YouthSays is an online youth opinion

community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, tow ...

that is operated and privately owned by Youth Asia Sdn. Bhd.,

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

. YouthSays works with organisations and businesses to reward

youth Youth is the time of life when one is young. The word, youth, can also mean the time between childhood and adulthood ( maturity), but it can also refer to one's peak, in terms of health or the period of life known as being a young adult. You ...

for collective action. Youths get paid money or prizes for participating in online surveys, advertising campaigns, and campus activities. YouthSays was founded in March 2008 for Malaysian youths only, but recently it has launched local versions for 3 other countries in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

and

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. YouthSays is widely known for its active participation in youth campaigns and events across the region including SEAChange (Southeast Asia Youths for Change), Youth '08 and Youth '09, Malaysia National Youth Entrepreneurs Convention (NYEC) 2008 and 2009.

History

The first version of YouthSays originated from the

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

of Youth Malaysia - a youth NGO started in October 2006 by Joel Neoh. Youth Malaysia organised Malaysia's largest youth festival for the first time, YOUTH'08. It was attended by Khailee Ng, who then collaborated with Joel to come up with the first version of YouthSays. The YouthSays website then opened for

beta testing Software testing is the act of examining the artifacts and the behavior of the software under test by validation and verification. Software testing can also provide an objective, independent view of the software to allow the business to apprecia ...

on 15 March 2008 and officially launched on 2 May 2008 in Malaysia. By the end of 2009, it claimed to have 230,000 members in

, and

Features

The current version of YouthSays includes 4 main features: * Surveys - Users tell the businesses what they think about their products & services by answering online surveys and get rewarded in return. * Advertising - It is basically an

affiliate network An affiliate network acts as an intermediary between publishers (affiliates) and merchant affiliate programs. It allows website publishers to more easily find and participate in affiliate programs which are suitable for their website (and thus ge ...

. Users can choose to support social or commercial campaigns and get unique links to promote those campaigns. They get rewarded for every unique clicks on these links. * Campus - Users list their campus events on Youthsays.com & the Youthsays gets sponsors for their campus events. Students might also be selected to become campus ambassadors for certain

brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's good or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create an ...

s and get rewarded. * Community - Users get to ask questions & give answers to each other which allows them to increase their knowledge and make more friends.

Youth Campaigns and Events

YouthSays is widely known for its participation in youths campaigns and events across the region.

SEAChange (Southeast Asia Youths for Change)

SEAChange is an ongoing movement organised by Youth Asia connecting Southeast Asian Youths to projects, organisations, businesses, and leaders who can help them with the change they want to see. SEAchange used YouthSays as the community organising vehicle to produce the SEAchange Youth Report, where over 180,000 responses from youths from across the region was used to compile a report on change. 500 respondents of the survey were sent to Youth Engagement Summit 2009 (YES2009) where they met business leaders and global change icons including

Bob Geldof Robert Frederick Zenon Geldof (; born 5 October 1951) is an Irish singer-songwriter, and political activist. He rose to prominence in the late 1970s as lead singer of the Rock music in Ireland, Irish rock band the Boomtown Rats, who achieved ...

Biz Stone Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone (born March 10, 1974) is an American entrepreneur who is a co-founder of Twitter, among other technology companies. Stone was the creative director at Xanga from 1999 to 2001. Stone co-founded Jelly, with Ben Finkel ...

, Datuk Seri Tony Fernandes, and Garry Kasparov

Youth '09

YouthSays.com was the primary

organising vehicle which brought youths to YOUTH'09. Youth Asia claimed to attract 36,720 youths during that 3 day festival.

Ambiguity

Not-for-profit or for-profit Due to its participation in youths' campaigns and its origin as an NGO, YouthSays is usually mistaken as a

non-profit organisation A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Official Blog

Youth Asia corporate website

YES 2009 Official Website
Youth organisations based in Malaysia