The Millenium generation and the challenge for social stability

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THINK ASIAN By ANDREW SHENG

AS we enter into autumn, 2011 is turning out to be quite a year. Who would have thought that the immolation of a jobless Tunisian graduate in December 2010 would have sparked off the Arab Spring, with uprisings in North Africa and Middle East and now a variant has appeared in Britain?

Other than the social unrest fermented by unemployed youth upset with government corruption and inability to create jobs, the common element was the use of the social media. Even the Chinese high speed train crash in Wenzhou sparked off microblogging that spread the news faster than before. Twitter, Facebook, Google and mobile phone texting have changed the nature of news transmission and the whole governance structure globally.
Image via Wikipedia

Human behaviour reacts to new information, hence our obsession with breaking news. We need information to plan, respond and act.

Traditionally, the control of news and information was confined to a relatively small number of powerful newspaper groups around the world or government media. Radio and television changed the game, but the information was essentially one way. News feed meant news was fed to the consumer. Advertising was about promoting products and services and conveying information to the user.

Society became concerned about the use and misuse of information, hence the intense debate about control of media and freedom of information.



With the arrival of the Internet and social media technology, information became two-way. Two simultaneous events happened with the arrival of social media, both of which are totally new and not fully understood.

First, information became available, faster and more comprehensive to more people than ever thought possible. Papers like the News of the World were considered successful if they sold more than one million copies daily. A successful book would sell 100,000.

However, today, there are five billion mobile phones in use, compared with just over six billion people. More and more people everywhere are connected to the Internet. Every month more than 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook. Twitter can reach millions instantaneously.

Second, because millions of people can receive news simultaneously, they can react synchronously. This is the rise of flash news and flash mobs. The news feedback mechanism has moved from months to nano-seconds.

Governments which had time to react to news, now have no time at all to understand and respond to instant public opinion or even sudden appearance of thousands on social protest.

When someone rich and famous like Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested, there was almost instant decision on the Web whether he was guilty or not.

In the past, legal justice could have the pretense that the jury should not be biased by newspaper comment. Today, there are no “clean” decisions everyone is affected by the public opinion.

There are several serious implications for the media industry and social governance.

In economic terms, the traditional print media is suffering in the advanced countries. The good news is that print media is still growing in the emerging markets, as less access to Internet and a rising young population look voraciously for news.

More and more people are turning to instant news on their mobile phone and the Web. The bad news is that with instant news are instant judgements Like or Do Not Like. The fates of major social events are no longer judged by Royal Commissions of Inquiry, but by 140 character limit of news transfer by Twitter or other micro-blogs.

The events and responses of daily life are now black and white, demanding instant solution, not complex matters of grey requiring careful analysis and cautious response.

Thus, in many ways, the world has moved into a multi-dimensional complex transformation, facing simultaneously forces of demographics (more and more younger people and at the same time ageing people), urbanisation, industrial transformation, dramatic technology advances and the visible effects of climate warming and natural disasters.

Hence, mankind is facing changes in the natural environment even as we are confronting massive social change. But the most profound change is the great divide in the inter-generational understanding of each other.

The baby boomers of my generation marched in the streets in 1968 to demand greater social equality, including gender and racial equality. We were less than 5% of our age group who went to university. We were an elite.

Today, the baby boomers (those born after World War II) are beginning to retire. They have become the establishment.

University or tertiary education has become much more broad-based. More than half the population of the world is under the age of 21. The protesters in the Arab Spring or the rioters in Britain represent a generation different from their political leaders.

The new generation has largely grown up not in an age of war, but in an age of global peace. But the biggest challenge for social stability is the challenge of jobs for Gen Y or the Millenium generation, people born around the turn of the century.

In China, there is general acceptance of the fact the post 1980 generation (after the implementation of the one-child policy) has social behaviour different from those when families were multi-children.

In the next 15 years, more than 700 million young people will enter the labour force, of whom 300 million will come from Asia.

Already, the International Labour Organisation estimates that there are roughly 100 million unemployed people in Asia, before the global financial crisis.

