'Springnote'에 해당되는 글 6건
- 2008/11/12 Aion's Cool Video Marketing (2)
- 2008/10/10 What does it mean that you are located in Asia and you offer global services?
- 2008/09/23 Power of tools. Does it apply to Asian work culture?
- 2008/09/19 Wikis in the Asian market? Check out Springnote.com!
- 2008/04/20 Danny Kim at Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco!
- 2007/11/15 TechnoKimchi at Web 2.0 Expo Tokyo! (3)
Aion, the highly anticipated MMORPG game by NCSoft, just had its open beta version launched yesterday. (disclaimer: Springnote, for whom I'm doing the global marketing project for, is a product by NCSoft)
Just looking through some information and reaction to the launch, I came across the Aion video marketing campaign site on Daum TV Pot, which is like the Korean version of YouTube. And it was pretty cool! Click on this link and click the play button and watch it for about a minute. You love it, too, don't you? :)
a little snapshot of what I'm talking about
Creativity is always a cool thing. I personally enjoyed it very much. Obviously so did others as there's some buzz being built around this video marketnig campaign.
Let's remember even video marketing needs be done "outside the (flash) box."
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What does it mean that you are located in Asia and you offer global services?
(This post is cross-posted on Springnotes and also a re-writing of my previous post on Springnote and the Asian wiki market.)
I understand there are many of you guys that are located in the Asia/Pan-Pacific region and that are aiming for global markets. I'd assume your primary language for the service offering is probably English.
So I'd love to hear from you guys: What are the advantages and disadvantages of being physically located in Asia and going global (or Western for that matter?)
I guess another question would be if a service like Springnote is offered in Chinese, what's the chance of that doubling the market?
Wikis on the rise in Asia
Springnote is based in Korea. It has multi-language offerings in
Korean, English, and Japanese. (We're planning to expand the language
set in the near future!)
A question that naturally follows is this: "Why Asia? Do you think
you can ever invade the invincible U.S. market while based in Korea?
Stop dreaming!" Well, let me walk you through one step at a time to
show what's really going on.
(click here for a larger view of the chart)
As a starter, needs for wikis are soaring higher than ever. If you
study the search trend on Google, as shown in the charge above, there
are far more queries for the word "wiki" than "blog ", i.e. Internet
users are willing to learn more about wikis than blogs.
However, what's even more surprising is that most of those queries
are indeed coming from many Asian and pan-Pacifc countries, such as
Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia. That means 1) we've got an
astonishingly fast growing market in wikis, and 2) the market belongs
to Asia. That seems to be a great business opportunity right there,
doesn't it?
For example, Springnote, the sole online wiki service in Asia,
gathers many users from around the world through its English and
Japanese service offerings. A great number of them indeed come from
China, Singapore, Japan, and Australia, in addition to many from the
U.S., U.K., Germany and Canada (We spotted an Swedish team today!)
Openmaru, the maker behind Springnote, is located in Seoul, Korea,
garnering a huge opportunity to explore the market here just by being
local, i.e. Asian. While it's a service aiming for global
presence, it's been so lucky to enjoy a success in Asia that could not
easily come with many companies from the West .
The Web 2.0 revolution didn't stop in the Silicon Valley. It's
spreading throughout the entire globe. Do you want to be global or
local? It's a very important question any business development people
should be asking themselves every single day. After all, the Internet
increasingly blurring the boundaries bewteen countries, or even
continents. :)
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Power of tools. Does it apply to Asian work culture?
How do I keep up with all the ever-changing information, news and knowledge, and tasks I need to finish? Most of them through online tools. I use a great number of web applications every day. Starting with Google products (gmail, calendar, reader, analytics, feedburner), I go into other amazing services like Springnote (which I mentioned in the last post) and RememberTheMilk. Tistory is a hosted blogging service which runs on top of Textcube (which I introduced here). TechnoKimchi blog itself runs on Tistory. Not to mention services like Meebo. My life often revolves around staying inside Firefox (sometimes inside Chrome and IE, too ^^) Of course, having ubiquitous networks in Korea is always a great help to me.
One interesting finding about the relationship between tools and productivity is that it doesn't seem to matter as much at workplaces in Asia. Productivity is always measured, but the measure doesn't necessarily mean we're really productive and efficient. They're just numbers. When I was working at Samsung, many of co-workers took 30-40 min long coffee or smoke breaks, not counting lunch breaks. This is a common scene around Korea and we're known to work more than anybody else!
Springnote, for example, is an amazing service. The reason I'm doing global marketing for Springnote is quite simple: I fell in love with the product and decided to become a voice for it myself. It's got some cool edges over other products, like being the only application combining personal note-taking with wikis to full-extent and 2 GB of free file storage. If you're a college student, hey, this is the place to be, right?
