“Stop using our products! Get off the couch. Do more!” is not something you hear from product tech startups. Growple aims to do just that with a vision of making products and services that encourage people to go out and have fun! Growple is derived from the thought of “growing people together”. It is all about doing more, having fun and making a difference. Growple is a platform that lets you challenge yourself and your friends to do anything. So you can do more by creating and initiating these challenges in real life, have fun while doing the challenges, store and share these small moments in life and finally make a difference. Cofounded by Korean-Canadian entrepreneur Kevin Kim and Salvadoran-Canadian entrepreneur Freddy Hidalgo-Monchez, Growple hopes to encourage people to get off the couch, have fun and make a difference all in a “social” way.
Growple works in the following way:
Kevin founded the 1st Korean Apparel E-commerce store in Canada at the age of 18 and has founded several internet start-ups. Freddy Hidalgo-Monchez has previously founded an entertainment company in Vancouver at the age of 17.
“We want our products to add value to your life in a way that they’re no longer considered a ‘thing’ or an ‘app’. Is a pencil considered technology? Do you think of a car as a tool? Probably not. Cars and pencils have become deeply ingrained in your life and no longer stick out, they integrate seamlessly. We want to see a world where web+mobile apps have become so immersed in our day-to-day lives that they naturally become part of it; they peacefully co-exist. We want to help web apps reach pencil status. You take it, use it, and move on with your life. We’re building products and services that complement your life, not invade it. That’s what we’re all about” says their website. BeSuccess caught up with Kevin to learn more about their start-up.
BeSuccess: How did the idea of Growple come about?
The idea came after a series of brainstorming sessions with my partner Freddy Hidalgo-Monchez. We originally met on another project (student side projects) but the project didn’t quite make it since all the other team members (developers) left for intern positions at big tech companies such as Google, Facebook and Tagged. With never-ending brainstorming sessions, Freddy and I felt that we essentially shared the ultimate vision in life: to break down the barrier between online and offline interactions to create products that are not invading your life but complementing it, to make people go out and do more stuff in real life rather than sitting at home connected to internet and other electronic devices. After we had a clear vision about what we wanted to do in terms of ultimate company goals, we then started brainstorming specifically about a product that will help us to achieve this goal. That’s when we came up with the idea of “Growple”!
The product itself fits very well with our company motto. We are really passionate about providing people with memorable and meaningful moments via day-to-day offline interactions in the form of challenges.
When did you launch and how has the progress/growth been so far?
Our idea is fairly new. We actually started this idea in the beginning of February. However, our progress has been real fast – we launched a web-demo and now we are looking to experiment our concept on the Facebook App Platform. We want to do this so that we are sure that people will find our idea interesting, so when we actually have our own platform, we can migrate these users to our platform. Right now our team is concentrating on building the experiment app. Once we reach our experiment goals, we will be fully working on the upcoming iOS platform.
We recently got an office space via University of Waterloo student incubator called VeloCity and we are loving our new office space. Growple team is preparing for a regional competition called VeloCity Venture Fund where the winner takes $25,000 in funding.
Any specific plans for Korea?
We do not have any specific plans for Korea as of right now. We are more focused on getting our brand out here in Canadian start-up community then hopefully looking to extend our exposure to U.S (preferably Silicon Valley). However, our team is not tied to anything. If there is an opportunity for Growple to grow, we’re there already! I’ve heard there are a lot of startup/VC activities starting in Korea, and if there are right opportunities, we are open to anything. Personally, as an immigrant from Korea, I want to succeed and build my reputation here so that I can go back to my country and inspire young entrepreneurs like myself later on.
To try out Growple subscribe to the beta list for their Facebook app here.
Put video conferencing + collaborative work + safe and secure transmission of information + simplicity of use together, and you’ll get VSee.
What comes to mind when you think of video collaboration tools?
For mainstream consumers (i.e., you and me), Skype (and to a smaller extent, Google hangout), is no stranger to us. As for businesses and enterprises, video conferencing systems like Polycom and WebEx are the bigger players in the market.
These video conferencing tools serve the same purpose of eliminating distance as an impediment to real-time visual and audio communication. How then, does video-collaboration softeware, VSee differ from the rest? On top of offering a rich video and audio experience, VSee takes video conferencing up a notch with simplicity in performing collaborative work and high security of information transmission.
To find out more about the product and the company, I VSee-interviewed CEO of VSee, Milton Chen.
Interviewing Milton through VSee.
Simplicity as the main difference between VSee and other video collaboration tools.
The biggest difference lies in VSee’s simplicity of work collaboration while video conferencing. With just a click, users can share screens and any application. Another of VSee’s easy-to-use features is the drag-and-drop file transfer. I have to admit that the name itself doesn’t sound too big a deal. But when Milton demonstrated it during the interview, I was sold for the product.
On his end, he simply drags and drop a file into the video window (yes, the entire video window is a folder). To retrieve it, all I had to do to get the file is to drag it out to my desktop. Milton also showed me how simple and easy it was to perform screen sharing with just a click. In my opinion, these are winning features that enables efficient video work collaboration.
