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.

*************
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.

Time: 7pm – 10pm Thursday, Feb 12

Location: Cafe Chim Xanh, 19 Khuc Hao, Hanoi

Agenda:

1. Getting to know each other

2. Twitter and Twitter Clones in Vietnam

3. Is there a crisis among Internet Companies? (CyVee, Faceviet, Vega, VON)

4. BarCamp Hanoi 2

Facebook Group for Twitter Community in Vietnam is here.

Facebook Event is here.

Twitter tag for it is: #twithanoi or #hanoitwit. But next time it should be #hanoitwit only.

Will blog about it after that.

______

Hey just came back from Twitter Offline in Hanoi. It was damn good actually. Thanks everyone for coming. Sorry it was my fault not to clarify that it was cafe only, not dinner.

Who were there?

Jeremi was the first to come, and then me. Actually Chim Xanh was a bit small, and we didn’t have time to talk peer to peer. I’ll write down list of people who were there so that you can easily recall. The problem is I’m pretty absent-minded, so please remind me if I accidentally forget anyone or give any wrong information. Thank you!

1. Jeremi Joslin – Product Manager at eXo Platform.

@jeremi

He was to the first to come, even ealier than me. A nice French guy riding a nice bike

2. Me – The author of this blog post. I’m the 2nd to come.

@chipro

3. Vương – Petalia.org

@tonami

Petalia has Alexa Ranking of 8700 worldwide, wow, not bad at all. Hey Vương, tell me more about yourself and your site. Are you working on it with your sisters & brothers?

4. Nguyễn Đức Hoàng

@hoang188

He is working at BiTTech, researching Google Apps and cloud computing, right?

5. Nguyễn Trung Kiên

@forty4vn

A young and active web designer at a Russian company, Badadu Media.

6. Hoạt Lê

@hoatle

A student at Hanoi University of Technology and Hanoi- Aptech. He just won second prize on Google Open Social Apps contest (right??) He will start working for eXo since next week.

He came with a schoolmate named Huy Dũng. His Twitter: @vannessars

7. Bryan Pelz

@bryanpelz

Many of us already know him, Co-Founder of Vinagame, and he lives part-time in Hanoi hahaa. Such a nice surprise to see you there, Bryan. I always like your humor, and you actually gave us a lot of precious information.

8. Nguyễn Thành Long

@epi_longo

He’s working at the same company as me, ePi Technologies. He has great marketing sense. He’s working a project about GenY.

9. Nguyễn Tuấn Anh

@tradaonline

He’s working on Social Media at VC Corp. He’s really good on WordPress and WordPress MU. He’s a rock fan and also the founder & admin of Rockpassion.

10. Nguyễn Minh Thảo

@cnccom

Chairman & CEO of CNC Software. His company is about to launch a social network for lovers in Vietnam, called http://traitim.vn

11. Lê Ngọc Quốc Khánh

@khanhlnq

One of the best programmer for JavaMobile, admin of JavaVietnam.org. He’s based in HCMC and wow, we are so lucky to have him join us in Hanoi today.

12. Nhữ Đình Thuận

What’s your Twitter account?

Another famous Java programmer, and an admin of JavaVietnam.org as well. He’s now working on his own company, Headvances. A typical product of his is a search engine called Moom.vn

13. Lê Đức Thắng

Chairman of TBWA Vietnam. FYI, TBWA is a son of OmniCom, the largest ads network in the world. The funny thing is that most Vietnamese never ever heard of that name.

14. Nguyễn Hải Linh

A really really talented manager. He’s been in charge of Lenovo Vietnam since he was only 23!!!!! OMG.

15. Sơn Bùi

He was once in charge of Punch Vietnam, but now he’s in a partnership with Baomoi. Secret! I’d love to talk more to you.

Both Thắng, Linh & Sơn haven’t been on Twitter yet, they are together.

16. Rick Rodgers

@rickrodgers

How could I forget you, Rick!!!! He’s in charge of Chodientu- eBay relationship (Peacesoft ofcourse). He’s also an organizer of BarCampSaigon. But you are always so mean to me, Rickkkkk!!

17. ThạchNN

@lockevn

Technical leader at Luften. They are working on a project similar to Twitter for Vietnam with some more features, called Tiutit.com (previous known as Loop.vn).Check out his comment below for more information.

18. Bill Tran (Tuấn Trần)

@

He’s in charge of Luften in Vietnam. Vietnamese - born, Polish – grown and American – educated. Sweet smile.

