Blogiversary 17 Years

My Blogiversary passed and I didn't even realise it. I started blogging on my ah ok lah blog on September 2003. 

Wow! 

That was actually 17 years ago.

I was still single then, much slimmer and had just joined academia as a lecturer at Universiti Utara Malaysia.

Brings back a lot of great memories. 

I have not been blogging much recently but I plan to start blogging on a regular basis.

Happy Belated Birthday to my blog.

8th Blogoversary

It has been 8 long years since I first started blogging on ah ok lah in 2003. What first started out as a place on the web to voice out and share my thoughts, emotions and events ended up changing my life completely. From a hobby it became my source of income and also my area of specialisation.

I received a scholarship to do a PhD  in marketing at the Warwick Business School my research looks at the relationship between interactivity and attitudes towards blogs and towards advertising on blogs. I now blog on several blogs and even have been invited to speak about blogging to different audiences including a presentation on teaching with blogs to some academics at the University of Warwick.

Some say blogging is addictive - in my case it has been therapeutic. Other people play golf, or video games or do yoga. In my case, blogging helped me whenever I was stressed. It has definitely helped me with my writing skills in a language which is not my mother tongue.

I have come a long way - from someone who used to enjoy reading blogs to someone who is now considered an expert on blogging.

Why do I blog?

7th Blog Anniversary

Today, I have been blogging for 7 long years and this is my oldest blog. I started blogging on the ah ok lah blog on the 8th of September 2003 and it has been an amazing journey.

I started blogging anonymously and late went public. I opened up my heart, shared my happy and sad moments, my anxieties and hope, made fun off, ranted and made friends all around the World.

I have been with Blogger all this while and though I did consider moving to Wordpress, I am glad I didn't.

Looking at the statistics, I can see that my most popular post is 'Freemasons in Malaysia' with 4,143 Pageviews and 42 comments. Check out some of my more popular posts and I realise that I actually write about anything under the Sun.

A big Thank You to all my visitors.

6th Blogoversary

I totally forgot about it until I saw a comment by Teena today. My oldest blog turned 6 yesterday.

Can't believe that I have been blogging this long. Thanks to all my loyal readers and friends who have motivated me to continue this adventure in the Blogosphere.

BTW, my post 'Blogger and I' even received a mention on Blogger buzz sometime back.

Blogger and I

Recently found out that Blogger turns 10 next month. It made me think about my blogging experiences and how it has changed my life. I had actually forgotten but after checking out my first post, I discovered that I am also going to celebrate six long years of blogging very soon as well.

I had been following various blogs and commenting on them for quite sometime when one fine day in the September of 2003, I started my own blog with Blogger and wrote my very first post . And as they say, the rest is history.

In the beginning it was more of a hobby and I used to post anonymously. I just used my nick name and a profile picture of me snorkelling in Redang.



I made a lot of blogger friends from all around the World, some of whom are still blogging while others have simply disappeared without a trace. Many of my old blogging pals have since then moved onto Wordpress and their own domains, while I stuck with good old Blogger. I have seen a lot of positive changes since Google took over blogger and I guess my decision to stick with Blogger has been the right choice.

Later on, I gradually lost my anonymity and started posting up pictures of myself, friends and family. It also became a place for friends and family to find out what I had been doing all the time.

The year 2006 was a landmark year in my life. I took the very huge decision to quit my comfy lecturing job at a public university in Malaysia and moved to the UK. I was a stay-at-home dad for a year -changing diapers, cooking and hoovering among others while my wife was away at the university. As I was looking after the kids, I couldn't go and get a job outside the house. Was really frustrating, depending on the meagre allowance that my wife received. One of the lowest points in my life.

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention, I noticed that other people were making money from their blogs (at least that was what they were saying), I decided to give it a go.

Becoming a full time blogger changed my life entirely - I started several other blogs with focussed themes including my car blog - Auto Lah, Freebies - on free stuff on the net and my technology and gadget blog - Adamok.net. I was also blogging more frequently, sometimes making as many as 7 posts in a day on various blogs.

Being able to contribute to the household expenditure did a great deal for my self-confidence. In the process, I started dabbling with CSS, web site design and search engine optimisation. This later helped me secure a part time job as a web developer in one of the centres in the University of Warwick. Web advertising projects followed. Since then I have worked with various companies including 3 mobilebuzz and bmw-web.tv among others.

