Web 2.0 Asia

Disclaimer: The contents in this post may pertain to the author's personal interests.

They say "All good things come in threes" - well, the year 2008 was the living proof of that phrase for me. Firstly, Sara and I had our first baby son, Issac, who is our biggest blessing. Secondly, Open Web Asia '08, the premier web conference that I started as a personal project but has since been a great community effort of more than a dozen web professionals, is looking more and more like a hit conference with about 20 top-notch speakers. (Register away!)

And, to borrow Steve Jobs's patent line from his keynote, there's "one last thing" - our company was acquired by Google.

Who we are and why (I think) Google bought us

TNC (full name Tatter and Company), Korea's blog specialty company which I've been running as a CEO with my partner Chester (who is the original founder of the company), was acquired by Google Korea on 9/12/2008. For those who are not familiar with us, think of TNC as Korea's Automattic - a company that develops a cool blogging platform that's favorited by the nation's A-list bloggers, and also works closely with the open source community.

Despite the danger of sounding too self-important, I would say our company was a fairly good acquisition target for Google. First, we had a killer product: Our previous work, Tistory blog service (now property of Daum as we sold the service to the Korea's #2 portal), made to the top 10 Korean web destination in less than a year from launch, showing some 30,000% growth over the initial 8 months. While other blog services seem to be exploring the idea of integrating social networks with blogs only lately, our new blog service Textcube (link in Korean) had already implemented the feature much earlier. Secondly, we have great engineering talents. Many of our software engineers hail from the nation's leading comp sci programs, such as KAIST.

Significance: Google takes Korean market seriously

Some might say what's the big deal here, as Google seems to acquire companies almost daily. Well, if I may put some meaning to this deal, the notable fact here is that we are a company based out of Korea. To my knowledge, we are being one of the first major acquisitions done by Google in the entire Asia let alone Korea, if we don't count Austrailia and also exclude share-taking activities in China for licensing purposes. Of course I could be totally wrong, as Google doesn't annnounce all its acquisitions.

Speaking of Google in Asia, one piece of fact that my American friends have really hard time perceiving is that Google is an underdog in this part of the globe. Korea is the world's sixth largest market in terms of internet users, and yet Google has a market share that can only be described as "minor" in Korea.

Why? Korean web users mostly use Yahoo-like "portal" services and never really venture out. Part of the reason for that is, Korean portals are so good. But portals have built too thick of a comfort zone for Korean web users, leaving little room for startup innovations. Hence less motivation for startups, hence less diversity and more portal domination (in this age of de-portalization, that is), and so on and so forth - the cycle goes on.

What we will do

Now as a part of Google, TNC will try to better the situation. We will commit ourselves to increasing Google's market share in Korea. Of course, Google isn't entitled with God-given right to become #1 in every region it operates in, just because it's Google. It's actually more about the Korean web industry than about Google. I think the Korean web industry needs a player that can, as a balancing force, provide more options to the users and help create a more open web. Well, who can be that player? How about giving a chance to a company that sincerely strives to be "not evil" despite its sheer bigness?

Perhaps fitting with my personal vision (which is also a motivation behind the Open Web Asia conference and this very blog), we will also try to introduce Textcube to outside of Korea. Textcube was so good that it was called "better than the services in the US in many ways" by some international media like Giga Om, but we were hopelessly behind in terms of globalizing our product, with my perennial excuse that I'm too busy with the Korean market alone. Hopefully Google's global presence will be of tremendous help in globalizing Textcube and other interesting web services coming from Korea.
 
PS.

1) For the deal specifics, as many of you should know well, by confidentiality agreement I am not supposed to talk anything about the deal, so you don't have to bother asking. :)

2) I would like to take this opportunity to thank my partner, Chester Roh. He's been extremely good to work with. If I hadn't met him back in 2004, I would still be pushing papers at a cubicle nation. Of course I owe the same thanks to all the rest of the crew at TNC, and to our investor Softbank.

So it started with some random thoughts, but it's finally here - Open Web Asia '08, the first truly pan-Asian web conference with one of the best speaker lineups you can ever get from any web conference. It's happening in Sheraton Grande Walkerhill hotel in Seoul, Korea on October 14, and the official website is now up. (You can also download the official PR here.) Online registration will follow soon, but you can drop an email for pre-registration now. The registration fees will be $200 after a special World Knowledge Forum discount, and will include lunch and refreshments.

Okay, so what is Open Web Asia? Well, I think this can be a good tagline: We got so tired of hearing there's no good web conference in Asia to attend, we just created one. To quote from my Open Web Asia blog post:

So why does Asia need another web conference? Doesn’t each and every country in Asia already have almost too many web conferences? Why Open Web Asia?

