To begin with, Facebook is finally getting ready for a historic $5bn IPO
Google raised an IPO for $2,718,281,828 in 2004.
Groupon ? $1 bn.
Back in 1986, Microsoft raised $ 61 million only.
Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. Almost everywhere I go and talked to people, people will quip “ah… IT. Facebook”. Some will say “Perhaps one day you can create another Facebook”.
In my opinion, Facebook is not that easy sir. It is a platform and ecosystem by itself. To build an ecosystem doesn’t just require a lot of attention, it also depends on timely technology,opportunity and ingenuity.
I consider myself the pioneer of Facebook user in Malaysia, wondering if there is a way to prove this claim ?
My personal belief has always been that Facebook is successful because of its name, comparing to others like Ringo, Hi5 and etc. The name and the URL itself is so catchy, relevant and easy. In Mandarin, Facebook is translated as ‘Face’+’book’ and if you translate from Mandarin to Malay, it means muka+buku. If you compare it with Microsoft, which in Mandarin is translated as ‘micro’+’soft’ but when translating from Mandarin to Malay it can literally go out of meaning. Thus, the name itself is a genius.
To create the platform, if one would hire me, I haven’t got much idea. It needs to be open source, to be scalable and massive. In other words, the design itself needs to be cloud computing all the way from the start. And definitely, we need to create a framework for that. So, most likely I will start with a more generic framework. The social media part is just the application anyway, but it is a huge app.
Facebook has changed human history. The Internet was introduced to Malaysian around 1994, I still remember that well because I was still in senior high school and my family wasn’t the early adopters. It was only during my college year when my house finally had a 56 kbps modem somewhere around 1999.
During 1997 to 1998, Yahoo was really the Internet. Asta La Vista was okay as well as Catcha. But it was all just the beginning, and everybody thought that Yahoo was really it.
It was around year 2000 which out of suddenly, Google became the homepage of all computer in the labs of APIIT. And nobody knows why and people just started to Google. Things was still under control, I don’t remember searching much from Google except that the interface was really plain and simple. Yahoo and Hotmail were our favourite things. Coupled with e-circles and then community zeroes, as well as irc and icq, our college years were defined by trying to go cyber-social.
The dot-com crashed was around 2000 and 2001 and it affected the job market. Before dot-com crashed, every company has an IT department which will tender to all your IT needs. Whenever one couldn’t print, Mr. IT guy will always be there. By year 2002, IT department has become a burden of cost and why would we want to hire some guys whose job is to surf the Internet ? Maybe to test the speed ?
After that period, it was Friendster, the beginning of social media. Everybody was so excited about it, it was the place to make new friends and check out photos. So, from 2002 to 2005, Malaysian were all on Friendster. I remember this well because I know that I was the pioneer of Facebook user which happened somewhere around 2006.
2006 to 2012, 6 years down the road, just imagined how Facebook have changed our life ?
To recap. Malaysia suffered the biggest economy down turn around year 1996 to 1997, almost half of working class fathers lost their jobs and income. (I remember this well because I was affected). And therefore, I believe that the best of Malaysia was pre-1996, when PM Tun Dr. Mahathir built KLIA and Petronas twin tower, that was what I called it the golden age of Malaysia. Everybody was happy, optimistic and go 2020.
The world survived the almost forgotten Y2K bug in year 2000 and Windows XP was launched around 2001.
Java programming was launched around 1995 which many expected to make Microsoft obsolete. The J2EE platform was considered to be the De-facto enterprise software platform for a certain period until Microsoft launched the .NET platform around year 2002.
Blog or weblog was started around 2000 – 2001. I remember that well because I was interning for a dot-com just before the crash and it was my CTO who I believe was probably the first few person in APAC to have done blogging. The company was called Starffire.com and the headquarter was in MBF tower, Jalan Yap Kwan Seng. My initial thought on blogging was why on earth does someone wanted to tell people what they are up to and who cares!!!
TM Streamyx was first launched around April 2001, the speed was a mere 384 kbit/s.
As for Google, who became really prominent before 2004. Partly it was due to the IPO, Adsense, Gmail and PageRank . I remember this well because I started to blog Aug 2004, to figure out how the search ranking works ? How to get web pages listed on top ? I learned something though.
And Google Maps was only available to Malaysia around December 2007.
My best memory for The Internet is that it literally stopped mainstream gangsterism in public high school around year 1994 – 1996. Do you know why ? I think everybody just went home online and start making new friends.
That was my time. Looking back, it was fun and hectic. And one thing for sure, my generation was part of The Internet revolution.
I am feeling kind of old now 😐
