Someone Did Win on July 9th - Charis Ding
A friend of ours wrote this beautiful piece for Malaysia-today.net and below is the complete article.
I went to the rally as a spectator. I returned a believer. And I had ice cream with the FRU.
By Charis Ding
I went as an individual rather than as a supporter. Whenever asked throughout the day, I told people “I just wanted to see what’s going on”. And that was the truth.
In the weeks leading to it, I was undecided whether to support the rally. Right up to yesterday I couldn’t decide. But I knew I didn’t want to stay home or watch from a distance. I didn’t want to just follow the news online. I had to see it with my own eyes. So I decided to do a walkabout, and I thought perhaps it would take being there to help me make my stand. And so as I was there I considered myself an observer – a reporter.
The police presence at the Pasar Seni area was overwhelming. In front of Central Market, four or five blue trucks in a row. Tension on the streets. It was eerily quiet. On Petaling Street, I walked past a small sized aunty in a yellow shirt (: I overheard her words to a few young boys around her – “We must stay united” she said - “that’s why we must wear yellow, to show we are united”. I smiled as I passed.
I saw that the flower shop was open and bought a bunch of daisies.
There was tension in the air, the sense of waiting for something to erupt. At Masjid Jamek, there were more policemen than civilians. I took note of their batons, their weapons. The air was oppressive. I caught myself seeing the men in uniform as the antagonists – weren’t they on the other side? But then I realized they were supposed to be our friends. It is their job to protect people like me.
I sat with the other people from various media. On the side of the road leading to the stadium, huge intimidating FRU trucks were lined up. POLICE barricades. After a while hanging around, I decided to wander across those borders. Some of the police, leaning against their truck, looked straight at me. I smiled, they smiled back. Phew. I walked by a bunch of intimidating looking FRU people staring at me. Right across the road from Dataran Merdeka, I stole a picture of one of them leaning on the back of his truck. He called me over. We chatted.
It’s tough, he said. They’ve been here and there all week, hardly with any sleep. Staying watch to make sure everything’s alright. Sometimes they sleep in the trucks. They were there until the wee hours of the morning yesterday, and came back early in the morning. If he could, he’d rather just have a quiet Saturday, stay at home, watch TV.
I nodded because I understood.
I spoke from my heart – it shouldn’t be this way. We should all be friends … we are friends.
Apa nak buat? There is always a chance of those who will cause trouble, he said. Don’t hang around here, he advised. It’s not that safe today.
A motorcycle tried to pass, carrying packages in plastic bags. Not wanting to distract him or get him into trouble, I took my leave. Told him to jaga baik-baik. He said “nice to meet you”.
I started back across to the other side. Halfway, I came across a bunch from the FRU surrounding an ice cream man, buying ice cream in buns. “Ais krim!” I kinda exclaimed. I was beside myself. “Ambik lah”, they said. “Which one do you want? Cornetto?” Just realizing that I had pretty much imposed upon them to belanja me ice cream, I said – “Takpe takpe, saya beli sendiri”.
“Takpe, bayar sama sama” – one of them said. They insisted I pick one.
“Where you from?” – they asked in English. “Here”, I said – “saya orang sini saje”. They laughed, “oh, ingatkan orang jepun!”
As we stood around with our ice creams, they asked me who I was. Did I come for the rally? “saya cume seorang gadis biasa” I said. They found that very amusing. “jangan-jangan ada t-shirt kuning dalam beg tu”.
I laughed – “tak de lah…”.
Then what was I doing there? “Saje mau tengok”, I said. “cume ingin tahu”.
“Baguslah tu”, he said. “But you shouldn’t hang around today, it might not be safe”. I asked them, “Apa khabar?”. “Ok”, they said. A bit tired, they hardly had any sleep. Ada rase tension? “Tension tu, sikit-sikit mesti ada lah”.
We finished our ice creams, and I said goodbye. “Jaga diri”, I said. “Jumpa lagi”.
I just had ice cream with the FRU.