If we cannot create enough jobs despite massive fiscal deficits and industrial restructuring, expect more social disruption from the new generation.

Andrew Sheng is president of the Fung Global Institute.

The Nine Habits of Highly Healthy & Effective People

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by Jonny Bowden 

 

For years, business and motivational gurus have known that there are basic habits that seem to predict professional success and excellence. Books like "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", by motivational speaker and business guru Stephen Covey, PhD has sold over 15 million copies alone, to people hungry for the secrets of success.
                    Image via Wikipedia
We don't yet have the perfect formula for long life, happiness and physical health, but a little careful distillation of the massive amount of research on health and longevity reveals that cultivating nine basic habits will significantly increase the odds of your living long, well and happily, in a robust, healthy, weight-appropriate body.

1. Eat your vegetables. No kidding. And I'm talking at least 9 servings a day.. Unless you're following the most stringent first stage of the Atkins Diet, you should be able to consume 60-120 grams of carbs a day (depending on your weight and exercise level), and you'd have to eat a stockyard full of spinach to get to that amount. Every major study of long-lived, healthy people shows that they eat a ton of plant foods. Nothing delivers antioxidants, fiber, flavonoids, indoles, and the entire pharmacopia of disease fighting phytochemicals like stuff that grows.

2. Eat fish and/or take fish oil. The Omega-3's found in cold-water fish like salmon deserve the title of "wellness molecule of the century". They lower the risk of heart disease, they lowerblood pressure, they improve mood and they're good for the brain. And if you're pregnant, they may make your kid smarter!

3. Connect. And I'm not talking about the internet. In virtually every study of people who are healthy and happy into their 9th and 10th decade, social connections are one of the "prime movers" in their life. Whether church, family, volunteer work or community, finding something you care about that's bigger than you that you can connect with and that involves other people (or animals) will extend your life, increase your energy, and make you happier. Only always.



4. Get some sun. At least 10-15 minutes three times a week. Interestingly, a recent study of four places in the globe where people lived the longest and were the healthiest noted that all four places were in sunny climates. Sun improves your mood and boosts levels of cancer-fighting, performance-enhancing, bone-strengthening vitamin D, a vitamin most people don't get nearly enough of.

5. Sleep Well. If you're low in energy, gaining weight, grumpy and looking haggard, guess what?- chances are you're not sleeping nearly long enough nor well enough. By sleeping "well", I mean uninterrupted sleep, in the dark, without the television on, in a relaxing environment. Nothing nourishes, replenishes and restarts the system like 7-9 hours sleep. Hint: start by going to bed an hour early. And if you've got a computer in the bedroom, banish it.

6. Exercise every day. Forget this 20 minutes three times a week stuff. Long lived people are doing things like farm chores at 4:30 in the morning! Our Paleolithic ancestors traveled an average of 20 miles per day. Our bodies were designed to move on a regular basis. New studies show that merely 30 minutes a day of walking not only reduces the risk of most serious diseases, but can even grow new brain cells!

7. Practise Gratitude. By making a list of things you're grateful for, you focus the brain on positive energy. Gratitude is incompatable with anger and stress. Practise using your under-utilized "right brain" and spread some love. Focusing on what you're grateful for - even for five minutes a day - has the added benefit of being one of the best stress -reduction techniques on the planet.

8. Drink red wine or eat red grapes. The resveratrol in dark grapes is being studied for its effect on extending life, which it seems to do for almost every species studied. (So does eating about 1/3 less food, by the way.) If you've got a problem with alcohol, you can get resveratrol from grapes, peanuts or supplements. (And if you're a woman, and you choose the alcohol option, make sure you're getting folic acid every day.)

9. Get the sugar out. The number one enemy of vitality, health and longevity is not fat, it's sugar. Sugar's effect on hormones, moods, immunity, weight and possibly even cancer cells is enormous, and it's all negative. To the extent that you can remove it from your diet, you will be adding years to your life and life to your years.

This list may not be perfect and it may not be complete, but it's a start. As my dear grandmother used to say, "Couldn't hurt". Not one of these "habits" will hurt you, all will benefit you, and some may make the difference between life and death.

