As 2010 approached, people started to make predictions about Internet trends in Vietnam this year. One of the most discussed topic is probably the future of blogging. Will the death of Yahoo! 360 foreshadow the end of blogs or will it open the door to more professional blogging? As a full-time slacker who is especially interested in blogosphere, I decided to stop stalking others’ discussion and chip in my thoughts.

Two main theories

After stalking Ngoc Hieu’s blog post and the discussion on Linkhay as well as talking to some friends, I came to a conclusion that there are 2 most noticeable points of view regarding this matter.

1. Blogs will die

Those who are into this theory think that blogging already died together with the death of Yahoo! 360. People become more lazy and lazy due to the ubiquity and convenience of social networks like Facebook. Who cares about wordy posts while they can update their friends instantly with a status or a quick note? After all, one of the most important reasons that made Yahoo! 360 popular is that it allowed users to connect with their Yahoo! Messenger friends.

In this theory, blogging will be limited to the use of industry professionals and companies only.

2. It’s time for blogging to show its true value

People in this theory think that the death of Yahoo! 360 also killed the personal/emotional/non-sense blogs, and opened the area of professional blogging. Blogs on Yahoo! 360 were never considered serious. Now serious bloggers are no longer put in the same class with Yahoo! 360 bloggers. The view has been cleaned for more professional platforms like WordPress or Blogspot to show up and attract more users. Everything has just started!

My 2 cents

Apparently, both schools meet at the point that “non-sense `personal blogging will die”. I, however, go for another theory which is “Blogging, any kind, will prosper”. Why?

1. Vietnamese people LOVE blogging

In Vietnam, it used to be that “if you’re on the Internet, it’s very likely that you’ll use Yahoo! Messenger; and if you use Yahoo! Messenger, it’s very likely that you’ll have a blog”. Yes (almost) everybody (those who had access to Internet only) blogged!

I believe this habit is something beyond the existence of Yahoo! 360. Yahoo! 360 was just a platform and replaceable. Users just need some time to find/ get used to a new platform, and need some motivation to start all over again!

2. If there is a demand, there will be a supply

A lot of marketers I know have complained that they tried to look for a decent blogger to advertise some kind of products, but hardly could they find one.

Well, maybe not yet. I meant the demand for blog advertising is really high. And if there is a demand, there will be a supply. It might be hard to see it from the point of view of an individual, but if there is some serious effort, things can be changed.

3. Personal/emotional blogs are not non-sense

People tend to think that nobody cares to read personal/emotional blogs, but actually there are lot of people who care, A LOT.

Two of Time’s 25 best blogs in 2009 are highly personal blogs where the authors talk about nothing other than their daily lives. If you think that this odd only happens in Western world, then look at some countries in Southeast Asia. The winner of the best Asian blog at Nuffnang APAC blogging awards 2009 is the blog about daily life of a girl. In Philippines, there are some personal (non-sense) blogs that attract thousands of subscribers.

In Vietnam, why not? Oh come on, not everyone’s life is boring.

Your bet?

How about you? Do you think blogging will die or prosper? Please cast your vote here. Your opinions are needed!

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I used to think that people in Southeast Asia are somewhat similar due to common characteristics in geology, ethnic background and economy. But I was totally wrong. Working and a little traveling have given me a chance to take a closer look into what SEA people are doing online which reveal a lot of differences.

Blogging

I once thought that most SEA people were introvert, but it seems to be that this statement can only be applied to the Vietnamese. I was surprised to find out how active people in other SEA countries are on the Internet.

In Vietnam, there are only a small number of “professional” bloggers. Most “hot” bloggers emerged from Yahoo! 360 and became famous because of sensational rag news, sex, short stories, etc. (things that tradional media can’t mention). It’s true that bloggers in Vietnam aren’t paid much attention. Earlier this year I attended PestaBlogger in Indonesia and I was amazed. It attracted about 1000 bloggers of all social groups: young, old (I even met some 50-something bloggers there); male, female (though male bloggers seem to be more prevalent); poor, rich. They blogged about anything: politics and other sensitive topics. Every blogs in Indonesia [Blogger.com ranks 5 and WordPress.com ranks 7 in Alexa Indonesia]!!

Blogging is also very popular in Malaysia [Blogger.com ranks 6 and WordPress.com ranks 15 in Alexa Malaysia].

In Philippines, there is even a bloggers association and the Philippines Blog Awards. [They call themselves a blogging nation].

It’s also true with Youthsays.com. Even though there are only 13 330 members in YouthSays Indonesia, new questions are submitted at the rate of 1 question/min. YouthSays Philippines is also much more active than YouthSays Vietnam.

Web Services

Generally, youths in Southeast Asia favor internationl products against local products. In almost every country in SEA except Vietnam [Thank to Zing.vn and VnExpress.net], 5 first places on Alexa belong to internationl products [the common denominator are Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live/YouTube]. Although Facebook is now dominant, there are still some other popular SNS and they vary in each country. Thai people show highly favor for Hi5 while the Flippino go Friendster.

Friendster

Unlike in Vietnam, Friendster is a little bit popular in other countries in SEA. As we all know, it just had a brand makeover to target Asian youths, makes it look like just a MySapce-wannabe (according to a friend of mine). The color, logo and tagline are new but the features almost remain the same except they launched “Friendster Virtual Gift Shop” and “Friendster Games” that make it look just like an Asian-born product.

