Twitter Has Hurt Blogging

The Blog Culture 86 Comments

When I started blogging 5 years ago, one of the reasons I did it was because I had shitloads of time on my hand that I needed to kill.

My blog posts back then tend to be short, mundane and written very quickly without much of a forethought. Over time, pressure from my readers creeped into my head. Somehow my style of blogging evolved to long magazine-type articles with 50 different photos and ends with a punch line.

Soon enough, my readers accepted that long entries and punchlines are essentially ingredients of what makes kennysia.com, kennysia.com.

It becomes a situation that when people log on to kennysia.com, they wanna read long entries, they wanna read something funny. And if my entries aren’t long enough or don’t end with anything funny, I’m gonna find myself a mailbox full of people calling me fat.

A lot of people don’t realise it, but brainstorming for jokes and photoshopping pictures ain’t exactly easy. Doing stuff like these for my blog tend to take up a lot of time. At one point, I was spending TEN hours divided over 3 days just to craft up a single blog entry.

Imagine that. TEN hours just to write ONE single blog post.

It wasn’t a problem for back me then because, like I said, I had shitloads of time. The problem is, these days I cannot even find time to shit. Let alone blog.

Yes, back then I was happy to spend 10 hours crafting up a single blog entry just to make my readers happy.

If I had something short or mundane to say, I would rather not blog about it at all – simply because it does not pass the Kenny Sia Quality Assurance Test™.

The longer I blog, the more I realise kennysia.com is no longer a hobby of mine that I do after work. My website had evolved into an “online lifestyle magazine” of sorts. I had to be careful not to offend people. I had to make sure people enjoy reading my content. I had to do all sorts of quality control to make sure the stuff published on my blog is good enough for an “online lifestyle magazine”.

The difference however, is this.

Whilst established magazines out there have a team of writers and photographers and editors working around the clock. Me? I got nobody. I gotta do it all by myself.

Eventually blogging became more of a chore. I wasn’t enjoying it as much.

Then Twitter came along.

And Twitter is awesome. I can publish one-liners and photos anytime, anywhere, on my phone. I could be sitting on the toilet bowl, or having my lunch, (or both) and I could still update on my Twitter.

Unlike traditional blogging, I don’t have to take photos with my digital camera, think of an idea, then wait until I get in front of my computer to update my blog. I can just do it all on my phone.

It works well with my lifestyle too. Since about 3 years ago, I have been pretty much living off my suitcase and travelling all over the world. Most of the time, I update my Twitter through my phone when it isn’t convenient for me to update on my computer at all.

The problem now is this.

I seem to be managing two completely different online sites – kennysia.com for long carefully-thought out blog entries written on my computer. And twitter.com/kennysia for my short spontaneous thoughts published through my phone.

But I think it is about time that I marry the two.

In future entries, I’ll be transforming kennysia.com into something similar to Twitter.

Updates will be short, simple, not always funny – but quick and frequent.

What it means is that kennysia.com is always gonna remain fresh. I’ll be updating my blog mainly through my phone, but if I do get the time to sit down in front of my laptop, I’ll write my usual long well thought-out entries.

Reason I’m this way is because about to embark on a 3-week long trip to the USA and Australia. I foresee myself not touching my laptop for quite a bit. Twitter will be my best friend, but there will be times when I need to say stuff that cannot be contained in 140 characters or less. So mobile blogging is the way to go.

I think this may very be the direction that blogging is going into.

Only time will tell how well this is gonna work.

Die Die Both Ways

15 January 2010

The Blog Culture 113 Comments

Last time, when I was updating my blog more frequently, people often asked me "So Kenny, are you a full-time blogger? Do you actually do anything else besides just blogging?”

“Do you even have a LIFE?"

Now that I started my own business, people are scolding me saying “Fuck you Kenny, all you ever blog about is your gym! Entertain us now DAMMIT!”

I don’t understand what people want from me sometimes.

kennysia.com Is 5 Years Old

4 January 2010

Out of the Ordinary The Blog Culture 77 Comments

I’m dead exhausted after spending 5 days in Singapore and KL.

I almost forgot that today my blog turns 5 years old.

kennysia.com has made some significant milestones over this past 5 years.

To celebrate this momentous occasion, here is a picture of an onion.

Looks like your dad.

ADV: Zhng My Walls

22 December 2009

The Blog Culture 43 Comments

Four months ago, this was what my cardio area looked like.

This is my cardio workout area today.

