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By TaiTran, November 20, 2011 4:12 pm

10 years ago the first thing Vietnamese learn about communicating through the Internet is chatting. There were some services targeting Vietnam market before Yahoo! Messenger came to dominate all communication channels.

Yahoo! Messenger’s domination in Vietnam opened up the way for Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! 360. In recent years, the email market share is largely chipped by Gmail. Yahoo! Messenger, while the top IM client, faces competition from Skype. Hotmail, Live Messenger and Gtalk are not widely popular in the country.

A growing trend is, however, that people start to learn about social networking and Facebook. Many sign up for the Internet to, first thing first, communicating via social networks. The same is happening in other South East Asian countries.

The social network battle in Vietnam in 2011 boils down to the dual-horse race between the two leaders Zing Me and Facebook. While Twitter and Plurk gain traction in other countries in the region, micro-blogging in Vietnam has never taken off. Even technology-enthusiasts use Facebook for live reporting (which Twitter is logically most suitable for) and viralling current events.

Why? My attempt to answer the question:

1. Vietnamese language comes with diacritics thus requires a lot more than 140 characters to express a full sentence
2. Vietnamese users are more familiar with “Add Friend” relationship than “Follow” mechanism
3. Most importantly, Twitter doesn’t satisfy the gamification demand crazed by Vietnamese users. Vietnamese teenagers go on Zing Me mostly to play webgames. Many also go on Facebook sheerly for games rather than for connecting. Foursquare has received lots of attention probably thanks to the rewards and Mayor competition.

The next question pops into my mind: if gamification is so important, why hasn’t Plurk known in Vietnam while it is very popular in Taiwan and the Philippines? Again, my attempt

1. Plurk hasn’t been covered by local media which is crucial in the growth of services. Facebook received local media coverage.
2. Many influencers don’t know what Plurk is. As for me, I deactivated my Plurk account after collecting many medals.

Thanks @salsabeela and @kounila for sharing the information on social networking in your countries.

Addendum

Tumblr is growing rapidly in Vietnam.

Ngoc Hieu has an explanation on the adaption Twitter: Vietnamese users like colors and emotions, neither of which Twitter offers.

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By TaiTran, October 22, 2011 12:22 pm

From 2006 through mid 2009, the hottest web property in Vietnam was the blogging platform Yahoo! 360. The reason was Vietnamese were largely using Yahoo! Messenger as a default online communication tool, and 360 was directly integrated to Messenger.

Out of 4 million global users, 2.5 million were from Vietnam, and the latter were highly active.

Starting from 2008, the service has gone extremely unstable with many bugs left open. Despite being flawed and faulty, Vietnamese expressed the will that the product should be spun off and sold to a Vietnamese operator. Nevertheless, Yahoo! decided to close down the service, leaving Vietnamese netizens disarray, disappointed, discontent.

The localized Yahoo! 360plus from Hong Kong was a big flop.

Where have they gone?

• The majority find social networks sticky. They settled down on Zing Me (now 8 million users) and Facebook (now 2 million). Apparently the numbers include the next generation of users
• Geeks use self-hosted WordPress
• Non-geeks who take writing seriously setup WordPress and Blogger accounts
• Around 2 million on YuMe, a 360 clone

Yahoo! MeMe, a microblogging tool received almost no attention.

Yahoo! just launched its new blogging platform, Yahoo! Blog. I have the impression it was created with Korea market in mind. The product is neatly done with improved and clean design.

All it receives from Vietnamese netizens are smirks and rejection. Too late for Yahoo!. The users were left with despair and they now turn their back on the company’s attempts. Hope it’ll growth in Korea and Hong Kong.

Again, even if Yahoo! didn’t close down the faulty 360, could it have successfully monetized the community in the first place? My guess is no. Yahoo! never tried doing so.

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By TaiTran, May 29, 2009 11:58 am

Yahoo! 360 is officially announced to be closed on 13 July 2009.

The impact this movement has:

Users

4 million users worldwide and 2 million Vietnamese users lose what they call “home-base”.

Vietnamese bloggers had long equate “blog = Yahoo! 360“. The closure will change that perception.

Where are they moving to

I have noted down my prediction on Kevin’s blog here.

