XM Asia-Pacific urges Twitter to put Singapore on its map

As noted in the petition, any Tweet tagged with a location from within Singapore is incorrectly displayed by Twitter as having originated from Johore, a state in neighbouring Malaysia.

“This has the potential to cause confusion and it's simply wrong,” said Ernest Kim, planning director at XM Asia-Pacific.

“As your readers will be well aware, Singapore has existed as an independent republic for 47 years, which is 41 years longer than Twitter has existed as a company," he said. "Our hard-working, digitally savvy population of over 5 million deserves to have their nationhood recognised on the world's second-biggest social platform.”

According to comScore, 19.9 per cent of Singapore’s online population is actively using Twitter. A Semiocast study in July also ranked Singapore the 11th most active Twitter city in the world as measured by the number of posted Tweets, ahead of cities with bigger populations such as Seoul, Osaka and Rio.

Kim noted that a high-profile example of Twitter's errant geo-tagging was on display during The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s recent visit to Singapore.

“The Royal couple's visit was documented via the Monarchy's official @BritishMonarchy handle, which posted geo-tagged Tweets from multiple stops on their tour,” he said. “But, thanks to Twitter's failure to recognise Singapore’s existence, followers of the Royal handle would have been led to believe that the Singapore Botanic Gardens, The Istana and the Kranji War Memorial are all actually located in Johore, Malaysia.”

Other social networks such as Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Google+, all recognise Singapore's existence within their location platforms.

XM Asia-Pacific is hosting the petition at global social action platform Change.org, where online users can sign-on and help spread the word. Everytime someone signs the petition, a copy is emailed directly to Twitter.

The agency is also using its own social channels, such as the microsite, Facebook page, Twitter and email, to raise awareness of the initiative. It hopes to get at least 10,000 Singaporeans to join the petition, to make their voices heard.

“But if we reach our goal and Twitter still refuses to act, we’ll come up with a way to raise the stakes—even if that means taking the message directly to Twitter’s new headquarters in San Francisco,” Kim said.

“As an agency, we believe that whatever we make has to matter, and that absolutely holds true with this petition: It's important for Singapore to be recognised on Twitter's map, and so XM is going to work to make that change happen,” he said.