Right after I crossed the barrier there was a commotion and the media was running towards where I had just came from. They were apparently mobilizing.
About twenty minutes later, I was in the middle in front of the Maybank Tower with the throngs of people on my right and the FRU line on the left. The crowd had just gathered, they weren’t even moving forward yet. The FRU shot water cannons. It was unprovoked. Then the gas came. When it hit, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe. And it hurt. I grabbed some water from my bag and washed my face with it. I covered my face with my baju. In the chaos, one, two people offered me salt. “Makan”, they told me. It really helped. I crumbled and sat on the corridors for a minute, eyes and nose watering.
I got up and kept walking, now amongst the people. Some looked me in the face, Chinese ladies speaking in Mandarin, Malay men in Malay, they seemed shocked and concerned. I must’ve looked a mess. “Are you ok?”, they asked me. I tried to smile and nodded.
Soon, people started running. From a distance I saw the men in dark blue chasing the marchers. So many of them. People were running down the hill slope at the Maybank Tower compound. Nowhere to run, they jumped down the hill from some height, scampering across the streets.
I ended up in Pudu, watching the marchers and listening to their shouts of “Hidup Rakyat!”. When we had to run later, at one point it was tricky to escape and we had to climb a railing at Pudu station. In the huru-hara, the man beside me, instead of just climbing up himself, was yelling to his friend – “Tolong amoi ini dulu!” He seemed more anxious for me than he was for himself, or even I was for myself.
Then it started to rain, and I thought – God Himself has intervened.
Once more, I had brothers who were concerned enough to ask me if I was ok. I followed the crowd and met some young men who had come all the way from Pahang for this. We ended up in front of the Chinese Assembly Hall, where a huge crowd had gathered. The police formed a human barricade, arms crossed, and barbed wire at the entrance of the road just a short distance from the Stadium. A. Samad Said came and talked with the policemen. Such a frail man, but so strong.
We sang Negaraku … and we sang it from the heart.
We dispersed soon after. I heard someone asking others to kutip sampah before we left. Retreating, suddenly part of the crowd broke into a run. There was a big group of police chasing from behind. Just as soon as we wanted to run instinctively, others said jangan lari … bertenang. Relaks saja. And we all calmed down again. It was like that the whole day – anytime there seemed to be a chance for rowdiness or chaos or violence, the people themselves would calm each other down, keep things in check.
Meeting up with my friends who were in the KLCC group, we exchanged stories. My friend Jagadev was at the frontline. He had been hit by teargas seven times that day, and he has a battle wound from where a canister hit his leg. But the bulk of what we spoke of wasn’t of hatred or anger – but a sense of passion, of new hope, and of solidarity as a people.
“It seems we’ve got pretty decent people”, I mused as a passing comment. I didn’t know how true it would turn out to be but it was immediately confirmed.
So many stories. My friend, caught in the rain, had a Malay man hand her some papers for her to cover up from the rain.
Hit by the full brunt of the tear gas, Jagad, along with a few others, stopped to help a man who had fallen down. He was heavy, too.
When someone tried to shout, incite others and burn a Patriot t-shirt, the rest immediately stopped him, silenced him and removed him from the group.
We are a decent, civilized people. What we experienced that day - Malaysia.
Later on at dinner with a different group of friends, the conversation was about our nation. This was rare. In the fifteen years I’ve known them, I don’t think we’ve ever talked together about politics, or our nation, or playing a part in it. At least, not like this. But that night, they said to me – because of you guys, we’ve decided we are going to register to vote.
They too caught the passion. The unggun. They too were upset over how the government had reacted to the rally, and the statement made by the Bersih marchers is loud and clear. I think it was a statement of hope that they caught. Tens of thousands of Malaysians who went out for a better nation. It’s a call that we can no longer disown or detach ourselves from, because we are in no way a lost cause.
In the midst of this conversation with my friends, something amazing happened. Following Bersih stories on Twitter, we talked about how good Malaysians can be … we remembered certain events and openly admitted those from other races who have been kind to us. And we confronted our stereotypes of always painting them a certain way.
