struggling dreams

Hello! thanks for visiting my blog... The language used in this web are mixed english and Indonesian, if you don't understand bahasa Indonesia, you probably like to read all english content here. Enjoy your life!

Indonesian “Pesta Blogger 2008” (blogger party) is over but everyone who involved still enjoy the hype left in pins, t-shirts, images, blog posts, and some videos. Of many unrecorded conversation I listened (which I wasn’t really Event Organizer (PB’08) insider nor a person to listen to) I chose to capture a tweet conversation of Budi Putra and Chef Mark about initiating a regional wide blogging party. A SouthEast Asia Blogging Party.. See the little Twitter conversation below…

the initiative: southeast asia blogging party

I believe that somebody else had already mentioned about this initiative sometimes in the Pesta Blogger 2008, since also attended few foreign bloggers from SouthEast countries like Malaysia, Philiphines and Singapore. This post simply appreciates the initiative, then spread it and hopefully becoming..

Personally I wish somewhere else than Jakarta but still in Indonesia will host such event but in the spirit of SEA (and ASEAN), I dare Malaysian government to take active part and host the event.

What do you think?

About 10 years ago I wrote on Parahyangan Catholic University web column about how music should be distributed and charged in this interconnected age (I missed that archive). Since then I had this believe that the industry should reform or die. Of course you can’t take that literally… the music will not die, top musicians most likely remain in wealth and the loyal audience will always listen… built playlist… and sing… and mix… and also make music..

What will be dead then?

No! The record label will still exists only their role won’t be the same again. They will seek into fit business model that shall generate at least at equal fortune value as their did before the mp3 invented. I predict only a few can survive… that because to serve today they need to go through a major paradigm shift which I doubt they will… yes, you can say that.. Post Power Syndrome.

Over decades record label strive to be in control on music supply chain and other related business. Key that makes them in control is they hold many exclusive rights including for copy (mechanical) and copy distribution, some also extend to performance right and related legal power in which they alleged to protect the artists. In action they really did control distribution until internet and mp3 joined in… They completely failed to control the internet distribution and digital duplication acts by user (audience) and pirates… They dramatically losing control… Ok, once or twice they won over trial like when stupid metallica stood up against napster.. really stupid metallica… even I am a fan.

Now they don’t have the ultimate control of music produced by musicians distributed by others… meaning they lose part of distribution right and worse, artists have much more alternatives to promote and publish they works.

What will be dead then?

The only thing that dying is the mindset of controlling distribution and sources of creative works.

Let me introduce you to Gerd Leonhard who tagged himself as a media futurist, although I think he’s more than that… he is a futurist. Gerd wrote few publications on above phenomenon, also the future regarding music and everything else that involve digital distribution and creative product… Yes, a bit about intellectual property (will discuss it later). His (relatively) new book is music 2.0 in which he provided alternatives for readers to procure it… you can download for free and pay as you like or you can buy it from amazon at very low price. It’s clear that he wanted it to have the widest distribution as possible. Lots you can learn about the future from mr Leonhard… even Google people spare to invite him on a presentation about the future of digital content and the end of control.

Mr. Leonhard is not fighting the cause alone.. There are others that persistently wrote about how music industry should democratically built. Latest related posts from names like Techcrunch, “who needs music label? …” and “..(TotalMusic) come back from the dead“, from the Inquisitr, “Is the music industry digging its online grave“, from arstechnica, “Music 1.0 is dead“, and more… music 2.0.

You probably think I’m dreaming and this is not really happening… please check the Nine Inch Nail ant the Radiohead free downloadable album.. also emerging music online services like MySongStore, YouLicense, and more…

Okay… now where the piracy stands?

First, piracy usually hides not stands… Second, it is a legal term for unauthorized use or reproduction of someone’s creative works… So pirates are hiding somewhere behind internet.. which could be much in larger number than non-pirates. Could be fact that internet democracy votes for piracy?

Me? I do download free music and pirated music.

Am I feeling guilty about it? No, Not at all… I support the artist by promoting them and of course I like to watch their performances… also vote them as my favorite if I have to…

US Government does have a strict set of law regarding Intellectual Property violation act. Why don’t you comply before they get to you?

If I can make a deal with Bush or Obama… I say stop pirating if only they also stop making atmosphere hole and sign the Kyoto Protocol. Fair??

• ** I just got back writing after months not post. The cluttered things still.. So apologize to whom reading this post as rant.

• ** I like to go deep on Intellectual Property, historic materialism, on morals and ethics.

This is a simple update… Most likely will be deleted and replaced by a better post.

It’s obvious that I need a better time and idea management, so I can post more and having my blogs regularly updated. Yet, to be community manager of whatever community occurred by things I initiated.

The cluttered things on my head… frustrated me… in this post, I’m just trying to be honest to my readers…

To: Paul Caridad Sanchez

cc: Oprah, Schwab, BBC, NBC, Mommies, Twitterers, Geeks

bcc: The World

Subject: simply want to be your friend

hi Paul,

Ok, I got your attention now. Instead of replying via Twitter DM, I like to do it in a post where I can be more than 140 characters, thus (probably) give your video few extra hits from my network and Google search result. I am not really sure this works… but hey, let’s give it a try.

