Singapore Airlines: Slow to board the social media flight?

I might be slow here but I only read in The Business Times recently that SIA took over an unofficial facebook page. Apparently, the SIA facebook page was originally set up by fans and had almost 100,000 members.

Until almost two years ago, I didn't really know what was social media. OK, I heard of blogs, which I thought was a classy bog, and Twitter, which I thought was a noisy chatroom, and Facebook, which I thought was a vanity item. Yes, that's me, an IT dinosaur.

After I got the hang of blogging, it took me quite a while to get on Twitter and, more recently, Facebook. While blogging serves a purpose for me, being a platform for me to pen my thoughts and analyses, I could not see any advantages of being on Twitter and Facebook. I only started accounts because of requests by some readers.

Since starting a Twitter account many months ago, a grand total of 33 people are following my blogs using it. My Facebook account is less than a month old, so, having 3 members is a start. However, I think the most popular way in which readers follow my blog is still through Feedburner. Almost 600 people are following my blogs via feeds!

I know people who have terminated their Twitter accounts because they were not very successful. I also know people who claim that Facebook is more effective than Twitter in spreading the word. I kind of suspect that these are just different tools for different purposes and, most probably, Feedburner is the best tool for my blog to keep readers updated.

So, the view that SIA is very late in latching onto social media and how it has been detrimental to its business is something I do not quite understand. For those who do understand, please be kind to me. Laugh a little if you must but enlighten me with your insights please. :)