chedet.com
The first blog post by Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, the former longest-serving Prime Minister of Malaysia who's warmly known by the locals of his birthplace as Che Det, was recorded on 1st of May 2008 (Labour Day holiday in Malaysia) when the nation was still in shock over the power of blogs (new media) that gave the ruling Barisan National (National Coalition) party its biggest lost in decades -- In fact, if Malaysians had embraced the new media significantly much earlier, perhaps, Dr M himself would have to cut short his prime ministership tenure that ended on his postponed resignation back in 2003.
The motivation for blogging for Tun M, judging from his earliest posts back in May 2008 was to counter mounting criticism against him, both from his older critics, and also the new critics from the ruling BN government, of which many of whom pointing the blame to his still powerful influence upon Malaysians to not giving BN a two-third control of the parliament during the March 8th election. Less than three weeks later, on Wesak holiday (19 May 2008) Mahathir resigned from UMNO, the backbone of the BN and a party he's been attached to for over 30 years. Since then, the blog has served as a free outlet for him, to defend himself verbally, as well as continue offering unbiased opinions on everything Malaysia and the world, and once shot to a popularity rank of top under 10,000 in the world, and top-100 in Malaysia, closing in the web traffic ranks of mainstream news media like the Star, Malaysia Kini, Utusan Malaysia & Kosmo and several of Media Prima's publications.
In fact, Mahathir today is probably the most popular former head of state in the world, who blogs regularly.The hard-to-catch personality who still travels around the world frequently, becomes easy to follow this time - practically everyday, his writings are reviewed and reposted by both the new and old media - blogs and daily newspapers.Just check out Mahathir's most recent quotes on daily basis as tracked by Google News aggregation service:-
"However, he can't put it off for a long because the assembly will need to convene to table the budget and such," said Dr Mahathir.
"But if the menteri besar did not want to convene a state assembly, then how can we force him to call for one? The law states that a vote of no-confidence should have been passed before there is a change in the government. Even if they continue to...
"What can be done to a minority government if it remains and continues to harm the state? This situation is still vague as to my knowledge, there are no legal provisions for such situations," Dr Mahathir said, adding state officials might not...
"The Israelis have learnt a lot from the Nazis. They are using Nazi methods against the Palestinians. I thought they would sympathise with other people, having been oppressed and tortured by the Nazis...... but no, now they want to do the same...
The former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohammed, has said that "the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."
When asked if the Malays would be upset with the legal suit, Dr Mahathir said as a Malay himself, he disagreed but, "there are many Malays now who are supporting Karpal".
"He is the one that really wanted the biggest party hopping on Sept 16. Oh! Mistake, Sept 24. Oh! A mistake again," Dr Mahathir wrote with glee about his protege-turned-nemesis whom he sacked in 1998.
Dr Mahathir said United States President Barack Obama was "quite free to do a lot of things but with regard to Israel, he is paralysed. His hands are tied".
"Kedah's situation is very different from Perak," Datuk Mukhriz Mahathir, the MP for Jerlun, told The Edge Financial Daily. "Kedah is a PAS-led government."
His blogging domain name chedet.com was so popular, that others have also registered .net, .org and .info counterparts of the name "chedet" immediately after the first blog post of Mahathir made the big buzz around cyberspace and mainstream media. The domain even made it to four wikipedia pages including a Japanese version for Dr Mahathir's biodata. These however are understandable.
chedet.cc?But closing in 2008, many were puzzled when a migration to chedet.cc was announced. The new domain that was registered on Christmas Day, was officially launched on New Year's Day following the last past on chedet.com on 31st of December. Speculations arose that move was to not support US-dominated .com domain (overseen by US-based Verisign, Inc as licensed registry company). But both chedet.com and chedet.cc rely on Verisign as their registry, being .cc overseen by eNic, also Verisign company (since 2001) despite chedet.com being registered through eNom (second largest domain registrar as of 2008, with strong cooperation with Verisign through eNom's owner, Demand Media), and chedet.cc being registered through GoDaddy (largest domain registrar as of 2008, also a US-based company) - although I myself immediately speculated back then that the use of .cc TLD was to promote Malaysian-based Qinetics Solutions (a unit of MOL/Vincent Tan's Berjaya, through web.cc and webnic.cc sites, acquired from WeBCC), among the first proponents for .cc domain.
