thanks CK for sharing. my comments are based on my experience as a private buyer and seller of stuff (mostly photography and techie stuff).

i've personally stopped using Lelong for years and gone to eBay US, Mudah and forums to buy and sell. I just can't find what i want there any more and Lelong is no longer a real auction site of used products but instead a place for lots of 'stores' which sell similar stuff. what used to be predominantly a used item store has now become a pasar malam.

ah, it's been a long time since i visited your blog! nice article here.

i have bought lots of groupons (it's become a noun for me) from mostly Groupon, Everyday.com.my and Dealmates. So far I have not been disappointed. Saved me quite a bit of money, especially when I bring my big family out for dinner once a month.

but i have been finding Groupon (the company) more and more unattractive so much so that I have unsubscribed to their email blast. Why?
1. because they keep sending mail almost twice a day, making it almost like spam
2. their deals are becoming more expensive and on the premium end that I don't feel it's cheap anymore. Perhaps it's just me, but i love food deals and not spa or travel and the food deals are not that great (mostly in the range of RM15 and above which is not a big deal to me - pun not intended).

I have since moved to Everyday.com.my and found that apart from very good deals (I heard they only charge merchants 25%) they even give 3% affiliate rebates for introducing a deal (not just a member like Groupon. and Groupon's RM2 token only last for a while and cannot be used more than once per deal).

I find that there is just too many of these deals site and a customer can only subscribe to so many. I only have 2 now and that is more than enough for me.

In the long run, I feel it's going to be the smaller players who is going to suffer because people are just sick of so-called deals sites and stick to trusted ones.

Hi CK, reading through some of your old blogs. Interesting to know there are actually local SNS players. I have to agree that probably the "users online now" is most probably an exaggerated number. However, I noticed you use Compete to check the number of unique visitors. I have tried Compete before and I think from their statistics only comes from unique visitors from the US and not worldwide (the explain how they get their unique visitors in the little "?" icon). :)

I kinda doubt that this SMiLDS.com would work... it seems to be trying to be a jack of all trades, which so many other ecommerce companies already have. Why should I use SMiLDS when I can use my favourite and trusted ebay or lelong services?

Of course, they are planning to make this an Asian platform which one can cross-sell to other countries. And cross marketing. (Selling Slimming products with iPhones???) Still, so what? There's no real benefit to consumers like you and me.

Finally, how does one pronounce SMiLDS? sounds like bad english to me.

However, I really like coming to Malaysiacrunch and read your insights. I found the Long Tail concept which you shared very interesting.

Keep up the good work CK!