Q: Can you share with us the reasons why Zing hosted Open Platform, what is Zing new direction of development for this API?

By launching Open Platform strategy, we hope that Zing would become an useful and efficient place for our third parties (including Ad Agency, Content Provider, Marketer…) expanding their business on Internet environment. We offer tools for integrating applications directly within the Zing platform or doing social media via Zing Me.

Q: What were the key takeouts from the conference?

The most achievement of the conference is bringing social network owners and their third parties closer and closer. The former has gained their position in the market after this event. The latter has learned about the large potential of local social network and found some chance to enhance their benefits by using their open platform . There were more than 500 representatives of Ad Agencies, Brands, Content Providers, Developer, Technical Experts, Marketers, Hot Bloggers…attending to this event.

Q: What’s next moving forward from this Open Platform conference from your perspective?

A new age of cooperation between local social networks and their third parties has opened. For example, Zing has earned a lot of cooperation proposals from not only Ad Agency but Content Provider also after the event.

Q: What are the most updated statistics on ZingMe platform right now?

We have a total users uptodate 6.8millions with 32.04% of monthly accounts are login daily. Among all social activities, aside from games, we have about 726.770 comments posted daily onto the network with  500.000 photos being uploaded on a regular day and around 8,780 blog posts.

Zing and ZingMe direction in moving into a more ‘branding & communication’ aspect with the intention of having the API open, branching out to communication should be an interesting move to watch. Extending from what only gaming activities. In order to structure like the facebook example, there will be a lot of work to be done.

For a case study, Megastar fanpage currently has 17,209 fans more than its facebook ‘confusing’ group.

(Facebook Group with 2,459 fans)

Zingme with more than 17,000 fans. The page also have an ‘ap’ for promoting current movie and it’s campaign page, users can score exclusive premier tickets, lucky draw to get free tickets and even prize for ticket design creative.

Managing fanpage here requires a closed collaboration between ZingMe team and agency, or marketers where the support level is more day to day. Insights such as interaction, post likes are all pretty much similar to Facebook but fanpage manage need to request data from admin team.  Other promotions to drive fans such as banners, news announcements, articles can be leveraged from Zing network itself.

Interesting move from ZingMe, I’d say.

Following such spirit, the equivalent of Groupon in Vietnam, launched this year across 2 key cities of Ha Noi and Ho Chi Minh City, is ranking at the top based on traffic, called Nhommua (literally means group buying). Nhom Mua has been extremely aggressive in launching its services across all social media site such as facebook and online media drive to their web, making the pageview* tops 6.7 millions, 570.000 visitors spending a whopping amount 7 and a half min on their site. (According to Alexa ranking and Google Ad Plan May 2011).  Nhommua has the commenting function without having to log on. However this is turned off from 23h to 7am.

Coming in at no. 2 on the watch list is Muachung developed by the same company who owns one of the most popular teen online website kenh14. Muachung (Buy Together) comes in at 2.4 million pageview with 670.000 visitors who spend 4:10min onsite.

Nothing would be complete in Vietnam without Zing network involvement. While facebook deals might not yet break the Vietnamese ties, Zingdeal. A humble 1.1 million pageview with 270.00 visitors compare to its ZingMe 5.5 millions of users potential.

The remaining competitors are sharing the smaller pie but Hotdeal.vn is getting some consumer favourites and starting to gain momentum with 84.000visitors, however falling behind to cucre.vn (super cheap)by 26.000 visitors.

How are these deals of the day sites continue to grow and differentiate themselves from each other and going beyond the common offerings of travel, hotel and hospitality services will be interesting to see. Moreover, the ‘social’ elements of these sites also not yet fully reached its potential and sophistication.

John lists three categories for evaluation with critical questions for each (full post here).

1) Enterprise Readiness

2) Local Market Readiness

3) Market Conditions

I’d offer up few specific points worth investigating for enterprises with priority markets in Asia:

1- Don’t Build in a Vacuum

The reality is enterprise readiness is not easy. It takes considerable organisational horsepower to build consensus on measurement, putting pen to paper on the brand playbook, leaping over the sales, marketing, pr silos. It’s messy and takes time.

