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By TaiTran, January 24, 2012 5:40 pm

Mixx.com

It was a Digg alternative, only with better design and user experience. It also ahead of Digg in offering channels.

Mixx was subsequently acquired by UberMedia and disappeared.

Twine.com

An alternative to Squidoo with a better design and user experience. Nevertheless, these are not unique selling points as Squidoo comes back and clone the design of Twine.

u.nu

One of the two shortest URL shorteners (the other one being z.pe which had less attractive design). u.nu claimed it failed because the site couldn’t control the contents; many used the system and shorten malicious and abusive contents. Nevertheless, bit.ly won Twitter endorsement.

Viewzi.com

A visual search engine that doesn’t run on Google. It couldn’t build up the data required for a search engine. Of course it is extremely hard to build the data close to that of Google. Bing costs Microsoft an arm and a leg. Plus, Bing goes vertical on product search. If not many people want visual aid in search, the unique selling point doesn’t pay off.

gocnhin.com

A Vietnamese content aggregator basing on information filtering and categorization. While online news is still number one Internet activity in Vietnam, maybe readers are not ready for, or even feel the need of, an aggregator that advanced.

The domain now points to LinkHay.com, a more successful product founded by the same team.

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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, March 24, 2009 11:25 am

Twitter-like services have 2 usages: status update and micro-blogging.

1. As I clearly stated in my previous slide, it’s safe to drop the term “micro-blog” for discussions in Vietnamese context. That leaves status updates which is a highly desirable feature among Vietnamese users.

2. I gave a wow to LinkHay’s blast collection feature. My impression that it was a Twitter clones killer.

3. A closer glance into Ola Me reveals that it is more than a Twitter clone

• ASAO, the company behind Ola, has the capability to build alliance(s) that offer SMS incentive to users
• Which means values to users are tangible and can be quantified
• And the differentiation is in terms of quality of Service, more than that of Product

4. Two channels to keep track of Twitter usage growth in Vietnam: the Facebook group ‘Twitter Community in Vietnam’ and the Twitter account @twitvietnam.

In terms of (relatively) measurable quality, check out the Grader’s list.

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By TaiTran, January 31, 2009 2:08 pm

The recession is forcing some web services to start charging their customers. And surprise? Some power users are ready to pay. Today I received another email from MyOtherDrive on premium accounts.

I guess it’s time now to put it on the table how much I am willing to spend for web services and why.

My first list includes Facebook and a news aggregator.

My Facebook

My Facebook = less formal LinkedIn + FriendFeed with friends + Photobucket + Life events Reader + Address Book + Calendar + mini-CRM + mini-YouTube

I don’t know whether Facebook likes it or not (if you don’t like it just contact me, Facebook) but above is how I utilize my Facebook account.

1. My profile on Facebook can be used to include professional and academic information. It’s not entirely an online CV but rather an informal page with relevant info. What makes it more like my LinkedIn is that I have received a dozen of business opportunities via Facebook, thrice as much as from LinkedIn. Sidenote: I’ll give Caravat some time

2. Facebook is now my feed aggregator of non-personal updates. My blog entries here, my reading archive on Tumblr, bookmarked links on StumbleUpon, submitted news on Mixx flow to my Facebook newsfeed. What Facebook offers me that FriendFeed hasn’t is audience: I have much more connections on Facebook than on FriendFeed and some of them are my readers.

3. Another disclosure is that Facebook Photos was the first feature that kept me with the service. I don’t compare with Flickr because Flickr is more of a publishing service than a sharing service.

4. What Life events Reader? I receive updates on events and activities around my location on Facebook.

5. Even when Facebook profile doesn’t explicitly capitalize them, contacts can be stored in Facebook. At least, I have a connection with ones I know and when I can’t ping them via cellphones or instant messengers, I drop them a message on Facebook.

6. Calendar! Facebook doesn’t provide a full-pledged calendar but since I have been utilizing its birthday-reminder function, I want to use it as a calendar as well. This is achieved with built-in Events feature or some applications.

7. Mini-CRM. While I haven’t provided any services or sold any product on Facebook, I know a bit of how I will be able to do that.

8. Mini-YouTube. Facebook Videos handles my videos well enough for me, except for a few that I want to be publicly available.

Up to $5/month

Considering the impact, I would be ready to pay up to $5 per month for Facebook provided that I have some privileges:

What I want for premium Facebook account

1. Lift the photo size from 604px width to at least 800px width like that of Orkut
2. Lift the limit of 60 photos per album to unlimited
3. Increase the maximum number of networks from 6 to unlimited
4. Maximum number of friends to send messages to is increased from 20 to at least 100. I don’t sp.am, never.
5. My news are broadcast more often to my connections
6. Optionally increase the maximum number of groups from 200 to a bigger number
7. A feature to download contents from Facebook, including all my photos in original size, all videos, all contacts of my connections that they make available, all notes, all posted items

A business news and analysis aggregator

As discussed on LinkHay, I am ready to pay up to $200/year for a business news aggregator, provided that high quality analysis is included and news are valuable. 200 bucks is the price of Harvard Business Review subscription so I would expect something that level of quality.

Storage

What I haven’t included here is storage. I will update more on this need when I am sure what I want.

How about you? What kind of services would you pay for and how much?