Technology and Social Media in Malaysia

I still remember in 80th, very hard to find a telephone especially in the rural area and the public phones were located at the busy area such as bus stop. The affordable family only had telephone at home. Later in 1985 the first mobile phone introduced in Malaysia. The improved in technology has made a great change in telecommunication especially mobile phone. When the mobile phone launched, the mobile phone can only made a call, thus due to this feature, the used of pager became famous. The user was able to receive short message from pager and if the user wants to know the detail of the message, the user has to call the call centers .The evolution of mobile phones occurs at very fast pace. The personal computer was also become famous followed by the laptop and notebook. .In 2007 the mobile phones have become a must devices that everybody have and now most young people has a Smartphone. The Smartphone is very stylish and equipped with an advanced feature which could be an alternative to the computer. In the last 25 years ago when the mobile phone came in to Malaysia the mobile phone  came with a huge, bulky or big size and with an antenna .At the beginning stage the user can only made a call and there was no short message feature. After the features of short message launched, most Malaysian was keen to send SMS rather than call as the cost is very cheap. Furthermore most Malaysia TV programs used SMS to communicate and the SMS became popular. 

The internet came to Malaysia somewhere in 1995 and the first Malaysia search engine and portal founded namely as Cari Internet. In order to meet the technology growth the broadband was introduced in Malaysia .Now in Malaysia has cellular broadband, DSL, Fibre optic, WIFI broadband, hotspot and Leased Line ,VSAT ,WiMAX and etc .

Although the call and SMS feature was improved and enhanced the new application name Chatting Messenger seem became popular to Malaysia as it can be freely download. This social media became popular as the new media provide free call and SMS or chatting within the group using the internet data.

The new social media popular in Malaysia nowadays is:-

·         Facebook

·         Twitter

·         Skype

·         BlackBerry Messenger

·         WhatsApp

·         Blogs

·         Viber

·         Tanggo

·         WeeChat

·         Line

·         Keek

Some of the chatting application can be free download at the handphone and some in the computer. Now the young people more interested to have this application in the handphone. Most of Gen Y nowadays has the account with the new social media.

Although my age is already forty plus, but I still use the chatting messenger to communicate .For instance Viber , I can sent message , files , photo , location via Viber and also can made a call via Viber  with no cost  as the Viber is using the internet data. Among the famous social media in Malaysia nowadays is Facebook , WhatApps and etc.

The recent PRU had also made the social media became interesting and popular to communicate and it has became an important communication tools. The result of the PRU was also can be view by slide the hand phone’s slider and the result came out via any social media that the user is exploring.Information was sent out through social media within moments for the PRU result, but some of it was misleading and wrong.

 Even though social networking is a great concept, there are many precautionary measures that we should take to ensure it is a safe experience.The user should precaution as there is no verification procedure for people who wish to join the site. Almost the entire Internet allows the user to remain anonymous if user choose to. But because of this reason there is no assurance that the person may actually be who he claims to be online.Therefore, it is important that the user to understand a site's privacy settings completely before the user log on.