Brands at the twilight of phase one – nearly but yet not complete – should already be activating and training local markets. This evaluation process is not liner. In fact, the leading enterprises I’ve worked with run this simultaneously with a built in feedback mechanism so the important lessons bound to pour out while building capacity at the local level are channeled back up to global.  Ready the enterprise while simultaneously building local capacity and both hub and spoke benefit.

We often subscribe to the multiple hub and spoke model for clients (it works for us at Ogilvy) and we’ve learned that those spokes need to flow both ways. See below for reference from the Altimeter Career Path of the Corporate Social Media Strategist.

2- Two-way Hub and Spokes

Successful enterprises know that Asia is an exporter of ideas and creativity in social media. Show up at a brand or agency brainstorm in Ho Chi Minh City, talk to digital creatives in Beijing or ask your Taiwan team to give you a demo of their wildly popular BBS ingeniously run off of Telenet.

A UK or US-headquartered client cannot toss the enterprise social strategy and brand content to Hong Kong or Shanghai and expect a word -by-word translation.

This import model doesn’t work in social media because enterprises risk serious innovation leak if there’s not a pipeline in place designed to channel the creativity and ideas destined to come flowing back to global HQ.

Be warned: do not make the mistake of dividing your Asia social media efforts based on the number of Facebook fans by country (see below from Tom Crampton) or any other stat your Intern googled. Indonesia, as an example, is the second largest Facebook market in the world, and also home to a fascinating and jaw-dropping complex cultural and business environment that may consume resources at a faster rate than other markets.

3- Pilots to build local teams

The following are must-have stats that your local team can and should easily pull (riff off of John’s post) and the second list of questions will yield deeper insight when planning and evaluating long term engagement:

• Dominant social networks (local vs global socnet)
• Dominant search engine
• Mobile penetration
• Broadband penetration
• Trust in WOM
• Censorship Level in Social Media (reality of some Asian countries, particularly China and Vietnam)

In order to know where to focus your efforts long term, a pilot program in a carefully chosen market answers to deeper questions designed to assess local market readiness:

• Is the local market an influencer or grassroots driven web ecosystem? Hint: No market in Asia is a symmetric 50 /50 split
• Does that social media monitoring tool really work in Vietnamese, Bahasa Malaysia, etc?
• Does this global enterprise program need further tweaking to “fit” in China?
• Can we really get general consensus on measurement?
• Do we need a regional hub serving Asia for added support – a mini-hub in cities like Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai that can serve as a single contact point for global HQ while coordinating 23 cities in Asia.

With so many languages, cultures and different web-climates, Asia warrants an extra level of attention and evaluation. Curious to know lessons learned from others as more and enterprises assess market readiness in social media.

This gets brands thinking, or at least our unit in Vietnam start shaking, looking at the demand of client asking for a Facebook Fanpage.

1. What about content on our Facebook page? Are we about to loose all of our valuable content, both form the brand and campaign perspective, and more importantly user-generated content?

2. What about the connection and social aspect we’re been cultivating? Is it going to be disappear forever?

3. What about our social media strategy?

Got me thinking, it’s time to relook at this Channel Strategy and the way our content is shaped. We cant wait for the National Congress meeting to pass and pray to Heaven that things will presume normal. The block might eased a bit, but there’s no guarantee, nothing is for sure. Brands and organisations shall start to rethink on the investment in their platforms and map out a strategic content channel, begin to think of youtube/clip.vn (which is not been ultilised locally), photo sharing sites.

Some argue that ZingMe and other blogging communities like Yume has the potentials, but looking at ZingMe target audience it’s too young for some brands and less serious/professional. Plus there’s no measurement method for ZingMe, not yet.

Facebook, with 2.2millions users in Vietnam up-to-date, has the perfect combination seems somewhat as fragile as ever.

It’s time to relook, re-evaluate in depth the kind of channel and social platforms brands want to engage. While it will take a while for local Vietnamese web developer to create original platforms, the Vietnam Social Media infographic comes in handy. The Channel Strategy will require a more complex, scientific and concrete strategic plan, measurement approach and most importantly Conversation Management that goes beyond the current popular forum seeding methods.

