ChurpChurp to me is a little bit of an experiment. What Ming and I did was slowly put a bunch of really talented young people together from different backgrounds and different skill sets, and give them a mission to build an awesome company. We had to trust them to build a great one… because Ming and I was constantly traveling and working on expanding Nuffnang in the region.
Build a great company they did.
After some two years and lots of struggles even in finding the right passionate people, the awesome team behind ChurpChurp have put together a company that isn’t just doing well financially but they’ve made it a fun place to work. Under this group of young leaders they put together a community of social media users in Malaysia and Singapore that meet up at #churpout’s.
They’ve managed to get some of the most influential people in the country to be a part of the community. Everyone from artists like Ning Baizura or Sazzy Falak to radio announcers like Adam C or Jinn… to… well.. even Alex Yoong our first F1 driver.
ChurpChurp now is one of the fastest growing companies under the Netccentric Group having offices in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Australia.
Every now and then though I lean in to guide them and give them direction in whatever way I can help. Just recently during whatever time I had in Malaysia, I worked with them on the new ChurpChurp site they were coming up with. We felt that the old ChurpChurp site had become way too messy so we decided to scrap everything and build a very minimalist and zen one. We spent 6 weeks on the site going through the smallest details even on where the smallest buttons should be placed.
The final result was launched yesterday.
Internally we called this ChurpChurp 6.0 because it’s the 6th version of our website since we started. Having to evolve over and over with time… we finally settled on this one that we think will bring us far into the future. (Kinda reminds me of how Nuffnang itself changed its website multiple times in the first couple of years before settling on the one we still use today).
ChurpChurp started out a couple of years to go as a company that was meant to help its users make money by sharing messages on their Facebook or Twitter. Since then it has evolved to more than that.
Because the Churpies (what we call the people who work at ChurpChurp and incidentally what we call the ChurpChurp plush toy) really got into 9GAG and all sorts of viral articles, they came up with the “Discover” part of ChurpChurp where users can share any interesting articles they read online over at ChurpChurp.
So if you’re ever bored and looking for something interesting to read you can always go to ChurpChurp. And if you see a brand message that you think your friends might be interested in, you can share it and get paid for doing it.
I’m so proud of how far ChurpChurp has come and it reminds me how young people can get together themselves and build something great. Here’s to the Churpies at ChurpChurp (to the ones in this photo and the shy ones who hide in the background).
Check out the new ChurpChurp to see what a bunch of 20-something year olds can do.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space