I wanted to blog this some time ago but now that Tomorrow.sg is on the Straits Time and there is a conspiracy theory about Tomorrow.sg, its time for me to step out to clear the air.
First of all, to the “conspiracy theorist(s)”, about bloody time someone discover the SGNIC whois record! Where have you been, my friend? My involvement in Tomorrow.sg was never a secret.
Now, is this an IDA thing? Hell no! As SGNIC whois record shows, it is registered to me personally. My boss in IDA is aware of it, but note it is “aware” not approve or disapprove, just merely aware. In other word, I screwed up, I am on my own. He is fancinated by all these Social Software and had given me a lot of leeways to indulge in this blogging stuff and I thank him for that.Now back to why I did Tomorrow.sg – the first and foremost reason is technology, as I always am. As a futurist, I study a lot of history on various industries; I noticed a trend that every 10-12 years, something major will come along to sweep away the former paradigm, the old ways of doing things.
Approximately 10 years ago, when WWW was in the infancy, I helped SPH to setup AsiaOne which is also the 2nd newspaper online, a week after NYT. In those days, content was king – the coolest content we have on hand back then were dinosaur pictures, while the rest comprised mostly of academic stuff. So getting SPH onboard was a natural thing to do – they have content, huge amount of content and there were a lot of oversea Singaporean dying for it.
The media industry 10 years ago was about online distribution. 10 years today, it is about content creation.
Content creation is no longer a monopoly of mainstream media. In fact, we are seeing a shift for content creation from traditional media to individuals and community. First are forums, then Slashdot then Boingboing and OhMyNews!.
I wasn’t the first to get into Blogging. In fact, I got in late only in mid 2003, thanks to John Patrick, former Chief Internet Officer of IBM who gave me a little push. But once I am inside, I learnt many things one won’t see from the ‘outside’ – it is not about readers prefering content written in broken-English or plastered with grammer mistakes, but the bloggers themselves that make or break a blog.
And like any tools, Blogging is a double-edge sword. It can be used to bring the best out of people and it also brings out the worst. Just as I did AsiaOne without knowing where it is heading, I do not know where Tomorrow.sg will be either in future. What I do know is I am interested in being part of this transformational change again in the media industry. And I want to bring the very best out of blogging and hence Tomorrow.sg.
For those who have a quick scan of my blog would know I involved in many different technologies but not many has the potential like Blogging (VoIP perhaps maybe the close next) affecting a large number of people.
Doing Tomorrow.sg have been very exciting. Within the first few days, we got emboiled into C.Z PSC Scholar incident. Within a week, we have been mentioned on MSM and the machine we have was overloaded and we have to migrate. By 2nd week, ST, the largest newspaper in Singapore, interviewed us while we made fun of CNA of reporting the AcidFlask incident two weeks late (and they have the cheek to say they ‘broke the story’ :-).
A friend, a senior management in SPH once told me that no one can ever challenge SPH because “most of the news aren’t really news but just goosip”. Guess what – gossips are what blogging have most. The top tag on Tomorrow.sg is funny so go figure :-)
Blogging is going to be a big part of Singapore Internet culture and I am lucky to be at the right place, at the right time with the right people. And I love working with Tomorrow.sg team.
Conspiracy? Ha. Don’t believe – go start your own Tomorrow.sg. The tools I used to setup Tomorrow can be downloaded from here.
Now, if you would excuse me, I got a flight to catch – See you in Beijing.