But the scene in Korea is a little bit different. Despite the efficiency and productivity presented by Springnote, when college students have group projects, I've witnessed that they would sometimes create a Cyworld Club (a community site) and manually keep up with each other's contact info, manage schedules (just in pure text formats) and share files as attachments. Given Cyworld clubs allow you to attach files only up to 5 MB each, which is too small for many files you need to share, they sign up for other file-hosting services, actually paying real money. And everything I just mentioned can be done in Springnote so easily and for free. (Of course, Springnote has been doing exceptionally well in Korea!)
So in Korea, you can't find a single "tool" service that's done well beside Springnote. At the same time, when it comes down communities and content, it's gone crazy. The best part of Korean news articles and blogs? Comments. Comments are so important in Korean society now that those comments are changing the laws and the way TV programs are structured.
This is very important as many Web companies from the West are trying to move into the Asian market. It doesn't work the same way. Web 2.0 is about social, right? Remember that Asia has always been about social for centuries, or even millennia.
Next time you design a Web service for Asia, add even more "social" flavor to it. Let people talk, participate, contribute, and "be da man". If you still can't get it, come to the Open Web Asia conference; the topic of the conference is "Social Web in Asia" :)
Wikis in the Asian market? Check out Springnote.com!
(click on the picture to see it full size)
As much as blogs and SNSs have been considered the core of Web 2.0, we haven't been diligently discussing the importance and the impact of wikis on the Web world. Think about it. Which one do you think is bigger? Wordpress or Wikipedia? In fact, Wikipedia is now so big that Google decided to create its own in Knol. (Of course, blogging is big and Google wants to do better by buying TNC--or at least I hope so
) As you can see from the chart above, the need for wikis have gone way beyond that for blogs. Quite astonishing, isn't it?Anyhow, the wiki market has been growing huge in the Asia-Pacific region. The chart tells us that the top queries for wiki are coming from none other than Japan, Singapore, and Australia. Quite astonishing, isn't it?
Anyhow, (not because I'm the marketer but), Springnote really is an excellent service.
- It's a FREE Web application, making it accessible from anywhere,
- comes with 2 GB of file storage and unlimited amount of texts
- provides collaborative features by giving edit/view rights to the selected only
- supports great tech stuff, like Open ID Authentication, Open APIs, and XHTML.
Springnote just went through a major upgrade few hours ago, making it even a better serivce. It now comes with a view mode, designed for better content consumption and a better collaborative environment. You can learn more about the upgrade here.
So I strongly urge you guys to check it out. For one, you guys will be supporting a Web 2.0 application from Asia, but for two, you'll probably just purely love the application. (and for three, help me be a better marketer as well. ;) )
As for Japan, Singapore, and Australia beating US, UK, Canada in their search for wikis, maybe some of you guys can give me feedback on how it's happening and if there's any internal market growing in your region.
Like an experienced marketer, I'm gonna wrap this post with this: "This is your Springnote day!". Ok, I admit that was weak, but you get the point. :)
Yes, you heard me right! I'm attending the Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco next week. This time, I'll be not only blogging/covering the entire conference as press, but also will be a session speaker. In the session, I'll be introducing the Korean IT/Digital landscape and the beloved online notebook application named Springnote by openmaru, for whom I've been working as the global marketing manager. You can have more information about the session here.
It's quite exciting that I can finally stand in front of people in SF to introduce what I've been talking about here in TechnoKimchi. Hopefully, I'll be able to meet great people there and even expand the TechnoKimchi network with whoever's interested in it!
So, looking forwarding to meet you all there. By the way, I'm already in New York and flying to San Francisco on Monday. If you want to catch up with me, please don't hesitate to email me at
p.s. My awesome friend Chang Kim has kindly introduced my session in his blog. Thanks, Chang!
I'm in Tokyo with the openmaru team. Here goes my discloser: I've been working with openmaru, a Korean Web 2.0 service provider, for its English blog marketing. Indeed, its English blog has been run by me! (but I'm not an employee, just working on a partnership-based project)
I'm not sure if you guys have come across the blog or any of its services, but not because I'm the marketer, but even from a pure user point of view, you should most definitely try out the openmaru applications, such as Springnote. It simply rocks!
I'll be reporting from the Expo as well as interviewing famous dudes and companies in the Web 2.0-sphere. One thing interesting is that reporting will be done through 4 major channels: openmaru Korean blog, openmaru English blog, Taewoo's log (my Korean blog), and TechnoKimchi. Chances are I'll be posting a lot more stuff in Korean than in English.
But if you ever had questions regarding openmaru or me, or the Web and digital landscape in Korea, feel free to come around the openmaru booth to find me. I'm not there, other openmaru members will be more than kind enough to find me for you :)
I'm very excited to attend the conference for many reasons. But for TechnoKimchi, I think this will definitely mark an important milestone as this is the first time I'm officially exploring the Web in Asia, outside Korea. As I've been writing in my Korean blog, there are so many things that are just completely different about the Web and the digital culture in Japan from Korea that I'm almost lost. Too many thoughts in my head.
But for now, I'm resting for tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be able to run into some of you guys!
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