A tale of two Facebook groups

This week’s 15 Jan 2008 Digital Life (a Straits Times accompaniment every Tuesday) showcased examples of companies and organisations leveraging on social networking sites.

One of the showcased was Singapore’s very own Speak Mandarin Campaign. The Promote Mandarin Council has created a group in Facebook to promote the Speak Mandarin Campaign. The name of this group is: Speak Mandarin - Are You Game?. According to the Digital Life article, the group has an “impressive” membership count of 100+ (the current count is 140 as at time of writing this blog entry).

This reminds me of another Singapore-related Facebook group that I chanced upon. Unlike the earlier Promote Mandarin Council group, this other group does not have the publicity backing of any government councils or organisations; it seems to be started by a couple of individuals. And yet, its membership count is 2274 (almost twenty times more)! The name of this group is: I’m pissed off that my prime minister’s getting S$3.1 million this year. Perhaps the Promote Mandarin Council can take a leaf from this group’s book to grow their membership beyond the “impressive” 140?

It seems that Singaporeans are more concerned about this other issue than speaking Mandarin.

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