Well, you know what? We are coming from China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, USA, France, and Germany - and that just about describes the kind of conference we have been trying to create. A first truly pan-Asian web conference where Asia’s web innovations can be introduced to the rest of the world in English; A world-class web event with “killer speakers” where thought leaders from the Asian web industry as well as from the Silicon Valley share their insights; A unique chance to discuss intra-regional business opportunities, say, how effectively a Korean web company can be funded by a Japanese VC and launch in the Chinese market; And last but not least, a great networking event where the audience can bump into the “movers and shakers” from Asia and the rest of the world. 

Here are the speakers confirmed to date. We are expecting to hear from some other great speakers in the coming days. (In an alphabetical order.)

• Kevin Day (CEO, Comsenz) (China)
• Arthur Chang (VP of Global Sales, Alibaba) (China)
• Yongjoon Hyoung (CEO of StoryBlender & Founder of Cyworld) (Korea)
• Yongseok Jang (Senior Director, eBay Asia Pacific) (Korea)
• Yozo Kaneko (Director and COO of ngi group, inc.) (Japan)
• James W. Kim (CEO of Yahoo!’s Korea Region) (Korea)
• Jimmy Kim (Executive Vice President, Nexon Corp.) (Korea)
• Loic Le Meur (CEO, Seesmic) (USA)
• Ram Lee (Head of Communities, NHN Corporation (Naver)) (Korea)
• Kent Lindström (Senior Vice President, Corporate Development, Friendster) (USA)
• Shusaku Maruko (General Manager, Corporate Strategy Department, Felica) (Japan)
• Jean K. Min (Communications Director, Ohmynews) (Korea)
• Akio Tanaka (Partner, Infinity Ventures) (Japan)
• Bill Wang (VP of Overseas Business, Perfect World) (China)
• Andreas Weigend (Consultant & Lecturer; Former Chief Scientist of Amazon) (USA)
• Kwan Yoon (Partner, Bluerun Ventures) (USA)

Well, for those outside of Asia, some of the speakers might not sound so familar - but tell you what, these are some of the biggest stars from the Asian web industry. Take Comsenz for example - if you are familiar with the Chinese web, you would know BBS absolutely rules in China, and Kevin is the founder and CEO of China's #1 internet BBS company. Or Ram Lee, who is the "hermit guru" of the Korean social web... Do you know what she brought to the world? How about Cyworld Minihompy and Naver Knowledge Search, the two trail-blazing services that forever changed the way Koreans use the internet. Speaking of Cyworld, its original founder, Hyung, is also coming to speak.

The one-day conference will have four sessions, each consisting of talks and panel discussions: 

• Session 1: Insights and Best Practices. We'll invite thought leaders to share their unique insights and industry outlook with regards to the Asian web industry.
• Session 2: Innovations in Asia. Speakers for this session will come from the arena where Asia has especial forte, such as gaming and mobile, and will talk about the Asian innovations that could be better understood/promoted outside of Asia.
  
• Session 3: Collaboration. This is a session where we will look into the ways Asian countries can collaborate better together, for example among China, Japan, and Korea.
• Session 4: East meets West. We will listen to the stories from the Asian companies trying to launch into the West, or vice versa, and try to draw strategies and lessons.
  

Open Web Asia will be held in association with the 9th World Knowledge Forum - dubbed Korea's Davos Forum, the prestigious forum's previous speakers include Colin Powell, Bill Gates, Alan Greenspan, Jack Welch, and Michael Dell. It will be held on October 15-16, on the same venue (Sheraton Walkerhill), so you could register for both and spend some intellectually challenging/refreshing three days in Seoul. For more information on the World Knowledge Forum, please visit their site.

So overall it will be a great conference to attend, to say the least. Again, you can start (pre) registering at our registration page. $200 is a good value - some of us even call it a bargain - for a conference of this quality. There's also sponsorship opportunity as well, and you can subscribe to our blog to stay tuned.

PS. I am especially proud of the organizers - Andrew, Angus, Benjamin, Bernard, Chang, Gang, George, Howie, John, Shun, and Tangos - who has recently been joined by the Korean local team, namely Taewoo, Mina, John, and Seongeun. The chemistry we built over the enormous virtual efforts is so great, that I think we could even do a startup together. A separate post on the organizers will follow later.

Korea's leading internet portal Naver is undertaking a great non-profit project, in partnership with local Starbucks.

The program is called Knowledge iN's Bookshelf (link in Korean). "Knowledge iN", which also happens to be the name for the hugely successful Q&A service, means "guru" in Korean. ("지식인", "知識人")

Under this program, Naver asks gurus from various fields to pick up the best books off their own personal bookshelves. We all know great people are great readers, and peeking into their favorite book collections would certainly be intellectually intriguing.

