Facebook Now Available In Malay

Selamat Datang ke Facebook dalam bahasa Melayu.
Kini penutur bahasa
Melayu di seluruh dunia boleh menyertai Facebook. Berhubunglah dengan semua
rakan anda, tidak kira apa bahasanya.
Gunakan Penjejak Rakan
untuk mengetahui sama ada lebih ramai rakan anda telah menyertai dan jemput semua rakan
berbahasa Melayu anda untuk mendaftar.

This is amazing but not unexpected. Facebook is now available for the Malay speaking - about 26 million of them in Malaysia alone.

Check it out. This is what I call smart web development. If Facebook's algorithms have been programmed right, the conversations can be turned into its database of the Malay lexicon. Now, I just hope the Dewan Bahasa Dan Pustaka is smart enough to capitalise on this to champion Bahasa Melayu and promote it worldwide.

What Blogger Is Doing To Fight Spam

I just discovered a good feature Blogger has introduced - an anti-Spam Blog feature. If you wish to read more about Spam Blogs, go here.

Basically, what it does is that an automated feature on all blogs hosted by Blogger (or elsewhere and managed by Blogger Dashboard) detects any possibility of a blog becoming a Spam Blog. Once it detects or identifies your Blog as a potential Spam Blog, it sends you a notifcation at the blog's registration email, locking your blog, and urges you to act within a specified period to unlock the blog - failing which your blog will be deleted.

Among the things implemented are:

1. It keep spam blogs out of NextBlog and the "Recently Published" list.
2. The same classifiers are used to require an extra word verification field on the posting form for potential spam blogs, making it harder for spammers to set up automated systems to do their posting since human intervention needs to complete this step.
3. The Flag as Objectionable button is introduced in the Navbar which lets readers notify Blogger of problem blogs and put them for review them and take appropriate action

This is an interesting development for Blogger towards creating a more socially responsible blogging commune on the web, especially when Blogger is the biggest host of blog community. Whether this control over spammers is in line with the Internet spirit of free speech is another matter, however. At the very least, from a public relations aspect, this anti-Spam Blog control will garner goodwill from Internet-users and keep spamming rogues at their wits' end.

However, it is interesting to note too that many blogs have been set up to host objectionable content, particularly porn, disguised under 'ADULT MATERIAL'. One wonders what Blogger is doing about it next,

Please Login/Register - Dangerous Words You Should Use Sparingly On Sites

A decade an a half ago, during the big rush to get to the Web, one newsportal I know had these two words prominently displayed on its landing page:

Please Login
(below these, in finer print, are)
If You Have Not Registered, Do It Here

As a result of this, users were turned off.

Indeed in the days of Internet infancy, particularly among Malaysian websites, the urge to gather visitor/user information was immense.

Most website owners thought that if you were to ask users to register or log in, it would allow you at least to get the users' profiles in exchange of the service you provide.

It was a feeble attempt at datamining in those days. The only portals that have successfully used it were the free email providers and chat rooms, where the need to have access far outweighed any afterthoughts on the part of the users. Others who have applied the Login requirement have successfullly driven off their potential return visitors, I believe.

Today, the Login/Register requirement is still being used thoughtlessly, without considering the implications. If you are a public relations practitioner in charge of your company's website, or a webmaster tasked to craft your firm's portal, think again if you should put up the Login/Register barrier gate at your front door.

Unless you only want registered users to use your site, I suggest provide alternatives for all visitors.

Allow limited access for sampling of your site's content. For more access, a Login/Register requirement can be imposed. This will allow the user to decide if he wants to register or not.

When you set up a Login/Register requirement, you will need additional resources such as a backend database to serve login information. Can you afford this? Maintenance costs will also be higher.

You will also be bound by privacy laws that require you, the service provider, to protect any personal information. Any leaks or spams resulting from it can and will attract legal actions.

If you have not realised it, datamining using Login/Register feature may not be accurate. Have you ever registered with a fake access information just to see what lies beyond the locked front door of a website? If you have, then don't you think some people will just do the same and the data you have just mined could well be adding to your server garbage?

In conclusion, use Login/Register feature sparingly and intelligently. Unless you really need it, don't even think about it!

And if you really need users to register to log in, make the registration simple - emails and usernames will do more than a string of text fields from your cat's name to your granny's social security number.

Great Copy Makes Interesting Ads

Since the day Bernbach sold the Beetle to the world in two words "Think Small", the war for eyeballs has more or less centered around good advertising copy. Sometimes it is more than two words, sometimes a mouthful of a sentence.

But ask any copywriter worth his/her salt, he/she will opt for a catchy heading than rivers of text.

Good headline for ad copy can sometimes say more than a truckload of text. Look at these ads below and you will get what I mean.



(In Malaysia, back in the 70s when Maggie is trying to gain a foothold, it was the jingle "Maggi Mee, Fast To Cook, Good To Eat" that created the brand recognition both on TV and across the airwaves on radio.)

In advertising, a little exaggeration is allowed. If your product is good, you can brag to the world. Such is the case of this ad by Horlicks:

This little girl is telling you that you can be healthy if you drink Horlicks. Subtle and effective, doesn't it? I remember this concept being used by one cod liver oil peddler in Malaysia in its TV ad.

The advertisement shows an empty classroom with only one boy student seated facing his teacher. The teacher asks for the names of other students and was told, each time, that they were absent. All except the boy, who had apparently been fed with cod liver oil, had taken medical leave because they were ill.



Who says you need a frightening ad to send the message that drugs are harmful, just like you see on Malaysian TV and billboards? This one says everything about starting them young on anti-drug campaign. The problem with using nursery rhymes like this, in Malaysia, is that not many may understand it.

Tainted Milk Scandal: Chinese Public Relations Crisis

This piece of news came more than three weeks after the first baby died of complications suffered from the side-effects of consuming melamine-tained milk. AFP reported it:

China tries to contain tainted milk fallout

BEIJING (AFP) — China attempted Sunday to contain the fallout from the tainted milk scandal, announcing a new survey of dairy products showed no traces of melamine and promising to subsidise farmers hit by the scare.

The latest test of more than 600 batches of liquid milk from 27 cities across China showed they were free of melamine, the industrial chemical at the centre of the dairy scare, the Beijing Morning Post reported.

Products made by 75 brands were sampled including prominent ones such as Yili, Mengniu and Bright Dairy, the paper said, citing the nation's product safety watchdog.

It was the sixth round of tests in China since the milk scare broke last month, according to the watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

Why this came such a long time after the first case was detected and the news was allowed spread like wild bush fire, albeit uncontrolled, was perplexing. From where I am sitting, the only assumption is that the Chinese authorities did not activate its Public Relations mechanism fast enough. Now that the fallout has reached global proportions, it will be quite a task to try to manage it, except let time be the greatest healer.

Like I said earlier, improperly managed crisis can turn into great disasters. This is one fine example.