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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Today (Monday Apr 27, 2009 if you are curious lol), Nganluong.vn, Vietnamese Paypal, was officially launched, allows Vietnamese users to purchase from eBay without a Paypal account required. Nganluong.vn, together with Chodientu.vn belong to PeaceSoft Solution, a company invested by IDGVV and SoftBank China & India Holdings. Chodientu.vn is the biggest e-commerce site in Vietnam & the official partner of eBay here. And I’m sure their targets for Nganluong as well as Chodientu are set much higher than that.

As you already know, online payment is always considered as one of the biggest obstacles for e-commerce in Vietnam together with users’ consciousness and legal corridors. I haven’t tried it yet ços my stupid account at Vietnam is still locked up, but IMHO, the launch of Nganluong.vn has definitely lit up new hope about a future of being able to buy everything online Most of major e-commerce websites in the world still block trading from Vietnam (Am I too optimistic or too pessimistic??)

Some facts about Nganluong.vn and Chodientu-eBay:

- Nganluong.vn won’t cost you anything to use Nganluong.vn to buy things, but will cost sellers 1.000 VND + 1% total transaction value.

- After 4 months of piloting, Nganluong.vn now has 50,000 online payment accounts. Don’t know how many accounts are active and how many accounts they target after 1 year

- And ofcourse Nganluong.vn is not for eBay or Chodientu only, but PeaceSoft is willing to integrate Nganluong into any e-commerce website totally free of charge. Well from this point of view, can Nganluong.vn be seen as a competitor of other online payment company in Vietnam like VinaPay (another IDGVV’s porfolio), Paynet, Mobivi, OnePay, Payoo, etc.??? Actually I don’t know much about this competition things so anyone could please explain for me?

- Chodientu-eBay also partners with Vietnam Post & Telecom Group which allows users to debit money into their accounts at 3000 post offices in Vietnam. I just wonder if we can debit via mobile phones someday.

- Nganluong.vn accepts payments via local banks, including Vietcombank, DongA Commercial Bank, Techombank and Vietnam International Bank (VIB-Bank) and others in the Smartlink network. It also accepts payment via VISA, Master, Amex or JCB cards.

- Nganluong.vn guarantee 100% refund if you don’t recieve exactly the product you order. For more information about this program.

- Ebay’s Gross Merchandise Value from Vietnam’s users grew 82% in 2008.

Some facts about Vietnam Online Payment:

- Online Payment accounts for 3.2% total payment in Vietnam (account transfer, cash, post office transfer), according to Ministry of Industry & Trade.

- The biggest obstacles for Online Payment are: people’s habit of using cash; security & safety during online payment process; legal corridors for this type of payment are still under construction; online payment infrastructure.

- In 2007, JetStar Pacific was one of the first companies to allow customers to book tickets and pay online. And in the past 2 years, JetStar Pacific lost billions VND (more than 500,000 USD) because of risks during payment process.

- A recent survey of Vietnam E-commerce and Information Technology Agency on 50 e-commerce websites in Vietnam revealed that: (Frankly I don’t think Vietnam has that much so-called e-commerce websites)
+ 98% has information about products & services provided with prices but only 38% has a clear price structure.
+ 46% doesn’t have any transaction clause.
+ 98% doesn’t provide sufficient information about seller (name, age, phone number, email, business license, etc.) & 96% doesn’t have a policy to resolve contentions.
+ Only 12% publishes a policy to protect personal information.

Rumors of Yahoo closes its offices to escape from Vietnam were settled off when Yahoo officially announced that it would open a subsidiary company here to better serve its sales & marketing strategies in this market. The move will take place on Feb 20. Vietnamese – languages websites will still be operated by Yahoo! Southeast Asia headquartering in Singapore. For more details, click here. or:

“Under Yahoo’s long-term plan, the company will implement many investment projects in Vietnam through the forthcoming subsidiary, and cooperate with some Vietnamese partners to establish a joint venture to localize its digital content for Vietnamese Internet users.” (SaigonTimes)

Seems like Yahoo! is trying its best to make money out ouf its 5th largest market in the world. Some acquisitions are negotiated, significantly is between VON (Vietnam Online Network) and Yahoo! Vietnam over the destiny of Timnhanh. After “dirty content” scandal on Timnhanh servers and  huge lay-off, it seems to be the best escape for Timnhanh. The price is not yet revealed, but it’s supposed to be much cheaper than unsuccesful negotiation one year ago. Looking forward to seeing Yume.vn to join Yahoo! 360 & Yahoo! 360 Plus family. (Someone from VON plz confirm that rumor).

About Yahoo! Vietnam & the market:

• Yahoo! totally dominates Vietnamese Internet users with about 16M – 18M users (out of 20M Internet users in total) for all Yahoo! services.  Its locally relevant and essential services accessed by 90% of internet audience in the country.
• Yahoo! Messenger is the most popular chat engine in Vietnam with approximately13M – 15M users.
• Yahoo! Mail reaches out to most of the total internet users in Vietnam and is the most used personal email engine.
• Yahoo! 360 in Vietnam has approximately 2M accounts out of 5M accounts of this services worldwide. (this one is not reliable)
• Yahoo! Music for Vietnam was shut down last month (Jan ‘09) due to issues over music copyright, local partner selection and digital content.

Today when I was walking around Hanoi Old Quarter, I ran into some “Tourist Information” kiosks. They offer information about restaurants, beauty services, banks, etc. for tourists. They are now all old and under bad maintenance. Some are turned off, some are working with crippled touch screen. As far as I know, they were installed just more than 2 years ago by Hanoi Tourism Department to serve APEC economic leaders’ conference (Please correct me if I’m wrong, and I’d like to get more information about those kiosks in other cities). Hey I was not gonna complain of public services of Vietnam, just because I found that the map used for those kiosks were powered by Diadiem.com – currently the leading mapping service provider in Vietnam. Doesn’t it prove that Diadiem is very well - connected to the government? But I haven’t seen any further partnership between Diadiem and Tourism Department.

Several days ago, Diadiem just launched its 3D map for Ho Chi Minh City. If you ever wonder why Diadiem needs more than 100 employees, here you got it.

Until now, Diadiem covers only 12 cities in Vietnam. Why instead of spending time, money & people to cover its service for all 64 cities in Vietnam first as promised, it suddenly turns to 3D mapping? The answer is monetization. 3D mapping means virtual billboards. Is Diadiem struggling for a way to make money?

“Song song với quá trình số hóa phần mềm bản đồ các tỉnh thành còn lại, việc nắm bắt và phục vụ nhu cầu quảng bá của các Doanh nghiệp trên www.diadiem.com  là một phần quan trọng trong chiến lược phát triển sản phẩm của Dia Diem JSC. “ (IDGVV)

As you can see, Diadiem will focus on ads for entreprises on its site.

Calling for ads

But actually with all recent activities, I don’t know where Diadiem is heading to. Its iPhone application doens’t recieve much optimistic feedbacks. 3D mapping is nice to have, but is it a “must-have” for users at the moment? I question about Diadiem’s traffic. Diadiem is a mapping service – somehow you can see it as a Google map clone, but can you show me any site that is based on Diadiem map?

Maybe Diadiem is rich, but with this rate of spending money, how long will it last?