VCs are seeking Vietnamese Web 2.0 Startups

Entries tagged as Social Network

Friday, April 4. 2008

Social Networking Services for Vietnamese Women

One day after Yahoo announced its Shine portal for women, in Vietnam the web 2.0 startup Vinalive also stirs the social networking competition with its PhunuNet targeting dynamic Vietnamese women. It seems that PhunuNet is following the simple but successful model of iVillage.

While social networking sites are in a fierce competition seeking users and monetization with such names as Tamtay, Yobanbe, Cyworld, Zoomban etc., targeting women segment is a smart way to differentiate. PhunuNet offers useful content for women’s interests, including Love & Sex, Fashion & Beauty, Health, Lifestyle, Career & Work, Entertainment & Celebrities, Travel, Cooking, Pregnancy & Babycare, Brides, Horoscope etc. It also offers social Q&A, video sharing, groups, events and blogging tools. Not just an iVillage clone, PhunuNet has good localization approach tailored to the taste of Vietnamese women. In fact PhunuNet currently looks like a content portal rather than a web 2.0 services. PhunuNet will have to improve a lot to be a good web 2.0 product rather than a women portal like it is now.

Vietnamese startups should not overlook the women segment in Vietnam, which may total 50% of Vietnamese Internet population of 20 millions. Women-oriented media channels account for the lion’s share of Vietnamese advertising expenses on TV and magazines. VCs are also rushing to women oriented websites in the United States. NBC Universal acquired iVillage, the most popular women’s site along with its other Internet properties for $600 million in 2006.Glam Media, the number one women’s property on the Net as per the latest comScore ranking raised $18.5 million in Series C funding from Duff Ackerman & Goodrich Ventures (DAG), Accel Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, WaldenVC, and Information Capital (Chairman & CEO Samir Arora’s fund). Glam Media had also raised $10 million in Series B led by Accel Partners with Draper Fisher Jurvetson and WaldenVC in 2004.

The question now is can VCs in Vietnam see the value of this potential segment?

Posted by Jason at 06:34 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: clone, cyworld, iVillage, PhunuNet, Social Network, Yahoo

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Current karma: 9, 44 vote(s) 829 hits

Thursday, November 22. 2007

Wrong Forecast on Cyworld Vietnam

Eight months ago I was sitting down with a cool guy discussing the future of web business in Vietnam. He asked me when the Web 2.0 boom would start in Vietnam, I said firmly end of this year and added the success of the Cyworld Vietnam could be a great part of the hype. I guestimated Cyworld Vietnam would target 1 million members after one year since open beta. I told him it was so hard to reach the target since 500K members could make other web services companies crazy. My forecast then was 300K members for Cyworld Vietnam by year end. The reported current number is about 100K. What was wrong with my forecast? Cyworld is a virtual world/social networking service, proven success in Korea. Its revenue model (item sales through mobile sms payment) can work quite well in Vietnam. There can be a number of reasons to the slow adoption of Cyworld among Vietnamese users but I think the main reason is the lack of local seasoned management team that can work out properly.
Hints: if you had a great idea, concept, prototype and even revenue model you would need a great team to turn it around.
Disclosure: the cool guy had left Cyworld Vietnam to start his own web service six months ago.

Posted by Jason at 10:14 | Comments (10) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: cyworld, Social Network, virtual world

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Current karma: 1, 182 vote(s) 37847 hits

Thursday, October 25. 2007

Web Portal Racing - Is it Worth The Effort?

Timnhanh - a local Yahoo version - could be seen the first portal in Vietnam. After two years in operation with some good VC money, I still did not see a way out of its business model. With the current burn rate, it is so hard to balance the revenue source. If it was set up for M&A the chance to find out a potential buyer is too low since it is an old model of the last dotcom era. Timnhanh's search engine is from Yahoo and Yahoo Vietnam is live for nearly one year and it is far from top websites in Vietnam.
Big boy FPT launched the portal Gate.vn to aggregate its online properties including top online news Vnexpress networks, MMOG sites and photo sharing service. Gate search feature is being powered by Yahoo also. For the aggregation services users rather choose personal start page such as iGoogle or Netvibes that can personalised their news sources and web apps or widgets.
I am surprized that the leading online game operator Vinagame, after making bulk of money from Swordman Online MMOG, joins the race with its portal Zing. Current features: news aggregation from various local sources, music search, link to its blog service Yobanbe. Zing Chat, an IM is being tested privately who could use it since the incumbent Yahoo IM with fully Vietnamese support will be put in use very soon.
In my opinion the winner is the one who can build online homes for its users/members. Users wake up in the morning and log in their "home" like Facebook members in the US, Cyworld fans in Korea, QQ users in China. In their "home" they can read first news from chosen sources, communicate with friends and colleagues, buy goods, look for jobs, dates... Building web portal is a top down approach, building "home" is bottom up, which way do you make choice?

