Vietnam New Media Business

A Website to show your tech startup

nospam@example.com (Jason) — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:42:09 +0200

Your team had spent days and nights working to launch your startup, it is time to get attention and recognition. Journalists and notable bloggers have hundreds of stories competing for their attention, and getting a few minutes of their time can be next to impossible - let alone convincing them to write a story about your company. Furthermore, most PR firms are simply too expensive for the vast majority of struggling tech startups.
Submit your startup to Discovering Startups and get feedback from community of users, potential customers as well as investors.

Echelon 2010 - Event for Tech Startups

nospam@example.com (Jason) — Tue, 04 May 2010 03:41:00 +0200

Echelon 2010 is a 2-day conference (June 1-2) organized in Singapore. Prominent speakers this year include A-list angels such as Dave McClure (Founders Fund, the Facebook early investor), Joi Ito (Twitter board member, CEO Creative Commons) and startup management stars such as Bret Terrill (Zynga, #1 social gaming startup), Vishal Gondhal (IndiaGames, India's #1 game portal) among other prominent representatives of the wider media and web industry. Last year, our event (link) attracted 500 attendees for a 1-day event which saw startups from over 10 Asian countries pitching to a renowned panel of investors.

Key topics in 2010 will include:

Mentorship, Investments and New Funding Models

Cloud Computing and Enterprise Web

Social Gaming and Social Networking

Mobile Applications and Location Based Services

Product Management and Marketing

Social Media and Online Marketing

Startup Cultures and Lessons

SocialTV: The Emergence of Social Networking and TV

Open Source Software Goes Mainstream in Vietnam?

nospam@example.com (Jason) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:37:38 +0200

Army-owned Viettel group just became one of the pioneer organizations using open source software (OSS) in Vietnam. According to local ICTnews, since July 2009 more than 2,200 PC units in Viettel network of stores and postal counters had been installed oss: Ubuntu, Open Offfice, X-Unikey, Mozilla ThunderBird. This is the first stage, and all new PCs will be used with OSS from now on, Viettel said.
Viettel is one of the fastest growing telcos in the world with revenue of $US 3 billion in 2009. The move will lead other State corporations and organizations to use OSS and inspire local OSS developers to launch new applications.

PayPal to enter Vietnam market?

nospam@example.com (Jason) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:46:20 +0100

According to AP, PayPal, the online payments unit of Internet auction site operator eBay Inc., plans to double its staff in Asia to 2,000 by the end of the year.
PayPal will tie up with China UnionPay, Chinese largest provider of electronic payment services, to allow consumers in China to buy from a network of nearly eight million online merchants worldwide.

In Vietnam, PayPal parent eBay local partner chodientu.vn helps Vietnamese customers to participate in international trade. Chodientu.vn' online payment platform nganluong.vn is still in its infancy among many children in online payment market in Vietnam. So far there is no dominant player in the industry and Vietnamese customers are hesitate to pick a premature service provider.

PayPal has been talking to State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) on regulations, business cooperation opportunities. If a local player becomes a PayPal partner, it will pull a large number of Internet users and etailers, and contribute greatly to the new development of e-commerce in Vietnam.

Announcing TechLang

nospam@example.com (Jason) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 08:28:52 +0100

Late last year with some friends and partners, I launched TechLang a new website covering technology news in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. In addition to profiling and reviewing new technology companies, Techlang holds technology events and connects startups to investors, advisors, job seekers and service providers through community networks.
I will dedicate more time on TechLang from 2009, however my blog http://jasonlog.supersized.org is still live with my personal view on Vietnam's web landscape.

TechLang welcomes all you guys as contributors, guest writers or whatever you name it. As startup entrepreneurs you can tip us your ventures so that we can follow and help you connect to the right circles.

Recap 2008

nospam@example.com (Jason) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:41:47 +0100

One year ago I made the predictions for 2008, now it is time to recap:
Again there is no momentum for startups to get to fast track: lack of seasoned management, hard to monetize with high traffic sites. Most chased consumer entertainment services and few startups target enterprise apps SaaS and click and mortar hybrid that have more sustainable revenue model.