It will be an exciting year to observe the instability status of facebook in Vietnam and how it had impact on brands and organisations. Will you everyone in the loop.

Meanwhile, some of the popular profiles on facebook in Vietnam

1. Nhat Ky (Diary) with 500.000 plus fans

2. Vietnam Travel with 245.008 likes

3. Kenh14 (leading teen portal) with 100.458 likes

4. Dell FC (seem to be doing well) with 28.283 likes

Amid street protests, Twitter shuttered in Egypt…. and shortly after AP’s
report on a man being shot, the Internet and RIM are turned off.
www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/twitter-revolution/
Egypt’s ruling Mubarak administration has pulled the plug on Twitter,
underscoring the power of the site and other social networks as tools to
both coordinate and disperse news of a citizen uprising. Twitter, Facebook
and YouTube were widely used in Tunisia’s recent uprising and in Iran last
year.

Twitter topples Tunisia?
www.nationalpost.com/news/world/Twitter+topples+Tunisia/4148834/story.html
Excellent compilation of opinions from global experts regarding the
Tunisian uprising. According to the experts, Twitter was not responsible
for the success of the uprising, but rather served as an incredibly useful
tool thanks to its short message format, multi-platform access and the
ability to use it on cell-phones.

Human Rights Watch condemns Vietnam for media and Internet censorship
www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1614312.php/Human-Rights-Watch-condemns-Vietnam-for-repression-of-human-rights
The Human Rights Watch reports that bloggers, human rights defenders,
workers’ rights activists, democracy and anti-corruption campaigners have
faced intimidation, arrest, torture and imprisonment in Vietnam. The
country’s government has extended its regime of media and Internet
censorship and introduced new regulations for monitoring Internet use.

Thailand: Serious setbacks in respecting rights
www.trust.org/alertnet/news/thailand-serious-setbacks-in-respecting-rights
The Human Rights Watch also addressed recent setbacks in Thailand, where
freedom of expression was a casualty of a far-reaching government
censorship campaign that shut down thousands of websites and dozens of
community radio stations, TV and satellite broadcasts, and publications.

China – cheap shots at an increasingly open internet
http://www.chinahearsay.com/nick-kristof-discovers-net-censorship-in-china/
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tried his hand last week at
investigative journalism. After a thorough investigation, he announced in
his column that . . . China is censoring Internet content… I actually
like Kristof and respect his commitment to important topics.. this cheap
gimmick is beneath him and ridiculous.
Here Kristof outline his “ridiculous experiment” which rewards readers with
the one insight, “A Chinese moderator once explained to me that grunt-level
censors are mostly young computer geeks who believe in Internet freedom and
try to sabotage their responsibilities without getting fired.”
http://www.news-record.com/content/2011/01/24/article/nicholas_kristof_banned_in_beijing

Targeting young urban savvy users, Two.vn has the estimate of 170,000 users. But it’s more than just simply check in and communicate your whereabouts or shouting out the location tips. It combines with the Lifestyles package: link with most popular local music site and local Music TV channel (Yan TV), news updates, and map.

Above is what the program looks like on Ipad.

In terms of loading location, there’s more visual. User can also upload pictures of the location and share across.  So far no system of mayor-ship but one could earn Golden Coin (+1), every time they check in.

Music update: the most viewed videos.

The program does take a while to load, but I do enjoy picture function of Two.vn. Also I have not been able to make any friends!

Credit: Photos by Tra My

psfk.com/2010/11/which-nation-is-the-most-innovative.html

Japan leads in terms of total patents granted, but it’s the Republic of Korea that is the most efficient in its innovation – each dollar spent on research is likelier to result in a patent.

Tencent Profit Increases 52% on China Online Games Sales, Advertising Surge

bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-10/tencent-profit-rises-52-on-china-online-games-sales-update1-.html

The company had 636.6 million active user accounts for its QQ instant-messaging service at the end of September, compared with 612.5 million three months earlier, it said. The online- chat program had 18 times more subscribers than Microsoft Corp.’s MSN service in China at the end of last year, according to research company Analysis International.