I was very much involved in the entire design process of my fitness centre. Everything, from what fitness equipment to buy, to which toilet bowls to use, to what colours were to be painted on the walls were all decided by myself.

The members love the look and feel of my fitness centre, but I kinda regretted not giving the walls more colour and design.

I wasn’t thinking too much back then. It would be a different story if my fitness centre were called “Sistine Chapel Fitness”. Or if my name were Michaelangelo Sia.

Unfortunately my name is only Kenny Sia. So I left the walls blank because I seriously had no idea what kinda drawings to put on them. I was way too busy choosing toilet bowls that I neglected to give my walls more forethought.

But Cindy, Cheesie and KY went to the Nippon Paint workshop and they’re like experts in home renovations now.

Cindy’s before and after.

This is what Cindy did after she transformed a section of her house into a work of art.

Cheesie’s Pacman wall.

She cheat one ‘cos she got someone else to paint the wall. She only drew the Pacman herself.

KY’s before and after.

KY and Haze took 3 days to create that mural on his empty piece of wall. Don’t play play, got guitar some more.

There are a couple of other creative peeps who did a kickass job giving their rooms/table/shoe cabinet an extreme makeover.

From the top to bottom are works by Nara, Sixthseal, Redmummy, Kampungboycitygal, c33ram00n, Pinkstilettos, Nicolekiss, FoxyFarah and PlusSizeKitten.

All they used were masking tapes or paper cutouts and Nippon paint..

I must say, they made it look easy.

Which brings me to this blank wall I have in my cardio area.

I want something less dull, but easy enough to do it myself. Perhaps some random straight lines like this would brighten up the place a bit.

painted-walls

Now, I just need the time to do it.

If not, I’ll just hire my 1-year-old nephew Ethan to decorate those walls for me…

I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, right?

It’s A Crime

26 October 2009

The Blog Culture 123 Comments

As the winner of the Best Entertainment Blog at Nuffnang’s Asia-Pacific Blog Awards…

… it’s a crime I’m not able to update this blog for so long.

Thanks for all the support you guys have given me. Imma get back to this blog as soon as the running of Level Up Fitness gets a level up. 🙂

I Accept

12 October 2009

The Blog Culture 72 Comments

Whoever it was that nominated me for the Asia-Pacific Blog Awards, thank you!

kennysia.com was accepted as one of the finalists for the prestigious awards to be held in two weeks time in Singapore.

With that, this blog now joins such luminaries as Budiey (MY), BeautifulNara (MY), CowboyCaleb (SG) and Girl With A Satchel (AU) in the running for Best Entertainment Blog; together with BeautifulNara (again), Down To Earth (AU), Jehzeel Laurente (PH) and Xiaxue (SG) for Most Influential Blog.

The casting of votes officially closed yesterday, so actually, it’s a bit too late to ask you to vote for kennysia.com. I didn’t mean to post this late deliberately. By right, this entry should have been up many weeks ago.

But it was not.

By right, I probably should also have been more pro-active in campaigning, as many other nominees had, hanging my face on the wall, going around pushing people to vote for me and stuff.

But I did not.

By right, I also should have titled this post “Krrunching My Away To Uniquely Singapore”, as a way to appease the two sponsors for the event, Pringles potato chips and the Singapore Tourism Board, without which this awards would never have happened.

But I shall not.

Was it because I don’t care about the awards? No, of course I do.

Anyone can smack together some HTML code and call it a “so-and-so” awards show. But it takes an agency like Nuffnang with 5 branches in 4 countries to be able to organize one that has some level of pedigree associated with it.

Was it because I do not want to win? Heck no, of course I would love to. Throughout my 5 years blogging, kennysia.com had never won any blog awards, except for one.

It was 5 years ago when Project Petaling Street was the de facto blogging community of Malaysia. kennysia.com won the Blog of the Year after some nomination and voting by peers. That was the only time PPS held an award before it was taken over by some religious nutcase.

My “trophy” was a T-shirt, which I never worn, but instead kept in my cupboard till this day.

So yes, I am over the top over being selected as a finalist. However, I did not campaign, nor did I do anything to appease the sponsors.

Instead I decided to do away with the glitz, the glamour and even the hint of commercialism that’s associated with the blog awards, so that I can write this entry, straight up from the heart.

And I want to say with all sincerity – thank you.

I know my nomination, in particular, for the Most Influential Blog was frowned upon by some other bloggers. Some figured since I have enjoyed my share of the limelight, the lesser-known blogs were not given a chance to shine.