I have personally moved most of my social graph to Facebook.

Yahoo!

• Yahoo! loses a global product which has been a bulletin board.
• Opportunity for Yahoo! 360plus.
• Yahoo! Profile has won the battle against its siblings.
• Yahoo! Feed looks promising amist.
• Full focus on Yahoo! Open Strategy.

Competitors

The global forces: Facebook is climbing Alexa Vietnam rapidly.

Local competitors: good news?

Ecosystems

There are two ecosystems in Vietnam on Yahoo! 360: 360themes and LinkHay feed. They will be heavily affected.

How about you? What impact will the closure have on you?

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By TaiTran, April 20, 2009 10:33 am

Many discussions rose once again when Yahoo! 360 is confirmed to be closed in near future. The question most frequently asked is: who will be the winner? It’s apparent that some of us have been aggressive in finding nailing down the “winner” of the race after the fall of the regional giant.

Discussions are shot, entries are flared and debates are burst.

But can we take one step back and see if we are so scripted with scenarios for competitions in the market?

Have we asked the question how the market will grow and how we will grow with the market?

Product/Portfolio growth = Market share x Market growth

Where is the internet market in Vietnam? It is arguable that the industry is only in its first steps. There are great potentials in the form of markets that have not been reached and markets that have not been created.

It’s not only about gaining market share, it’s also about growing the market so you can grow along.

What will fuel market growth? The answer is efforts from every player in the industry. Your competitors also help the market grow.

@tanng and @duongminhviet have occasionally applaud FPT’s movements to enter deeper into the market. In my perspective, this is not only an act of diplomacy, but also out of their wisdom that competition shakes up and levels up the industry as a whole. As long as passion is there, opportunities are there.

Good luck

***

Appendix: market growth will be fueled by the following sources:

1. Urban adults who have not used internet services. They have income, are skeptical, and definitely not early adopters.
2. Users from provinces who have not used internet services. Their income varies, they range from major adopters to laggards.
3. Young people growing up. They have sponsorship, are curious, smart, and would make innovators and early adopters.

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By TaiTran, April 6, 2009 11:39 am

Yahoo! is concentrating on their Open Strategy; the focus is good, if they don’t abandon the particles that form a platform.

My metaphor: the Hall of Valhalla and the billboards

Imagine you’re a college student. You’re going to the library. On your way, a billboard is hung just around the corner before you reach the library.You stop for a few seconds to skim around the messages. The billboard is typically normal as in every school and at first it looks somewhat messy; however it is messy in its own order and as you figure through, you’ll know what you need.

Basically there are 2 things:

• It is convenient: on people’s way of achieving something (going to the library)
• It has its own order

There are various billboards like that across the campus. All good ones have the 2 characteristics above.

Now, the authority decides to build a hall where all the billboard is going to reside. The hall is separated from other buildings (library, computer labs, class rooms, sport grounds, common rooms…) for it to be easily managed.

How often will you drop by the hall of billboards? To what extent will the hall add values to your benefits? To what extent will the hall add values to the posters?

The hall will desert. People will scarcely visit. The values will drop.

Now, let’s go back to Yahoo!’s case.

Yahoo!’s Hall of Valhalla Yahoolla

Users are billboard viewers. Developers are billboard posters.

Yahoo! 360 which will be closed was a billboard of contents. Yahoo! Mash which had been closed was a billboard of relationships. Yahoo!’s Open Platform in which Yahoo! Profile centers is the Hall!

Image from Neal Sample & Cody Simms’ presentation

Without particles, how can an open but blank platform attract users and developers? How will Y!OSP add values to users?

Now, extending the boundary a bit further to other services that Y!OSP supports: Twitter, Tumblr, slideshare, StumbleUpon…

Yahoo! is leveraging its greatest user base: Yahoo! Mail. The prospect is that Yahoo! Mail users can manage different services from their Inbox! Additionally, users have their Yahoo! Profiles.

However, how willing are users going to stay in one place to get updated of all these services? If they do, they miss out the most, name it interaction or content, from going directly to the other services.

The Hall that Yahoo! is building will be a grand, titanic, ordered silo. The biggest question is: what will users find in there?