And it's never too late to start cultivating them.

Enjoy the journey!

The convenient scapegoat barring technology and social media

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The convenient scapegoat

ALONG THE WATCHTOWER By M.VEERA PANDIYAN veera@thestar.com.my

Barring technology and the social media is not the answer to quelling unrest.
Image via CrunchBase

IS the social media and free flow of information via digital technology good or bad? It depends on where it happens and whom it affects.

Text messages, Twitter and Facebook were hailed as powerful tools against repression when the people of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya took to the streets to protest against their authoritarian rulers in February.

British Prime Minister David Cameron declared then that the Internet and social media belonged to people who had “enough of corruption, of having to make do with what they’re given, of having to settle for second best”.

But when riots and anarchy broke out back home in London and elsewhere in Britain, the reaction was patently different.

“Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organised via social media.

“Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. When people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them.”

And Cameron told an emergency session of the British Parliament: “So we are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.”

The UK police have rounded up close to 5,000 people and taken about 1,000 rioters and looters to court since the ugly wave of unrest and arson hit.

Britain’s entire national intelligence machinery – including its Security Service, or M15, which usually handles espionage and terrorism – is now focused on identifying the culprits and trying to prevent future occurrences of disorder.



The authorities have been generally blaming the misuse of social media for the mayhem; it appears that Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) was the most effective tool used because of its tight security features.

The BBM application provides password-protected messages to individuals or groups that can only be read with a PIN.

During the height of the riots, British MP David Lammy used Twitter to call for the halt of the service by tweeting: “BBM clearly helping rioters outfox police. Suspend it.”

RIM, Facebook and Twitter have since given assurances that they would comply with the UK’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, the country’s privacy laws.

Besides his government’s willingness to consider shutting down or blocking access to social networks, the British PM also pledged a “zero tolerance” system of policing under which no form of law breaking would be condoned.

Critics have been quick to censure Cameron’s call for curbs and tough measures as smacking of hypocrisy and as a violation of free speech, civil liberties and human rights.

Index on Censorship news editor Padraig Reidy slammed it as “a bizarre and kind of knee-jerk reaction by the government”.

“More recently, we’ve seen this kind of thing in Egypt,” he said.

Actually, the most recent incident of shutting down a phone network happened last week in the United States.

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) shut down the cell phone service at four stations to prevent a protest rally over the shooting of two men by police.

BART deactivated the service from 4pm to 7pm to stop protest organisers from communicating.

Meanwhile, China, which was subject to Western sermons over its fierce crackdown on dissent in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, has raised safety concerns over the 2012 Olympics to be staged in London.

The Chinese media has responded to the UK riots with “a mixture of shock and schadenfreude”, as fittingly described by the Daily Telegraph.

“The West has been talking about supporting Internet freedom, and opposing other countries’ government to control this kind of websites. Now we can say they are tasting the bitter fruit (of their complacency) and they can’t complain about it,” wrote a People’s Daily commentator.

But the real issue to be addressed by governments everywhere is distrust brought about by the gap between the haves and have-nots and unfairness, whether real of perceived.

Ian Williams, a veteran journalist and analyst, described it aptly when he said the UK government’s posturing ignored the fact lawlessness in the highest places was at the root of the riots.

“The rioters who were interviewed and people on the streets all remarked upon members of parliament stealing expenses from the tax payer, mostly with impunity, although some went to jail,” he said when interviewed by Press TV.

“They look at the bankers making billions of dollars and getting away with it; they look at Rupert Murdoch, the head of News International, hacking innocent people’s telephones, and getting away with it.
“So basically the message that is being sent from the ruling classes of Britain is that the law is not there to be obeyed.

“So to start shouting that the lesser people - the people who steal televisions - should be locked up for life whereas the people who steal whole industries and banks and countries should be given knighthoods and peerages for it is not really a sustainable one on the streets I suspect.”

> Associate Editor M. Veera Pandiyan likes this quote by Edgar Allan Poe: The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

The Secrets to Mastering Facebook, Get Ready For F-Commerce!