The fact of the matter is – I never claim myself to be the “top blogger” nor the “most influential blogger” in Malaysia, let alone Asia Pacific.

The “top blogger” in Malaysia is ex-Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir. The “most influential blogger” in Malaysia is perhaps ex-ISA detainee Raja Petra. Kenny Sia is nothing close to being as influential as those two.

Of course, those are controversial socio-political bloggers. In the category of personal or lifestyle blog, yeah, while I do enjoy some success both in terms of popularity and commercially, it does not mean that I do not help propell relatively unknown blogs into prominence.

That was one of the reasons I created “Short Talk”. That’s the small subsection of text you see above before my normal blog entry. The reason behind its creation is so that I can promote other bloggers in my “Blog Plug of the Day”, or charities in my “Karma Point Collection” or just link to anything I find interesting on the web.

For the sake of creating a healthy blogging community, I think it’s important that we keep linking to each other.

It’s important that bloggers with high traffic do their part in promoting good-quality lesser-known bloggers, even when they are not obligated to. Popular bloggers become popular only because they were supported by others in the blogging community back in their heydays. Now that they have enjoyed success, I reckon it is only right to give back to the community.

In any case, while the top-most influential blogger ain’t me, I’d like to think that at least I have played my part in promoting a healthy blogging community and a positive blogging culture within Malaysia.

As I spend less time on blogging and more time concentrating on running my new business, that’s the kinda impact I hope I had left in the Malaysian blogging community. 🙂

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Because I’ve been too busy to blog a proper entry, I’m gonna leave you with two more of my episodes from Jojo Struys’s Project Alpha.

This episode, I shared with Jojo about the people that inspire me.

I spoke about my so-called love life (or rather, the lack thereof).

Everyone, meet Ericka.

Nuffnang

28 February 2009

Personalities The Blog Culture 84 Comments

In life, nobody ever goes through success alone.

Everyone of us achieved success did it with the help and support from the people around us.

Throughout my four years, I have met countless incredible people who are never selfish in lending me a helping hand. Two people among the top of my list, are Timothy and Ming of Nuffnang.

For those who donâ€™t already know, Nuffnang is the largest blog advertising agency in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Australia.

A blog advertising agency functions much like a modelling agency. Except we do not model. Thatâ€™s a good thing because we could probably make Nuffnang go bankrupt with our looks.

But Nuffnang functions similar to a modelling agency in that they get approached by corporate clients seeking to advertise in blogs, and Nuffnang then assign these jobs to the most suitable bloggers under their network.

Today is Nuffnangâ€™s second anniversary, and I thought I should write something here to pay tribute to this wonderful team of people whom I am very proud to be associated with since their inception.

I want to tell the story about how Nuffnang and I got started, because people do not know realise how much effort and drama went behind my signing with Nuffnang. Before I do, be warned that the story is a little long, and there is no punch line at the end of it. But even if you have no interests in blog advertising at all, I think this story have lessons in entrepreneurship, people and business skills that I am sure we can all benefit from.

Blog advertising, as I knew it, is not exactly a new industry.

It may be relatively new compared to traditional forms of advertising like newspapers, TV or billboard ads. But in actual fact, advertising on blogs has been practised long before Nuffnang was founded. In Malaysia, I was one of the few ones fortunate enough to consistently receive 1 or 2 jobs a month from various advertisers without the help of an agency, and those gave me a small but decent supplement income.

The problem back then was that blog advertising was only limited to few selected high-traffic bloggers. The industry was extremely inconsistent, unregulated and unrefined.

So although there were no shortages of companies out there wanting to invest in blog advertising, they did not know how to do it or who to go to.

Compounding the problem is that every blogger has different rules and policies when it comes to blog advertising. How one blogger does things is very different from how the others do.

For example, you will never see Kenny Sia doing an ad for a laptop posing like this.

I just wouldnâ€™t give the same effect as Cindy doing it.

Itâ€™s kinda like how in modelling, some models will pose nude and some wonâ€™t. Some bloggers will not do certain things asked for by the advertiser no matter how much money was put on the table. Advertisers were also confused as they wondered how come bloggers do not function like in the print media where they can just plonk a full-page ad in for RM 12,000 a day.

It was precisely due to these confusion that a lot of investment were lost, investment that could have been injected into the blog advertising industry but abandoned because advertisers were confused. But in February 2007, this bleak scenario was set to change when Timothy and Ming decided to start Nuffnang â€“ an agency that focuses exclusively on blogs.