Blogging has been a wonderful experience and quite rewarding as well. However, more was yet to come. In 2008, my PhD proposal to the Warwick Business School to study the attitude of consumers towards blogs was accepted and I received a scholarship as well.

I am now about to start the 3rd year of my study and have discovered so many interesting aspects about this wonderful online interactive media. I still have some way to go before I complete my research. One thing is certain though - I will still be involved in this intellectual cyberspace which we call the blogosphere in one way or the other.

First Commentator
Daddypapersurfer

Dr. Mahathir's blog down

Just noticed that Tun Dr. Mahathir's blog - Che Det is no longer up. For those who didn't know Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad was the fourth and longest serving Prime Minister of Malaysia. He held the post for 22 years from 1981 to 2003.

AS someone who likes to keep up to date with the latest development in almost everything, Tun Dr. Mahathir started his blog in 2008 and it became hugely popular soon. He raised some really controversial issues in the blog.

I am not sure why the blog went down. Does anybody have any information?
The website mentions that www.chedet.co.cc is available.

Don't tell me he forgot to renew the domain.

First Commentator
Angel

Top Entrecard Droppers for April

1. How to Make Money on the Internet
2. Life Reflections
3. Life After Work
4. A malaysian abroad
5. Digital Polaroids
6. Knowledge distribution center
7. Emila's Illustrated Blog
8. Blogger Rise
9. Beyond Feron
10. Turn-u-Off

Thanks guys and do drop by again.

How to increase traffic to your blogs

As part of my doctoral research, I have looked at the reasons why some blogs are able to get thousand if not hundreds of visitors to their blog everyday.

Some websites charge to tell you this secret but here I am telling you for FREE.

CREDIBILITY.

There is a huge debate among various scholars and various conceptualisations about credibility but most define it as as "believability".

Some authors have come out with the terms ‘webelievability’ to refer to “the degree to which people judge online information as credible”. Of course we cannot discount the credbility of the source - the blogger when it comes to blogs.

Looking at the credibility of the source, Credibility has been shown to be composed of

1. trustworthiness and
2. expertise.
   

Of course you must note that there is a difference between trustworthiness and trust. While credibility is about believability, trust is about dependability. but they are related. in other words if you perceive the credibility of a blogger to be high, this will then lead to trust.

However, the next question is how do bloggers gain this credibility. This is where it gets interesting. Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab has published a list of ten guidelines to boost your web site's credibility.

Some are not even experts at all but somehow were able to get this perceived credibility and eventually became an "expert". I know of a couple of guys who ultimately went on to become popular speakers even though they didn't have either the professional or educational qualifications but just on the basis of their popularity of their blogs. Some of them have regular columns in magazines and even lecture at Universities with professors sitting in the audience. That's amazing isn't it.

It is interesting to note that many popular bloggers including John Chow don't really follow some of the points listed (for example, many of them carry ads including pop-ups) but they still continue to receive thousands of visitors. I guess that's where branding comes in. It also provides an interesting insight into the human behaviour. Once you get famous, the traffic has a snowball effect. Everyone wants a piece of you.

How you get that break is really important and sometimes it is by pure chance but often due to talent. I saw this with popular Malaysian blogger Kenny Sia when he exploded on the Malaysian blogging scene with his original brand of humour (his big coconuts) and of course his (in)famous Xiaxue pose. Now's he's Internationally known and his blog averages about 14k visits daily.

The lucky break may occur due to a mention in the press, magazine or a mention by another celebrity blogger. For example, a small mention by the ProBlogger can do wonders for your blog traffic.

But as they say, not everyone is lucky and sometimes you have to slog it out for several years before you get famous just by your sheer effort.

First Commentator
Lisalicious

Cheaper flights to London with Air Asia

A few weeks back I wrote about the Ryanair and bloggers episode and mentioned that "they can learn a thing or two from Air Asia". Well, Maxton Walker of the Guardian seems to think so as well.

In his article 'This is budget travel. We demand to suffer' he seems to be pleasantly surprised by the level of service quality and mentions that "If AirAsia X can keep it up, it is on to something".

Experts have always assumed that it is impossible to have a profitable budget long-haul airline service. Air Asia might have cracked it. I mean Kuala Lumpur to London for only RM490 (approx. £93) is crazy.