Then, those books hand-picked by the gurus appear physically in select Starbucks coffeeshops for free reading. (See the top left picture.) The Knowledge iN's Bookshelf website provides links to let the users know which Starbucks coffeeshops have those books.

Despite its huge success and obvious contribution to the Korean web industry in many ways, Naver has been called "an evil company" on, well, more than one occasion - probably due to the company's alledged closedness. But a project like this is something even Amazon isn't known to be doing (Come on, you guys even have Starbucks HQ in town!) and can help enhance Naver's corporate image. Below is a screen shot of Knowledge iN's Bookshelf - these are the books hand-picked by Chan-Wook Park, a prominent Korean movie director. (Seen the Oldboy?)

WISIA is another service from IWIlab, a US- and Korea-based web startup founded by Brian Kim, the former CEO of NHN USA. Again NHN is the company operating Naver, Korea's top internet portal.

I introduced an English based service called Buru.com on this blog before - Apparently Buru is not the only service rolled out by IWIlab. Unlike Buru, Wisia is offered only in Korean for the time being.


Wisia is basically a social recommendation service. It's like a Q&A service (such as Naver's knowledge search or Yahoo Answers) focusing entirely on recommendations. A user can either put up a new question, or search through questions already posted by others seeking for good recommendations. Questions include "Where are the best spots I can take family during the holidays?" or "What do twenty-somethings have to have, in order to become happier?"

Click on one of these questions, and if there are enough answers (that is, the recommendations) posted already, the user goes directly to the voting page. For example, when I click on the question "Where are the best spots I can take family during the holidays?", I am directed to the poll, where I'm supposed to pick my favorite first. Here I'm choosing "Sullak Waterpia".


Then I can see the poll result, i.e. where my selection is ranked at. Here I can see Sullak Waterpia is ranked at the second place (second most voted option for the family vacation place), and see my selection was also supported by other folks.



If I don't think a given recommendation is not ranked high enough, I can click to vote it. Or if I believe there are other good items that are not yet listed, I can scroll down and click on the "Add item" option. I am adding "Jirisan" as a new item of a good spot to take my family.


Adding an item can be done in a brisk. Wisia provides built-in Google image search (via mashup, I suppose), so I can choose the right image to go with the item and write a short message as to why I recommend this item. Placing the Google image search upfront is Wikia's way of encouraging users to insert the accompanying images to go with their posts. Wisia knows very well that pictures say a thousand words. As a result, most recommendations that appear on Wisia seem to have images.


At least in Korea, knowledge search was what catapulted Naver into its current leading position (which I'll discuss in further detail in my next piece.) Wisia, when done right, can be a better alternative to Naver's knowledge search for those specifically seeking for recommendations. Other services also to note include 43 things, 43 places, and Should do this.

Daum, Korea's #2 portal, had 27M monthly search queries in April (link in Korean), a 75% increase over two months.

For portals, search is the name of the game, and Daum's position in Korea is no better than Yahoo's in the US. Naver, the top dog, has over 70% market share. Daum didn't hide its intention to play a catch-up game in search market, and their weapon of choice was to introduce better search over its "cafe" (web bulletin board) content.

Daum believed web BBSes are some great archives of useful knowledge, and the strategy seems to pay off, judging from Daum's search market share gains. A few posts before, I called BBS a rather older system - now, BBS combined with very robust search might be an entirely different story.

Do you know what's #1 electronics brand in India? It's not Sony, Samsung, or even Tata (Not sure Tata is in electronics business, but they seem to make everything). It's LG.

Knowledge@Wharton has a podcast with Y.V. Verma, who has been director of human resources and management support for LG's India division since 1997. Verma has even authored a book on LG India called "Passion: The Untold Story of LG Electronics India."

Verma says the key success factor of LG India was empowerment - handling the decision power to the local staff as a way to hire and retain good talent. Sounds easy, but it's definitely not the typical way Korean conglomerates are run, I can say.

I posted this because some of the readers might be working at a local branch of a multinational company. Mr Verma is a living evidence that you can succeed big time at multinationals, or if you are determined enough, you might even pull a book endorsement. What's cooler than writing a book? (except for blogging, that is ;-) )

Over the past couple of weeks, online Q&A services in Asia made some announcements, suggesting Q&A services are pretty active in Asia.

Tangos writes that Qihoo.com of China is set to focus more on the Q&A service (China already has a prominent Q&A service in Baidu Zhidao); Japan's top Q&A service, OKWave, announced they will start contextual ads ("content-matching ads") alongside their Q&A content.



It's to be seen if Qihoo and OKWave will generate huge ad revenue, as seems to be the case with Naver Q&A service ("Knowledge iN") and Baidu Zhidao.