As Milton puts it,
“VSee allows for video calls, but, so what? It is important to connect to someone, share a report or an image easily with a single click or drag and drop. VSee believes that video is important in while having a conversation. What makes us different is the rich video experience through file sharing etc.”
Big push this year is to make vsee mobile. background- research on video streaming efficiently over 3g and 4g network.
VSee offers security in information transmission using end-to-end encryption.
Milton demonstrates the VSee for the U.S. House of Congress. Photo: Darren Pillen, VSee
The U.S. congress has recently approved VSee to run behind the congressional firewall. Other video collaboration tools such as Google, Skype or even big companies like Cisco, Polycom and WebEx, are not approved to run behind the congressional firewall. This, together with VSee’s many other high profile government clients like NASA, serve as testament to VSee’s secure information transmission technology.
The technology behind: VSee does this by using end-to-end encryption. That is to say, a two-way video session on VSee is being encrypted such that only the parties involved have access. No one else, not even VSee, has access. With such high security, it is easy and more assuring to have a conversation without having to worry that a third-party might tap in.
1. Internal team work. The challenge that companies face is the problem of being able to work efficiently with the team, given that most of the co-workers are located at different offices. VSee aims to solve this by providing a social and friendly rich working experience to the team.
2. B2B communication/ Talking to customers. One of the company’s bigger clients, IBM, uses VSee as a communication tool for customers to communicate easily with IBM sales representative solution specialist to solve their problems.
Milton emphasized that the key to VSee solutions lies in its simplicity of use. Traditionally, video collaboration is viewed as being complicated with too many steps involved. Vsee breaks this perception by making the video communication experience simple and easy through rich video, screen sharing, file transfer, etc. with just a click on a webpage.
Traditional video conferencing requires expensive gadgets and setups. Photo: Video conferencing equipment blog
VSee’s software-only solution vs. traditional hardware video collaboration tools.
Milton commented that if the interview setup that we were having, was done a couple of years ago, there is a heavy stress on the need for video quality. Of which, can only be achieved through purchasing delicate hardware that don’t come cheap. To further inconvenience users, the hardware must be placed in a dedicated room, say a fixed ‘video conference room’ where all have to be physically present to hold a meeting.
Today, all video conferencing can be solved with a purely software-only solution. I must say, the level of quality achieved with VSee is pretty high.
Why spend US$20,ooo on a piece of hardware that comes with all the complexity to schedule a meeting, and physically being in a conference room before the actual video collaboration meeting.
“The line has crossed for the level of quality you can achieve from hardware and software. This again, is why we think that the multi-billion dollar hardware-based companies will die in the next 5 to 10 years. There is no reason for their existence.”
The future for video collaboration
“The VSee team is really excited about the future of video collaboration,” exclaimed Milton. He gave a very good picture of how the future of video collaboration will be like by relating to the ongoing video experience that we were having.
“It is near midnight here in California and I’m working from home while you are in Singapore. VSee enables one to have a rich dialogue with someone from across the world. It is easy to show something or share a file. We see VSee as a social network technology that brings people together, erase distances and simply get work done, no matter where the other person happens to be.”
Milton adds on that he believes, in the future, people will do more and more of such video activities. Today, it is used by mostly big enterprises for mainly tech conference calls. Prior to the call, one party might have to send a powerpoint presentation over before the conference begins. There is simply too much work to prepare before and during the video conference for traditional video communication methods as compared to a solution like VSee that allows all work collaboration to be done during the call.
Milton envisions that in five to ten years’ time, everybody will be doing video collaboration online, all the time. And, people will just take for granted. His prediction is that traditional hardware-based, multi-billion dollar video conferencing companies like Telepresence, Polycom and Tandberg will be in serious trouble. With the level of video quality that can be achieved now with software technologies like VSee, there is no need to invest in $20,000 on a piece of hardware that entails complexity with it.
Milton adds on, “With the rise of technology like VSee, we will kill the billion dollar companies like Tandberg and Polycom.”
The VSee team at their annual winter ski trip. Photo: VSee
The VSee team as a proven testimony that remote team work can be efficient.
As a company, VSee has two offices worldwide- Silicon Valley and Singapore. Half of its staff is spread out all over the world in India, Spain and in the United States, they are scattered in different states. Even though the team is separated by distance, the company’s efficiency level remains high.
The VSee team is a proven testimony that remote team work can also be efficient and effective as the product itself allow for efficient work flow and collaboration. In the beginning, when VSee was first created, the main motivation behind was to create a good tool to facilitate the work collaboration amongst the widely geographically-distributed team.
One of the trends that Milton has pointed out is the difficulty that that companies face in hiring good engineers. There are few tech companies fighting for resources in there. Unlike these companies, VSee does not face such a problem. With an efficient remote teamwork tool, they can hire the best talents around the world, no matter where they are located.
Big companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, are traditional and afraid to hire people remotely. They have the mindset that as soon as they have people working remotely, productivity suffers. Trust and social bonding between team members also suffer. That is why most prefer not to hire someone else located far from the home office as there are no tools that will ensure effective team work.