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Dan Schawbel

 With over 700 million users now, Facebook is growing rapidly and becoming more entrenched in our society. In order to learn more about Facebook, and how we should and shouldn’t be using it, I caught up with Mikal E. Belicove, who is a business strategist, author, and writer for Entrepreneur Magazine. He  specializes in content development, market analysis, and messaging/positioning for a select group of individuals and businesses. Mikal’s latest book is The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook. I asked him if Facebook can hurt your career or business, to reveal some Facebook secrets, what the true value of Facebook is, and more.

Could it hurt your career and/or business if you’re not active on Facebook?

Having a strong Facebook presence is more important for businesses than it is for advancing one’s career (in fact, you could easily argue that Facebook has hurt more careers as a result of user naivety than it has helped). In the current marketplace, where discretionary spending is anything but discretionary, and where anyone can attempt to sell anything, businesses must prove why

 

Mikal E. Belicove

they’re special, and one of the best ways to do that is to leverage engagement and word-of-mouth. Facebook now reaches nearly 75 percent of the total U.S. Internet population each month. Businesses that fail to include the world’s largest social utility in their business-aligned communication strategy do so at their own risk.

What are a few Facebook secrets that most people don’t know about?

The Privacy page is deceptively simple; it doesn’t show all privacy settings on one screen. I encourage users to go to their Privacy page and then check the settings for Connecting on Facebook (click View Settings), Sharing on Facebook (click Customize settings), and Apps and Websites (click Edit your settings).

Also, Facebook is in the process of rolling out Check-in Deals. If you’re a consumer, you can check in at a business location using a smartphone or other mobile device to obtain promotional offers. If you’re a business owner, you can use Check-in Deals to promote and drive repeat business. But really, not much is secret on Facebook, because if a feature is cool enough to use, everyone’s talking about it.

Do you think that Facebook is worth $100 billion dollars? Why or why not?

Placing a value on a private company while it’s experiencing exponential growth is an inexact science. That said, Facebook appears to be on track to earn around $4 billion in FY11, which is slightly more than double what I conjecture it earned in FY10. While revenue growth won’t maintain its current pace, the company could earn around $10 billion in 2015. At that rate, with net margins of 15-20 percent and a growth multiple of 20-25x, I peg Facebook today to be worth something more along the lines of $30-$35 billion. And while competition for consumers’ time and discretionary dollars is fierce — and the fact that more people are spending more time on Facebook gives it an incredible potential to generate revenue — unless SMBs realize unmatched ROI and ROE (return on engagement) from the site, I feel $100 billion is nothing more than unbridled enthusiasm.

If you make your entire profile private, can people still access your pictures and updates?

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Facebook

Your name and profile picture don’t have privacy settings, so even if you make your entire profile private, people can still find your name and profile image on Facebook by searching for you by name. As for other pictures you upload and status updates, you can choose to have all of them accessible to only yourself, friends, friends of friends, everyone, or only certain friends. In addition, whenever you post something on Facebook, you can click the lock icon and choose who can see it.

What do you think is the future for Facebook? Will they consume all other social networks?

Certainly not all networks, and “consume” is too strong a word. I suspect Facebook will command the lion’s share of the most popular social networking features. For example, Facebook hasn’t completely replaced photo-sharing networks including Flickr and Photobucket, but it did rise very quickly to become the number one place for sharing photos on the Web. YouTube remains top dog in the video-sharing arena, and I don’t see Facebook ever taking that over. Bottom line… Facebook does an excellent job of incorporating the best of what other more specialized social utilities and platforms offer. You can see this with Facebook’s Groupon clone – Deals. This could make Facebook a one-stop-shop for users and businesses, giving Facebook a huge competitive edge in many social categories.

Dan Schawbel, recognized as a “personal branding guru” by The New York Times, is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, a full-service personal branding agency. Dan is the author of Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, the founder of the Personal Branding Blog, and publisher of Personal Branding Magazine. He has worked with companies such as Google, Time Warner, Symantec, IBM, EMC, and CitiGroup.

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Attention Facebook Shoppers: Get Ready For F-Commerce

Written by Tim McMullen

Tim McMullen: Shopping Facebook.

