360DigitalInfluence

A recent report by Inside Facebook highlights the interesting development of Facebook in Southeast Asia. Despite being blocked in China, East Asia’s largest and fastest-growing market, Facebook has grown phenomenally in the rest of Southeast Asia during the last few quarters.

How has this happened?

• In Taiwan, Facebook has exploded from 400,000 to nearly 7 million users in only 12 months
• Significant growth in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia
• Indonesia is now the world’s #3 country in terms of total Facebook audience size (behind US and UK)
• Facebook has overtaken hi5 in Thailand and Friendster in the Philippines (formerly the top social networks)
• …But Facebook has seen little growth in Japan and S. Korea

Taiwan’s rapid adoption of Facebook is a particulary interesting example, as it is now one of the few non-English speaking countries with over 30% penetration, joining Hong Kong and Singapore as one of Facebook’s Asian sucess stories.

Why Taiwan?

• A key driver for this growth has been social gaming apps, like Happy Harvest, Pet Society and Restaurant City
• These apps pull users away from other social sites without games, like Taiwan’s other social network Wretch.cc
• More games are being developed in or translated into Traditional Chinese, such as Mahjong by Godgames

Though perhaps Taiwan doesn’t represent a gateway to the rest of Southeast Asia,  it does show that Facebook can be successful in the region. Perhaps social gaming will also open doors for Facebook in tougher markets like Japan and South Korea…

Korea’s second most popular search engine, Daum is preparing to launch its own Social Network Service called Yozm (http://yozm.daum.net).

Various modification of a Twitter-like services have developed in Korea to better serve Koreans’ socializing habit, needs and interest:
-me2day(www.me2day.net by NHN Naver), Twitter-like service instead offers 150 words
-sfoon(www.sfoon.com by Nurien), Connects your twitter, Me2day, Flickr, You Tube accounts in one viewing convenience
-itgling(www.itgling.co.kr by Mediare), socializing with people who share similar web surfing/using pattern rather than choosing to follow or request to be friends

So, how is Yozm different from the rest?

Well, first of all, Yozm, meaning “nowadays” in Korean, allows the user to select/type in
- What you like
- What you dislike
- What you are good at
- Where you go often to find friends.

Under each category, the user can enter up to three things, which can be changed at anytime.
This function, not offered in Twitter and Me2day allows the user to quickly socialize by allocating and becoming friends with people who share similar taste and lifestyle.

Like me2day offers 150 words to input a message but it also allows the users to upload image (not just a link) to the message box.

Yozm is being tested through active social media users now. It is expected to launch sometime in the first quarter of 2010.

Pic 2:   1) 150 word message   2) upload image, link, direct msg to a friend   3) view option (my msg, reply, favorite, private)

In online content creation, Korea has been the biggest in the world. They have the highest portion of Internet users who enjoy publishing web content, more than 55% of the Internet users have uploaded articles, photos, music, videosand other digital content.

Lately, company Playstreet created this mapping site, which breaks Seoul into 29 areas, users can pick the area and virtually walk on the street. The map shows you exactly where you are, and in terms of accuracy, I think they have done a better job than Google Street View since Google sometimes messes up the numbers on some streets.

Also, as shown on image above, the map shows names for each building/ shop, which I think it’s something Google Street View can learn from.

Now Playstreet has partnered with Web Concepts (NZ company) and working on ShowStreet; a map for New Zealand, and it will be launched in Australian soon. Would be great if they add social media elements to the map in the future.

Play around with it now!