You asked me what inspired me to follow you. To answer that, I have to memorize my twitterring activities in a past few week.

Twitter has been the center of attention for social media analyst in the past few months, and I read what those social media guys write about it. So many, then I decided to actively follow more people just to have sort of “experience” added on comprehending what those guy blog about. Not as much as you do but reasonably sufficient for me.

Note: I still don’t get it how Jake Marsh, Calacanis or Scoble listen to tons of twitterers, I suspect they frequently check at replies or utilize tweetscan and summize more than everybody else.

Here’s how. I find people to follow from some references like these:

• A post by Jeremiah Owyang to encourage social media people (who follow him) to connect each other. I checked you weren’t there.
• Twubble by crazybob definitely helps to find like-minded, friends of friends to follow. This could be the connector.
• Nice posts I read and happens that the blog owner have a twitter account. Did not read yours until yesterday.
• Tweetscan result (I did on intention to find people to follow only once, with keyword “South East Asia”, “Asia”, “Indonesia” and “Jakarta”) which clearly, you never listed there.
• Random picks from friends’ follow. Possible connector
• Random tweets. Possible connector.

Knowing the one to follow is important for me. I don’t want too much noise and could worse, spams in my page. Simply say, I tried to be bit organized on listening whilst I don’t want to miss good contextual tweet either. So I do these things before decision to follow:

• Check the Twiterer’s bio and stat. Recency, how many updates, friends and followed. You are a digg addict, then must be interesting links come out from your tweets. Your stat says that you need more followers (friends).
• Visit the Twiterer’s website and found out more about the person. You won on this

Ok, enough all about social media, twitter crap. Now, here is why I follow you. I watched all your videos, visited your lousy blog, and helloed @you. Then I conclude:

You are a great man and I want to be your friend. I empathize your cause, admire your spirit and think that your doing is a portrait of struggling (see this blog title), thus will actively support you. Your presence in this blog could inspire others…

About your blog. Please do post properly, so people can track you conveniently then you can benefit more from organized feedback. You would benefit more from a mention in a Seth’s post, of course the blogosphere.

About the your video view count. I think your old 8 wishes & 10,000 miles video is a bit overtime by last message loop. Approximately you wasted 2 minutes, whilst youtube counts a valid view only for a full view (a research by tubemogul). Probably missed some view counts there. You were doing better with the new 8 wishes but way too little views compare to the old one.

look forward to hear your updates. Good luck and God Bless You

cheers

For everyone: to know about Paul Caridad Sanchez, please view his 8 wishes video and don’t stop until the video end. Also, don’t forget to visit his blog

Oprah, please interview this nice guy.

Just like blogging… Twitter succeeded hook me with new cool things. Got referred by Rifie, went to her blog to play her Mixwit of her choices tracks… I said cool! Then I made one too… enjoy!

I don’t know if they know Indonesia is populated by hundreds of million people and we do have internet in our computers. comScore made a report on trends and prediction about Internet titled “State of Global Internet“.

Internet usage is low among Southeast Asia countries except Singapore and Malaysia

are you sure about this? I wasn’t sure they did it right in Southeast Asia coverage. The flaw begins just when they did not count Indonesia in. Simply say please look at the fact that Indonesia is no.4 in world population. Even though Indonesian Internet Users only 9% of its population, still it 4 times than the whole Singapore population (including Singaporean who never use internet).

Although Indonesian international bandwidth mostly using Singaporean or Malaysian channels, it should never be problem for a company like Comscore to trace the request origin.

Alternatively please see:

• google.co.id ranked 3 in Indonesia (alexa) with over 500 million daily pageviews. See Alexa
• Asian Internet Usage

Just like other Internet geek, I like comScore but their flaw coverage on southeast Asia could mislead region specific business interest and overall internet usage mapping.

This, of course part of my experiences using online services like twitter, facebook, friendfeed, qik, ustream, tweetscan, tweeterboard, and more. I just can’t list all here but I will list what found interesting reading and what I do on the web today.

• Upgraded this blog. Now, this blog already using wordpress 2.5. I also dumped the old coffee theme because too many incompatibility with all latest wp engine. I am not into this theme but to find a free and easy to customize theme was never easy for me as I always picky and conservative about design. So I hope this condition is only temporary.

• Read post about monetizing widget in Web Strategist Blog by Jeremiah Owyang. He announced it in twitter last night, and because I believe he’s on the right track on social media, then I paid a visit. Just when I was about adding comment to his monetizing business model through widget list, I found that Rodney Rumford already did much better than what I wanted to add. Credit to him, and I started to follow the founder of facereviews.com. Of course he is good, he’s on it every second.

• I blocked an “unknown facebook friend” named Widyanto Duta Nugroho and reported him on spam act to the facebook customer service. He spammed badly and I never had a real conversation regarding his act (he didn’t response to my messages). I believe, I did help other facebook users.

• I tried few of twitter related services again. These services actually do best for twitter experience: tweeterboard, tweetscan, and quotably.

