Posts Tagged ‘Tamtay’

1
May

Should Vietnamese people use Vietnamese products?

   Posted by: Chip    in Overview, Vietnam

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.

Will you use Vietnam Web Services?

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3
Nov

How far you can go, Mr. Facebook Clone?

   Posted by: Chip    in Vietnam

Update 1: For you guys who wanna be a Vietnamese Facebook, check out the press room of Facebook (click here), esp. this timeline - quite interesting to know that orginal Facebook didn’t even have the Wall feature.

Update 2: The email from Mark Ford: A TGB guy.

Many exicting new sites came through my eyes these days, just don’t have time to blog about them (Check out upcoming events in Vietnam for geeks). But HarryD did a nice coverage about Thegioiban and other gamers in FB clone bandwagon. Well, this bandwagon is getting hot, and it’s burning me!!!!!

As far as I know, Thegioiban (TGB) is one of 2 new guys joining Facebook clone bandwagon. The other guy is YouSecond (YS). Anhyou (former Anhone) is supposed to be another FB clone but I’m still waiting for an invitation from Mr. Khoi Pham. ‘Til now it has nothing to show at its front page.

FaceViet, TGB and YS have suprisingly many things in common. Both sites were built on SocialEngine - a pretty famous software for Facebook clone. Both sites are run by overseas Vietnamese or overseas students, mostly from the US. And both sites are not well funded by any deep pocket venture capital at least until now (please correct me if I’m wrong). But they have different approaches and perspectives.

The biggest and oldest player FaceViet was launched in Oct 2007 and hasn’t made any big thing so far. FV team was pretty motivated at first but now everyone seems to be quite busy with his/her own job. FV’s high profile and well-educated users was the point to atract me at first but it’s also the fatal weakpoint for itself. Initial users those were supposed to orient user behaviors and help new users get used with the site were all founders’ friends. They used English with each other, talked about their own stuff and weren’t willing to make friends with people from lower background. Well, still remember FV is a Facebook clone for Vietnamese common use? Thanh Le, FV founder once told me that FV targeted mobile platform. An interesting approach for monetization ‘cos mobile is seen super potential considering 40 millions mobile users in Vietnam. Do you still keep that in mind or you already have another plan, Mr. Thanh?

YS is a YouNet Solution’s baby, launched about 5 months ago. It didn’t catch my attention at first but after some chats with Hoa and Ryan, I found the idea of building YS community based on REAL communities (like Thanh Nien House of Culture) really smart!!!!! Hey you guys, I like your forum 2.0 concept. It may take more time but you can be sure of users’ quality and loyalty. Just make sure you have a sustainable financial plan and keep your fire in heart. Let’s see how far you can go.

TGB impressed me by its exellent code + design (you can say well-customized SocialEngine) and the speed even though it’s hosted in the US. I greatly appreciate your efforts, your team esp. Mark with a great sense of humor and Spanish, but to be honest, I can’t see any difference in your site. Could you please tell me about that?

Update 2: Ya, Mark Ford sent me an interesting email after my question. There’s no secret here so I think it’s no problem to put it here.

“……

You have asked a really good question, but a really hard one to answer at the moment, none the less, I will endeavour to respond accordingly.

“but to be honest, I can’t see any difference in your site. Could you please tell me about that?”

As you could probably see, the site is still under development by Thang Nguyen. To date, Thang has been working on some of the features that SocialEngine currently offer, but after discussions, we do realise that there is something missing and we brainstorm each other everyday trying to come up with the missing “link” if you pardon the pun. Following the demise of Yahoo360, and the current “in thing” in Vietnam still being blogging, we are looking at ways to perhaps fill that void, but let me tell you, its one heck of a large void to fill, but something that we are aiming towards. Any ideas that we are currently toying with, without their implementation, I’m not ready to go into at this stage, but stay tuned for updates.

One of the areas that we are looking at now is also ensuring that our back end is robust enough to manage Users and to ensure that if they POKE us, we’re there to be poked and can respond in a prompt efficient manner whether its in Vietnamese or English. This is where our geographical locations comes in handy, there is usually one of us, if not both of us around.

You also pointed out something that is quite important for us and that is the speed at which the site delivers even though the servers are hosted in the US. That is a trade secret at the moment, but as you can see its working quite well.

…….”

You may have question about the other guys. Nothing special.

Tamtay was brought back to stage after IDGVV investment. As far I know, Tamtay was first built to be a Facebook clone but I just don’t know what exactly it is now with thousands pics of hot girls. Music? Film? Pics? SNS? Blog? Tamtay Chat? But what IDG brought to Tamtay seemed to be not only money but a whole new blow. Tamtay is doing some big changes on its strategy and staff, to concentrate more than community. Frankly, I don’t have much partiality for this site since it blocked my account just b/c my duplicate messages (my internet connection was terrible at that time) without any notice or explanation. Such a service!

Truongxua with its grand opening ceremony, boasted $10 millions USD of investment and GSO PLV system doesn’t seem to work well. People come to Truongxua mostly b/c of curiosity, and far from serious.

Guongmat is another Facebook clone built on SocialEngine. Nothing special.

Zoomban was dead. And is there anybody using Vietnamese version of Facebook?

Did I forget anything?

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