Map of Online Communities
Very interesting map thanks to Randall Munroe.
2007/5/3
2007/4/25
Do we need to educate old media?
IDGVV just announced to invest in three companies in Vietnam. Vietnam Investment Review featured the news that I got from Vietnamnet and press coverage section of IDGVV website. The original in Vietnamese only.
"Website yeuamnhac run by the Yeu Am Nhac Joint Stock Company is one of the three companies. This is a professional forum specialising in music established in 2003. More than 500,000 members have joined the forum". What do they mean professional here: is it for music professionals, actually it is an online community for music lovers.
"The third company is Cyworld, a forum about society run and developed by SK Communications, a member of the Republic of Korea’s SK Telecom". This old media guy has no concept of social media, social networking services. Furthermore, SK Communications and SK Telecom are affiliates (same level) of SK Group. PR is good but it should be adapted to new media influence, PR guys should read The High Cost of Being “AntiSocial”.
"Website yeuamnhac run by the Yeu Am Nhac Joint Stock Company is one of the three companies. This is a professional forum specialising in music established in 2003. More than 500,000 members have joined the forum". What do they mean professional here: is it for music professionals, actually it is an online community for music lovers.
"The third company is Cyworld, a forum about society run and developed by SK Communications, a member of the Republic of Korea’s SK Telecom". This old media guy has no concept of social media, social networking services. Furthermore, SK Communications and SK Telecom are affiliates (same level) of SK Group. PR is good but it should be adapted to new media influence, PR guys should read The High Cost of Being “AntiSocial”.
2007/4/23
American Idol vs Next Webstar
TV show American Idol just came to Vietnam with local version Vietnam Idol. If it had arrived earlier than 2005, it should been a huge success. Some American Idol clones had been on air since then. It is worse now as social media is much more important to youngsters than TV. Next Webstar could be the right answer:
With the explosion of online video in 2006, Next Webstar was born to provide an outlet for anyone to share their talent with the world, without all the clutter of other video sites. The power of the internet has allowed the PEOPLE to define entertainment and has weakened traditional "Hollywood" methods of becoming a celebrity. Innovative sites like YouTube have proven that everyday people can become celebrities if they have that certain something that makes us want to watch. There is no longer the need for years of auditions before you can get your big break. Online video has truly enabled us to choose America's funniest home videos and the real American idols.
Beside Next Webstar, anyone can also enter contest with SingShot, an online singing community that lets you choose from thousands of songs, record your own versions, and share them with the world for free. SingShot was acquired by Electronic Arts Inc. early this year.
Do you want to be the Next Web Startup Star?
2007/4/14
Newspapers United?
Everyday we see many newspapers (both online and print) chase the same happening for their news coverage. It is waste of social resources, why these old gangs did not sit together to defend against young social media. CityTools seems to be the answer, it is a kind of social network for newspapers or/and file sharing network for publishers. “Our system allows editors to create innovative content sharing networks with like-minded, and let's face it, visionary, editors at other newspapers. Think of it as a way of creating mini-wire services, defined as narrowly or broadly as you choose.” It sounds cool, who can unite Vietnamese newspapers?
2007/4/13
Job Widget
I tried a job widget at a leading online newspaper Thanhnien today, to my surprise, it did not work. Vietnamworks.com is the leading online job site in Vietnam, it owns this widget. At first I think it had added some Web 2.0 features but not now sure. Test below from Hong Kong based Recruit.net.
2007/4/10
Where Social Networking Sites Go
Looking back to old CNET's article Five reasons social networking doesn't work, I can see CNET guys are really in the first half of the web sphere. With recent Mixi IPO success and Facebook turned down Yahoo offer, social networking startups would be web enterpreneurs' darlings. Why young people flock to SNS? They can:
- Send email
- Chat IM
- Post blogs
- Share multimedia: pictures, videos, music
- Check member profile
- Meet-up
- Rate other members
- .......
2007/4/9
Microsoft is Dead
I just met today a friend who came to US with Vietnamese Government officials and some leading ICT figures visiting a Microsoft developers conference. He told me that he feels Microsoft is not powerful as previously and I said Microsoft era is gone. Came back home, got Paul Graham's new post Microsoft is Dead. Put an end: "Half the readers will say that Microsoft is still an enormously profitable company, and that I should be more careful about drawing conclusions based on what a few people think in our insular little "Web 2.0" bubble. The other half, the younger half, will complain that this is old news". Hope we will see many more young people in the latter half.
2007/4/3
Vietnam News 2.0?
