Twitter traffic has multiplied by 27 over the last year, and this is only the main site. It doesn’t take into account access via third party applications or mobile phones.

Twitter has also reached the number 7 spot in terms of top social networking and forum sites in the UK. Check out this chart for the top ten:

Twitter is being overshadowed by another player in Singapore however. In that country, microblogging site Plurk is dominating Twitter. You can see how traffic to that site has spiked over the course of a year:

"Blogger was the leading source of traffic to Plurk, accounting for 13.9% of upstream traffic, week ending 7 February 2009, and was also the main point of difference in referrals between Plurk and Twitter (difference of 11.9%)," says Hitwise Asia Pacific Senior Analyst Sandra Hanchard. "The strong influence of traffic referrals by Blogger is underpinned by its ranking as the 7th most visited website overall by Singapore Internet users."

Twitter is getting a lot more attention around here today, as co-founder Biz Stone has talked about a possible business model for the service. Also, some have predicted Twitter’s demise at the hands of Facebook’s status API launch, though plenty of people can give you reasons why that won’t happen.

"As with all our new edition launches, the English-language Singapore edition is tailored to provide a mix of locally relevant news as well as globally important events," says a blog post at the Official Google News Blog. "We hope that our readers in Singapore can now reach the best news destinations on the Internet even faster, and that news publishers in Singapore can connect to news readers even better."

Google notes that this is just the latest in the company’s efforts to have more of a presence in Asia. I talked a bit about this back when Google bought the Korean Blog Company TNC.

"At the start of 2008, we had nine editions in Asia: India (English and Hindi),Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Israel and an Arabic edition for the Middle East," says the post. "Now, a year later, we have almost doubled our coverage by adding seven and a half editions in Asia: Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Pakistan, India (Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam) and Turkey. Why the half? We’ll take partial credit for Turkey since it’s in Europe as well as Asia."

Of course, Google also points out that any English-language news publishers in Singapore, and can’t find your site in Google News, you can contact the company and request inclusion.

"The mainstream media did its job of trying to play down the most shameful part of the incident. It is a blow to Singapore’s image as being efficient," Seah Chiang Nee, a political commentator and former Singapore newspaper editor, told Reuters. "The more Internet savvy would not depend on the mainstream media for news of what’s happening in the country, they would go to the Internet," said Seah.

Mas Selamat bin Kastari, the alleged leader of the Singapore cell of al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah, a group thought to be responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people, escaped last Wednesday from the bathroom of a detention center.

The escape was an embarrassment for the country, which touts high levels of security.  The escape led to a large manhunt and an apology from the government who called it a "security lapse."

Cherian George, a former Straits Times journalist, wrote online that the Singapore media had not answered the question of how Kastari escaped. " The question is so natural and so obvious that you’d think anyone barely paying attention would ask it. Unless, apparently, one worked for the national news media," George wrote.

George said the lack of government details surrounding the escape was due to state controlled media that would eventually drive readers to other sources.

Patrick Daniel, editor of the Straits Times, said the paper took its responsibility to readers seriously and that George was "utterly wrong"  about its journalists not asking about how Kastari escaped.

"If Cherian had checked with us, we would have told him that we asked that question, and many others too, many times," he said.

"I think that there was tacit understanding between the government and the media," Catherine Lim, said, a well known local author and political commentator.

Another obvious patent gets paid off by Apple. Apple has agreed to pay Burst a $10 million payment for infringing on its 1990 streaming video technology patent.

Singapore officials have a smash rap video hit on YouTube. It has been views over 80,000 times over the last five days alone. It goes to show that it is much easier to get famous than rich with web video.

There is a growing concern over so-called in-text ads according to an article in BusinessWeek. These are the ads where words in articles are double underlined and mousing over them causes a temporary pop-up. The problem is that these ads are not part of the intended editorial context of the journalist writing the article. Personally, I think these ads are highly annoying and distract from reading the article. You won’t find them here at WebProNews anytime soon.

The looming advertising recession could actually increase targeted Internet ad spending. When sales are down advertisers want to get the biggest bang for their buck and that means more search and niche Internet ad buys.

New features are coming to Microsoft’s IM according to a leaked report. Features include a SPIM reporting feature that helps users fight IM based phishing and spam.

A post by Rand Fishkin’s father outlines why the original Google PageRank forumla is flawed. It is an insightful piece with lots of diagrams too!

The game contains " a scene of lesbian intimacyas such the game has been disallowed," the deputy director of the Board of Film Censors said. The board is a division of the Media Development Authority (MDA) Singapore’s media watchdog.

Video games sold in Singapore cannot "feature exploitative or gratuitous sex and violence, or denigrate any race or religion," according to the Board Film of Censors. Mass Effect will be launched globally next week.

Microsoft, maker of the Xbox console said it understood the MDA’s action. "We strictly adhere to the laws, regulations and norms of the markets we operate in,’ it told the AFP. The MDA says that a new video game ratings system will be put in place next year that could allow video games like Mass Effect to be sold in Singapore.

Other video games that have been banned in Singapore include "God of War II" for nudity and "The Darkness" for violence and religiously offensive words.

