Much Ado About Social Networks in Asia

MUCH ADO ABOUT SOCIAL NETWORKS IN ASIA Bernard Leong Partner, Thymos Capital LLP & COO, SENATUS Source: TED Talk by Sir Tim Berners Lee Saturday, May 16, 2009

BREAKOUT TAKEAWAYS & DISCUSSION What are the trends on SNS in Asia as till today? Look at CyWorld, Mixi and Xiaonei. Discussion with the audience: Why do you build a SNS? Niche or Mobile? How do you grow a SNS? When do you monetize a social network? Saturday, May 16, 2009

Social Network in a Nutshe!: (1) Construct Public Proﬁle with a degree of control of privacy in a closed platform Saturday, May 16, 2009

http://apps.facebook.com/mysingapore (2)A!ow users to Generate Activity on the Social Network Platform. Saturday, May 16, 2009

(3) Viewing of Activity of Users connected or share similar interests like yourself. Saturday, May 16, 2009

Source: Boyd & Ellison Saturday, May 16, 2009

Source: OXYWEB.co.uk/Blog Social Networks are %agmented based on geographic social and cultural diﬀerences. Saturday, May 16, 2009

Two Dominant Trends of SNS in Asia East Asia SEA + India + Australia Saturday, May 16, 2009

NUMBERS ON SNS Time Spent on 25.1 22.8 22.9 Site Global Reach 16.7 1.85 0.091 Page Views/ 10.3 22 19.9 User Alexa Rank 4 24 54 Saturday, May 16, 2009

NUMBERS ON SNS Time Spent on 20.6 17.1 20.7 Site Global Reach 0.039 0.19 0.091 Page Views/ 18.3 20.5 22.5 User Alexa Rank 360 81 148 Source: ALEXA (tracking 7 days) Saturday, May 16, 2009

CYworld.com Saturday, May 16, 2009

CYWORLD Korea’s most popular SNS founded in July 1999 by Young Joon Hyung 20M unique visitors a month 1 in 3 Koreans uses the SNS and 90% penetration in the age group btw 18 and 25. Acquired by SK Telecom for US$7.14M Revenue Model: Micro-transactions on Avatars and Minihompy (500 Acorns per day on avg) and Digital Song Sales (35%) Recently announced adoption of Open Social Platform. Saturday, May 16, 2009

Saturday, May 16, 2009

CYWORLD Successes Failures CyWorld (US) and CyWorld (Germany) was not successful Successful in Korea - Advantage due to the difference in revenue of language and culture. models. MySpace tried to enter into the Korean market and find it CyWorld (Germany) faced local relatively difficult to penetrate competitors (Studviz, SkyRock) into the market. and also MySpace. Costs upon entry in Germany were too high and led to CyWorld withdrawing from Europe. Saturday, May 16, 2009

MIXI Mixi is launched in 2004, 15M users and 14B page views monthly. Market Capitalization: US$970M (Note: Linkedin’s valuation is US$2.6B). IPO on Tokyo Stock Exchange in Sep 2006. Mixi have features based on country specific differences: Restricted Membership (Used to be 18 and now 13) and a Japanese Mobile number needed. Japanese Users like high level of anonymity (Upload of photos and real names is < 5%. Tailor made mobile version (60% mobile to 40% PC in March 2008) Saturday, May 16, 2009

MIXI Revenue Models (US$5.46 per member): Premium membership (US$3 per month - 7% of total revenue) Find Job! (sales increase from US$36.5M to US$82.4M) Mixi Radio (fee based) and Reviews (Online advertising) Saturday, May 16, 2009

XIAONEI “Facebook” of China acquired by Oak Pacific. Raised US$430M (compare Facebook raised US$378M - valued at US$15B by Accel Partners). Leading Investor: SoftBank. 22M Registered Users, and 12.7M daily users Revenue Model: Micro-Transactions, Services that push users towards other microsites. Saturday, May 16, 2009

DISCUSSION What is the aim of the social network which you want to build? What are the services that you like to offer? How do you grow or seed your users from the start? At what point and how do you monetize your online social network? Saturday, May 16, 2009

THE THREE PHASES OF SOCIAL NETWORK The Platform Creation Phase - when the platform is initially launched and generate interest. The Growth Phase - when you grow the members of the platform and sustain interest. The Monetization Phase - when you have the database and directs interests and generate brand and monetization. Saturday, May 16, 2009

ONLINE ADVERTISING The promise of social advertising: to target ads on people interested in only the products and services that appeals to them. Online Advertising requires rich media delivery. Online Advertising is dependent on the audience and the traffic on the site. Saturday, May 16, 2009

SUBSCRIPTION MODEL Saturday, May 16, 2009

MICRO-TRANSACTIONS & REFERRALS Cyworld, Xiaonei & Facebook uses micro-transactions via “send a gift”. Xiaonei provides services within the network to push users to other microsites in China. Saturday, May 16, 2009

BRAND ADVERTISING/ PLACEMENT Most brands have avoided major social networks in the fear of dilution and afraid to let fans to run the groups or pages on Facebook. Brand Advertising and brand placement remains a holy grail and very few successful cases have happened. Saturday, May 16, 2009

CONTACT ME? The slides of the talk: http://www.slideshare.net/bleongcw Contact me via GMail, Skype, Fanfou or Twitter - bleongcw Read my blog: http://bleongcw.typepad.com and http://www.sgentrepreneurs.com If you are interested in what I do: www.thymoscapital.com or www.senatus.net Saturday, May 16, 2009

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Much Ado About Social Networks in Asia

by Bernard Leong on May 16, 2009

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