Posted by Jason at 11:28 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: portal, Search Engine, Social Network

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Current karma: 12, 201 vote(s) 2435 hits

Tuesday, October 9. 2007

VnSpoke Renamed CyVee with New Features

About half year ago I blogged about the first Vietnamese social network services for professionals. Just last week I got an email from vnSpoke alert of name change. Checked it out, still the same color scheme so as members would have felt of coming back refurbished house. Frontend design seems much more user friendly with some new features: Q&A, job listing. The name CyVee made me think of China' Cyzone, the SNS for Chinese entrepreneurs, sounds familiar to Korean Cyworld. Members can add photo to their profile and I saw some kid pictures representing corporate executives, perhaps some users prefer funny avatar showing off to others rather than professional/business networking. Q&A section could keep members stay longer but I think it would work better with tagging feature. There is no profile widget similar to LinkedIn yet. Maybe the CyVee team is developing more features since I see the backend (framework and database) had some errors. However they had drop the Beta badge from the logo. Like other SNS for professionals, CyVee will make money from job listing fees. This is a necessary move, but the revenue seems so small. How about sponsorship and advertising?

Posted by Jason at 12:54 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Professionals, Social Network

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Current karma: 4, 203 vote(s) 1106 hits

Tuesday, August 14. 2007

Facebook Code Leaked and Social Networking Service Architect

Leak of much hyped SNS Facebook codes is the top digg these day. The guy revealed the secrets suddenly became a must watch in the blogosphere. What can you do with the codes: to know more about what behind the brilliant features of FB? Find the reasons why FB is so successful? Copy these to make your clone better?...If you plan a SNS put those FB codes away even you have whole source codes. Mark Zuckerberg is truly a Social Networking Service Architect not just merely a coder. Start by targeting your defined folks, design your own SNS blueprint with centric user experience. Find out how members interact/connect with others is more important than how pretty lines of codes. Since you show your architect talent, you would be a hot boy in the town for tag team partners and investors.

Posted by Jason at 14:30 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: clone, Facebook, Social Network

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Current karma: -18, 204 vote(s) 1531 hits

Thursday, August 9. 2007

Local Reviews Wrap Up

While Google is collecting street map data of Vietnam in order to launch local mapping service end of this year, some local reviews sites are live to catch up the Web 2.0 boom.

The New Hanoian could be the first one of this kind and make you think of VIR Time Out online version. Targeting expats in Hanoi, with simple layout and looks as old as ancient quarter of Hanoi. Users can find locations with simple Google Maps custom layer. Some SNS features: profile, comment, rating.

Shiva - Hanoi city portal is adding HCM City map data with its own mapping engine. With English and Vietnamese version, both expats and Vietnameses can easily find good local services. Although Shiva had built the service with its self developed mapping, it still did not put users (members) at the center. Not easy to navigate, lack of social connection. Young local people would think the site is for travellers than for local community.

Thodia.vn, the new kid on the block, is a Yahoo Local clone. Only Vietnamese available, targets young party people in HCM City. It developed Flash mapping exactly the same with Yahoo Flash Maps. Full social networking features, clean layout, but still missing something to stick members together.

Vnnavi.com focuses mainly on restaurants, drinks with three language support: Vietnamese, English and Japanese. Its look like a dining listing service rather than a local reviews. Although it has Google Maps local layer for finding locations, it has large number of staff to review the restaurants (with prior agreement with the owners). There is no user profile but a vBulletin forum to discuss eating habits and other interests.
My advice: If you have your own mapping solutions, it is an advantage not to pay Google Maps or Yahoo Maps (and Microsoft Maps also) for enterprise API. For these kind of services to be competitive, put social networking features first, develop your community. Otherwise your service is just a paving stone for the giants entering the market.

