'Tools'에 해당되는 글 1건
2008/09/23 16:09
Power of tools. Does it apply to Asian work culture?
2008/09/23 16:09 in basic info
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" :)
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