Tony Fernandes, the CEO of Air Asia says that flying to London is "A dream accomplished".

First Commentator
Bokjae

Ryanair and bloggers

As we all know, if you are a big company, picking a quarrel with a blogger is not really a good idea. However, Ryanair recently did that.

Web developer and blogger Jason Roe was called an "idiot blogger" when he pointed out a flaw on the airline's website. The response from other bloggers was predictable. The comments are hilarious and as someone who's in marketing, I simply couldn't believe it. Is it possible that one of the biggest low cost airline in Europe is that arrogant?

Read the Telegraph's article: 'Ryanair calls blogger lunatic'.

In spite of that, I was really surprised to find the level of negative perception towards the airline prevalent among my friends here. Not even one had a nice thing to say about the company. This is a case of extremely bad PR and they clearly need to do something about this.



I have flown with the airline only once to La Rochelle and I simply flew with them because they were the cheapest. I had no problems with the airline apart from the one thing - there was no information on the tickets on how to contact their customer service by telephone (do they even have one?) when we had problems.

They can learn a thing or two from Air Asia, a low cost airline based in Malaysia and one of the fastest growing the World. They start flying to London this year.

You just have to compare the websites of the two airlines to see what I mean:


Air Asia


Ryanair

This is an interesting case because I can always use it as an example of "what not to do" for my marketing students.

Anyway, enjoy this ad:

First Commentator
D

Where are the non-bloggers?

There is a strange phenomenon that I have noticed while going through my blog as well as as a couple of others, namely, most commentators on blogs are bloggers themselves.

I am sure that a number of non-bloggers visit my blog as well but somehow very few leave comments. Maybe this is an indication of why certain people become bloggers. It is likely that there is something in the psychology of bloggers that makes them bloggers - something that makes them different from other people. These are people who want to voice out their views and opinions. More often than not, they are also the opinion leaders in their communities.

Another trend I have noticed is that a number of non-bloggers who used to leave comments eventually became bloggers themselves.

Trying to gauge the awareness of blogs amongst undergraduate students, I recently asked a group regarding their favourite blogs and I was shocked to discover that less than half knew what a blog was. The fact is that a lot of people can't differentiate between a generic website and a blog and many who think they know what a blog is defines it as a personal diary. Most blogs are personal diaries I guess but there are many others which are based on specific topics and I wouldn't call them "personal diaries".

What do you think?

1st Commentator
Nana

Rewarding the 1st commentator

Following in the footsteps of the extremely talented Emila, I have decided to add a link to the blog/ website of the first commentator on every post at the bottom of the post.

This will help increase traffic to their own sites as well. My way of saying a big Thank You to supporters of my blog.

1st Commentator
Metallman

Does Google control my life?

I couldn't resist the title.

A couple of minutes ago, I had a panic attack as I couldn't open Google mail on my browser. The reason is that it's nearly 2 am and I am going through a draft of a book chapter I am writing with my supervisor. I am really sleepy and I am meeting her at 11am tomorrow, and I really needed to go through the reviewer's feedback to see whether I have covered all the points.

I had a similar problem yesterday and even though the problem was solved after restarting my computer, which may indicate that the problem is with my computer rather than with Google. However, it made me wonder whether I am being too dependent on Google.

I use my Google mail account to read my university mail, moderate my comments and also to read Twitter updates and Tweet (using Twitter Gadget). It's also linked to my Paypal, Amazon and eBay accounts. I also use the Google calender to manage my appointments which is shared and syncronised with my wife's. There are a few documents shared with friends via Google documents.

Besides that, I have most of my blogs hosted with Blogger (which is also owned by Google). And I am guessing that I am not the only one.

I shudder to think what would happen if Google were to shut down even for a day - there might be utter chaos in the World.

Blogroll problems

I have been using Blogrolling.com to manage my blogroll (on my right hand side bar). Quite recently, I realised that some of the links are dead. It was only then that I realised that we can only add but cannot delete the dead links from the blogroll - in fact, I can edit it at all.

According to their blog, their site was hacked late last year and they took the "system offline to ensure that no customer data was compromised". Right now they are in the process of developing a new blogrolling system. It's quite frustrating but I am sure it will be worth the wait.

Malaysian bloggers in Coventry

I am not alone. The list of Malaysian bloggers in Coventry grows higher every day. Some of them like the blogger who goes just by here initial "D" have been blogging for a while but anonymously. She blogs at Pause to reflect.