A distinct thought came home to me then: Malaysia, I do love you.
That night we said cheers, to a better Malaysia.
By the end of the day, I discovered I referred to the marchers and myself as ‘we’, no longer ‘them’ and ‘I’. It is because we were there together, as Malaysia. We helped each other and cared for each other as Malaysia. There was no political agenda with the people there – I was there, I experienced it and I know it. It was Malaysia, embracing in our hearts and our actions the hope for better government.
What I experienced on the 9th of July is Malaysia. We are decent people, we are a people of quality. Those in power who are selfish or bigots or who try to divide the people – that is not Malaysia, and they are not deserving of Malaysia. Those who try to taint and politicize the beautiful events of that day, are not deserving of Malaysia. We are a people who deserve much more than that.
We came out and proved that yesterday. It has proved to me, to the marchers who were there, to my friends, what Malaysia is.
And so, on 9th July, Malaysia won.
Source: malaysia-today.net
This image just showcase how the media is being controlled by some high level phantoms to manipulate the mass and media. It’s a freaking photoshop work that make it look as though the people is violent and as such needed to be water-cannoned and tear-gassed continuously.
To know more detail about the whole event, just search Bersih and read those bloggers whom are sincere and truthful in their writings. Here is the facebook fan page for Bersih. Or their official site, http://bersih.org/
Please, refrain from putting any trust in the news and media released by Media Prima, Berita Harian, The Star, and China Press. They are already known to be manipulating the news and make the people looks like some kind of barbarians on the run!
Go to these folks, such as:
To folks who are confused as to what happened to Malaysia, please read the short notes below.
On 9th of July, 2011, a historical event took place in downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It’s called Bersih 2.0, the first took place in year 2007. So this time around, it’s more like a second episode.
The following excerpts are from their facebook page.
The Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections or Gabungan Pilihanraya Bersih dan Adil (better known by its Bahasa Malaysia name “BERSIH”) issued its first joint communiqué on 23 November 2006.
At its formation, BERSIH comprised civil society organisations and political parties with the objective of campaigning for clean and fair elections in Malaysia.
BERSIH’s journey thus far has been both monumental and memorable. The public demonstration of November 2007, which saw thousands of ordinary Malaysians take to the streets in support of clean and fair elections, was a critical juncture in our nation’s electoral journey.
Almost 3 ½ years later, the aims of BERSIH continue to be relevant.
The time has now come for BERSIH to continue its crusade for clean and fair elections independent of any political party. BERSIH is thus being re-launched as BERSIH 2.0, a coalition of like minded civil society organisations unaffiliated to any political party. Our aim will be to effectively monitor both sides of the political divide.
The Steering Committee members of BERSIH 2.0 are as follows :
Dato’ Ambiga Sreenevasan, Chairperson
Andrew Khoo
Arumugam K.
