A different perspective to Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem

My friend Jon Russell from The Next Web has recently penned that there are four issues challenging Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem: risk aversion, fear of failure, lack of big firm presence and immature ecosystem.

To his credit, he has spotted some inherent weaknesses of a diverse market fragmented not just by geography but also business culture. In a similar reflection, Michael Smith Jr from Spuul focused on the lack of enough big firms.

While there is a lot of hurrah with the arrival of 500 Startups to the region, there are several trends that might deter the growth of the ecosystem — the purpose of this article is to open a discussion on what these might be. Read more

Photos: A glimpse into Facebook Singapore’s newly renovated office

Facebook Singapore opened up its newly renovated sales office to the media yesterday. The office features a mish-mash of different themes. Graffiti created by local artists line the walls of the pantries and offices, along with replicas of shophouse shutters and windows. Blue lanterns adorn the ceilings.

These familiar local elements are mixed with what has come to define the quintessential Facebook office: Posters encouraging employees to “move fast and break things”, a wall for visitors and staff to write messages, and red industrial pipes that signify a company in constant evolution. Read more

Facebook Page comments are now ads, rules Australia watchdog; makes brands liable for breaches

Australia’s industry watchdog Advertising Standards Bureau has ruled that it considers Facebook brand pages and the comments in it to be forms of advertising, stemming from a complaint about sexist, obscene, and racist comments on the Smirnoff Facebook page.

This landmark ruling means the ASB believes brands are responsible for the content written by their fans on branded Facebook pages, and must comply with industry self-regulatory codes and therefore consumer protection laws.

In its ruling, the ASB said: “The board considered that the Facebook site of an advertiser is a marketing communication tool over which the advertiser has a reasonable degree of control and could be considered to draw the attention of a segment of the public to a product in a manner calculated to promote or oppose directly or indirectly that product. Read more

Mysteries surround Facebook’s Asia Pacific Gateway project

The Asia Pacific Gateway (APG) is an NTT (Nippon Telephone and Telegraph)-led initiative to lay submarine cables across 12 Asian Telcos and not 11 as initially reported.

These countries include: China (China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom), Taiwan (Chunghwa Telecom), Korea (KT and LG Uplus), Japan (NTT Communications), Singapore (StarHub), Malaysia (Time dotcom), Vietnam (Viettel and Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications) and the Philippines (PLDT).

Credit: SubmarineNetworks.com

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From Browser to Kernel: Learn about Facebook’s cool performance tricks in Tech Talk this August

Interested in learning what drives the success of the world’s largest website? Facebook Asia-Pacific is hosting an invite-only only session, called Tech Talk, in Singapore this August!

For the event, attendees will get to hear Sanjeev Singh, part of the Software Engineering team based in Facebook’s Menlo Park office, touch on topics including Facebook engineering, infrastructure and challenges. He will even share some of the coolest performance tricks in use for Facebook’s entire stack — from Browser to Kernel! Read more

Everyone has a Facebook agony aunt; SocialKit tells you who it is

Like real life, every friend on Facebook plays a different role. There’s the Talkative One, the Quiet Admirer, the Agony Aunt, the Winger, and of course, the Partner (Facebook doesn’t allow for Partners, sorry).

SocialKit, a web app from the folks at GoodStuph, a Singapore-based “badass” social media marketing company, finds out who these people are on your social media social life, and more. Read more

Facebook Studio aims to inspire marketers to run better social media campaigns

With more than 900 million monthly active users, Facebook has the potential to be a great marketing tool. The social network hopes to build on this potential through Facebook Studio, a platform that enables the marketing community to get inspiration on how to run their Facebook campaigns.

Marketers can upload their marketing campaigns, gain recognition for their efforts, and perhaps more importantly, be inspired by great examples across the world. Once campaigns are uploaded onto Facebook Studio, they can be shared and “liked”. As a result, marketers can gauge the popularity and reception a particular campaign has. One feature agencies will also find useful is the ability to credit multiple contributors for any single campaign. Read more

Facebook Pages Manager now available on iTunes in Singapore and select countries

The Facebook Pages Manager is now available for free to iPhone and iPad users through the Apps Store. The app by the world’s largest social network lets users manage their company’s Facebook Pages using their phone.

While the official Facebook app allows for some basic Facebook Page management, it lacks a lot of key features. This new app has the ability to let social media managers post new updates and photos on their Pages, get push notifications about Page activity, view Page insights, and more. Read more

Facebook Offers rolls out in Asia, gives daily deal sites a run for their money

Facebook has launched a feature that allows users to get special deals from merchants within the social network.

The deals will appear on their news feeds, and after claiming a deal, an email will be sent to the user. The deal can then be redeemed by flashing the email at a store.

Facebook Offers is currently in beta and is being rolled out to selected businesses in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, US, and Turkey, according to The Verge. Read more

The fastest growing Facebook nations in Asia (first quarter 2012)

A version of this article was first published on Grey Review.

Facebook has over 850 million users worldwide. Out of that, a total of 194 million users are from Asia at the end of March 2012. Most of these users from the Southeast Asia region – 97 million or 54% of the total Facebook users in Asia. Some other observations on the latest Facebook in Asia statistics: Read more