Tag | philippines
Breaking: Facebook To Enter Into Partnership With Friendster Buyer MOL Global
We’re hearing that Facebook and Malaysian payments company MOL Global will be holding a press conference shortly to announce a significant new partnership around gaming and payments in Asia. MOL, you may recall, was in the news when it acquired Friendster earlier this year. The press conference is being held in Kuala Lumpur and will begin shortly, we’re told. Update: Press release below: MOL and Facebook Bring Facebook Credits to Retail Stores for the First Time MOL Partners with Facebook to Become Payment Provider for Facebook Credits; Facebook Credits to be Available through MOL’s 500,000 Outlets Across Asia KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – July 8, 2010 – MOL Global today announced a strategic partnership with Facebook that will make it significantly easier and more convenient for millions of people across Asia to purchase virtual goods in online games and applications on Facebook. Under the agreement, MOL Global’s wholly owned subsidiary MOL AccessPortal will become a payment provider for Facebook Credits. That will enable Facebook members to buy Credits using MOLPoints on Facebook and on MOL’s website, MOL.Com. In the coming months, Facebook users will be able to obtain Facebook Credits using MOL points purchased through MOL’s network of more than 500,000 outlets, which are mainly in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, India, Australia and New Zealand. In addition to outlets such as 7-Eleven stores and cybercafes, customers will be able to purchase Credits through MOL’s network of online banks in these countries. Facebook and MOL will also offer co-branded gift cards at outlets in Malaysia and Singapore that can be redeemed for Facebook Credits. The partnership makes purchasing Facebook Credits significantly more convenient in Asia, a region where consumers rely heavily on offline prepaid cards rather than credit cards to purchase digital goods and services. “The relationship with Facebook demonstrates MOL’s growing role as a leading payment provider for social networking sites in Asia, especially in our core countries of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and India,” said Ganesh Kumar Bangah, group chief executive officer for MOL Global. “Over the last few quarters, we have seen a double-digit increase in payment transactions and payment volume. This partnership continues MOL’s momentum to build the largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network in Asia.” “Working with MOL means we can offer the benefits of Facebook Credits to millions of people in Asia using a payment system that is already widely used and trusted,” said Vaughan Smith, director of business and corporate development at Facebook. “We’re investing in the long-term future of Facebook Credits and we view this agreement as a major opportunity to broaden the availability of a simple, unified currency that can be used in games and applications across Facebook.” Facebook Credits enable users to buy and spend virtual currency in more than 150 applications on Facebook from many leading developers, eliminating the frustration of having to enter payment details separately for each application. Every month, more than 70 percent of Facebook members engage with applications on Facebook Platform. ### About MOL Global MOL Global is one of South East Asia’s biggest internet companies and owns 100% of both payment service provider, MOL AccessPortal Berhad (MOL) and the world’s pioneer social network, Friendster Inc. (Friendster) with 115 million members worldwide. MOL is a MSC Malaysia Status Company that operates and develops payment systems incorporated in 2000. MOL handles over 60 million transactions with an annual payment volume of USD200 million. MOL leverages on a network of more than 540,000 physical payment collection points across more than 75 countries. It is also linked online to 88 banks in 9 countries worldwide. MOL was recognized as one of Asia Pacific’s fastest growing technology companies in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific Awards in 2005 and 2006, won a Merit Award for the Best of E-Commerce Applications in the MSC Asia Pacific ICT Awards and received the Member Excellence Award at the 2009 ICT Leadership Awards of the National ICT Association of Malaysia. Through its ownership of MOL and Friendster, MOL Global is Asia’s largest end-to-end content, distribution and commerce network, pairing MOL’s physical payment collection points and payment platform with Friendster’s large online footprint, social network and user community in Asia. CrunchBase Information Facebook Information provided by CrunchBase
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Breaking: Facebook To Enter Into Partnership With Friendster Buyer MOL Global
GeeksOnAPlane At echelon 2010 In Singapore: An Overview Of South East Asia’s Web Scene
Following Shanghai , Beijing , and Seoul , the GeeksOnAPlane (GOAP) tour reached its fourth and penultimate stop last week: Singapore . The island nation isn’t a very big market by itself (population: 5 million), but it’s located in the center of South East Asia, home to 600 million people. Only a small fraction of the population in that region currently has access to the web. However, it’s just a question of time until places like Indonesia (240 million people, 12.5% Internet penetration), Vietnam (89 million, 25.7%), or the Philippines (98 million, 24.5%) catch up to the rest of the wired world. There’s quite a lot happening in this region of the world already, as demonstrated by the 650 local entrepreneurs, investors and executives who attended echelon 2010 , a two-day web industry event organized by Singaporean startup community e27 . What follows is a summary of just a few presentations, panel