Malaysia has the 16th largest Facebook population

... Indonesia no.3, Philippines no.8

Screw you, this is social media #mol #offgamers

Yesterday, Ganesh Kumar Bangah, CEO of MOL (which acquired Friendster and recently signed a partnership with Facebook to become a payment provider for Facebook Credits), paid a visit to the OffGamers Facebook community page and:

(1) made an unwelcomed remark that its gaming service was better than the competitor's

(2) indicated that people who didn't agree that MOL's product was better, were... un-intelligent. To him, it should be plain to all, since his brand is BIGGER

(3) after the page admin kindly offered to carry MOL's game credit products, said "no thank you, you are of no value to us"

You can read the Twitter and Facebook reactions for yourselves. It has now spilled over to the Lowyat forum and MOL's own Facebook page.

But what baffled me the most were Ganesh's final words: "I understand that you may be upset that we are gate crashing, but this is social media".

"...but this is social media"??? What does that mean?

I hope he isn't of the opinion that social media is the wild wild west, and no rules apply. That is a huge myth. The misconception that you can do and say what you want on social media without consequences is a major mistake. Social media is made up of people and communities, and the same rules of engaging with people offline apply online. What is rude offline, is rude online. What is considered shameless promoting offline, is still shameless promoting online. But unlike offline, where communication is one-to-one or one-to-a-few, what you do online is laid bare for all to see. Hence, adhering to the rules and etiquettes become even more important.

In my opinion, the most important rule is respect the community. It isn't hard. e.g.:

Don't be rude
Don't say what you wouldn't want to see on your own page
Don't spam
Don't be a troll
Respect the on-going conversation
Understand the intent of the community before you participate
Add value, don't just push your own agenda

Wait, don't we know all these things already?

-- UPDATE --

E27, the Singapore based web / mobile community, wrote to Ganesh for his side of the story. MOL's media liaison replied:

"Thanks for your email. We have no plans to provide comments on the matter. Regards."

One of the commentators on the E27 blog said it best: "He is a CEO of a regional online company, but acted like a pasar-malam (night market) pirated VCD seller." #epicwin