My predictions for 2008:

Social Media:

    * Many new startups will be launched until mid year then some quit of exhausting. [Right: 2nd half 2008 saw few new startups, VC Corp quit Facebook clone game (Zoomban)]
    * Some large tech companies such as FPT, CMC will opt for acquisition instead of in-house development. [Wrong: FPT launch its own incubator (Visky) and the FPT chairman takes care of these projects. I think it was not a good choice.]
    * Self hosted Wordpress based blogs are increasing popular. [Quite true.]
    * Active Yahoo360 accounts will drop 50% [Right: rumor of Yahoo SE Asia shutting down Yahoo360 service.]

Search Service:

    * No local player can challenge the Google' dominant position. [Official launch of local search service xalo.vn, no bright future for this search engine.]

Online Gaming:

    * WOW will be exploring the market through Asian affiliate. [The local market was ready for WOW, I did not know why Blizzard Entertainment still did not enter this promising game land.]
    * Audition Online is still the top casual MMO. [Audition rocked again.]

Mobile:

    * iPhone would be the top choice of wish list among local professionals and Vietnam would be the largest market of iPhone in Southeast Asia with sales of 200K to 250K of units end of the year 2008. [iPhone was truly a hit in Vietnam mobile market, without software based unlock solution iPhone 3G was a bit slow demand, but the number was still about 200k.]
    * No one remembers DVB-H ever in existence. [What did DVB-H mean?]
    * Wimax is still in testing and not a commodity until yearend. [Did Intel still bullish on Wimax this year?]

Investment:

    * Some international VC firms will enter Vietnam market in addition to incumbent IDGVV, DFJ Vina. [Softbank China and India Holdings is an important player now.]
    * Local VC and angels network will be formed to get a piece of the pie. [Not a clear trend in Vietnam, but some practice in existence.]

I will make the predictions for 2009 in next couple of days.

FPT CEO is the New Visky

nospam@example.com (Jason) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:32:53 +0100

Earlier this year I wrote about FPT CEO blogging with some interesting comments. But two months ago the blog had been down with error message. Now the CEO blog is replaced by new FPT 2.0 effort Visky: Welcome to Visky!
Are Mr. Truong Gia Binh tired of blogging or Visky will blog on behalf soon?

Who control Miss World Tube Rights in Vietnam?

nospam@example.com (Jason) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:08:20 +0100

Mainstream and social media in Vietnam discussed "VTV lost Miss World Final broadcasting rights" these days.
"According to an agreement between RAAS and VTV, RAAS would provide Miss World 2008 shows free of charge to VTV for broadcasting on its VTV3 channel only. All profit earned from advertising during Miss World shows on VTV would be contributed to a charity fund.
RAAS withdrew the broadcasting rights for the final show because some websites in Vietnam stole the signals from VTVs broadcasting of the Miss World fashion and swimwear programmes to broadcast live on their websites or upload on their sites illegally. These acts, according to RAAS, were serious copyright violations.

However, VietnamITV was not the only one; other websites, namely VTC.com.vn, PDA.vn, Clip.vn, stole signals from VTV and broadcast the Miss World shows live on their websites."

RAAS is a business group founded by a powerful Vietnamese Overseas family with business operation in the US, China and Vietnam. As a partner of Miss World Organization, RAAS holds exclusive broadcasting rights in Vietnam territory.
Of course VTV could not control the redistribution of its video signal across Internet, especially user generated content websites. VTV tried to explain it was out of their control but Vietnamese Internet users (about 20 millions) care? If young Vietnamese want to watch the Event they can find on many video sharing websites whether VTV did broadcasting or not. Are Julia Morley aware of this?

Googles Strategy Slides by faberNovel

nospam@example.com (Jason) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:46:37 +0100

All about Google

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: google technology)

An interesting presentation prepared by FaberNovel, a french consulting firm, which produced many reports on Web 2.0 services. In the mid of recession and falling price of Google's shares, the slides shed light on the long term strategy of Google from Internet to mobile world.