Some of the bloggers have moved away from Coventry while others like Rosydi are on an extented hiatus to concentrate on their research work.

One of the most prolific bloggers has got to be Ahrasis who started blogging recently and has not one but four blogs:
Forex Profiteer
Daily Digest
Automobile As Easy As 123 and
Malaysia's Politics

His wife has also started her own blog - "Mama Fahim"

The newest to join the blogosphere is Fauzan, our Tech Expert. He was responsible for maintaining the Malaysian Coventry Society site (which is under maintenance at the moment) and he's the guy everyone goes to whenever they have some problems with their gadget, etc. His blog is called "Living in United Kingdom", filled with a number of useful tips.

Several others have shown interest but are concerned about their privacy (solved by blogging anonymously), don't know what to write about (anything under the sun and the moon) or too busy with their research. Blogging is not everyone's cup of tea but it can be a really rewarding and fulfilling experience for some.

Hopefully there should be enough of us to have our own Blogger's meet.

Five years blogging

Was reading Liew's post on how he has been blogging full-time for three years when I suddenly realised that my own blog is now five years old. My first post on this blog was on September 8, 2003 and as they say, the rest is history.

This is how my blog looked in 2003:

I am Adam

Talented artist Emila Yusof created this stylised graphic of my name just for commenting on her blog.



What do you think?

Geeky girls

Way back in 2003, I once asked "Are most bloggers, Girls?" I later wrote "Not all Bloggers are teenage girls". This was followed by "WAHMs leading the blogging brigade" in my technology focussed blog, Adamok.net.

Well according to an article in The New York Times,

..the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

The article also quotes the results of a Pew study, which says that the doubling of the number of bloggers from 2004 to 2006 was due to the “the increased activity of girls.”

Not only are there more teenage girl bloggers, but apparently the primary creators of Web content and social networking sites are girls. I guess it's true because just looking at my classmates - almost all of the girls are on Facebook whereas some of the guys haven't even heard of it. Of course, I should point out that some of these guys have teenage kids and are not really into the new developments on the net.

Katy has always something to write about

It's been quite sometime since I last visited 'I’m Blogging That' blog. It was on my old blogs "to review" list but ..... (excuses, excuses). Anyway, blogger Katy Castro is a work at home Mom who currently resides in Las Vegas. She blogs on a number of topics but mostly related to the blogosphere and on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), something that I am keen on as well.

One of her latest posts gives tips on ways to "make your free theme unique". It's a post that all new bloggers should read. I totally agree with her. Come to think of it, I know of several long time bloggers who are still using the generic Blogger templates. Talking about themes, I really like the new blog design. It's a bit "girly " with the pink colours but why not.

One new rumour I just learnt from her blog is that Google might start offering sponsored reviews in the near future. That's great news and I am really looking forward to signing up if it does go ahead.

There are loads of interesting posts on her blog. I am really looking forward to her series on ways to improving your page rank. As the tag line of Katy's blog goes "Because there is always something to write about."

Vote for Katy on the 2008 Blogger Choice Awards.

Bloggers are Opinion leaders

Have you ever wondered who the most influential people in the World are? Are they politicians or are they the celebrities - actors and actresses, singers? Paris Hilton? I certainly hope not because apart from a few, majority are definitely not good role models.

I asked a few of my friends and quite a few mentioned their parents. Some mentioned peer groups and in particular- the opinion leaders. So who are these opinion leaders?

Searching for a suitable definition, I cam across several. Wikipedia defines an opinion leader as "the agent who is an active media user and who interprets the meaning of media messages or content for lower-end media users. Typically the opinion leader is held in high esteem by those that accept their opinions".

However, I prefer the definition given by Ronald S. Burt in his paper "The Social Capital of Opinion Leaders" in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 566, No. 1, 37-54 (1999). According to him,

"Opinion leaders are more precisely opinion brokers who carry information across the social boundaries between groups. They are not people at the top of things so much as people at the edge of things, not leaders within groups so much as brokers between groups."

By this definition, I guess a lot of Bloggers are indeed opinion leaders. We share and carry information among various groups around the World. We bloggers can proudly say that we are indeed the most influential people in the World. Organisations, Governments and companies that ignore that fact do so at their own risk.