1 Articles for 'Couchmob'
- 2008/01/28 Meet Paprika Lab, a Korean Garage Venture (8)
Well, maybe I should have said "a Korean officetel venture", as not many Korean homes have a garage. (By the way, "Officetel" is a Korean term for small studios used by SOHOs.)
In the midst of a slow economy, when everyone cares for job security, two young talents equipped with hands-on Ruby-on-Rails skills as well as business insights learned from bluechip companies like NC Soft and SK Telecom have set up an interesting new venture. I was fortunate enough to visit their office and had intriguing conversations.
The two-men company, Paprika Lab, is building lightweight web apps. The founders are from KAIST and Seoul National University and worked at bluechip companies like SK Telecom and NC Soft. But what really sets them apart from other Korean web startups is that they are gunning for the global market from day one. Their services are built in English and they make their services available as Facebook apps as well.
Their first brainchild, Faceworthy, is already gaining some popularity among international users. (The visitors are still way small, but increasing at about 200%/week pace). The basic proposition of the service is simple enough: Pics of good-looking people are perhaps the best content. If you think you are good looking and sexy (I seriously doubt if the readers of this blog will fall into this category, ahem), just upload your pics - then you'll become famous and popular, Faceworthy says.
Viewer clicks on a photo, and a photo gallery opens up with the voting section. The photo frame has room for placing ads. The whole voting experience reminds of Hot or Not, but Faceworthy provides personal photo album - Can I say Faceworthy is Hot or Not plus Flickr?
Another service Paprika Lab whipped out in a very short time is a quick poll service called CouchMob - I guess the name comes from Couch potatoes + Mobs. It's a very simple service that allows users to generate polls and put them up on the site, so others can vote.
I'll introduce more services as they come out of the Paprika Lab. Meanwhile, I wish there will be more "Office-tel ventures" from Korea, and also more Asian web startups will launch their services in English as well.
In the midst of a slow economy, when everyone cares for job security, two young talents equipped with hands-on Ruby-on-Rails skills as well as business insights learned from bluechip companies like NC Soft and SK Telecom have set up an interesting new venture. I was fortunate enough to visit their office and had intriguing conversations.
The two-men company, Paprika Lab, is building lightweight web apps. The founders are from KAIST and Seoul National University and worked at bluechip companies like SK Telecom and NC Soft. But what really sets them apart from other Korean web startups is that they are gunning for the global market from day one. Their services are built in English and they make their services available as Facebook apps as well.
Their first brainchild, Faceworthy, is already gaining some popularity among international users. (The visitors are still way small, but increasing at about 200%/week pace). The basic proposition of the service is simple enough: Pics of good-looking people are perhaps the best content. If you think you are good looking and sexy (I seriously doubt if the readers of this blog will fall into this category, ahem), just upload your pics - then you'll become famous and popular, Faceworthy says.
Viewer clicks on a photo, and a photo gallery opens up with the voting section. The photo frame has room for placing ads. The whole voting experience reminds of Hot or Not, but Faceworthy provides personal photo album - Can I say Faceworthy is Hot or Not plus Flickr?
Another service Paprika Lab whipped out in a very short time is a quick poll service called CouchMob - I guess the name comes from Couch potatoes + Mobs. It's a very simple service that allows users to generate polls and put them up on the site, so others can vote.
I'll introduce more services as they come out of the Paprika Lab. Meanwhile, I wish there will be more "Office-tel ventures" from Korea, and also more Asian web startups will launch their services in English as well.
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