It was a night where the who’s who in the local social media community gathered for the first #nlbmeetup held at library@esplanade. If you’ve missed this one, don’t worry, cause they promised to have more coming your way soon!

Photo from Kevin

A meetup at the library? Isn’t that boring? On the contrary it’s quite an experience. Not all the time you get to cheer, clap and laugh out loud inside a library right?

Couple of questions that keeps popping up in my mind, Why are people around me telling me that I inspire them? and Why do they tell me that I’m more than an expert in the field than I think I am?. These kept me thinking. I never want to see myself as a social media expert. I do things because I want to, because I am interested in doing it, and because I believe I can do better. No one moment I’ll think I’m an expert in anything. More often, I’ll tell someone that I’m a “jane-of-most-trades“.

Then I chanced upon “The 12 Types Of “Social Media Experts” – Which One Are You?” by Rohit Bhargava, then I discovered why I’m known as who I am today. Let me break it down…

I’m liking the new announcement of “Like” a page rather than “Become a Fan” of a page. Makes more sense too this way, and with the displaying of how many and who are your friends liking the page in its own box, you can now see clearly who has got common interests as you!

It makes more sense to “Like” a company or organisation than to become a fan of it don’t you think?

Now, if you “Like” me, can you please go to my page and click on it? Or if you don’t ‘Like’ me anymore, you may want to “Unlike” (at bottom left of page) me.

Yes… yes… noted the last update on the page was in August! Promise I’ll look into it soon! Remember my ReFresh! plan? Now’s thats one reason why you should “Like” Claudia Lim! Wahahahahaha!!!

Being in the almost forefront of the digital space here in Singapore, and thanks to the many good friends whom I’d met throughout the journey, I’ve got a few opportunities to share about my thoughts and experiences in the social media community with traditional mainstream media journalists. Usually there will either be an email interview or a phone interview. Sometimes there may be a meetup at a cafe where the interview is conducted. Being who I am, I will share whatever I know openly with those who really are keen to learn and write a well prepared article.

But when the journalist tell me that she’d failed to search the web for information or find blog posts about the topic in discussion, it irritates me. If I can use a single keyword, e.g. the name of an even to find an entire page of blogs posts discussing about it in Google, I don’t see why you can’t. Now that I think about it, I regretted sending links and information over to them. It’s their job to search and investigate, not mine.

Blogging has helped me record my life, happenings and memories in a way that’s openly searched, read and used by anyone that chances upon my blogs. Some of these posts come in very useful for future referencing or if there’s a need to provide a set of comment with regards to that particular event that happened months ago, blog posts surely serve a better memory refresher than trying to squeeze your braincell dry trying to remember what happened or who were there etc. Especially if you keep your posts organised and accompany it with related photos, videos or links, referencing back your past is made easy and possible through blogging.

Every journalists, in the digital space or not, need to get into the talks and walks first, before trying to make sense of something totally new to them and try to draft an article on it based on interviews and hear-say from others. Why not take the plunge and dive into it yourself and experience it? That’s one thing bloggers love. Experiencing things first hand. We would rather spend time attending an event and trying out the product in real life, then just reading off a press release. We take action first and blog later.

Are you picking up social media tools and learning to be human in the digital space already? I hope you do!

… and which story one decides to read and believe depends on that reader’s preference, choice, taste, understanding of the topic and knowledge.

It was the first social media discussion that got all hot and sweaty (literally) over at Open Room tonight. Only Ogilvy dares to do something that most brands and agencies are afraid of, mixing the traditional media (TM) journalists with the social media (SM) bloggers together in the same room to discuss about Journalism. And may I quote, Journalism as explained in my trusty dictionary in my macbook states that – “the activity or profession of writing for newspapers or magazines or of broadcasting news on radio or television.” Hmm… nope, it didn’t include bloggers nor online digital storytellers. Let’s see what Wikipedia (the community dictionary) explains Journalism…

Journalism is the production of news reports and editorials through media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, television and the Internet. Journalists—be they writers, editors, photographers, broadcast presenters or producers—serve as the main purveyors of information and opinion in contemporary society.

There. The community speaks.

What am I trying to proof here? The way content is consumed depends on the way a person prefers or are aware of. Both the TM and SM know very well about this and they do well serving their own group of audiences. Let’s take the big boy in TM for instance, they’ve got BT for the business minded individuals, New Paper and Wan Bao for the tabloids and sensational news, and they’ve got magazines catered for different types of population. As for ST, guess I’m classifying it under the general category. Just like most of the blogs here in Singapore. No niche, just write whatever they were told to and censor whatever that’s not to be told.

