The Thailand wiki is officially up

We are very please to present our wiki on Thailand’s social media landscape to you.

Here is how our wiki looks like.

 

 

Once again, we are hopeful that this wiki would provide you with greater understanding on the social media scene in Thailand.

Do you have any comments to our wiki? We will be happy to hear from you.

 

 

Be ready for our wiki on Thailand

Our group is full of anticipation to see our final wiki, while our “in-house” designer, Jac, gives it the final touches.

It is unbelievable how different people come together and form a wiki page with a congruent voice.

We are hopeful that this wiki would provide a better understanding to anyone who wish to know more about the social media landscape in Thailand.

There is a bigger picture to our wiki project. If you wish to know more about social media across Asia, our classmates have also done up wikis on Australia, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, China and South Korea.

 

 

 

Building a Wiki on Thailand

This is exciting. It is our group’s first time in creating a wiki page.

We are foreign to the Wiki editing tools but we had lots of fun exploring how the functions work.

We have loads of information – this is always the problem. We have to remind one another to be concise and keep putting ourselves into the position of a social media practioner or anyone who is clueless about social media in Thailand.

We are on our way to bringing this wiki to this world and be sure to say “Hi” to it very soon.

 

The inevitable side effects of the Internet

Blogger, Thailand’s Lost Boy wrote an entry today titled “Flirting monks under investigation”.

The content of the entry does sound familiar. It’s one of those discussions that we had in class over privacy and issues over identity. And just like any highly debatable topic, there was no solution to it.

In the same way, as the Lost Boy describes, whether or not there is such a monk who is going about doing such things or whether people are just poking fun, we have no idea. We all know that it isn’t difficult to change our identity or to sweet talk a stranger from believing who you are.

I believe such problems existed long before, just like in the chat rooms. So, if everyone does the same e.g. change their identity to be someone they are not, then how honest or truthful is the Web 2.0? Or, is it worth it to publish or upload truthful information about oneself for others to take advantage of?

The Big Switch Blog on Social Media in Thailand

Check out this link, it shows a few interesting facts on Nicole and my part on advertising in Thailand plus some Thai blogs. It is such a waste that everything is mostly in Thai, and we can only await our Thai friends to help us in translation.

Accessibility of WordPress in Thailand

Just a quick update after reading Vanessa’s post below: I just returned from Bangkok for holiday and I could access my WordPress account there. Hence, I guess the WordPress ban has been lifted.

Is there freedom of expression for Thais on the Internet?

As I was doing my research and trying to find out corporations which blog in Thailand, I find some other interesting information with regards to the social media scene in Thailand.

Some time last April, Thailand blocked access to YouTube as it had some contentious videos of their King. This resulted to YouTube feeling disappointed as described in this article as the country decided to ban the video sharing site. While the internet allows information to be shared by anyone who has access to it, there are cultural issues that arise from the advancement of technology. Nevertheless, the country has lifted the ban.

A couple of months later, access to blogs hosted on wordpress.com were not accessible in Thailand as it was blocked by TOT (Telephone Organization of Thailand). This was due to inappropriate content, text and/or pictures which may affects the minds of Thai people all over the world. Till today, I am unsure if the access to wordpress.com is blocked.

It seems that the Thai government has a huge influence in the social media scene with bans that have been imposed and blocks on various sites. While I continue reading more about how the government plays such a pivotal role in controlling what could be published on the internet or not, I wonder if this would hold Thai people back from having the freedom to speak their minds and share it on the web. Or, perhaps a more fundamental question – Would Thais choose blogging as an avenue to express themselves?

Social networks in Thailand

My Thai friend, Jamorn, gave a little more light into social networking scene in Thailand.

He said the Thai people use social networks like Hi5 and Friendster instead of Facebook unless they are internationally educated (like him!).

He gave a “guesstimate” that less than 5% of the Thai corporations are following the web 2.0 standard at the moment and blogging has not caught on.

As for information search, Jamorn mentioned that the main sites that Thai people use are probably Yahoo! Thailand and Sanook.com. Wikipedia may not be as popular because the contents in Thai is extremely limited.

Thanks Jamorn!

Edelman’s 2005 Trust “MEdia”

How real people are finally being heard, I personally like this tagline. Do check out this Edelman document, in particular page 4 where I got this extract below.

“When the world’s largest natural disaster took place in late 2004 in remote Southern Asia, bloggers in Thailand, Indonesia, India and other affected countries quickly jumped into action (e.g., http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/) to provide some of the fi rst on-the-scene “reporting,” including casualty reports, videos of the damage, heart-breaking photographs, government updates, links to relief agencies, lists of missing persons and victims, hospital reports and more. This shift from appointment-driven news consumption to on-demand news consumption is altering the news media landscape.”

PRSpeak on Thailand

Here’re four entries from a PR blog I found on Thailand. A pretty interesting read, do check it out.