Posted by Jason at 14:24 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Local Reviews, Social Network

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Current karma: 15, 186 vote(s) 1651 hits

Tuesday, August 7. 2007

The First Vietnamese Music Social Network?

There are so many online digital music services in Vietnam now. But most are forum based, poor developed and dumb designed. ASP.NET is the dominant framework and windows media player is nearly everywhere. How young people could choose to embed those WMP into their social network services/blogs. Nhacuatui (My Music) is one exception with cool Flash player, easy search with tagging. Users can easily create albums and embed into blogs or social networking services. The layout is simple and clean. Based on current music service scene the team could develop it into cool music SNS. Drop by Khoa's blog for further information on Vi etnam digital music services.

Posted by Jason at 08:40 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: music, Social Network

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Current karma: -13, 141 vote(s) 2542 hits

Monday, July 30. 2007

Blog for Business

An online news site run an article promoting Emotino.com - Business Blog Community as its tagline. At first I thought it is a sort of group blog but after testing as a member, it is totally different. A kind of social network with member profile with almost no feature for members, just submit function (URL submission with some short introduction - Digg style). Some Vietnamese and expat businessmen were listed as bloggers but almost did not blog but copy and paste some articles else where. How this model works if it is not a group blog, not a SNS. Since a businessman want to blog he could pick up a blog service like Typepad, want to network go with sort of LinkedIn services. How emotional businessmen go with Emotino (as it name derived from emotion).

Update: Emotino is run by Dpassion, a blog consulting firm and I did not see them blogging on how to blog.

Posted by Jason at 05:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: blog, Social Network

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Current karma: 20, 108 vote(s) 773 hits

Thursday, July 19. 2007

Time to Launch Wordpress Blogging Services

Wordpress.com, one of the top blog service providers got into top 100 traffic sites by Alexa ranking in Vietnam recently. Actually the rank could be higher since bloggers and blog reader prefer Firefox without Alexa toolbar. This interpret a good demand for Wordpress based blog services and there is no such service in Vietnam now (to my knowledge). Launch a good blog service instead of mass social networking one is a good choice for small team startups.

Posted by Jason at 20:24 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: blog, Social Network

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Current karma: -10, 160 vote(s) 1467 hits

Thursday, July 12. 2007

Yahoo Got PR Support From Online News Sites

I just stumbled across an article from one of the leading local news site Vietnamnet, put Yahoo as absolute winner in Web 2.0 scene in Vietnam. Ironically Yahoo Vietnam is associated with another competitor, online newspapers Tuoitre.

Some ideas to develop virtual communities and social networks have been realised, for example Blog Viet, Young Generation, Xahoi, Cyworld. Websites for searching for and sharing video clips, mp3 files and information like Clip, Bamboo, Gneet have become quite popular. However, those sites just temporarily focus on entertainment services, perhaps because it is easy to see effectiveness in this area.

Is it error or intention as the author put Cyworld as local newly setup social network.

Vnspoke, Vietspace, Ngoisaoblog, cyworld, and Young Generation and other social networks and communities of Vietnamese have modest numbers of users in comparison with Yahoo! 360 or GooglePage.

Why he put GooglePage the same league with Yahoo360? It should be Blogger (blogspot) along with Yahoo360.

Posted by Jason at 15:37 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Defined tags for this entry: Social Network, Yahoo

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Current karma: 2, 71 vote(s) 839 hits

Entries tagged as Social Network

Entries tagged as Social Network

Friday, April 4. 2008

Social Networking Services for Vietnamese Women

Thursday, November 22. 2007

Wrong Forecast on Cyworld Vietnam

Thursday, October 25. 2007

Web Portal Racing - Is it Worth The Effort?

Tuesday, October 9. 2007

VnSpoke Renamed CyVee with New Features

Tuesday, August 14. 2007

Facebook Code Leaked and Social Networking Service Architect

Thursday, August 9. 2007

Local Reviews Wrap Up

Tuesday, August 7. 2007

The First Vietnamese Music Social Network?

Monday, July 30. 2007

Blog for Business

Thursday, July 19. 2007

Time to Launch Wordpress Blogging Services

Thursday, July 12. 2007

Yahoo Got PR Support From Online News Sites

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