Why Nuffnang Singapore so long lah?
When Nuffnang.com.my was launched on the 27th of Febuary, 2007, we thought the launch of Nuffnang.com.sg would follow shortly after.
We were thinking two weeks after.
It has been almost 2 months now! For this we must apologize to the Singaporean blogosphere.
The response in Malaysia took our whole team off guard. The original aim had been to sign up 300 bloggers in 3 months. That was what we got within a week! Today, the Nuffnang community in Malaysia is 1500 bloggers strong, and still growing. We are a platform with incredible reach and influence, and a force to be reckoned with.
As a Singaporean, success in Malaysia has been an enlightening, humbling and heartwarming experience. The way Malaysians rallied behind a local product, with cries of “Malaysia Boleh!” underscored an admirable sense of patriotism and support for local enterprise. Over the past 2 months, I have also had to privilege of meeting many Malaysian bloggers and truthfully, the pleasure has been all mine.
Nuffnang Singapore! Nuffnang Singapore!
Not to worry though, Singapore. We certainly have not forgotten about you. We’ve gotten numerous emails and comments from Singaporean bloggers asking us when Nuffnang would be coming to Singapore.
Today marks that day! Once again, thank you JB for your choice of an auspicious launch time and date! I don’t quite understand why all these auspicious times are in the weeeee hours of the morning. Better safe than sorry though. So here we are on the 30th of April at 3AM, the whole team in
Nuffnang.com.sg is officially online!
What to expect?
As we did in
The first necessary step is the recruitment of bloggers into our community. Without you, we are nothing. In Malaysia, we garnered a significant medium pretty quickly. We hope it is the same case in Singapore! The team is keeping their fingers crossed, but we could certainly do with your help to spread the word
Once you have joined us and pasted your HTML code, we will need approximately two weeks to track your statistics. We need information on how big your blog is, what kind of target audience we have, before we can even present this information to advertisers
Not to worry, groundwork has already been done in targeting LOCAL advertisers who are interested in exploring this new medium. As soon as we have a big enough medium, the marketing team (locally based) will hit the ground, pitching for deals.
We expect this whole process to take between 4-6 weeks. In Malaysia, we achieved it in 3. Today we have served ads on hundreds of blogs and have a stable of advertisers that is steadily growing.
When you join Nuffnang, you’re not just joining a blog advertisement network. You’re joining a community.
Our vision in the medium run is to create a vibrant blogging community in Singapore, and we have all kinds of initiatives in place to achieve that aim. Visit Our Community page for some examples of what these are.
Our first blogger outing in Malaysia, will see 250 Malaysian bloggers, malaysian press, and advertisers descend on Cathay Cineleisure Damansara, KL, to catch an exclusive premiere of Pirates of the Carribean 3, on the 24th of May 2007. It will be a blogger outing of a scale not seen previously.
I look forward to the day Singaporean bloggers from all walks of life will gather in the same way.
Thank you for your vote of confidence. If there is anything I can do to help. Do not hesitate to get in touch.
Humbly Yours,
Ming, Timothy and The Nuffnang Team
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Needless to say, both me and Ewe Tiam have begun the search for our own pirate costumes!
Check out Our Community page for more details of the event and more.
It was also my birthday yesterday, and I'd really like to thank all the people who dropped me well wishes.
Thanks to denka and darren for organising the "surprise" BBQ on Thursday (Amidst exams and the like). Hahhaah, wasn't much of a surprise but I'm just glad to have seen good friends come together in such a serene setting as this to eat and be merry.
On Saturday, I got an incredible opportunity to be in the same room as a man I admire deeply. The founding father of modern Singapore, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew.
It was at a Young PAP forum. The first time the young PAP had MM Lee as a guest. The forum was titled, Political Development in Singapore in the next 20 years. And to tell you the truth, I had expected a more explosive event, in terms of content, but I think most people in the room just stood in awe of MM's presence and were content they had managed to get in!
Taking nothing away from the people who organised the event, it could have been done better. The venue was all wrong. It was held at dragonfly in St Jame's Powerhouse, and I can understand their desire to promote a "young hip factor" but many of my peers agreed we would have been better off in an auditorium.
Standing for three hours, is simply not conducive for a forum of any kind, and furthermore does little to suit the stature of MM and the event itself.
Nonetheless, I was grateful for the opportunity.
It was a rare insight into a brilliant mind. MM started off slow. And you could sense a little bit of unease in the beginning, but as soon as he got into the swing of things, his mind started whirring, he din't stop.
He tackled a number of topics expertly and with ease. Clearly he had done his homework. He came prepared with immigration statistics, reports, quotes, and articles to back up his case.
I think the biggest eye opener for me into the man himself. And this surprised me. I was always of the opinion that this was a stubborn and resoloute leader, on all terms. What I took away from the event, was that this was a man whose stubbornness was founded on reason, on fact, on reality and circumstance.
I saw this in two instances. The first when he was asked about censorship. And he said, listen, I can't tell you where censorship is going, it all depends on how the world moves along, how value systems change (I'm not quoting him by the way, paraphrasing). He then said, many cabinet members had been against bringing crazy horse into Singapore, but he had dispelled their concerns. And said, Singaporeans are now mobile enough to watch such a show in Paris, or london or the like, if it's going to contribute... why not!?You've got to take all of this into perspective. We've got an 80 year old gentleman here. Now most of our grandmothers or grandfathers would scoff at any such activities, heeding their traditional instincts and sense of propiety. Not this man. He is clearly one who moves with the times, but one who has to measure that response against the response of 4.5 million people, set against the larger backdrop of 5 billion. The point is, he's not out to please everybody. He's out to ensure the stability of Singaporean society at large.
In my opinion, he is a man of intense incorruptibility. The question I had in mind for him was had he established a system that would ensure similar men of power would lead singapore in the future. Was it fail safe? It needs to be for certain. It is clear Singapore cannot afford anything less.
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Anyway let me introduce you to the dudes and dudettes who are in late with me today!
That's jazz and Joel, our ace programmers. They're working on some integration together, thats why they're sitting on the same table!
Thats uncle lee meng deep in thought. At 29 years of age, he's the oldest of the nuffnangers and performs a multitude of roles.
And of course there's my room mate Tiam, his evident addiction to beard papa strategically positioned within reach.
This is me after a long day, tired but happy! I lurpe Nuffnangers, and all things Nuffnang!
Yes, everytime I see this building, I step into the office and shout out loud, "HONEEYY, I'm home! Oh I forgot! I'm not married." Hehehe. 
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