VCs are seeking Vietnamese Web 2.0 Startups

Vietnamese web startups like to clone social networking services (SNS) like Facebook, Myspace. It seems to be easy, cool and trendy. One of the most successful Web 2.0 services winning hearts and minds of bloggers worldwide, Twitter is not popular in Vietnam. Joining social networks as anonymous user is still common in Vietnam. Showing to others what are you doing means you have to show some true identity. To my guestimate there are about 3k - 5k of Twitter users in Vietnam. More than one year ago, Japanese Ascent Network launched its Twitter clone Haru dubbed Tictac (meaning every second in Vietnamese, truly good brand name). A micro blogging service with no widget feature, Tictac is in the Deadpool now. Twitter clones are not in good position in China also. Chinese Internet users can use Tencent's QQ IM for their communication. To leverage its user base, Tencent launched a Twitter clone TaoTao, members can update from the Web and QQ only. Number of TaoTao users is far above other clones.