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By TaiTran, January 2, 2012 7:54 am

Icon source

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By TaiTran, December 23, 2011 11:38 am

1. Vietnamese users like colorful, emotional, right-brain products. Twitter is analytical, left-brain. Right-brain: Tumblr, daily life, emotional messages, visual.
2. Vietnamese users are unfamiliar with Follow, and have no incentive to learn the concept.
3. Twitter is individualistic while Vietnamese in general are collectivistic.
4. Vietnamese users haven’t had the need to follow influencers. In fact, many social influencers are not tech-savvy. Early Twitter adopters are geeks and online marketers who are not appealing to mass users.
5. Vietnamese sentences are longer than those of English, on average.
6. Early adopters started to use Twitter in 2007-2008 when smartphones were costly to mass users. When smartphones are much cheaper now, Vietnam Twitter is deserted. Also, it took too long for mimo.vn to roll out SMS service.
7. Twitter offers no gamification.

Would Weibo clones do any better than the wave of dead Twitter clones in 2008? We’ll see.

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By TaiTran, December 17, 2011 3:09 am

Sometime in 2008 I was having issue with my Twitter account.

1. A search of keyword "taitran" did not display my tweets
2. My tweets were not displayed in hashtag aggregation, for example #barcampSaigon

I DM @support and received no response.

On 1 December 2011 I DM @support again and received a reply

Please file a support ticket http://t.co/AqfAUZF so that our agents can check out your account. Mention that you’re not in search. Thanks!

I filed two support tickets. The cases are resolved after two weeks. Here is the response from Twitter:

Thanks for letting us know that your updates were not appearing in Twitter search results. In order to provide the best search experience for users, Twitter automatically filters search results for quality. To understand what might have caused your Tweets to jeopardize search quality, please review this page:

http://support.twitter.com/entries/42646

It looks like at some point a third-party website was posting duplicate Tweets to your account. We’ve now updated your account settings so that your Tweets will appear in the search results. Please note that it may take at least 24 hours for recent Tweets to be indexed, and due to the dynamic nature of Twitter’s search algorithm, you may not find every recent Tweet in Twitter search.

So the issues resulted from third-party apps messing with my account. I unauthorized all suspicious programs.

So now my Twitter account is back, full-pledged and healthy.

Hello searches and hashtags, so long!

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By TaiTran, December 3, 2011 6:41 am

Since 2008, the following

1. qblog.vn
2. hola.vn
3. tiutit.com
4. nhangui.com
5. lamgi.com
6. kucku.vn
7. tictac.vn

A veteran from the Twitter clone craze in 2008 is mimo.vn and they did implement the SMS mass messaging feature that I had hinted. Another one is also left is saigonica.com

In 2011, these new local micro-blogging products were launched:

1. ming.vn from VCCorp
2. live.zing.vn from VNG
3. pega.vn from VCCorp [slightly different in that it works on "add friend" mechanism instead of follow]
4. vsao.vn

The wave of Weibo cloning will be observable in 2012.

Meanwhile, Tumblr is growing rapidly. Vietnamese users like right-brain products.

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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 8, 2011 3:43 pm

• At its peak, Twitter had no more than 3000 users in Vietnam, the majority among whom are geeks. This is a rough estimation from many avid users. The number has dropped drastically since 2008.
• Most Twitter clones in Vietnam failed. This year, I only see mimo.vn left. It eventually implemented SMS updates that I had hinted back in 2009.
• 2 years after I deplurked, Plurk has been slowly gaining traction in Philippines and Taiwan. While information on the reasons Weibo dominates China is easy to find, analysis on Plurk is limited I still can’t answer why. A Taiwanese friend of mine, upon receiving my question, replied briefly “Personally I think the mechanism of Plurk is very close to Taiwanese ideology of mumbling”.
• When Twitter clones don’t work, a new wave of products were hatched: VNG launched Zing Live, a proclaimed Weibo clone by its CEO. VCCorp launched Ming.vn and Pega.vn. Pega, surprisingly, works on “add friend” rather than “follow” mechanism.
• I would expect more Weibo clones to come.
• Digg, reddit, Mixx, slashdot, furk are all dropping
• Meanwhile, StumbleUpon is having a spike in traffic. What has it done right?

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By TaiTran, September 16, 2011 4:45 am

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog: English – 43 characters
Con cáo nâu nhanh nhẹn nhảy qua chú chó lười biếng: Vietnamese – 50 characters
敏捷的棕色狐狸跃过懒狗: simplified Chinese – 11 characters

Twitter sucks.

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By TaiTran, May 7, 2009 11:52 am

A response to Techcrunch Steve Gillmor’s controversial article Rest in Peace, RSS

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By TaiTran, April 26, 2009 7:52 pm

Friendfeed was the first major social media player to introduce “Like” option of a feed item. Soon this is available on Facebook. Twitter and Tumblr also provide similar feature. Looks like services with streams favor this concept.

The advantages is obvious to many users; they are now simply clicking on “Like” instead of writing comments. However, there are certain drawbacks of this feature.

Let’s consider the advantages and disadvantages on each aspect:

Appropriateness

As the “Like” feature kills off re-share actions, it is appropriate for immediate status that has very short life. i.e. Personal status

It may devalue items which have values increased when shared such as a link or a thought.

At the core, it comes down to value of the feed item. If the item is worth and appropriate for sharing, it should be forwarded, not ended with a simple “Like”.

What do you think of my proposal?

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By TaiTran, April 20, 2009 2:05 pm

Micro-blogging is raising a trend in Vietnam, not by the number of users, but by the level of media coverage. Obviously, the coverage of Vietnamese media is not as high as the hype of all the global ones on Twitter and its ecosystems, but still, it is perceived by many to be the main trend of Vietnam internet market in 2009.

I don’t. Well I don’t talk about micro-blogs for Vietnam. I see different things.

Moreover, there are two missing pieces of important information from media coverage: appropriate market and the greatest monetization opportunities.

Without the knowledge of the target market of Twitter-like services, reporters easily fall into the trap of comparing micro-blogs and blogs, and users will be confused.

Without seeing the monetization opportunities, people will be reluctant in using/investing for them.

This article solves this issue by discussing the two points mentioned.

1. What is the market for Twitter-like services?

I identify 4 groups of users:

1. Geeks. Obviously, this group has already been there. They are innovators and early adopters of the services. Most use Twitter and not the clones anyhow.
2. Users who want to use Twitter as a substitute to Yahoo! 360 blast. Check Kazenka’s out.
3. Those who want to keep up with the Joneses. i.e. want to show that they’re cool by using a trendy stuff.
4. This group has not existed: those who want SMS incentives for using the service(s) to send mass messages

It’s the last group which has not existed that is potentially profitable.

2. What is SMS incentive and why is it a group when it hasn’t even existed?

In an over-simplified example:

3. Devices and platforms

1. Device: Only smart phones or laptops can access Wi-Fi. All phones can SMS.
2. Platform: good Wi-Fi is not ubiquitous even in urban areas. Mobile coverage is country-wide.

Hope that (2) and (3) answer @firstjames’ wonder.

4. Which player has the potential?

I would say ASAO. Their Ola Me is more than a Twitter clone; the product is one in ASAO’s mobile package suite. And the company may have the credentials to negotiate for SMS incentives.

Addendum: lamgi.vn also has SMS incentives.

5. Summary

This entry is not about micro-blogging. It’s all about the market of SMS incentives, powered by Twitter-like services.