discussions, and startup demos the GOAP witnessed at that event. Needless to say, there was a lot more going on during those two days in Singapore (for the purpose of this post, I am just focusing on the Asia-related stuff; here ‘s the complete agenda and here ‘s the speaker list). If you want to know more, e27 itself covered much of what happened at the event on its blog and offers a slew of video recordings on its Ustream page . Asia-related presentations and panel discussions at echelon 2010 Asia’s web industry (panel discussion) Podcast series This Week In Asia ( iTunes link ) recorded its 50th episode live on stage at echelon 2010. Guests included investor and GOAP head honcho Dave McClure , Gen Kanai ( Director of Asia Business Development for Mozilla) , Mohan Belani (Director at e27), Rama Mamuaya (founder of Indonesian tech blog DailySocial ), myself, and others. You can listen to the podcast, which touches upon various topics around Asia’s web scene, over on This Week In Asia’s site (the sound quality improves after the first two minutes), download it on iTunes , or watch the discussion on video here . Indonesia’s mobile industry (presentation) Indonesia is hot right now, not only in South East Asia. One of the most interesting (Asia-related) presentations delivered at the event came from Jakarta-based Andy Zain , founder of Mobile Monday Indonesia . Zain said that the mobile web in Indonesia is bigger than the fixed-line Internet (210 million cell phone owners), that Indonesians love browsing the web on their handsets more than anyone else (they’re consuming 661 pages monthly), and that 80% of all new handsets sold in the country are web-enabled. Here’s Zain’s presentation: Hit this link to view the presentation on video. Social gaming in Asia (panel discussion) Unfortunately, there is no video recording of the third Asia-related discussion panel (Social Gaming – How a Fast Rising Global Phenomenon is Developing in Asia) available. But e27 has summarized what the six panelists talked about in a dedicated blog post . Startup demos at echelon 2010 Thankfully, echelon 2010 not only gave big corporations and star entrepreneurs some airtime, but also made room for South East Asian startups to show their wares (dozens of them, in fact). All of the companies offer their wares in English (and quite a few were approached by investors from Asia and elsewhere on the spot, I’ve heard.) In TechCrunch 50 tradition, ten of the startups actually launched their products at the event. You can watch the entire launchpad on video here and here . Here’s a list of all the products that were first unveiled at echelon 2010: Zelrealm , a virtual items-based monetization tool for social game developers ( more info on the e27 blog) MyCube , a “digital life management tool” that will be built on top of existing social networks ( more info ) scraplr , a “Yahoo Answers for tasks” that makes it possible to share tasks on Facebook and Twitter ( more info ) TangoFX , a video platform (in alpha) that lets multiple users connect while consuming video content through widgets ( more info ) Pandaform , a simple form builder mainly targeted at small organizations ( more info ) foound , an LBS for the iPhone that intends to make it easier to organize “hangouts with friends” ( more info ) FlickEvents , an event management platform ( more info ) Maxus Contentian , a copywriting add-on for the Drupal CMS that’s targeted at small businesses ( more info ) MoVend , an in-app payment system for Android mainly targeting South East Asian developers ( more info ) Time Voyager , whose game engine JX2 will be marketed to makers of 3D games ( more info ) foound (tag line: “Why check-in alone when you can hangout with friends?”) was widely regarded to be the top product of the echelon launchpad. The eponymous Singapore-based startup expects its iPhone app to hit the App Store within this month (the foound team – along with some members of the GOAP group – is pictured on top of this post). Among the around 40 exhibiting startups , I found three companies to be standing out from the crowd (although there were probably more). These were Flutterscape from Japan (a unique, cross-border social commerce platform), Creately from Australia (a collaborative online diagramming tool), and insync from the Philippines (“Dropbox for Gmail and Google users”). Many thanks from the GOAP group to the echelon 2010 organizers (especially Mohan Belani and Sneha Menon ) for their hospitality. Only a small part of the group has now moved on to Tokyo . The final stop of the GOAP tour (which formally ended after echelon) is Sapporo, where the Infinity Ventures Summit , one of Japan’s most important web industry events, will be held from Thursday. For GOAP information in real-time, follow the #goap hash tag (the official Twitter account is here ). “Official” GOAP pictures are still being uploaded over on Flickr . Photo credit: Kris Krüg , Static Photography CrunchBase Information Flutterscape Information provided by CrunchBase
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GeeksOnAPlane At echelon 2010 In Singapore: An Overview Of South East Asia’s Web Scene
Symantec Internet security threat report XV: Trends for the …
Spam trends . The Philippines ranked in the 10th position for spam origin in APJ, and ranked 4th in SEA. The most common type of spam detected in 2009 was related to Internet-related goods and services such as online degrees, …
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Symantec Internet security threat report XV: Trends for the …
Beauty is Rare – Elusive so it Can be Easily Sold
A couple years ago my wife and I had our big wedding in the Philippines (we even had the mayor of Manila show up). She was so beautiful that day. And lucky for me she is just as beautiful when she wakes up each day. 
