I was happy to host Day Two of the Social Media World Forum Asia in Singapore last week. Overall we don’t spend much time at conferences – preferring to do the work that will be talked about in future. But some great contacts were made and some interesting (young) companies are out there doing interesting things. More about the conference here.

My preview to Day 2.

Social Networking World Forum Asia Day Two

To be part of an event like this is to be part of something that could potentially make a serious difference to your point of view. Whether it be the connections you make, the lessons you learn, or the ideas that are sparked. I hope we can help make that sort of difference to you today.

There is one thing for sure about the digital marketing and technology world – it is brimming with buzz words, catch phrases and over-hype. I am a cynic (but like to think an early adopter too) and we are right to be cynical about anything that is over-hyped. We are right to be cautious when easy solutions are presented.

But behind every bit of ‘buzz’ and every ‘irrational exuberance’ is a clear fact. That things are changing and what is behind that change is significant. Social Media is significant. An in a long line of fads it will certainly make its mark on business, on marketing and on people (or is that because of people?)

In Day One you looked at where we are today and where it could go in the future. We talked about how it fits within the mix and how to build communities which are at the core of social networking. Today our speakers want to extend this to the area of Public Relations and also how it will affect TV or TV 2.0. And then in the afternoon we will have two sessions on Mobile Social Networks.

So while I very much hope that these talks are informative and the discussions help bring understanding and insight – what I hope the most is that they spark ideas, that they help create new thinking in how you can approach your business or customers.

Ultimately I hope that they lead to Action – so that the buzz, no matter how irrational, has lead to change which is the one common denominator behind the world we are dealing with today.

We are happy to post the new website for Lasalle College of the Arts. This relatively simple job was a content migration and new design for the existing site content and structure.

But in the process we have put in a new Joomla! CMS with some nice graphics and an easy way to update their new Live@Lasalle home page.

Thank you to the marketing team at Lasalle, it was a pleasure putting this together.

In keeping with our mantra we are not a digital agency but more correctly, a modern agency in a digital age, we have been rolling out Retail work across Asia for Acer. In line with our Online campaign done in July – we have developed the Retail POS to help launch this exciting new Acer Timeline product. This is just a taste, for full details contact us.

Acer Timeline Hanging Mobile

It’s this time of the year in Singapore again. Time when people working with Flash platform gather and spend few great days together. Last year it was first TAC, and it was great. This year, in it’s 2nd edition speaker list got impressive, conference expanded from one day to two days so it’s guaranteed there will be double fun.

The Upper Storey like last year decided to be a Bronze sponsor. We love Flash and we like supporting the community. Let’s meet at the conference and talk about things that keep us going further, like wonderful web technologies.

List of speakers should get you interested to come, even if you need to travel to Singapore specially for this occasion:  Ryan Stewart, Andre Michelle,  Mark Barcinski, Peter Elst, Marco Casario, Leif Wells, Stefan Wessels, Michael Plank, Mohammed Khan and local talents Alvin Zhang, Stefano Virgilli and Hu Shunjie. Topic covered are wide ranging from Audio processing in Flash, Papervision 3D, AIR, Flash Platform, Flex integration to even Multi-touch in Flash.

The Upper Storey will be presenting too. A ten minute walk through one of our latest projects.

See you all at The Actionscript Conference.

Our “Tomorrow’s Stars, Today” site for Intel wins Site of the Day for August 8th over at the prestigious design portal Favorite Website Awards. Yay! Thanks guys.

Facebook Lite versus Twitter

Facebook Lite is a very smart move by Facebook to consolidate an ever-growing social networking captive audience to a single platform, i.e. why use 2 platforms when one can do it all and do it quickly? Facebook Lite is definitely a threat to Twitter, no doubt about it. Most folks who have Twitter accounts also have Facebook accounts. What if Facebook Lite provides users with a tool very similar/better than Twitter? What if their service is far superior in dealing with things like spam (a serious problem twitter continues to struggle with and always have)? What if the service as a whole is superior? They have a MASSIVE platform to work from – these guys are not starting from scratch, they already have a much more popular service than twitter and are not little-leaguers when it comes to social networking.

I’d say Facebook Lite has a high chance of winning greater market share from Twitter, but only after a 12 months at the very least. Why? Twitter has a massive following in the West, where most tech and social media opinion leaders reside. Twitter gives those who don’t want a MySpace or a Facebook a way to still keep in touch with people. It’s easier than instant messaging and less costly than text messaging. It’s a great tool to get one message out to everyone quick and allows people to check on other people when those people want. That’s what the main feature of Facebook Lite needs to be about – giving people a quick and easy way to keep in touch with people and broadcast messages.

Twitter should be very concerned, especially in Asia where Facebook has a much larger following than Twitter. I suspect Twitter will try to expand its offering to compete head on with Facebook, at least in the United States.

The use of mobile devices with social media is a huge growth area. Why? Smartphones manufacturers like Apple, RIM and Nokia have immensely improved the processing speed and browsing experience of their devices. Bandwidth is increasing by the day. People are more mobile and want to express their thoughts and opinions real-time. The trends are obvious.

P.S. Facebook recently acquired a start-up company from Silicon Valley called FriendFeed, which allows members to see what their friends are doing online and share content. It has been described as a potential “rival to Twitter in its ability to conduct real-time search.