For most petty domain owners however, the switch from the much cheaper .com to a .cc seem pointless - why pay more? (why waste money) -- Oh well, the site with a popularity such as chedet.com can definitely afford it, with the cash it can naturally pulls! Read on...
With the new domain comes the new management (and ownership!) for the domain: Mutual Digital Sdn Bhd, chaired by Datuk Wan Lokman Bin Dato' Paduka Wan Ibrahim and headed executively by Tuan Haji Ismail Bin Daud. From the company's website, Mutual Digital boasts an impresive list of partners for its Mobile ASP business - practically every major name in the local telco and entertainment production industry. Its flagship service, the musiclobby.net, however seems to be put on hold for now. So the company's service to the public consumers for now has got be delivering content from chedet's both via web and perhaps mobile too. And to finance it, and perhaps make a hefty profit too, by sponsorship opportunities on the website. Great, but the small fish would have to wait, because the cheapest ad placement starts of RM2,100 for an "inside page" banner space at RM300 per day (7-day minimum) and the premium space on top of the page costs a whopping RM1K/day, making it one of the most expensive online ad space for a Malaysia-based publication -- if completely booked, this one site can easily pull about RM1-million in ad revenue per year!
chedet.co.cc ??
By mid January 2009, the site started giving a headscratch again - a soft switch to chedet.co.cc - a subdomain of a popular free DNS service by Korea-based co.cc (an independent company, not a domain sTLD like com.my etc.)? Could it be that this is to hide the site's popularity that are naturally metered by traffic ranking service Alexa? After all, based on a six-month monitoring, chedet.com has suffered dwindling popularity from a top-10K in October down to a rank of top-40K by December before missing from the top-100K radar after the domain switch? Supposedly, lack of controversies and increase in new media competition may have caused this, except of course, by early February 2009, when millions flock again to chedet.com to find out what Tun has to say with regards to the Perak political crisis.
The little traffic graph spike recorded by Alexa during the first week of Feb '09 shows how people still remember .com the most, being it is the most popular top-level domain with about two-third market share.URL Jump
The concern here is CONTROL. A domain ownership is like a land title. Being approved as a domain registrant means that you're holding the exclusive right (no freeholds as of yet) to its use, and you are required to pay the relevant authorities a minimal annual fee. And in most cases, unlike popular physical land leaseholds for up to 99 years, domains can generally be held for a maximum of ten years. This provides the owner the most control - unless if you've falsify ownership or commit other activities not permitted by the registry or registrar, you can safely do what you want with the domain.
Tun Mahathir unfortunately does not owns the domain chedet.cc, which has been personally registered by one CEO of Mutual Digital for exclusive use by the said individual (not company), and ultimately owned by assigned registry (eNic), and above it, the governing entity for Cocos Islands (presently under Australian control). Though, should any control dispute arise, Tun can legally contest for the right for the domain via Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UNDP) set by ICANN, or any other legal agreements made between Tun and Hj Ismail/Mutual Digital -- However, consider that the less-monitored smaller entity eNic can easily dictate chedet.cc versus chedet.com (which on the other hand, registered through the rather influential Godaddy, and closely-watched Verisign).
The use of chedet.co.cc on the other hand might be a setback: suddenly, chedet's site is under the full mercy and possible monitoring of a single company co.cc -- it's hard to decide on infrastructure reliability, security, features etc.
For certain however, the possible move to avoid close monitory by Alexa and the likes (Compete.com etc.) is temporary, as once co.cc becomes very popular which it already is, Alexa will switch to monitor subdomains similar to what it does with blogspot.com, geocities.com and the likes.
And it puzzles me greatly on how a less than 1-year old domain bears a 199 changes on its whois record! BTW, Mutual Digital ironically does not even fully control its own mutualdigital.com and musiclobby.net...Whatever it is, it's not Belilah Barangan Buatan Malaysia (Buy Malaysian) for Che Det for now, as chedet.my and chedet.com.my are registered for Kuching-based Jacob Liew (CDC) and KL-based C Wong (Alpha Global) respectively...
(in reference to Che Det's Lompat Lagi, Feb 6, 2009... This lompat-lompat reminds me of Battlestar Galatica's Jump, jump parodies)
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