Farouk Musa
Maria Chin Abdullah
Haris Ibrahim
Liau Koh Fah
Richard Y W Yeoh
Toh Kin Woon
Wong Chin Huat
Yeoh Yang Poh
Zaid Kamaruddin
But the demand for this ideology is much refined and list here:
8 Points Bersih 2.0′s calls consist of 8 points. In summary, they are: 1. Clean the electoral roll 2. Reform postal ballot 3. Use of indelible ink 4. Minimum 21 days campaign period 5. Free and fair access to media 6. Strengthen public institutions 7. Stop corruption 8. Stop dirty politics
Source: bharian.com.my
7 Twitter Marketing Campaigns to Learn From
While marketing activities on Twitter are often described by silly, Twitterized words — like tweetathon, twontest and tweetchat — these types of campaigns have provensuccessful for marketers and brands of all sizes. There are a number of winning Twitter strategies used by top brands, but those same companies tend to mix up the types of individual marketing campaigns they run on Twitter, whether paid or organic. Here are seven successful Twitter marketing campaigns from American Airlines, Network Solutions, UNICEF India, IBM, USA for UNHCR, McDonald’s Canada and appbackr. Read about their successes below and share your brand’s Twitter campaign victories in the comments. In celebration of the 30th anniversary of its AAdvantage loyalty program, American Airlines ran a Twitter contest called “Tweet to Win 30K Miles.” The Twitter contest was a smaller portion of a larger campaign, called “Deal 30,” which involved 30 partner deals and promotions over 30 weekdays. The AAdvantage team created a microsite that promoted a new daily partner deal or promotion — the Twitter contest occurred on the fourth day of the promotion. Participants had to register their AAdvantage number on a microsite, tweet the #Deal30 hashtag and follow the @AAdvantageaccount to enter for a chance to win 30,000 AAdvantage miles. The campaign was promoted primarily through AAdvantage and American Airlines’ social media channels with the goals of driving traffic to the Deal 30 microsite to increase buzz for the remaining deals and to attract new Twitter followers for the recently launched @AAdvantage Twitter account. Success Metrics: Within one week, the microsite’s bit.ly link gained nearly 18,000 clicks via Twitter, and the @AAdvantage Twitter account experienced a 70% increase in followers. And overall, retweets on Twitter increased 43% and the Deal 30 microsite garnered more than 27,000 entries. Lesson: Weber Shandwick account supervisor and AAdvantage community manager Colin Alsheimer shares his takeaways about the campaign with Mashable: “Given a valuable enough incentive, users will complete several registration steps for entry. The requirement to share a specific tweet and hashtag to an entrants own social network is what drove the success of this promotion, especially given that it wasn’t heavily supported by other media channels. In the future, we’d probably require that users take fewer steps for entry in order to increase the total number of entrants. Including a specific and unique hashtag was essential for tracking purposes.” During the 2011 Super Bowl, domain registrar Network Solutions aimed to detract from competitor GoDaddy’srisqué media blitz while promoting its .CO product offerings. Instead of directly competing with GoDaddy’s substantial Super Bowl ad buy, Network Solutions worked with agency CRT/tanaka to spoof GoDaddy’s infamous Super Bowl commercials with hopes of garnering attention on Twitter among social media influencers. With a $200,000 budget, the company developed a concept around Go Granny, “the original domain girl,” and created a series of mockumentary vignettes featuring Academy Award-winner Cloris Leachman. While the campaign was centered around one parody commercial hosted on YouTube (embedded above), Twitter played a large role in the promotion and success of the campaign. “Go Granny’s antics did not stop on YouTube. She took her sassy personality to drive traffic to the video,” says CRT/tanaka director of social media Priya Ramesh. “She took over Twitter for three one-hour long tweetcapades on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Super Bowl weekend. During the tweetcapades,@Go_Granny‘s tweets were carefully targeted to win the attention of influencers like Guy Kawasaki and Scott Monty, under the premise she was inviting people to her Super Bowl party. The team of powerful mommy bloggers at BlogHer participated in the tweetcapades as well, tapping into their extensive networks.” Success Metrics: In five days, the campaign inspired more than 3,500 tweets and garnered nearly 20 million impressions across Twitter, reports agency CRT/tanaka. On top of that, #GoGranny became a trending topic in Washington, D.C., and top influencers who tweeted about Go Granny included Gina Trapani and Brian Solis. Even more impressive, the company’s sales of the .CO domain increased by more than 500% during Super Bowl weekend