In SM, there are blogs, websites, forums and lots of people we can follow on twitter, facebook, plurk or whichever social networking site you can name. But the smart users who are using these tools read, follow or participate in their selection due to their choice and needs. I won’t follow someone whose tweet nothing but conversation between his/her followers nor will I want to read a blog on a regular basis if that writer simply posts random things that doesn’t matter to me. Smart users know how to filter out the noise and focus on what matters to them. Same goes for TM. No one (with no reason other than its job responsibilities) will read every single publication and every single page in the TM publications.

Yes, I agree with Daryl that habits die hard (for the older generation), but for the young ones, we pick up new things everyday and our habit changes as we grow together with this new channel of information that’s available for free. And these young ones are eventually going to continue to grow and progress and changing their daily habits. Whether or not reading the newspaper daily will eventually become one of their favorite pastime in years to come, no one knows. Perhaps they’ll still read about the news, but from other channels and ways. So the questions now is how are the TM and SM storytellers evolving and embracing this change to match what may come in the future? Its about delivering the right content when the user wants it. Not when you think they want it. Consumer always have their final choice. No one can force them.

Than there’s the thing about credibility and professionalism. TM journalists state that they are the credible sources, but what about the many misquotes, over sensationalizing of topics, featuring article of certain products as there’s sponsorship involved, reporting of things that they see only one side of the picture, and publishing news that are of no need for public concern e.g. death of someone due to suicide. Personally I have got bad experiences with these things. How can I trust 101% that the TM is giving us accurate and credible news? What about the parts that were not published?

If citizenship journalism is encouraged by the TM, than what makes the differences from a blogger reporting about an incident or happening on their own blog or twitter as they’d encountered it and a citizen that posts up to Stomp? Citizens are encouraged to Stomp about happenings so that the big boys can get the traffic from tabloid or gossip hunters to visit their website, increase their pageviews and get advertising dollars from all the flashing irritating banner ads. If they can do that, than why can’t the bloggers?

On a final note, I’ve to say this again – I read what I want to read, if I’m not interested in the war that’s happening out there nor the new jet that some army purchased, I can’t be bothered. When I really need to find them, I search! If google or yahoo (or bing) doesn’t list your content within the first 3 to 4 pages, I’m sorry you didn’t reach me. Eventually I’ll get my source from somewhere else. Whether or not the source is 100% reliable, its all up to the smart reader to decide.

Updates – posts I want to remember

• POV from Daryl, one of the panelists at Open Room
• Interesting analogy by Lucian
• Ian’s thought never fails to make me put on another thinking cap
• Brian’s shares the building of future media organisation (with reference to Monocle.com)

#sgtweetup ended with mixed thoughts from those who were there that night. So what happened? Was it good? Could it have been better? And what’s the difference between #smbsg #websg #sgtweetup and Tweet! Tuesday? Let see my analysis of them all. *takes out magnifying glass*

First lets see what’s a tweetup. In my own words, its a mashed-up for meet-up that happens for people using Twitter. Hence tweetup. Simple right? So when I came to know about the first sgtweetup by @CarlGriffith, my immediate impression was, “Yeah! I’m going to meet more new people!” And that’s what happened. (For me!) I got to catch up with old friends, especially nice seeing @emoh whom I knew back in my days at Made With Love, and I met lots of new ones too! *waves!!* I regretted not getting to meet everyone there. There will be a next one I’m sure! In fact @inrsoul has already started the next tweetup with beer and tapas on 21 May! (Sorry guys, can’t make it for this one. Heading to BKK the next day.)

If you’d read yesterday’s chinese papers, you would not have missed this huge photo of three black humans with two macbooks and an iPhone on the cover of zbNOW (Zaobao Now).

That’s @claudia10 (me), @howiec and @patlaw with our twitter page.

This interview happened when the journalist from Zao Bao contacted TDM to see if anyone of us are able to share more about Twitter with him. And after a few emails, Howie confirmed the interview with Fong Wei and we met at Geek Terminal one evening for the interview. Coincidentally, I’d met Fong Wei and his photographer previously at the Volvo Ocean Race with Puma.

When I saw the article on my desk yesterday (thanks to molemole), my jaws dropped. I had no idea it would be a cover story for zbNOW and such a long one too! To be honest, I had lots of problem trying to read past the first paragraph. Too many of the characters know me more than I know them. So thanks to @melvinkee and @shenheng, we had an english translated version, which was rather hilarious reading through it. You can also find the online copy of this article in mandarin here.

In brief, the part where I contributed is on how locals whom I’m following are using Twitter. Based on my researched while I try to find all Singapore Tweeters via @sgtweet.