Archive for February, 2007
E27 SG Unconference And interesting Web Services in East Asia
I was at the E27 Unconference Thu night and it was good to meet so many people interested in building new products. Thanks to Bjorn and Vinod for slotting in a session for me and thanks to the organisers and attendees for interesting discussions. One of the reasons I travel is to hang out at such informal events in across Asia. Singapore tended to have bigger formal events where you generally can’t meet the most interesting people and most of the budget goes in inviting experts from abroad. It is really heartening to see such events gaining momentum in Singapore. I have always maintained that if we have interesting enough event, people and experts and VCs from abroad will come on their own, just look at any blog conference in China or India these days.
I introduced some interesting web services that I have seen or come across.
China
Douban.net: A book based social networking site. Make friends with people who like to read the same books as you. Find new books from their reading list. Your collection or latest read book can be plugged into your blog.
Babatang.com: Find people who live in your area or block (English summary). Catall.com : Meet people in your office block (Read English summary at wangr.com)
Meetpretty.com : A site to cash in on the increasing number of beauty parlours and women interested in beauty products.
Homeinns.com : This site has user generated reviews of hotels and guest-houses.
Korea
Cyworld : Some figures say this social network site has 90% of 20 to 30 years olds in South Korea as members.
Japan
Mixi: Social network site, nearest western example for this site is Vox. You can set who reads your blog.
Couple of good sites worth following for more developments in this space across Asia are
Wangr : Reviews Chinese Web 2.0 sites
Asia Web 2.0 Review: Latest developments in Korea and beyond.
There was some discussion on whether one should build a web2.0 site for a particular geography or try to aim for bigger audience. My feeling is that there is lot more that can be done in a localised space targeting native languages and cultural traits and more importantly have a real world service tied to your site then the value is more. One example I recently heard about was a online dating site in China that has tied up with (or owns) real world cafes. Once people meet online, they can choose to meet in the cafe for safety reasons.
As I was talking about East Asia, we were looking at what country would be a good place to build services for.
I am very bullish about Vietnam, not just because I see lots of construction happening everywhere and real estate prices shooting up. I see a kind of energy and dynamism in the young people that we have been seeing in China in the last 8-10 years. Broadband has not reached that many homes but you see cybercafes everywhere and the customers are not just playing games. Vietnam in one big audience for MIT’s open courseware initiative. Yahoo’s 360 is the most popular blog platform in Vietnam. Most of my Vietnamese friends would IM me from their offices if they have some questions on English usage. IM has become part of life.
Some one mentioned Indonesia. One issue with rolling out a Indonesia-wide service is as James pointed out Internet access is still not widespread. What would work in Indonesia is deploying services via mobile phones but not via Gprs or 3g as these services are still not widespread or most people find it tedious to configure the setting. In Indonesia, you will find mobile phone shops all over offer games, ring tones and application download services. Of course most of the content they download is pirated but we can make use of the distribution mechanism. Lets say you build a Java app to help people improve their English, you can distribute each episode through the mobile shops. At the end of the week the guy goes to the shop for the next lesson. And while next lesson is being downloaded, the shop guy can read the user’s score for the previous weeks lessons and print it out for him or send it to a central database. This way you can send a progress report or a certificate to the user at the end of the course.
We spoke briefly about Myanmar where kids are using web technologies to subtitle Korean dramas into Burmese. Someone asked what motivates people to do this free of cost for others. Kevin spoke about anime fans doing the same in the US helping subtitle Japanese cartoon and how being seen as an expert or lead contributor in a group is motivation enough.
People in many areas in South East Asia and Indian Subcontinent do not have access to online payment methods like credit cards but the Chinese model of prepaid cards (sold at corner shops) may be a good example to follow for those trying to figure out non-advertisement based services. Education and regional business to business online services are areas worth exploring for those looking to build a regional web services.
Web 2.0 in five minutes
From Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University
Outsource Your Second Life
Thinking of this business idea, a Second Life/ Virtual World avatar outsourcing service. Our guys will become your avatar for a small fee and attend the Second Life training or meeting or date while you party in real life. Any VCs out there?
Oni go away. Good luck come in
Tomorrow (Feb 3) is Setsubun in Japan. Males will wear a demon or Oni (demon) mask. Others will throw roasted soyabean on them and say “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi” which means Oni (demon) go away and fuku (good luck) come in. From Wikipedia entry on Setsubun
The beans are thought to symbolically purify the home by driving away the evil spirits that bring misfortune and bad health with them. Then, as part of bringing luck in, it is customary eat soybeans, one for each year of one’s life, and in some areas, one for each year of one’s life, plus one more for bringing good luck for the year to come. In the Heian era, a famous Buddhist monk was said to have driven away oni by throwing beans.
These days you can buy the Oni mask in supermarkets.
The Oni also contains a packet of irimame (pan fried soyabean) that other can throw on you.
Now I am the Oni. Where are the children? Come throw irimame at me.
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