as a direct result of the campaign. Lesson: “Twitter is extremely helpful for generating buzz around an online social media campaign, but it needs support from other social outlets as well,” says Shashi Bellamkonda, director of social media and PR at Network Solutions. He continues: “For maximum success, Twitter can’t stand alone. Beyond tweeting, our team dropped blog posts about the campaign, alerted our Facebook base, sent out an email to our customer, issued a press release and conducted traditional media outreach. We also worked with BlogHer to tap into their extensive network of influential women and mom bloggers. If marketers do their homework and recognize that Twitter campaigns must go hand-in-hand with other efforts, they will increase their overall success. In our case, once the Go Granny tweetcapades started, there was no stopping them.” UNICEF India’s agency, OgilvyOne Worldwide, enlisted social agency BUZZVALVE to manage a three-month social media campaign to promote UNICEF’s “Awaaz Do” (which means “lend your voice” in Hindi) initiative, an effort to send eight million unschooled Indian children back to education. “The thrust of our campaign lay in targeting influential personas and celebrities on Twitter,” says BUZZVALVE CEO Rohan Chandrashekhar. “A retweet or a mention by them proved crucial for our outreach program and to get word out about the campaign.” Bollywood icons Priyanka Chopra and Shekhar Kapur were among others to tweet about the campaign. BUZZVALVE encouraged their participation by showing them how big of an impact they had on the initiative. Chandrashekhar explains: “We set up a two-way communication channel between us and them, where we were able to show them through our analytics the kind of impact they were having on Twitter and among their followers on every retweet or mention about the campaign. In effect, rather than have them formally ‘endorse’ the campaign, we helped them ‘participate’ actively. Our analytics helped them understand their own influence and this acted as an encouragement for them be active campaigners. We thus created an environment for them to engage with us and the ‘Awaaz Do’ cause directly, by making real-time info about their impact available to them.” Success Metrics: During the three-month campaign, the #AWAAZDO hashtag received 1,525 mentions and the @UNICEFIndia Twitter account gained 2,198 followers. The campaign itself received 60,540 impressions on Twitter during the time period, as calculated using Tweetreach. By the end of the campaign, the Awaaz Do website garnered 203,248 signups of people interested in “joining the movement” to help get India’s children back to school. Lesson: Non-profit organizations can increase their celebrity endorsers’ activity with a campaign by showing them just how impactful their Twitter involvement is. Sharing analytics with celebrities involved in the campaign can encourage them to share the campaign with their followers more often. For Lotusphere 2011, one of IBM’s annual user conferences for customers and partners, the tech firm expanded its typical social media strategy and created a social media hub, a single online landing page providing a live stream of blogs, Twitter comments, Flickr photos and videos of keynote sessions and interviews from the conference. To keep chatter organized on Twitter, the company employed the hashtag #ls11. Success Metrics: By mid-event at Lotusphere 2011, which takes place from January 30 to February 3, there were more than 20,000 tweets tagged with the #ls11 hashtag, and the hub site’s video channel had garnered 34,000 views. As of February 15, 2011, there were more than 35,000 tweets with the #ls11 hashtag, and 9,500 of those tweets were retweeted. IBM calculates that the campaign garnered more than 41 million total impressions on Twitter. Lesson: Whether it’s as simple as employing a hashtag or as strategic as creating a social landing page, aggregating and organizing conversation around your brand, especially during events, is key to making a splash on Twitter. For World Refugee Day this year, USA for UNHCR held a “tweetathon” as part of its overall Blue Key Campaign, which asks Americans to purchase a symbolic $5 Blue Key pin or pendant to show their support for refugees worldwide and the 6,000 UNHCR staffers who work 24/7 to assist them. The tweetathon took place on Monday, June 13, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET, seven days before World Refugee Day, and it featured a number of social-savvy “Blue Key Champions” tweeting via their personal Twitter accounts for at least an hour each, while supporting tweets originating from the official @UNRefugeeAgencyTwitter handle. Roya Hosseini, wife of The Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini and the Twitter voice of theKhaled Hosseini Foundation (@tkhf) also appeared on the tweetathon as a special guest, which especially increased awareness of