It’s not that eBay is dying – far, far from it.  eBay’s just not the wunderkind that it once was, and in an interview with Julie Sloane, the company’s spokesman acknowledged, “About a year ago, the leadership of the marketplace business got together and took a hard look at what had been a successful business for 11 years.  The (buying) experience hadn’t kept up with what people expect when they go online.”

So eBay introduced a host of upgrades that were intended to enhance users’ experiences and keep them interested.  The company’s also planning long-term – in the past three months, we’ve seen it acquire a German auction management software company and talk about moving into Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia.

These efforts may not have paid off yet – Compete statistics show an up-and-down rollercoaster that doesn’t follow any clear pattern.  Still, eBay’s currently up 2.2 percent for the month, and 2.5 percent for the year, so it would appear that the company’s doing something right.

A glance at eBay’s stock is less encouraging, but still lands us in a “wait and see” mode.

“Multimedia industry, which includes animation, music, radio and video production and sharing websites enjoyed a 116% increase comparing September 2006 and September 2007 by Singapore Internet users,” according to Hanchard.  This market is the only one she mentions – Hanchard’s data won’t be of any help to eBay, in other words – but there are still some important details.

For instance: it seems that, thanks in part to YouTube, Google has a well-established presence on this island nation.  YouTube controls a market share of almost 43 percent in its industry, up more than one-third from its standing last year.

Also, Veoh, which we’ve checked in on from time to time, experienced a 129 percent surge in user numbers, and the audience of Tudou, another YouTube competitor, grew by 47 percent.

As Singapore’s entire online entertainment industry swells, there don’t appear to be many losers.  Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see Google and YouTube outpace the competition, and – if we have to bring China into it – outperform Tudou, which is based in Shanghai.

Just last week, Google China’s Kai-Fu Lee announced his interest in mobile matters; he believes they offer access to a wider audience than computers.  Sam McDonagh, the director of eBay Southeast Asia, might agree; he told Isabelle Chan, “The great thing about mobile is it provides folks with busy lifestyles a convenient way to buy and sell while they are on the go.  As technology continues to evolve, the ability to transact over the mobile phones will improve.”

Lee’s statement did relate to China, though, whereas McDonagh is more focused on that country’s southern neighbors.  “We’re very optimistic about the growth of the market, and it is not just Singapore but the Southeast Asia region,” he said.

eBay doesn’t compete directly with either Google or Yahoo, of course, but it might nonetheless manage to “beat” both companies in Singapore; Google only opened its first office in Singapore five months ago.  Of course, if eBay doesn’t do so well, we’ll have to wonder if it should have mimicked Google and Yahoo by focusing on a country like Korea.

The second installment of Jo Han Mok and Matt Bacak’s Internet Millionaire Incubator hits Singapore this Friday.

It’s a 3-day event with some of the top Internet Marketers giving you their strategies and tips to succeed online.

In particular, these 2 guys alone are worth the ticket price:

eBay Specialist Adam Ginsburg and Internet Marketing guru Kirt Christensen

Adam Ginsburg: I travelled to Atlanta, Georgie earlier this year to listen to Adam speak and I’d rank him among the top 3 eBay experts around. He talked about how he’s sold $20 million worth of pianos on eBay and has now moved on to flipping properties (houses and buildings) on eBay.

Additionally he had one of his students who enrolled in his program a year ago, a single mother with 4 kids, talk about how she now generates more than $10,000 a month from her eBay business.

Adam has also appeared in master marketer Dan Kennedy’s programs, together with the likes of Yanik Silver, Bill Glazer and John Carlton.

This is the perfect opportunity to get tips from Adam on starting up your eBay marketing efforts or bringing it to the next level.

[Adam’s actually the reason why I’ve been focusing on eBay recently and have sold a number of items using his techniques]

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Kirt Christensen: Kirt’s a very Internet Marketer having been in the industry for some time. If you’ve listen to Matt Bacak speak, you’d probably heard about the Internet marketer who runs his business from his swimming pool. Matt was refering to Kirt.

If there’s one marketer who’s just about done it all, it’s Kirt. Besides his info products, Kirt’s also been successful at PPC affiliate marketing, membership sites and video marketing and training.

I’ve had the opportunity to talk to Kirt a number of times because we’re in the same mastermind and he’s given me a number of techniques to enhance my video marketing efforts.

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I guess one concern some might have about the event is: “Will it be a pitch fest?”

I attended the first Internet Millionaire Incubator last year, and the sessions were very content heavy, especially the ones by Keith Wellman and Warren Whitlock.

If you’re a newer Internet marketer or eBay auction specialist and your income is less than $5,000 a month, you should take advantage of this opportunity and attend the Internet Millionaire Incubator which runs this Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 9 am to 7 pm at the Singapore Expo center.

The other speakers include:

• John Childers
• Frank Garon
• Chris Moreno
• Mark Anastasi
• Randy Charach
• Jarl Moe
• Patric Chan
• Debra Thompson
• David Cavanagh
• Matt Bacak
• Jo Han Mok.

Tickets are $288 and available at the Internet Millionaire Incubator site.

I have a limited number of tickets available which Jo Han offered my list at a substantial discount. I’d like to offer them to my list members and if there’re any remaining to my blog readers.

If you’re interested, drop me a mail at the contact form with your name, email and contact number, and we’ll contact you if you qualify.

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