How Baidu Won China

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_47/b4204060242597.htm

The company has a 73 percent share of the world’s largest Internet market by users, and has the fifth-largest market capitalization ($38.3 billion) among the world’s pure-play Internet companies. It’s now 57 percent bigger than Yahoo!.

Baidu’s stock price has more than doubled since January, when Google first disclosed … “a new approach” to China, with the company saying it would no longer censor search results.”Every once in a while a gift is handed to you. We handed one to Robin,” says Eric Schmidt CEO of Google.

Social Media Booming in Indonesia and India

While you weren’t looking, Indonesia became Facebook’s second largest market, Twitter’s fifth largest market, and the number ONE Foursquare nation. The social media boom in Indonesia is also spreading its influence to other Asian nations.

techcrunch.com/2010/11/06/hey-facebook-twitter-and-foursquare-zynga-and-i-are-in-indonesia-where-are-you/

The mobile social network Mig33, which boasts over two million Indian users, has just secured US $8.9 million, most from an Indonesian entrepreneur.

watblog.com/2010/11/09/mig33-raises-8-9-million-from-indonesian-entrepreneur/

India’s Challenge to Facebook

bbc.co.uk/news/business-11525627

Ibibo is making a good challenge on Facebook by developing a range of local relevant games. Those games include “The Great Indian Parking Wars”, where users collect points by parking “legally or illegally” and – in a very local touch – removing idle cows. Like its home base of Gurgaon, which has turned from a village near Delhi to a shining new city in a matter of years, Ibibo has come seemingly out of nowhere. Since it was set up in January 2007, Ibibo has massed 3.7 million users, making it the largest locally based social network in India.

Kik, the Skype of Text Messages, is Registering 250,000 New Users a Day

venturebeat.com/2010/11/05/kik-sms-growth/

(Thanks to Rohan Deshpande for the link)

Fashion Forward in China’s Booming E-Commerce Market.

bloggerinsight.com/blog

Chinese business to consumer fashion e-commerce has grown by 100% in the past three years. TaoBao controls 76% of China’s eCommerce, but increasingly growth will be driven by more sophisticated offerings that can differentiate on service and style. With Gap joining established Chinese forces such as VANCL and Taobao, the industry is poised to grow even more.

Bain & Co on Luxury in China

What luxury goods to Chinese consumers buy? Bain and Co. have just released their new study of the Chinese luxury market. Research points to a new generation of luxury shoppers. 67% of the growth in 2010 is from new consumers. Also, luxury interest in expanding from Tier 1 cities to China’s Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.

bain.com/bainweb/PDFs/cms/Public/China_Luxury_Market_Study_2010.pdf

The bowl itself represents containers, platforms that make social networking possible. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr; these sites are the bowl. They make participating in this networking possible. The broth represents our network. It symbolizes our relationships with other people, our presence, our connections. Just like the broth brings harmony to every single element of pho, our network is the harmonious jungle we call our “buddies” or “facebook friends.”

The noodle is what I consider to be the essence of the pho. After all, pho is a noodle dish. So for social media, the noodle represents the things we share: the pictures, the links, the songs, the camera photos, the status updates. This is essentially what social media boils down to: sharing things with other people.

The beef is what you reward yourself with after you’ve eaten enough noodle. It’s the big stuff. The hits. And they only come once in a while. The beef is the stuff that makes waves on these social networking communities. Viral videos like Old Spice, “Man Your Man Can Smell Like,” or Nike’s “Write the Future,” or T-Mobile’s “Dance” video. These are the things people can’t get enough of when they see it. They bookmark it, save it, download it. It’s that good.

Lastly, believe it or not, are the herbs. Those herbs that people throw in the last minute right before they eat. Herbs give pho spice and taste. In social media, these spices would be the leaders of the network. People with huge online presence, tons of followers, lots of reactions every time they post a status update. For example, Ashton Kutcher has a huge following on Twitter; he’s an herb. Same as Ricky Gervais in the podcast world; he’s an herb. It’s the people you follow closely, since they’re so entertaining and juicy’

—–SAID a freelance Copywriter: Alexandre V. Nguyen

A quick quest to understand the odd relationship was on. Sample size of interviewees: 30.