But she can be hard on herself and if she gains a single pound she worries. Truth is I am the chubby one who needs to drop weight. Beauty (and the perception of it) is a wonder commodity to sell because there is no limit. Almost everyone could be in better shape or be stronger or eat healthier or not have this or that birthmark or the odd finger that bends backwards. We are imperfect beings by our very nature. We get sick. We break. And we all fight the battle of aging one day at a time – every single day! But no matter where you go, whatever is rare is typically considered desirable & beautiful. This is not done as an accident, but as a way to generate profits. If the human condition is flawed (and can’t be fixed) then the person selling a bogus solution to that problem is going to make a lot more money than a person who sells something which is actually attainable. And so we live in a world where we treat symptoms, rather than problems. Anything to make the numbers look good and make the sale. From there you are on your own! If you feel bad, we can give you more drugs! Spending too much time at the computer and eating unhealthy has made me a bit too chubby. No good in obese America ! But did you know that in the certain times & cultures being fat was considered a sign of beauty , like when few people could afford to be fat ! 
There is too much high fructose corn syrup in the typical American diet for obesity to be considered beautiful: “Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic,” Avena said. The new research complements previous work led by Hoebel and Avena demonstrating that sucrose can be addictive, having effects on the brain similar to some drugs of abuse. In the United States many girls not only label anorexia as beauty, but some go to tanning salons so they can darken their skin to look beautiful , at least until they get older : Long-term exposure to artificial sources of ultraviolet rays like tanning beds (or to the sun’s natural rays) increases both men and women’s risk of developing skin cancer. In addition, exposure to tanning salon rays increases damage caused by sunlight because ultraviolet light actually thins the skin, making it less able to heal. Women who use tanning beds more than once a month are 55 percent more likely to develop malignant melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer. A service which has no lasting positive tangible value AND certainly has a lasting negative tangible risk can grow to become a multi-billion Dollar industry Anything to be beautiful! This is what beautiful people do. I want to beautiful. The above never really made sense to me and always felt a wee bit scammy. There was an odd odor to it, but it was hard to appreciate how scammy it was, until… When it really hit home for me was when my wife and I were in the Philippines. Many of the department stores sell skin whitening soap! Having a lighter skin tone is supposed to be a sign that you are from a wealthier family. And since wealth is concentrated that is rare. And so that is what is considered beautiful.
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Beauty is Rare – Elusive so it Can be Easily Sold
Beauty is Rare – Elusive so it Can be Easily Sold
A couple years ago my wife and I had our big wedding in the Philippines (we even had the mayor of Manila show up). She was so beautiful that day. And lucky for me she is just as beautiful when she wakes up each day. But she can be hard on herself and if she gains a single pound she worries. Truth is I am the chubby one who needs to drop weight. Beauty (and the perception of it) is a wonder commodity to sell because there is no limit. Almost everyone could be in better shape or be stronger or eat healthier or not have this or that birthmark or the odd finger that bends backwards. We are imperfect beings by our very nature. We get sick. We break. And we all fight the battle of aging one day at a time – every single day! But no matter where you go, whatever is rare is typically considered desirable & beautiful. This is not done as an accident, but as a way to generate profits. If the human condition is flawed (and can’t be fixed) then the person selling a bogus solution to that problem is going to make a lot more money than a person who sells something which is actually attainable. And so we live in a world where we treat symptoms, rather than problems. Anything to make the numbers look good and make the sale. From there you are on your own! If you feel bad, we can give you more drugs! Spending too much time at the computer and eating unhealthy has made me a bit too chubby. No good in obese America ! But did you know that in the certain times & cultures being fat was considered a sign of beauty , like when few people could afford to be fat ! There is too much high fructose corn syrup in the typical American diet for obesity to be considered beautiful: “Our findings lend support to the theory that the excessive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup found in many beverages may be an important factor in the obesity epidemic,” Avena said. The new research complements previous work led by Hoebel and Avena demonstrating that sucrose can be addictive, having effects on the brain similar to some drugs of abuse. In the United States many girls not only label anorexia as beauty, but some go to tanning salons so they can darken their skin to look beautiful , at least until they get older : Long-term exposure to artificial sources of ultraviolet rays like tanning beds (or to the sun’s natural rays) increases both men and women’s risk of developing skin cancer. In addition, exposure to tanning salon rays increases damage caused by sunlight because ultraviolet light actually thins the skin, making it less able to heal. Women who use tanning beds more than once a month are 55 percent more likely to develop malignant melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer. A service which has no lasting positive tangible value AND certainly has a lasting negative tangible risk can grow to become a multi-billion Dollar industry Anything to be beautiful! This is what beautiful people do. I want to beautiful. The above never really made sense to me and always felt a wee bit scammy. There was an odd odor to it, but it was hard to appreciate how scammy it was, until… When it really hit home for me was when my wife and I were in the Philippines. Many of the department stores sell skin whitening soap! Having a lighter skin tone is supposed to be a sign that you are from a wealthier family. And since wealth is concentrated that is rare. And so that is what is considered beautiful.