the tweetathon and campaign. Success Metrics: On the day of the tweetathon, 1,524 tweets used the #bluekey hashtag, which is a significant increase over the daily average of 50 that occurred during the rest of the campaign. Traffic to the Blue Key website also increased 169% over the previous high point. Furthermore, more than 50% of key purchases for that week were a result of the tweetathon. Lesson: A tweetathon can significantly benefit a time-sensitive social good campaign. USA for UNHCR’s social media consultant Shonali Burke explains that the campaign experienced a huge bump in activity as a result of using Twitter: “From December 2010 (when the Blue Key site was launched) until April 2011, there were approximately 1,100 keys dispatched. For the duration of the 6-week campaign (May 9 to June 20), there were 2,645 keys dispatched, and significant awareness created via online and social media. That’s a huge jump in just 6 weeks.” Agency Golin Harris recently launched a geo-targeted Promoted Account for its client, McDonald’s Canada, which was the first brand in Canada to execute such a campaign. The goal was to leverage Promoted Accounts to increase @McD_Canada’s average new followers by using a ‘suggested follow’ that targeted Twitter users via specified keywords and hashtags. While the client declined to share specific keywords used, citing “the competitive nature of how McDonald’s Canada gains followers using Promoted Accounts,” it was quite pleased with the results, noting that the use of diverse keywords and hashtags enabled the company to reach viewers of many demographics with many different interests. Success Metrics: With a total budget of $15,000 USD, McDonald’s Canada gained 9,503 new followers over the course of the campaign. The campaign also drew in 14,200 profile views and resulted in a 4% overall engagement rate, which includes retweets, replies, favorites and clicks. This engagement rate is quite high when one considers that advertising click-through rates are generally subzero percentages. Lesson: Paid advertising on Twitter, including Promoted Tweets, Trends and Accounts, can be an option for brands looking to gain new eyes. Brands should test out various hashtags and keywords to target their desired audience. “The Twitter team acted as a great resource to help McDonald’s Canada test out different keywords and bids to gain the greatest amount of new followers,” notes Karin Campbell, senior manager of external communications, McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada Limited. App marketplace appbackr began using Promoted Tweets and Account in mid-May to promote the LSATMaxapp that is currently on its way to funding its next iteration via the appbackr platform. “The app is directed to people studying for the LSAT, so a 20 to 26 age group roughly,” says Sarah Cornwell, product manager at appbackr. “Our online marketing budget for this app was split between Facebook ads and Twitter. In the past, we would have focused entirely on Facebook, but with Twitter, we can watch the impact in bit.ly, and we like that immediate feedback.” Cornwell stressed that creating a targeted campaign on Twitter, instead of targeting a wider audience, gave appbackr the most bang for its buck. “LSATMax lends itself to a targeted campaign. We were able to focus on people on Twitter searching for relevant keywords — LSAT, law school, etc. — to let them know this app was available as a study tool.” Success Metrics: In six weeks, appbackr has increased its follower count by 140% (from 880 to 2,114) and increased traffic to its site from Twitter by 94%. Furthermore, traffic from Twitter as a percentage of appbackr’s total site traffic rose from 2.6% to 4.4%. And of its Twitter from traffic, the percentage of new visits rose from 51% to 65%. Lesson: Appbackr’s campaign with Promoted Tweets and Accounts enabled it to reach a highly targeted audience on Twitter, resulting in an increase in Twitter followers and site traffic.1. American Airlines: Celebrate Successes with a Hashtag
2. Network Solutions: Use Twitter to Promote Larger Social Campaigns
3. UNICEF India: Show Celebrities Their Impact on Social Good Projects
4. IBM: Aggregate & Organize Event Conversation
5. USA for UNHCR: Hold a Tweetathon
6. McDonald’s Canada: Target Specific Users with a Promoted Account
7. appbackr: Increase Site Traffic with Promoted Tweets & Accounts
Source: Mashable
Brother - Printer. Has gone colorful this time around in it’s ATL.
Brother Large format Printers: Poster guerilla
Source: jaymug
LinkedIn Is Sending Us Far More Referral Traffic Than Twitter.com Now
If I asked you which of the major social sites you thought sent us the most traffic, you might think it was Twitter. After all, the TechCrunch Twitter account has over 1.7 million followers. When you compare this to the (just under) 250,000 fans our Facebook TechCrunch page has, it should be no contest, right? Wrong.