Friendster claimed that it “pioneered social networking, and today is a leading web site throughout Southeast Asia, with over 75 million registered users and over 90 percent of daily traffic coming from the region.”. But from what I observed, Facebook is winning it over.

According to Reuters, there is a rumor that Friendster will be sold off by the end of this year to an Asian Internet company with the value of at least $100M. Our Vinagame might be interested [I'm just joking, but who knows, Vinagame is valued at $500M, they are rich].

In August 2008, it got funded $20M by IDG Ventures. Around that time, they did some pretty noisy marketing campaign in Vietnam but didn’t get any success.

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Some quick facts:

1. Only in Vietnam that people love reading news that much. Of Top 10 websites on Alexa Vietnam, there are 3 newspapers, 1 portal and 1 porn site lol

2. Singapore has the highest Internet penetration rate, 72.4 % population, Brunei ranks 2nd with 55.9% while Burma has the lowest, only 0.2%. Burnese government imposes very very strict censorship upon Internet usage. In Laos, there are only 130,000 (1.9% population) and in Cambodia there are only 74000 (0.5% population).

3. In Singapore, there are only 3,370,000 Internet users but 1,789,840 Facebook users which means more than 50% Internet users there on Facebook. The rate is also super high in Indonesia where there are 30,000,000 Internet but more than 14,000,000 Facebook users. The Indonesian do not only love blogging, they also love facebooking

Recently, two Vietnameses got fined 15 millions VND each (830 USD) for calumniating on 2 forums TTVNOL.com and SanOTC.com. Hanoi Department of Information & Technology charge them for distorting, slandering, diminishing the prestige of a security company named VNDirect. Well who dares to tell that no one knows who you are on the Internet? Last year, Vietnam government also published a policty to censor personal blogs. So, watch your very single words!

And just recently, the 21-year-old founder of 4chan.org was nominated as world’s most influential person by Time, beating off the President of the United Stateds Barack Obama as well as the Queen of communication Oprah Winfrey. As a forum (or you can call it online bulletin board), 4chan doesn’t have a registration system, enabling users to post & discuss anonymously, yes anyone from anywhere.

Does that make 4chan a strong & powerful community?

Well, our government knows it better than us.

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TTVNOL.com is one of the first & biggest forums in Vietnam. Dunno how many members it has at the moment.

SanOTC.com’s owned by SanOTC - an IDGVV’s porfolio.

Vietnamese source.

Hey calm down, I’m not gonna make another long speech about macro-economics or noble patriotism. Just some thoughts about the future of Vietnamese web services in relationships with Vietnamese users and esp. early adapters.

One week ago, I had a very interesting discussion over this matter with CEO of VON - Paul Nguyen. His arguments agaisnt exotic products are:

- We Vietnamese people have to use Vietnamese products. Exotic comapnies like Google, etc. they don’t even have offices here, so they don’t have to spend so much money in Vietnam, don’t create jobs for Vietnamese but they still get users. In the mean time, Vietnamese companies have to spend millions US dollars, pay all the taxes, creates thousands jobs for Vietnamese, they should get something in return. In some countries like China, they require exotic companies to open offices in China, hire Chinese, pay taxes for Chinese governments in order to do business in China.

- Exotic products don’t necessarily mean they have better technology than Vietnamese products. Like Yahoo! 360’s technology & concept is such a lame that no where else in the world use it, except Vietnam. Yahoo! 360 plus is just a failed product in HongKong, then brought back to Vietnam. He believes Vietnamese products can do much better than that. But exotic companies have big names, and Vietnamese people are very fond of exotic things.

But he still believes in the future of Vietnamese products in general and Vietnamese social network sites in particular, b/c:

- We early adapters might find Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Linkedin, etc. very useful and interesting. But the gap between early adapters and mass users in Vietnam is just too huge, and the number of early adapters are just so small (we have around 70k-80k facebook users compared to 2-3 millions Yahoo! 360’s users) that every service provider knows where their cash flow should go to and come from. Many Yahoo! 360’s users don’t even know how to upload a picture, they just simply hit the button “compose a blog entry” and type and send. Exotic products might be too complicated for them.

- The Vietnamese love color and show their own styles, while exotic products are normally just too simply designed. Just an example among many other differences in anguages and cultures.

He said, early adapters should use and talk more about Vietnamese products. Because if we just support exotic products, we will gradually kill Vietnamese products, let the foreigners take over us.

Several days ago was the inauguration of Nguyen Thanh Nam - the new CEO of FPT - the biggest Vietnamese IT company at the moment. One idea in his speech that drew public opinion’s attention was that he called for FPT people to use FPT’s products, not because of love only but because of trust in the products’s quality and the future of company. That might sound delirious, but is it absolutely impossible? He has his point, ofcourse.

Hm it has made me think a lot. Are we too enthusiastic about Facebook, Google, WordPress, Twitter, etc. and forget about Vietnamese products? Are we early adapters, and if yes, where do we stay if no service providers care about us?

I’m confused, though I obviously have my own explanation, but I want to hear your opinions first. Every idea is welcome. Thanks.

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As you all know, VON’s 3 most noticeable products are Timnhanh - a Viet search engine and Yume - a blog & social networkig site, and Kiemviec - an HR site, of which I’m interested the most in Yume - one of prominent candicates for Yahoo! 360′s substitute together with Tamtay, Yobanbe, YouSecond (Yeah in Vietnam blog means Yahoo! 360 and most people have no idea of what social network is. But well, it’s going to be shut down). According to Paul, Yume is gonna have a risky chance in June, with much more social features learned from Facebook.

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