Participants profiles: media/advertising agencies, PR agencies, overseas Vietnamese, SME owners

Out of 30, 80% could not find the linkage or ‘relationship’ between Phở – THE infamous Vietnamese noodles soup (beef for the South & Chicken for the North) and social media.

(Credit: Photo by Christian Berg, Logo by RedWorks Tien Doanh). Phở Hòa on 260C Pasteur, P8, Q3, TP. Hồ Chí Minh has been one of the most popular and grounded Phở place in Sài Gòn, opened for more than 40 years. The place remains to date rustic feel, the kind of dinner where there’s no messing around, just honest good phở, tasty broth, fast service. A must eat for all locals and tourists

Second best answer was from Aryeh S (Group M Interactive) ‘ for me, Facebook is kind of like Pho24, you can find it everywhere, and it tastes okay and has pretty much what you want on the menu, but there are definitely better tastes out there . . . there are dozens of great forums that only a few people know about, the sits that have great user generated content but don’t see much traffic, which are like the hole-in-the-wall pho shops that are famous for delicious broth, or maybe the perfect crunchy-chewy quay (bread stick thingies) . . . then you have a sites that are famous for one reason or another, either they specialize in content that a lot of people know about, or maybe a blogger’s site that a lot of people know (but don’t necessarily like), and these are the Pho2000s and other small chains that pretend to be delicious but really are kind of just there . . .’

Interesting answers were mostly from the ‘Creatives’ people who responded with great enthusiasm

“You like it at first, and then you grow bored with it, but after a few days without it, you crave for it again”

“‘Pho-nomenal’ bites of daily virtual diet usually consumed in alternate of one another but seldom simultaneously due to a high risk of screen fogging or choking through sudden reaction to unexpected chat online. “

Special thanks to Thomas who inspired the idea.

This is something DI Vietnam team put together while training in Hong Kong DI office.

(International platforms in the outer rim)

Hot bloggers have died, most of them, and now come a new breed of influencers. The replacement of Yahoo 360Plus cant seem to have the same drive, affect and influence it once has. Most hot bloggers have moved out of the old shelter and some adopted facebook for refuge.

Still ranking highly at the top list is Robbey McNificent (Lê Minh Mẫn). This guy is a phenomenon just as his name suggested. Spreading his influence over both facebook (with 3 accounts), to his regular blog on wordpress to the local social media sites yume, blog tamtay, Zing, and here is the comprehensive list.

http://robbey.info

http://robbey.cu.to

http://robbeydeptrai.wordpress.com/

http://yume.timnhanh.com/robbey

http://vn.myblog.yahoo.com/robbey-deptrai

http://yobanbe.zing.vn/highlandmanle

http://robbey.multiply.com/

http://robbeydeptrai.blogspot.com/

http://www.tamtay.vn/home/Robbey

http://www.facebook.com/robbey.deptrai

(note: dep trai = đẹp trai = handsome)

Robbey is known for his connection with the showbiz and entertainment celebrities including his frequent controversial commentaries. He has recently opened a new company titled Robbey Communications. With an average of 9,000 friends on facebook sites and up to 2million pageview for his blog, Robbey can be considered a true ‘Magnificent’.

Another survivor is Mèo Ác
Her blog focus on food and lifestyles featuring her experience with restaurants, cafes, and the entertainment business. She still maintains a relatively high presence across other social media sites.

http://meoac.multiply.com

http://www.facebook.com/meowistoc

http://www.facebook.com/luccie.nguyen

Although content is mostly quite general, Mèo Ác has a steady fan base. So maybe ‘spreading’ does have some effect on maintaining your presence on the radar.

Gào – a true writer that has also stand the test of ‘Yahoo360’ time. She has been writing since 2005 and published a few books offline. Young, pretty, and romantic, Gào shared her personal touches through love fictions to readers and her beauty care regime and know-how on both her site and facebook fan page

What have replaced the hot bloggers culture? A new trend of celebrities’ page and facebook page has taken up the space, including MC, models, actors and actresses. Some of them write (particularly the MC) mostly on Notes pages and Pictures Sharing, some don’t even bother.

Apart from the celebrities culture, perhaps there are bound to have ‘influencers’ that are soon to be discovered.