The truth is that if this were October of last year, you would have been right in thinking that Twitter was our top referrer in terms of social websites. But since that time, Facebook has far surpassed Twitter in terms of traffic coming our way each month. In fact, Facebook.com is now sends nearly double the traffic that Twitter.com does. This is probably due to the fact that last November, we added Elin, our excellent community manager, who curates and engages with people from our feed on Facebook. I also suspect it has to do with the rise of the Like button. Ever since it was released last year, Facebook has been steadily referring more readers our way.
But this info, while interesting, isn’t all that surprising. After all, Facebook is by far the largest social network in the world. With over 750 million active users, it still dwarfs Twitter. The really surprising thing is that Twitter isn’t even our number two social referrer in terms of websites anymore. As of this month, that distinction goes to LinkedIn. And it’s not even close.
Yes, LinkedIn, the professional social network which just went public is now by far our second biggest referrer of social traffic. That’s crazy when you consider that just last month, it was around half the size of Twitter (in terms of referrals), and trailed sites like Hacker News. And two months ago, it was roughly 1/8th the size of Twitter, trailing Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, and others in terms of referral traffic to TechCrunch. But the biggest stat of all is that a year ago, traffic coming from LinkedIn was 1/50th what it is today on a monthly basis.
So what changed? As far as we can tell, this is all about LinkedIn Today, the social news product the service launched back in March. It was around that time that was saw the first big bump in terms of traffic coming from LinkedIn. In March, it roughly doubled from February. Then April was pretty flat — it was still much higher than previously, but not growing. Then in May, traffic went up 5x. And in June, it more than doubled from that. The growth has been astounding.
Of course what’s perhaps most interesting about that is that LinkedIn Today is powered by Twitter. Twitter shared links determine what shows up on LinkedIn Today, but the traffic does not go back through Twitter.
Again, this is just traffic from LinkedIn to TechCrunch. And the truth is that with its cross between technology and business, LinkedIn may be the most perfect social network for regular TechCrunch readers. But talking with some other bloggers, they’ve been noticing the exact same thing. All of this is undoubtedly buoyed by the LinkedIn social buttons that have been appearing all over the web as well. recently (and on TechCrunch recently).
The bigger question in my mind is what this means for the future of Twitter’s website as a disseminator of news? While Twitter has attempted to help journalists and bloggers a bit with things like the recently-launched Twitter for Newsrooms tutorials, they haven’t had much in the way of new features to better surface information. Referral traffic from Twitter had been steadily rising over the years, but it was only as we gained more Twitter followers incrementally. And in the last year, that traffic has flattened completely. And now in just a couple of months, LinkedIn has shot by it when a hot new product.
Part of the explanations on Twitter’s side may be the increased use of HTTPS, which likely scrubs referrer information in traffic sent. But Facebook and LinkedIn both have HTTPS options as well, and again, those numbers are rising fast, Twitter is not. Also a part of this is the use of Twitter mobile clients. But again, Facebook has hugely popular mobile clients too (though, admittedly, LinkedIn’s mobile clients don’t appear to be as popular, so most of their traffic will likely be from linkedin.com).
If that trend is true on a larger scale, that’s not good news for Twitter. It’s substantial traffic that can’t be ignored, obviously, but the numbers point to it stalling out as others come along. In the same year timespan that Twitter referral traffic has flattened, Facebook referral traffic has gone up six-fold. Again, that doesn’t look good for Twitter. Digg was once the undisputed king of referrals as well. Last month, they were in 17th place in terms of referrals to TechCrunch.
Update: Twitter says the lack of growth on twitter.com is due to the soaring of Twitter mobile usage and says they will share some stats soon which I’ll post here. Though that would also suggest that people are turning away from the website in order to use mobile, which would be interesting. Either way, I altered the title to better reflect that Twitter.com is mainly what’s being discussed here.
Update 2: Twitter has pointed to these previously stated numbers to share in terms of mobile growth.
Source: TechCrunch
Probably telco from Malaysia can adopt this type of marketing style. Cool ambient.
Hate Dropped Calls? by Cingular in New York
Source: jaymug
