Social Media in Malaysia and Indonesia: It Use as Communication, collaboration and digital networking tool

Social media has become a global phenomenon and Asia is the largest market in terms of consumer participation. A study conducted by Universal McCann indicate that all social media platforms grew significantly and showed an increase in penetration rate from 33% in 2005 to 83% in 2008. In Asia, a total of 456 million users, which is one third of the world’s population online, engage with social media activities. For instance, favourite activities for Singaporeans are blogging, social networking, and online forums, while Malaysian seems to prefer blogging and interacting on social networking sites such as Facebook. Internet users in Thailand are more inclined towards “citizen-journalism”, blogs and news sharing, while in Indonesia the use of instant messaging via Blackberry Messenger (BBM) to communicate and interact in cyberspace is popular. This shows that social media is used to interact, collaborate, and share digital contents as well as build online networks that encourage members to connect with each others. This paper discusses the use of social media in Malaysia and Indonesia and how it can be used to bring benefit to the relationship among the people of the two countries