By Dawn Tay

ASIA is experiencing a social-media boom - news and information spread, people connect and star bloggers rise and fall.

A staggering 456 million users in Asia - just under a third of the world's online population - have embraced social media, according to a regional study released recently by marketing agency OgilvyOne Asia Pacific.

Its study, Can Brands Have A Social Life?, highlights the vast differences in the adoption and use of social media by people in 12 Asian countries.

Here are nine case studies:

SOUTH KOREA

What's hot: Ubiquitous broadband access and competitive telco pricings have allowed users to create and post online content via high-quality mobile phones.

Favourite activities: Gaming, buying of digital music and sharing information on indigenous Wikipedia-like sites such as Naver.

Lineage II, Korea's most popular online game, has a reach of 14 million users ? double that of World Of Warcraft. Successful online gamers are paid professionals with celebrity status.

Choice platforms: Home- grown search engines Naver and Daum.

Favourite social-networking site: Cyworld, with 48 per cent of the country's market share. It is also the world's second-largest music-and-video retailer behind iTunes, earning a sales revenue of US$100 million (S$150 million) to date from song downloads.

CHINA

What's hot: YouTube-like video-broadcasting platforms with faster speeds than those in the United States.

What's not: Access via mobile phone. Less than 15 per cent of mobile subscribers use their devices to go online.

Favourite activities: Digital music (84.5 per cent of consumers), videos (71 per cent) and online games (58.3 per cent).

Choice platforms: Home-grown music-and-video broadcasting platforms such as youku.com and tudou.com, which garner up to 100 million views daily, and Bulletin Board Systems, with 10 million posts daily.

Favourite social-networking site: No company dominates the market, unlike in South Korea. Indigenous sites like Instant Messenger company Tencent and Facebook-like Xiaonei.com are favoured.

JAPAN

Favourite activity: Blogging - Japan has the highest blog readership in the world. Anonymous blogging and the creation of avatars indicate that the Japanese do not like to speak out or be seen as confrontational.

Choice platforms: Indigenous blogsites such as Hatena diary, search engines such as Kizasi.jp and social-networking sites.

Favourite social-networking site: Indigenous social networking site Mixi dominates, with 80 per cent market share.

But the Japanese prefer to maintain close personal relationships on social-networking sites, unlike their Western counterparts.

HONG KONG

Social-media scene: Even though over 72 per cent of its population has an online presence, social media is still quite a passive exercise for the majority of Hong Kongers.

Surprisingly, political blogs or citizen journalism, which are increasingly popular in mainland China, are practically non-existent, thanks to a relatively open society. Hong Kongers don't yet feel that they have to treasure or tap these new outlets to get heard.

Favourite activities: Home-grown forums, entertainment sites and celebrity blogs like those of Hong Kong stars Edison Chen and Eason Chan.

Favourite social-networking site: Split between Facebook - frequented by Western-educated users - and the locally targeted Xanga.

INDIA

Social-networking scene: India is one of the fastest-growing online markets with 60 million users, and is projected to grow around 18 per cent by 2011.

What's hot: Online and off- line tie-up of TV, Internet and mobile phones into integrated multichannel social media.

What's not: Blogging. Barely any local online content is developed, but social media is expected to take a new life in coming months with the launch of YouTube in India.

Favourite activity: Social networking, entertainment, finding matrimonial matches and job searches. Around 73 per cent of consumers use the Internet to find new jobs, even higher than for those searching for news.

SINGAPORE

What's hot: Over 80 per cent broadband penetration and ultra-high-speed digital-highway infrastructure. A high level of proficiency in English has helped Singaporeans to adopt Western social-media behaviours very quickly.

Favourite activities: Blogging, social networking and forums like hardwarezone.com

Favourite social-networking sites: Friendster - with 940,000 unique visitors per month - and Facebook, with 495,000 unique visitors per month. Social networks are a culturally acceptable way for Singaporeans to connect, and they are the most likely people in Asia to check out other people's profiles on a social network.

THAILAND

What's hot: Citizen-journalism blogs. Big events such as the opposition coup in 2006 have seen sociopolitical blogs transform into powerful news-sharing sources.

What's not: Internet penetration is at around only 20.5 per cent, with 13.4 million users. There are around only one million broadband subscribers in Thailand.

Favourite sites: News-related portals such as Pantip.com/cafe and Manager.co.th.

MALAYSIA

Social-media scene: Still in its nascent stages, with an estimated 11 million basic social-media users out of 13.5 million Internet users.

With tight government control over traditional media, Malaysians use the Internet to express themselves.

Social sites such as Facebook and Malaysiakini also play key roles in garnering support for political campaigns.

What's hot: Current-affairs blogs by established bloggers such as Kenny Sia. To subsidise the trend in blogging, blog- advertising agencies have emerged, such as Advertlets.

Favourite social-networking site: Friendster dominates the market with around three million unique visitors a month.

INDONESIA

Social-networking scene: While Internet usage is projected to grow four-fold by 2010, broadband penetration is still virtually non-existent. Around 94 per cent of consumers still tune in to TV for breaking news.

Blogs are starting to be used as a means of expression but government legislation introduced last March prescribes severe penalties for slander.

Favourite activities: Research, e-mail and instant chat.

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