• Read a post titled “what does facebook actually do for me” by Chris Brogan which he actually asked everyone who follow him on Twitter (or anywhere), and he got loads quality comments. I also added my perspective, bit unique one as I believe that its most comments come from English Tongue (American and English), that probably positioned us, the Southeast Asian as newbies (we are and I explained about it).

• My curiosity. A comment from Chris Brogan post leads me to another good blog, specifically a post about how Robert Scoble (a tech-geek blogger) loves/hates facebook and somehow loves twitter. The blog owner is Hutch Carpenter and he did write very good posts. I shared one on my facebook profile.

• Guess what? Hutch’s post about his blogging experience made me land on another very much worth to visit blog belongs to Louis Gray. Read a post about posting statistic and watch interview video of Scoble by Pete Cashmore from Mashable. From the interview post, Scoble said that he did not know Louis Gray who make it to Techmeme Leaderboard for sometime, of course commented by Louis. As for me… I checked out Techmeme Leaderboard and Technorati Top 100 for most visited blog.

• From a tweet by Aulia Masna, I know that I missed an event, an Id-Mac Gathering which I always wanted to go. More from him, there will be British Council Bloggers Day event sponsored by ChIP on Sunday which also my curiosity at most, but all seat are reserved. I’ll pass another offline blogosphere.

• Subscribed few feeds from above blogs to my netvibes, update and customize mybloglog, watch John Spencer on qik covering something about Celine Dion. No, I don’t forget to check out my facebook.

Early this year, Time reviewed about Friendster moved to Asia. Though I am bit late for the article (just found it), I think it's lame. Everybody in Asia knows that right after myspace and YouTube, Friendster only hope was Asian. However they decided to fight, and they won the social network patent, but for what?

Last year just before the facebook platform hype, it launched its alternative languages features which was chinese, followed by Korean and Japanese but left out all Southeast Asian users which was (is) biggest portion of registered users. Why chinese? Obviously everyone after China for giant market acquisition. How did they perform? Not well…

Friendster traffic ranks in East Asian and Southeast Asian countries according Alexa:

• China 209
• Japan 256
• South Korea 19
• Hongkong 179
• Macao 59
• Philippines 1
• Brunei 1
• Malaysia 2
• Indonesia 2
• Singapore 5
• Thailand 415

And some other regions:

• Australia 20
• New Zealand 30
• United States 101
• United Kingdom 93
• United Arab Emirate 10
• Qatar 11
• India 367

Data not available for South America and Africa (very few).

Look at the traffic ranks, Friendster already failed in China, Japan and Hongkong. China users already enjoy local social networking like 51.com and qq.com, while Japanese has mixi.com. Benjamin Joffe, Managing Director of Asia Internet Consultancy did not even count Friendster in today competition on an interview by ReadWriteWeb.com.

Even though Indonesian contributes as major traffic since 2004, the option to switch to Bahasa Indonesia lastly provided on March this year, and it is very lousy. Other Languages option provided are Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and English.

How is Friendster doing in its birthland, US? According Quancast, Friendster has about 1,3 million American users. About 40% actively contributes traffic on daily basis while 10% described as addicted users and most are Asian of 25-34 y/o. (I can't access Quantcast for second look due to server maintenance?).

I have been user at Friendster since 2004, and it helped me meet long lost friends and new friends as well. I also enjoyed many other services like blog, gallery and feeds. What I found to be annoying were Friendster seems to easily approved fake profiles, did not do much about spams, and did not response well on user reports and complaints. I also had reported some malicious code on few profile testimonials but never received their response. 

They claimed to have 65 user worldwide and growing. I wonder how many of them are fake. 

I suggest Friendster, to be more serious to listen to its constituent whatever languages spoken, find it as more opportunities to reveal. Lucky to have OpenSocial but please do more on the developer page. Also, it is important to have local rep while Friendster execs don't understand what their million users talk about.

Sidenote:

• This blog enjoys traffic from thousands queries on google about "cara daftar friendster" (how to sign up on Friendster).
• Today, I check my Facebook on daily basis.

Referred by Jeremiah Owyang's update on twitter… a summary of a 'shaker' book titled 4-hour workweek by Timothy Ferris. This book suggest few steps to have more and work less… if you want to enjoy life more… note what interesting..

Outsource your life

Please see if you think you need it..

How do you like to work only 4 hour a week but still earn more?? Go buy and read the book and tell me if you ever make it 4 a week. Please.. 

As for me… I say no to this book. I rather put it as a distraction to what I am. Misdirection and another obstacle in my struggling… see my blog title. 

You probably one of those who think that my English sucks.

Yes I know, pretty much aware of the issue since I read/write lots on web but found that only a few really got my points. No, I am not that into stubbornness on this, but my top priority still to improve my time management (very lousy).

Noticed from statistics that non-Indonesian often visit this blog. Of course I love to share my thought to those who don't read Indonesian, but most of the contents written in bahasa Indonesia. So, I made "english" as a new category to help those English readers finding English content easier.

Please browse the English content.