Ready or not, we’re approaching the age of F-commerce: Facebook-based retailing.

It’s time for retailers around the world to prepare for the rise of the Facebook consumer, a new breed in convenience-seeking online shoppers. From shoes to plane tickets, it’s all right there on the social network.

Facebook now offers options for retailers to tailor their Facebook page layout to look less like the familiar profile page and more like a Web page. The simple click-and-pay option seems to be attracting more shoppers. And where shoppers flock, retailers follow.

One thing in particular that’s encouraging businesses to participate in F-commerce is the fact that the platform is completely free. There are no hosting or domain fees (yet), and Facebook isn’t keeping portions of your profits. As more and more people adopt social media, F-commerce will only grow and take on more retailers.

Facebook has more than 600 million members, a fat slice of the world’s online population. People want to be social, and shopping is a social act in itself. And retailers are paying attention to the changes taking place within the online shopping world.

When businesses post news or updates to their Facebook account, they hope that users “like” what they have to say. Now, instead of sharing thoughts, people can share discounts and products. “Sally now likes Delta and has purchased two tickets to Hawaii,” could show up in your news feed anytime. Delta, Coca-Cola and Barneys New York are just a few of the major brands that have added a Facebook shop to their fan page.

Best Buy is one retailer that wanted to offer more options for their customers, so they created a Facebook page that has a shop-and-share option. This is in addition to their e-commerce site; savvy sites are not switching but rather adding channels to their arsenal of outlets.

Now, disregard the fake profiles for newborns and people’s cats and go straight for the fastest growing demographic on Facebook: Women over 55. I’m thinking online shopping has a great deal to do with their interest in Facebook. And I couldn’t be more… right.

According to a survey conducted for Kirkland’s, a home decor specialty store with brick-and-mortar and online stores, that’s exactly what this growing audience wants. It’s important for retailers to recognize that they must prepare for F-commerce by engaging their Facebook audience first. With Kirkland’s specifically, coupons and discounts are their game.

s was a virtually unknown retailer in the social commerce space that blew everyone away when they became the sixth-fastest growing fan page on Facebook. Just four days after launching their Cha-Ching! interactive game promotion, Kirkland’s went from 43,000 fans to 140,000. They have since surpassed their goal of 200,000 fans. Now, this is all without actually selling merchandise on their Facebook page. They are still in the engagement stage, working with their customers to make their Facebook site more fun and trustworthy at the same time.

The promotion included a $25,000 cash prize and a chance to win Kirkland’s merchandise in a swap game where people trade virtual merchandise with other players. And everyone who plays the game receives a coupon for future purchases.

This is a positive step into the direction of F-commerce. Interactive games will keep an audience interested, and will solidify pages in terms of getting sales. In the survey, Kirkland’s found a majority of their Facebook customers wanted to save money, and to see merchandise and prices alongside content such as decorating ideas.

After conducting the survey, they saw a purpose and direction for their Facebook page that was different from their online community, mykirklands.com, and they went for it. The survey clearly showed that more and more Facebook users want to engage on Facebook. Campaigns such as the Cha-Ching! promotion are driving users to the social media hub and retailers must quickly follow to meet the demands of the users.

With the Kirkland’s campaign, we saw that 36-45 year old females were more involved with the online community, and that 46-55 year olds were more engaged with the Facebook page (which squashes the belief that F-commerce is limited to young and hip brands). Another interesting find was that the online community members were generally not interested in Facebook. They went online for different reasons.

The critics of F-commerce have begged the question, if Facebook starts to overlap with more traditional means of online shopping, why have two touch points? As we learned from the success of Kirkland’s, it seems that it would be best practice to have multiple touch points because the consumers have the option of how they do their online shopping. There was little crossover between the online users at mykirklands.com and the Facebook users, which shows that there isn’t that universal preference just yet.

It’s no secret that people spend hours on their Facebook pages weekly or even daily, whether it’s on their smart phone, tablet or computer. This sort of accessibility is what’s driving retailers to set up shop on the social network. F-commerce is still in its early stages, but judging by the consumer response so far, many more retailers are sure to begin exploring it within the next few months.

