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 it against the protesters. Wall Street Journal describes the effort:

The Royal Malaysia Police are now using their own official Facebook and Twitter pages – typically filled with traffic warnings and information on crime rates – to hopefully prevent a planned rally in support of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on Jan. 9, when the verdict on his two-year sodomy trial is expected.

Sharing photos and videos of past riots – including the raucous London demonstrations that shook Britain last August – the Malaysian police warned that peaceful assemblies can easily devolve into chaos, and “should be a lesson” to Malaysians.

“Should be a lesson”? Nice words of intimidation and fear-mongering. Still, the Facebook page for the Malaysian police don’t seem to be short on popularity as it has nearly 100,000 likes while their Twitter account, which was only launched last September, has nearly 10,000 followers. Of course, likes and followers does not necessarily imply support for the government’s tactics. It could just as well be an online episode of cat-and-mouse between protesters and the government: government watches the protesters, and the protesters watch the government. While both sides try to stay one step ahead of the other, the meantime result is the perception of greater online popularity. But is anybody even really surprised that the government is using social media to monitor the activity of dissident groups? Malaysia’s police aren’t alone in this act nor are they the first.

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.

“News sites combine both significant reach and user engagement, making them an ideal destination for many brand advertisers,” said Joe Nguyen,

comScore

vice president for Southeast Asia.

“Similar to offline news-reading habits, online readers displayed strong brand loyalty to their preferred news sources. Of the top five local news destinations, only 1 out of 4 Malaysians visited more than one of these sites during the month.”

The rest of the list was mainly local news and information attracting strong user engagement. TheStar.com.my was the top local brand in the ranking reaching 788,000 visitors, with an average visitor spending 16 minutes on the site during July and viewing 18 pages of content on average. Malaysiakini.com reached 547,000 visitors, with users consuming 33 pages on average and spending 16 minutes on the site during the month, while the New Straits Times’ Hmetro.com.my saw 545,000 unique visitors, with visitors averaging 20 pages and spending more than 20 minutes on the site.
 

The Malaysia Situation

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

First, a gov’t official slammed blogs and tried to pass a law requiring bloggers to register with the government. Outrage over such a plan resulted in it being scrapped, but the majority ruling party still struggled with blogs — though tried to figure out ways to respond to them more feasibly than attacking them. It set up a gov’t agency to respond to bloggers, and later required certain candidates for offices to set up their own blogs.

Government Blocking Access

Now there are blogs being written by members of the opposing party. These and others are critical of the current ruling party. Naturally, the government is now blocking access to them.

The New Straits Times (NST) Online reports that one such blog, Malaysia Today, was up and running on a mirror site, just hours after it was blocked. "How could the MCMC [Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission]have overlooked such an obvious loophole?" asks NST writer Evangeline Majawat.

Help for the Opposition

The whole thing has to make the already heavily existent government criticism skyrocket. On a related note, one of its biggest critics, a blogger named Jeff Ooi, was elected into Parliament this year. 

 Maimun Yusuf And Posing Voter

Supporters of Maimun Yusuf have helped her create a profile on Facebook and are also running a blog for her (www.maimunbintiyusuf.blogspot.com). She is the oldest election candidate in the country and most likely in the world.

"This is very tiring. I have been going non-stop since nomination day but a lot of people are helping me out, so I’m not pulling out," Yusuf told Reuters. She is running in Kuala Terengganu, capital of Teregganu state.

Yusuf surprised her town when she showed up to register on February 24 as an independent candidate. Since then she has received the support of 24 volunteers and has used the Internet to communicate her message.

On her unusual campaign she said," Alhamdulillah (Thank God), I am happy. I hope it can serve as an example to younger people. They just sit and complain and since no one I knew was willing to fight, I decided that I had to be the one to do it."

She has spent 20,000 ringgit ($6,319) on her campaign so far using most of her savings. As for here election message to voters she says she is upset when young people turn to drugs and that there are a lack of schools. If elected she says, "I will make it all better."

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.

 Jeff Ooi
 Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org

"Everyone of us has a stake in the country’s future, but talk is cheap. We now need to walk the walk," said Jeff Ooi, a popular blogger who is running for a seat in northern Penang state for the opposition Democratic Action Party, Reuters reported. Ooi has become popular for writing a blog focused on politics called "Screenshots" and has attracted readers beyond the pro-government mainstream media.

Tony Pua is another well-known blogger running on a DAP ticket who began blogging three years ago after opening a high-tech business. "I’ve had opportunities to migrate but I decided that Malaysia is my home," Pua said. "So the next question is what should I do to make it better?"

A third popular political blogger, Badrul Hisham Shaharin is finding it challenging to reach people due to limited Internet access in the rural Malay majority seat where he is running. " I admit that is difficult because my blog is not accessible here, but I am getting a lot of help from fellow bloggers," he said.

The politically focused Malaysian blogosphere is considered troublesome to the government for it sometimes critical political and social commentaries that are not inline with the rest of the mainstream media. The government said last year it could force bloggers to register with officials to reduce the spread of malicious content on the Web.

Government supporters are skeptical about the impact the political bloggers will have. "Beyond the major cities like Kuala Lumpur and Penang, there’s not much the bloggers can really hope to accomplish," says Mohamad Norza Zakaria, a leader in Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s UMNO party.

Just a fifth of Malaysians have Internet access and there are 10.9 million voters in the nation of 26 million people.
 

Vietnam and India are also possibilities, according to Isabelle Duerme, but the odds appear to favor that first country.  Malaysia’s prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, even stated, "They want to make their presence felt in Malaysia."

As for the server farm itself, numbers remain completely absent from the conversation – nothing related to time, prices, or square footage seems to have been publicly mentioned.  Still, judging from the size of other server farms, it’s safe to bet that over $1 billion will go into the project, and at least 250 acres should become involved.

All that’s left, then, is to sit and wait for Google to move forward.  It’s possible that current economic conditions will slow down any progress, yet at the same time, weaker companies (like Yahoo) seem especially vulnerable just now.  We’ll keep an eye out for any further developments.