Truth to be told, I was very sceptical when Timothy contacted me way back in January 2007, inviting me to join his â€œblog advertising networkâ€. I was sceptical because plenty of other people had contacted me before to join in on their projects, and I always turned them down either because I had no confidence in what theyâ€™re proposing or what theyâ€™re asking for seems to benefit them more than it benefits me or my readers. Why should I help them profit anyway?

Besides, I was comfortable with what I was already earning and I figured I could get by with the contacts I have in the industry. Apart from the convenience of having somebody representing me in Kuala Lumpur while I remain in Kuching, I simply could not see how I could benefit from joining Nuffnang at all.

I thought, why should I let an agency take a slice of my earnings as commission when I could do it all myself right?

Regardless, I stayed on and hear what Timothy had to say. My initial impression was that he was polite and humble, yet persistent in our correspondence. A couple of phone calls and e-mails later, I finally agreed to try out their service.

But that was only just the beginning of the drama.

Around the same time, I was actually approached another similar to Nuffnang. They too, invited me to join their network. They too, appeared to offer similar, if not bigger and better payouts compared to Nuffnang. Many bloggers, including those with less than 1% of my traffic were getting paid very high rates, and on the surface it seemed almost too good to be true.

So when Nuffnangâ€™s competitor spoke to me, I told him that heâ€™s welcome to use me to pitch for jobs as well. After all, I donâ€™t have to be exclusive to one agency. Foolishly, I thought that there was no harm signing up to two different agencies if both could offer me advertorial jobs.

But what I never had expected, was that Nuffnang and the other agency were so fiercely competing with each other. In more than one occasion, both agencies were pitching the same job to the same advertisers, and both claimed to represent kennysia.com. Advertisers were confused. It was very bad for me and worse for the industry in general.

On my part, it was like having two lovers going after you at the same time. Sounds good in theory, but very bad idea in practice.

Secretly though, I knew that because both agencies wanted my exclusivity badly, I was in the position to make ridiculous demands. 😉 But of course I never did that because I believe in business, good people should not be taken advantage of. And Timothy and Ming seems like two good-natured people.

The battle between Nuffnang and the competitor raged on for several months.

20090228-1

In the end, I wrote a long e-mail to the directors of both advertising agencies that I can only be committed to one.

The agency I choose shall be one that not only represents my best interests, but also shows potential in working hard for me and for Malaysian blogging community as a whole. In return, I pledged that once I make a business decision on which agency I award my exclusively to, I will do my very best to help them succeed and I will not let them down.

Timothy and Ming replied resignedly saying that they will accept whatever decision I make. Nuffnangâ€™s competitor replied with this.

20090228-2

I did not make my decision immediately. In fact, I spent the next three weeks evaluating which agency I wanted to represent me.

Nuffnangâ€™s rival was quick to offer me a huge upfront payment for my exclusivity.

Nuffnang 0 â€“ Competitor 1

But monetary compensation was actually the least of my concern.

The most important thing is that they need to show potential in representing my interests to the clients.

Before either of them ventured into blog advertising, the rival agency has already been in the internet industry for a while and the boss has himself built quite an impressive number of leads and contacts. Nuffnangâ€™s competitor was already better known in the internet industry.

Timothy on the other hand was a fresh graduate whose previous internet business experience was one cute website called Tuition Hamster.

DSC00265-1

Nuffnang 0 â€“ Competitor 2

Because I didnâ€™t know Timothy nor his competitor all that well back then, but I seeked a lot of second opinion from those who knew them personally. Just like how schoolgirls often talked among themselves over which guy they should date, I did the same with my trusted circle of friends.

I donâ€™t know what Timothy did, but that guy has got some seriously supportive friends. Out of 10 people I asked, 9 have nothing but good things to say about him.

Nuffnang 1 â€“ Competitor 2

Nuffnang also shows a lot of respect, integrity and sincerity in their way of doing business, which I like.

I got the feeling that they meant every word they said, and not just making empty promises. In Nuffnang, a lot effort was put into improving their product and services. The two bosses were very focused and determined to do their best. Very rarely do you see Nuffnang waste time in slagging off competition.

Nuffnang 2 â€“ Competitor 2

The last thing I did was run a search through all my e-mails, comments and their blogs to see if any of them had ever talked shit about me. 😉

I wasnâ€™t expecting fanboy comments of course. I just wanted to check if they are one of those scumbags who would spend day and night belittling you, then suddenly turn around and act nice just because they wanted something from you. Too many of those leeches exist in the business world.

