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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Tags: Early Adapters, facebook, FPT, future, Gooogle, patriotism, Paul Nguyen, Tamtay, Timnhanh, twitter, Vietnam, VON, WordPess, Yahoo! 360, Yobanbe, Yume