Benjamin Koe

Facebook fans fail as a measure (Singapore GE2011)

I was intrigued by the data my friend Pat Law posted on the GoodStuph blog on the Singapore General Elections results. She proved that even if a party had the majority of Facebook Fans, it didn't equate to the actual wins. Logically it should work. What you support as a fan you should be voting for in reality. But I think the biggest distinction here is the barrier to entry. To be a Facebook fan is amazingly easy and mostly brainless. You click a button and it's done. Most people don't even think about it and many others support it even though it has little or nothing to do with their constituency. But for the actual vote, you only get one shot in five years. You only get to vote for the candidate(s) in your constituency. It's also a difficult choice compared to the frivolous click on Facebook.

So I tried to look at the data from a different point of view. Borrowing data from Pat's earlier post, I put side by side the actual Facebook Fans vs. Actual Votes.

Elections_results

Assuming that everyone who was a Facebook Fan also went to the polls, that's 173,754 Facebook Fans out of a total 350,916 Actual Votes. About 50%. This is even more surprising when you consider Pat's conclusions because a 50% sample size is often more than enough to indicate a fairly accurate trend. But in actuality Facebook Fans fail to be useful indicators. In fact, from the above data, the party with lower Facebook Fans to Actual Votes percentage won.

It seem clear that Facebook Fans, however buzz-worthy they are, have little to do with gaining results. I'm wondering if the same is true for product companies. Do more fans equate to greater adoption?

My oldest tweet

My_oldest_tweet

I can't seem to find my first tweet. I think it was somewhere in early 2007. The oldest I could find with help from Google is this above from the link: http://twitter.com/#!/benkoe/status/20753331

Not sure where my pre-April 2007 tweets have gone, maybe Twitter has purged them or they are stored in some super legacy database that is no longer publicly searchable. Oh well. I guess I'll never know what my first tweet was.

The Ultimate Start-Up Space

Img_0269

Martell V.S.O.P is giving away S$20,000 in seed capital and one year's rent of a 1,400 sq ft shop space at 29 Boon Tat Street to anyone in Singapore who wants a shot at entrepreneurship. All it takes is a clever idea of what you'll do with the shop space and you stand a chance to win it.

Last year's winners, Cherilyn Tan and Jamie Koh, set up The Chupitos Bar at Clarke Quay with the seed capital and shop space. I hear they are still doing well continuing their lease after the free year.

What I like about this competition is that it's open to any business idea that can make good use of the shop space. Many of the other grants available in Singapore are focused on particular industries with a significant amount of them focusing on new technologies. This competition gives a fighting chance to non-technical entrepreneurs.

What is different this year is that there's an added component of "crowdfunding" where the public gets to vote by pledging funds for the idea they think is the best. The best scoring ideas get judged by a panel that includes top local entrepreneurs Jimmy Fong, CEO, EpiCentre as well as Low Cheong Kee, Managing Director, Home-Fix D.I.Y.

The competition runs from 31 March to 15 May 2011. To participate drop your ideas off at http://ultimatestartupspace.com.sg/

Apple's Red Friday deals are better in Malaysia

If you're in Singapore and looking to get an Apple product from today's one-day only sale on selected items, I'd suggest if you have friends or relatives in Malaysia, to try there instead. They have the exact same sale, only cheaper!

For example, the 13" MacBook Air on the Singapore store is now S$1,808 (was S$1948). Not a bad discount. But in Malaysia, it's RM3,968. That's S$1,671 for a 13" MacBook Air!

Happy shopping!

Free and instant way to share your screen

Joinme

This nifty little app called join.me worked amazingly for my morning's conference call. It's so simple. No signup, no login, no passwords for all joining the conference. Just download a simple app and run. All you need to do to join the conference is visit the given URL such as: https://join.me/214-457-843. Those joining get to see your screen in their browser. Amazingly simple. Love it. And it's free!

YOG didn't make the Buzzworthy Events for 2010 list from Google

Google's Top 10 Searches in Singapore for 2010 has a section on Buzzworthy Events. Making the list we have everything from big events from the World Cup to small local ones like SITEX but it clearly misses out the Youth Olympic Games. I thought YOG was a big thing for Singapore. But it looks like the reality is that too few people in Singapore cared enough to search for info on YOG.

Buzzworthy 2010 events

  1. World Cup 2010
  2. Commonwealth Games 2010
  3. Deepavali 2010
  4. Communic Asia 2010
  5. Vancouver 2010
  6. Chingay 2010
  7. Singapore Marathon 2010
  8. Asian Games 2010
  9. Earth Hour 2010
  10. SITEX 2010

Singapore Sports Council tries social media contest for new cheer

via singaporesports.sg

I just found out that there's a contest going on about a new Singapore cheer (following the JJ Lin one) called Go! Go! Singapore by the band Juz-B.

What SSC wants is for the public to create a music video for the cheer (Listen to MP3) and upload it to YouTube before 16 October 2010. I'm actually curious to see what entries they'll get.