 days.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is thanks to social media. Granted, many of the revolutions were a long time-coming. After all, the sentiments that the public held in contempt of those in power are not new.

Yet, one can hardly argue that if it was not for social media networks – be it Facebook or Twitter – the public would never have felt as empowered as they did, even in countries where the change they were hoping for did not come their way.

Time magazine may have named the “Protestors” as their Person Of The Year. I would rather look at how social media was integral to their strategies for mobilising the people. Just look at the #Occupy movement around the world as an example. – Niki Cheong

Group buying

Somewhere deep inside each of us, there’s a little Kiasu Malaysian waiting to get out. Unfortunately, that Kiasu Malaysian just got unleashed this year with the string of group buying sites now flooding the market.

Somehow, I don’t remember it being this prevalent in 2010, but when Groupon entered Malaysia by buying over local leader GroupsMore, it seemed to kick the group-buying trend in Malaysia up a couple of notches. Instead of seedy discounts offered for obscure holiday packages and slimming trials (or “experiences” as they were marketed previously), we get good discounts on good brands, and at the very least, some top name restaurants offering really good deals on meals.

The cheap person in me wants to rush out and buy as many Groupons as I can. The savvy person realises I’m probably going to forget to use half of them. – DL

Timelines

It may have only been rolled out for a couple of weeks but one of social media’s biggest stories of 2011 has to be the introduction of the Facebook Timeline.

People may whine and whinge about how it changes the look of their profile but this is probably the most significant aesthetic change Facebook has introduced in a long time.

Look aside, this move by the social media giant could serve as a warning to its competitors, especially as speculation of an IPO gets rife, to show just how much of an institution it already is.

Numbers or users aside (the largest in the world, in case you didn’t know), Timeline also shows other networks what Facebook has that they might not – years of history with its users.

Users who have been with the network from the beginning would have close to a decade’s worth of history saved onto the site, which is now available at a mere click. It not only helps users walk down memory lane but also reminds them just how much they (the user and Facebook) have gone through together over the years.

Who needs to write an autobiography these days? Just make your timeline public (if you dare to share your life with the world!). – NC

Steve Jobs

You might think it’s cliche that Steve Job gets a mention, but in my mind, his passing stands out as one of the best covered events on the Internet, surpassing even Michael Jackson’s.

When the announcement first broke on Twitter, it smashed a number of records with hashtags #iSad and #ThankYouSteve jamming up Twitter and Facebook. Then came the wave of inevitable Steve Jobs quotes flooding everyone’s wall. And this is merely on social network sites.

Blogs, columns and yes, whole websites, started commemorating the inventor of the Apple devices we all love. So if this doesn’t get him a mention as perhaps one of the biggest “things” to happen in the technology or social world, I don’t know what else does. - DL

Google+

While Google+ is not yet a #fail story, one really has to wonder when it’ll all come together for the Internet giant.

Earlier this year, Google released its new social network in beta mode to selected users, although control wasn’t that tight and most early adopters found themselves actively using it within weeks.

Unfortunately for Google, it seems that many of the said early adopters have left the network, or at least left their accounts idle. The biggest problem? No one really knows what adding people to “Circles” mean. Facebook took the easy way out with “Friends” while Twitter’s “Follow” concept is easy enough to grasp.

Despite the bad press (more to do with its initial push for users to use their real names), Google+ is still running, probably because it owns such a huge database of users from its Gmail accounts which makes it easier for new users to start using the network.

But you can’t force these things. If Google doesn’t think of more nifty ideas (such as organising a Google+ Hangout session between the Dalai Lama and Reverend Desmond Tutu), Google+ might just go along the same route as Google Wave and Google Buzz before it.

And that’s nowhere. – NC

> First published in What The Tweet, The Star R.AGE on Dec 28, 2011

With social media being such a “new” phenomenon, it was easy getting caught up in it. Will next year see Twitter trump Facebook, or will Google come up with something to kill off its blue nemesis (it tried, and failed miserably in 2011)?

Who can blame the experts, analysts or academics their predictions? After all, isn’t this the era of new media technologies that move so fast there’s always something new to look into?

Well, not really.

If anything, 2011 has taught us that it’s not the mediums and the networks we should be focusing on.

There was the prediction that this was the year of geolocation – you could tag your tweets with data about where you were, while Facebook’s “check-in” was supposedly going to crush Foursquare. Except that it never really took off, so Facebook essentially killed it and Foursquare remains a niche network.

Some people who saw this coming decided that it would be more accurate to look at it from a business point of view. After all, how many new networks can one deal with? So, while predictions about which social media network will go public entertained us all year, we’re actually still guessing when all of it will happen.

I suspect that while we obsessed over what was coming next – in an effort to one up each other – we forgot to look at what was already at hand.

The biggest mistake in 2011 was asking what was coming next when we should have focused on what the current big guns had in store.

If we just looked at the more mainstream networks, Facebook introduced the social graph and its Timeline, which look set to change the way the Internet functions forever.

Twitter gave us several new looks – not just via its web version but also with its native apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry.

Then more recently, we saw the re-emergence of the “anti-social social network” Path, an iPhone app that once allowed you to add only 50 friends (its reincarnation allows 150). The first time it launched, it died a slow death but rose from the ashes over the past few weeks by “borrowing” ideas from successful applications like Facebook (with its own timeline feature) and Instagram’s photo manipulation concept.

The best part is that it allowed you to connect each update via its application with the most popular existing networks – Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Foursquare.

It’s early days still but it looks set to be the next iPhone app du jour. Why? Well, it’s because it acknowledges the power of the aforementioned social networks and attempts to survive by complementing them as opposed to competing with them.

If my interpretation of what Path is doing is correct, then 2011 would have been the year that the biggest social networks made their mark and withstood any of its competitors – Google+ and Diaspora (what?).

So where does this leave us as 2012 approaches?

I wouldn’t dare make any predictions, really. At this stage, I feel like we’ve been obsessing over social media so much that we’ve forgotten the largest digital ecosystem in which it resides.

Along that vein, I would say that we can look forward to 2012 as the year where digital users empower themselves. We’ve already seen how social media assisted in protests – either in the Arab world or in many Western countries via the Occupy movement – so much so that Time magazine named the “protestors” as its person of the year.

My vision is that next year, we move forward from there and empower ourselves to be active users of social media by being more conscious of how we engage online, be aware of what we’re “liking” and retweeting and figure out how else we can be more efficient users of social media, than just following the trends.

I won’t predict that for 2012, but I would definitely hope for it.

> First published in What The Tweet, The Star R.AGE on Dec 20, 2011