Tim McMullen is President and partner at redpepper, an  integrated marketing agency with offices in Atlanta and Nashville.

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A matter of opinion

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Culture Cul De Sac By Jacqueline Pereira 

A person’s views are shaped by perceptions and thought processes personal to him.

COLUMNISTS often receive responses to their articles, from people moved to agree or (sometimes vehemently) disagree with views published the previous week. Either way, it’s all part of the process of expression and exchange.

Dissenting opinions are invaluable, as they open our eyes to different reasoning and new lines of discussion. And, in a country like ours, the variety of opinions astounds, from the absurd that amuses to the profound that provokes.

Adding to this colourful discourse are the quirky conclusion, the untested premise, the unaccepted assertion.

Which is a perfect recipe for a lively, entertaining debate. If we genuinely have an opinion.

Unfortunately, as Oscar Wilde once said: “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

But diverse opinions add to a delightful cauldron that is society, constantly cooking, spouting a range of views in its steam.

On a wider scale, public opinion refers to attitudes and positions collectively adopted by a group of people. In many cases these shared opinions contribute to policy-making, either in their communities or the country itself.

A case in point is the Arab Spring. Months after the first stirrings in Tunisia and Egypt, affected governments in the Middle East and North Africa (collectively known as MENA) are still reeling from the effects of not reacting earlier to the voices of their citizens. Despite the clampdowns and killings, large numbers across Mena continue to demand that their opinions be heard and respected.



Individual opinions matter, but we must remember that personal opinions are firstly that – personal – and are based on a person’s perceptions and thought processes. And it can come as a surprise that we don’t see eye to eye with someone, or follow his train of thought. When we try to think like the other, our thought train comes to a halt.

The unappreciated beauty of opinions is that they matter most to the person who utters them. Listeners are allowed, as they wish, to gauge, judge and accept the proffered view. But opinions can change. All the time.

Take fashion as an example. We may be lusting after a fashion item – like a Fendi Silvana handbag this season – while making dramatic plans to acquire next season’s Burberry Grainy Leather Tote (in red). And that’s all right.

The much-maligned Obedient Wives Club, too, has a right to its opinions. Derided it may be, but its founders and followers have their beliefs, and they choose to stand by them. We, as listeners, are free to disagree.

To cultivate an open mind, it is imperative to question every opinion. Just because some people say it louder, go on about it longer, or keep repeating their views over and over again, it does not mean that what they say is right.

Opinions must be met with some measure of doubt, no matter how convincing the orator. A well-argued opinion, backed with indisputable facts, may change your view. But it can often also be used as a vehicle for an orator with his own agenda – as in the case of a smooth salesman who’s out to sell refrigerators to Eskimos.

Putting forward an opinion involves the art of persuasion, not polemic, not put-down, not a litany of facts. Aided by a coherent thought process, building from experience and backed with information, an opinion enables an individual to take a stand.

Naturally, opinions differ. This is most evident in political systems worldwide. Each side of the divide shores up its support. What matters most here, though, is that the protagonists do not stop talking – and listening – to differing views. There is evidence that we become more entrenched in our opinions if we only interact with people of the same persuasion and, as a result, narrow rather than broaden our view.

It is the skill of speakers to persuade people and rally them to their way of thinking. Meanwhile, people have to decide on their own, based on what they hear. In the end they make up their own minds, drawing on their own values and experiences.

Lastly, let’s not forget that to hold an opinion is an act of courage. Especially if you are going against the grain or ruffling a few feathers. Even the thought of an unconventional opinion is enough to get some people bristling, bursting at a moment’s notice to counter the argument vehemently.

But there is a difference between a person with an opinion and an opinionated person.

So, before responding, it is best to think and reflect, and definitely not be afraid to have an opinion. And let others have theirs.

As the 18th-century French writer and philosopher Voltaire said: “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

People, places and perceptions inspire writer Jacqueline Pereira. In this column, she rummages through cultural differences and revels in discovering similarities. Check her out on Facebook.