19. Mike Le (Thành Lê)

Founder and CEO of FaceViet. He’s also working for An Binh Security. His most impressive announcement there was Faceviet didn’t go bankruptcy!!!

20. Ninh Nguyễn

@xoai

A young & talented social guy, a product manager at VC Corp. He’s a product manager. He gave us a pretty nice vision about VC Corp, where LinkHay would be the central point (a platform like Facebook and every other product would be like applications)

21. Bùi Quang Huy

Director of Viettel Media. He told me he couldn’t come, then he arrived a bit late with a Malaysian guy named Joey. He seemed to know many people there. B/c of arriving late, he couldn’t share much. But his friend Joey already shared out an interesting news that he was working with Vinaphone & Mobiphone on lbs project?? (Was it? Anyone plz confirmed for me, I sat to far away from him).

22. Nguyễn Duy Hưng

Another quiet guy from Social Media, VC Corp. I hope you did enjoy it, Hưng. Sorry we couldn’t talk more. Hope to see you soon.

23. Tuấn Nguyễn

@conquerorvn

He’s doing some research but I didn’t understand him clearly ‘cos he was a lil bit far. Hey tell us more abt yourself

24. Thái Mak

@dtlvan

He’s working for VTC Intecom, online game. He’s young, enthusiastic and a good friend

Did I miss anything?

What was happening?

Actually, we didn’t only talk about Twitter, but all about doing Internet in Vietnam (junk, huh?)

Let’s go through some quick facts about Twitter first.

What is the most serious thing we have to face with when doing microblogging in Vietnam?

- People don’t know what micro-blogging is.

- Twitter hasn’t made any money, so how can a Twitter clone make money?

Some interesting information we got from this meetup:

- FaceViet didn’t go bankruptcy – confirmed by FaceViet’s Founder, Mike Le.

- There’s no point to do a Facebook clone in Vietnam (I’m not so sure about it)

- Bad PR can be good, but not always.

- Localization is not only about translation, but also about customization features to get on with cultures and habits.

- VC Corp is trying to make LinkHay a platform like FaceViet, and all other products of VC Corp will work like applications.

- Of all people using OpenID at VC Corp’s products, 90% use Yahoo and only 10% use Google.

- Micro-blogging & iTV will be hot in 2009

- BarcampHanoi 2 will be on April 12.

- Vietnamese and Chinese people like portal websites.

- You name it.

After Chim Xanh, some of us went for a beercamp and dinner on Mã Mây str., then went for some nice bars. It was a totally great evening. Thanks again for everything.

Hope to see you guys very soon! Tell me if you want another meetup like that in Hanoi next time

Finally I woke up. Thanks for you valuable opinions on my unfinished blog post “News and Information” (esp. Tai Tran and ePi.Longo, you guys have some really good points). Now let me finish what I started.

Back to the question Long asked me was: “If people used SE to search some information outside the online newspaper sphere, why did they still go to Baomoi (or any online newspaper) again?”. Tai actually had a pretty decent answer for that (You can track full converstation here).

SE is just a tool for search, not a content site. The keywors here are “News” and “Information”. You go to a search engine to search for “Information”, and go to a newspaper to read “News”. News gives us Information, but you can find Information in News, in people’s reactions, analyzation, etc. The top priority for News is “hot”, while for “Information” it is “deep”. I know it’s confusing, but let’s make it clear step by step.
First, suppose that you hear about **something** and want to know more about it for a variety of reasons (Read Tai.tran’s 2nd comment). It means that you hear a “News” and now you want to get more “Information”. People don’t use the built-in SE inside some newspapers ‘cos we know that it sux, and there are many sources of Information rather than some single newspapers.

Baomoi’s blog introduced a series called: “Why Social Works” (You can read the Vietnamese version here). A nice coverage. But actually I don’t really like it ‘cos “social” doesn’t reach the bottom of it. What do social news sites like Digg, Mixx, Reddit do?? Why they work? It’s b/c they don’t give users only “News”, but also lots of “Information”. You submit a link, if it’s interesting & attracts a lot of people, it will get to “hot” very soon. Then people comment, introduce related links that can suplement a full story that give you deep Information. Social power makes it work! You see, that can satisfy: make News hot and make Information deep.

Then comes another question: In Vietnam, is there any source for Information other than newspapers? Blogs, Social Sites, Wikis, Micro-blogs??

I wanted to write about it a long long time ago, when Long asked me: “Why people go to Baomoi for news, then go to Google for news and then end up in Baomoi again? Why don’t they search directly in Baomoi??”

Gotta to go to sleep now. Will blog about it when I get back.