Social media taketh and now social media taketh away. Sorta. While social media sites like Twitter and Facebook have become integral for protesters to organize events, government officials in Malaysia have taken a page out of this playbook and used …

More than half of Malaysians online visited a news/information site in July, reaching more than 5.5 million visitors, according to a new report from comScore.

Yahoo News led as the most visited site in the category reaching 1.2 million visitors, followed by the New York Times Digital with 873,000 visitors.

The New York Times recently claimed that the "year of the political blogger" has arrived. While that might be a true statement, it is certainly not limited to the American political agendas discussed in that article.

The Malaysia Situation

TechDirt has been keeping an eye on what is happening with blogging in Malaysia, and gives a little background:

An 89-year-old Malaysian grandmother is running for parliament in Saturday’s general election and is using the Internet to promote her campaign and to reach voters.

Bloggers in Malaysia are having an impact on the political process as the country prepares for elections next month.

Three well-known bloggers, who are opponents of the ruling party that has been in power for fifty years, are running for the first time as candidates on March 8, counting on their online popularity to bring in votes.

Throughout the past month or so, Google’s stock has taken a well-documented beating.  The company remains massive, though (with a market cap of $177 billion), and new reports indicate that Google may build the world’s largest server farm in Malaysia.