In 2006 DEC launched a print press reading portal Docbao, which scans/captures printed pages of newspapers and magazines. At first, it was in pdf form and now the UI is much better with some AJAX applications. Different from Docbao, some portals aggregate news from online newspapers. Baomoi seems on top of this category: fast loading, different viewing options, nice preview pop-ups. Thegioitin from DTT and Danduong of FPT are similar, but Thegioitin has better UI design and preview pop-ups. Newly launched Diemtin seems get fast and has good mobile format support.
My rating:
My rating:
| No | Portal | UI | Ads Support | Mobile Support |
| 1 | Baomoi | Good | Good | Poor |
| 2 | Thegioitin | Good | Poor | Poor |
| 3 | Diemtin | Fair | Good | Good |
| 4 | Danduong | Poor | Fair | Poor |
However all these portal have no user generated content elements. They were launch based on presumption that users are eager to read old media news. Actually many users now want to read news from citizen journalists. A good model is OhmyNews from Korea. News 2.0 is the way to go and VCs love someone who standout from the crowd.
[update1] Diemtin had been upgraded with some nice features:new layout, popup preview.
2007/3/30
How Much to Clone YouTube
Following the first Vietnamese YouTube clone, others would be launched soon. How about the cost, based on my initial estimate* for the site of 1/10th of size of YouTube (as in February 2007) the workout is as follows:
Grid-computing costs for 1 year = $4,000.00
Storage costs for 1 year = $15,000.00
Bandwidth costs for 1 year = $40,000.00
Development cost = $30,000.00
Maintenance cost = $12,000.00
Editorial team = $25,000.00
Grand Total = $126,000.00
It is minimum cost for year one, so what is your revenue model? When and how you clone exit?
* Estimate used Vormiteer calculation (built with Rails).
* YouTube bandwidth costs could reach $1 million a month according to Forbes
Grid-computing costs for 1 year = $4,000.00
Storage costs for 1 year = $15,000.00
Bandwidth costs for 1 year = $40,000.00
Development cost = $30,000.00
Maintenance cost = $12,000.00
Editorial team = $25,000.00
Grand Total = $126,000.00
It is minimum cost for year one, so what is your revenue model? When and how you clone exit?
* Estimate used Vormiteer calculation (built with Rails).
* YouTube bandwidth costs could reach $1 million a month according to Forbes
2007/3/26
The $20 Million Challenge
Early 2007 Mekong Capital Vietnam launched $20 million challenge -Thách thức $20 triệu competition. It is truly a business plan competition even it is stated beyond that. The priority categories are distribution of branded consumer products, retails, franchise and no mention of web services. This implies Mekong Capital would not join Vina Capital DFJ and IDGVV on tech VC battle ground. Young tech entrepreneurs rather digg into CNN Business 2.0 feature as Mekong Capital does not favor tech savvy guys under 25 and have no MBA diploma. The 22 year old Mark Zuckerberg with his Facebook could reach $1 billion. Vietnamese Phùng Tiến Công started nhacso.net with FPT Music in 2005 at 24 years old. As my earlier post, if you have a good concept and dream team just start and VC should come along. Competitions and gameshows can make an American Idol and The Apprentice but not a Simon Fuller and Donald Trump.
2007/3/19
CNET Clone?
Amid new wave of Web 2.0, a Vietnamese Cnet clone has been launched recently. It is named The Gioi Phang (means The World is Flat). Two years ago, Cnet was looked down by blogosphere and just early this year Engadget had nearly 10 million page views on iPhone Day. Investors downgrade Cnet stock also. If you plan digital gadget sites, think Engadget, Gizmodo instead of Cnet.
2007/3/7
The First Vietnamese YouTube Clone
Following many China firms cloning YouTube recently, Vega Technology Group launched Clip in February 2007 as the first Vietnamese YouTube clone. The user interface is similar to almost other YouTube clones. Color scheme is exactly the same with Chinese YoQoo. Clip streaming speed is better than YouTube at Clip site (access from Vietnam), but no significant different at users' blog as most Vietnamese bloggers use non Vietnamese blog services (Yahoo 360, Opera, Wordpress, Blogger and others descending order). There is no revenue model at Clip now and no social networking partner yet. We would see some MySpace, Facebook clones soon so that Clip could team up.
2007/3/1
Vietnam is ready for Web 2.0?
1)
Population of more than 85 millions (about one third from 15 to 30 years old) and nearly 15 millions internet users. Some Vietnamese websites reach high rank with Alexa. Online games are so popular with Vietnamese youngsters.
2) Available funding for Web 2.0
IDG Venture
3) HR 2.0
There are not many Web 2.0 visionaries in
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