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
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http://apps.facebook.com/mysingapore
(2)A!ow users to Generate Activity on the Social
Network Platform.
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(3) Viewing of Activity of Users connected or
share similar interests like yourself.
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Source: Boyd & Ellison
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Source: OXYWEB.co.uk/Blog
Social Networks are %agmented based on geographic
social and cultural differences.
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Two Dominant Trends of SNS in Asia
East Asia
SEA + India + Australia
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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.
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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

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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.
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SUBSCRIPTION MODEL
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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