Petaling Jaya, 22-Aug-2013 - I have always been impressed with Rohizam Md Yusoff, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of VirtualMalaysia.com and CAT, he knows what he is talking about and he makes good presentation.
The thing about the IT and Internet technology is that it never sleeps, period.
The reality is such that the industry changes so rapidly that not even Google Search is able to keep up with the indexing. And Rohizam once commented that Google never stops, referring to the fact that the Internet giant is in fact the lead catalyst of the never-stop Internet revolution the world is observing currently.
Under the leadership of Rohizam and Joanna Liao (Marketing director), Creative Advances Technology Sdn Bhd (CAT) today introduced the virtualmalaysia.com portal, with core intention of showcasing Malaysia as a travel destination and Malaysia’s many attractions. The new VirtualMalaysia.com portal went live on 1 August 2013.
VirtualMalaysia.com portal is a portal which leverages on user-generated contents from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, pInterest and etc. By doing so, it allows the portal to serve four core purposes: 1.) to host Malaysia’s tourism contents; 2.) to get latest updates from user-generated contents; 3.) to establish a long term relationship with users and to communicate with users; 4.) to allow users to communicate with one another.
This is the way forward for the Internet, just like how Google won the war by indexing web pages and present it to users as a one stop search engine. In the case of VirtualMalaysia.com, it can be seen as a vertical information archive and search portal for Malaysia’s tourism related contents.
The remaining task is to moderate the contents for accuracy and legal compliance. To do this, CAT employs own team for the role.
Just like how Google works, contents owner will not be compensated for the contents published under VirtualMalaysia.com. To publish contents to the portal, users will have to explicitly share the contents; similarly there is an option to not allow search engine to index the web site.
Rohizam thinks many users wouldn’t mind contributing to the great cause of promoting Malaysia as a premier tourism attraction in the world; Tuan Haji Hamzah Rahmat, President of Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (MATTA) commended CAT’s effort as privately funded initiative for national service.
Personally, I agree with both and I think that it will work, but they will have to increase the search capability of the portal. Internet users are very open-minded these days. The social media is like a modern plague which finds hosts on our prides. For example, when someone goes on a social visit to an interesting place, he or she posts the information and photos on Facebook. The friends see the photos and become agitated with desire to achieve similar feat. Hence, the social media is actually a great innovation which contributes to modern day micro-economy activities – the only casualty is the advertising industry.
What impresses me more is the level of tolerance towards negative comments. I used to opine that public hosted reviews will not take off in Malaysia because this is a society which doesn’t discuss sensitive information freely and publicly, unlike the U.S and U.K. Nonetheless, recently I saw bad reviews on hotels published on social media networks like Agoda.com and etc – and the affected hotels are still operating like nobody business; I hope they have made efforts to follow-up on the feedbacks from unhappy consumers than being ignorant.
In retrospect, the challenge with social media updates or social graph information is about searching for relevant and accurate information. Most holiday planners will still perform Google search as the first avenue for information. Hence unless it is able to find everything from VirtualMalaysia.com, some people may still not able to get the best of Malaysia’s tourism.
Tourism Malaysia will host Malaysia as visit Malaysia year 2014.
Get more information.
The thing about the IT and Internet technology is that it never sleeps, period.
The reality is such that the industry changes so rapidly that not even Google Search is able to keep up with the indexing. And Rohizam once commented that Google never stops, referring to the fact that the Internet giant is in fact the lead catalyst of the never-stop Internet revolution the world is observing currently.
Under the leadership of Rohizam and Joanna Liao (Marketing director), Creative Advances Technology Sdn Bhd (CAT) today introduced the virtualmalaysia.com portal, with core intention of showcasing Malaysia as a travel destination and Malaysia’s many attractions. The new VirtualMalaysia.com portal went live on 1 August 2013.
VirtualMalaysia.com portal is a portal which leverages on user-generated contents from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, pInterest and etc. By doing so, it allows the portal to serve four core purposes: 1.) to host Malaysia’s tourism contents; 2.) to get latest updates from user-generated contents; 3.) to establish a long term relationship with users and to communicate with users; 4.) to allow users to communicate with one another.
This is the way forward for the Internet, just like how Google won the war by indexing web pages and present it to users as a one stop search engine. In the case of VirtualMalaysia.com, it can be seen as a vertical information archive and search portal for Malaysia’s tourism related contents.
The remaining task is to moderate the contents for accuracy and legal compliance. To do this, CAT employs own team for the role.
Just like how Google works, contents owner will not be compensated for the contents published under VirtualMalaysia.com. To publish contents to the portal, users will have to explicitly share the contents; similarly there is an option to not allow search engine to index the web site.
Rohizam thinks many users wouldn’t mind contributing to the great cause of promoting Malaysia as a premier tourism attraction in the world; Tuan Haji Hamzah Rahmat, President of Malaysian Association of Tour and Travel Agents (MATTA) commended CAT’s effort as privately funded initiative for national service.
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| (L-R:) Tuan Haji Hamzah Rahmat, President of MATTA; Rohizam, CEO, CAT; Joanna Liao, Marketing Director, CAT |
Personally, I agree with both and I think that it will work, but they will have to increase the search capability of the portal. Internet users are very open-minded these days. The social media is like a modern plague which finds hosts on our prides. For example, when someone goes on a social visit to an interesting place, he or she posts the information and photos on Facebook. The friends see the photos and become agitated with desire to achieve similar feat. Hence, the social media is actually a great innovation which contributes to modern day micro-economy activities – the only casualty is the advertising industry.
What impresses me more is the level of tolerance towards negative comments. I used to opine that public hosted reviews will not take off in Malaysia because this is a society which doesn’t discuss sensitive information freely and publicly, unlike the U.S and U.K. Nonetheless, recently I saw bad reviews on hotels published on social media networks like Agoda.com and etc – and the affected hotels are still operating like nobody business; I hope they have made efforts to follow-up on the feedbacks from unhappy consumers than being ignorant.
In retrospect, the challenge with social media updates or social graph information is about searching for relevant and accurate information. Most holiday planners will still perform Google search as the first avenue for information. Hence unless it is able to find everything from VirtualMalaysia.com, some people may still not able to get the best of Malaysia’s tourism.
Tourism Malaysia will host Malaysia as visit Malaysia year 2014.
Get more information.
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