Turns out that Timothy had left comments on my blog every now and then since 2005. The competitor on the hand, had never even participated in my blog at all.

Nuffnang 3 â€“ Competitor 2

Eventually I made my decision.

Although the competitor has a more experience and offered me more money, in the end it was Nuffnangâ€™s sincerity that won me over. On the 15th May 2007, I gave Timothy the phone call to inform him of my decision.

Over the next several months, I passed on virtually all my leads and industry contacts for him to work on. I encouraged other bloggers to give them a chance to tryout their service. I gave them a small advertising space on my blog for free, which they must work hard to fill up. They did not disappoint.

On their side, they held several large-scale social events, discovered interesting bloggers no one heard of and most importantly – promoted to the commercial world that blogs are a legitimate and effective advertising avenue alongside television, newspapers, billboards and radio.

It would be an understatement to say that Nuffnang made an impact on the blogging community, because they virtually uprooted and completely revolutionized the way the media and advertising industry look at blogs.

For two 20+ year olds with no experience in advertising whatsoever, that is very impressive.

Nuffnang had not only fulfilled all their promises they made to me, but they did so much more. Many other bloggers two years ago who would never have the chance to earn any income and now doing well enough to even have it as their regular income.

__hr_DSC00064

My partnership with Nuffnang has been synergistic and fruitful to say the least. Yet even until today, Timothy and Ming never rested on their laurels and opened up branches in places as farflung as Australia.

As I embark on my journey to start my own b
usiness this year, I am sure Iâ€™ll find myself constantly drawing lessons I learnt from my experience with Tim and Ming.

Anyway, this might sound a bit gay but I am gonna say it anyhow.

Congratulations to the both of you on your second anniversary!

kennysia.com Is Four Years Old

5 January 2009

The Blog Culture 101 Comments

For years, I have been using w.bloggar to update my blog offline. It’s raw text HTML style coding with a clunky image upload tool. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.
And then, I discovered Windows Live Writer, which completely blew me away with how easy it is to put together a blog post. The enhancing and watermarking of the photos, which normally took the longest time, now take nothing more than just a few clicks.

Photoshop Challenge

1 December 2008

The Blog Culture 162 Comments

WAH LAO. Did you see what Xiaxue did to my picture or not?

She took this ugly photo of mine (from back in June I think), did some Photoshopping work THEN transformed it into this.

Who. The. Heow. Is. THAT!?
Got some people even say I look like Korean actor, after Photoshop.
It is an example of “a compliment that’s not a compliment.” It is the equivalent of Vanessa Hudgens saying she’ll marry me, if my bank balance has six more zeroes behind it and hell freezes over. Looks like these can only exist on computer graphics.
What’s more, while everyone else had one of their pics Photoshopped, I was treated to TWO!
From this.

To this!

Bugger, pick randomly also cannot pick until two right. Must mean I’m really ugly lah.

Don’t you think it looks like some dodgy before and after pic they use to sell you some bogus overpriced weight loss pills?
When I got your ass served on a plate like that, I gotta respond. But of course, Xiaxue is not the only one who knows how to Photoshop. I also know how to use Photoshop to enhance HER photos!
I ain’t gonna manipulate Wendy’s photos because frankly she does a better job at it herself. Instead, I’m gonna victimize the one thing she loves most.
Her hamster!

Before.

After.
I made her smile!
What’s that you say? It’s not that difficult to Photoshop ‘cos it’s just a hamster?
Fine, let’ try something more difficult shall we! Take Singapore’s biggest celebrity poster boy as an example.

No, not Phua Chu Kang!
The OTHER poster boy.
Can you guess who this is?

Correct.

It is Mas Selamat!

Work done: slimming, skin-lightening, beard-trimming, eye white-brightening, undereye puff elimination, forehead reduction, added dimples for him and I made him smile.
Doesn’t look like that much of a wanted terrorist now does he! He can escape to Hollywood and become like Orlando Bloom.
Xiaxue’s boldest move, however, was when she photoshopped Barack Obama from this.

To THIS.

Now, that’s asking for trouble. The guy is the future President of the United States and is well-loved by a lot of people. Although Xiaxue has Photoshopped to make him look younger, better and more similar to Darlie toothpaste, I reckon she’s gonna upset a lot of sensitive Americans out there.
I mean, imagine if some American were to take the photo of the founding father of modern Singapore, Lee Kwan Yew.

And then PHOTOSHOP him to make him look 30 years younger.

Surely that’s gonna upset a lot of people right!