Malaysiakini is extending it’s free service till this Friday 14th March. However after that it will be switching back to it’s subscribers-only model. Malaykini.tv their video site will also be transitioning to a subscriber-only model due to the high cost of bandwidth. Lower resolution videos will however still be uploaded into YouTube as they have always been.
Much needed upgrades are also being put in place. Malaysiakini will be seeing 3 new high-end servers and have it’s bandwidth upgraded to 150mbps. Users will surely realize an improvement in performance moving forward.
Malaysiakini and many other local news sites experienced a tremendous spike in users/subscribers this past week thanks to the Malaysia 12th general elections. I myself experienced 12k page views within a few hours.
This just comes to show the awareness levels of Malaysians, almost everyone I know is internet savvy now, even my dad 63 years old now spends 6 hours a day on the net researching. Many politicians (Non net savvy I guess) consider the Net (alternative media) a bad thing and claim that almost everything if not all is not true. But one must ask, why aren’t they coming out with their own sites/blogs to counter the negative media. An open debate I would call it(the democratic way). Watch a video.
I still buy newspapers today but since I feel that the local papers and news channels are generally pro government, I need to hear both sides of a story. Where do I go? The online world/community is the answer to satisfy my “need to know” hunger. However one must not easily believe everything one reads online or from the papers. Always cross reference before coming to a conclusion. Find the truth and not blindly follow.
Malaysians are smart people, don’t keep challenging them. serve the people and your country not just your party.
Source: Malaysiakini