Milton’s hunch is that by being able to show that VSee is able to work well across distance, this will give VSee and any other company that follows the VSee work culture an unfair advantage over other companies. He believes that in five to ten years’ time, companies will switch to the VSee style of working.
Although the interview was done at 3pm, Singapore time (11pm, California time), there wasn’t a hint of time or distance difference throughout the entire VSee interview session. I’d have to say the voice and image quality was brilliant.
VSee is available free for download for both Windows and Mac. The iOS and Android versions will be coming out soon.
Where do you head to to find good recommendations for these:
Hotel and Flights? Tripadvisor.
Food? hungrygowhere (Singapore)
And what about EVERYTHING? Here’s one that we all know– Yelp.
Taiwan startup, Citydomo is creating a Yelp-like site for users to read and write reviews on everything from food, hotels, night clubs to even plastic surgery! In exchange for writing reviews, users gain Domo dollars and stand a chance to win prizes.
e27 caught up with Co-founder, Kevin Lin to find out more about Citydomo.
What is the idea behind Citydomo?
Citydomo wants to build a company that can send local businesses themselves viral.
Citydomo has two inspirations. We would like to provide the education, support, and nurturing necessary for companies to craft and manage the entire sales life cycle online, from exposure and sales, to post-sale branding. Secondly, we would like to make it fun to promote the businesses that you love by offering prizes to users who spreads the word through Facebook, Twitter, write reviews, upload business photos, attend events, make purchases…etc from Citydomo’s business partners. With good content, good tracking, and incentives to spread the message, we plan to send our business partners viral.
Your team is mostly made up of the friends you made while at Duke. How has the overseas experience contributed to your entrepreneurship endeavor?
At Duke MBA, we had a chance to learn from a vast array of business people around the world. From spice market vendors in Dubai to the CEO of the second largest mining company in the world, the most important lessons we learned from these people was to listen to our customers. We found out that we ourselves don’t have to have all the answers. If we listen to our end users and craft our product around their wants, needs, desires and ambitions, we will fill the gap that exist in the market.
From a logistics points of view, Joe and Kevin learned to collaborate remotely as a team from anywhere in the world. This has played out well as Joseph is currently stationed in Austria while Kevin is on the ground in Taiwan. Even with thousands of miles between them, they are able to create synergies that even in-person teams would envy.
The Citydomo team. Photo: Citydomo
How is the traction like for Citydomo and what are some of the feedback you have received from users so far?
From a user’s perspective, Citydomo is growing on track with our models. Our gamification system, as we predicted, has accelerated our growth about three fold as users sign on and begin earning domo $ and promoting businesses with the goal of winning great prizes they love. We have already outgrown our first hosting solution and just this past weekend we moved into the Amazon Cloud hosted in Singapore.
Citydomo's office. Photo: Citydomo
From a business partner’s perspective, we are moving along the learning curve. We knew going into this that working with small and medium sized businesses in Taiwan required a customized plan. We could not simple take a business idea from North America and drop it down in Taiwan – like Google/Yahoo tried – because it would fail. We see our progression down this learning curve as a competitive advantage. Once we have tailored our business partner education, sales, sales support and logistics programs we will have a year to a year and a half of operational protection from other competitors.
The main thing our business partners are telling us is that they want to see proof that their campaigns are working and that they did not feel a fixed monthly rate was justifiable. Citydomo responded to these observations by launching a pay-per-performance scheme based on the amount of domo $ generated around a business and by expanding our reporting, tracking, and branding features of the website and corresponding concierge services. (Concierge is what Citydomo calls its business development staff because they aren’t just selling the site to our clients, they are helping to educate the businesses on our tools and mold the businesses image online)
What are some of Citydomo’s plans ahead?
Citydomo is pushing hard to continue partnering with businesses around the Taipei area. To date we have 60 business partners and we would like to expand that to 350 by the end of the year.
Our next big push of features will be to support the businesses’ needs. These include the ability to interact with leads, detailed reporting capabilities, and additional tools to manage and sculpt their brand on Citydomo.com. Our other big initiative will be to begin releasing the mobile versions of Citydomo that will allow users to write reviews, learn about businesses and their events and specials, and earn domo $ while on the go.
Citydomo's Co-founders, Kevin and Joe. Photo: Citydomo
What would you mainly be looking for at Echelon 2012 Startup Marketplace?
We are mainly looking for exposure through the Echelon 2012 market place. This is our first big coming out to the world and we would like everyone to know about the great work our staff is doing on the ground in Taipei, building up the Citydomo brand and product.
While we are opening lines of communication with potential investors in Taiwan, we are looking forward to meet some other international investors in the event who are interested in our product and believe in Citydomo’s business model.
From getting updated with the latest news, watching viral videos, to getting connected with online friends through popular social networks, Joanna Yeo talks about her personal experience with one of the world’s most famous social networking site.
Being a fairly heavy consumer of online content, I have to admit that I wouldn’t have been as well connected to the world if not for the internet. And if you are like me, you might have probably noticed the recent surge of internet companies adopting the use of Facebook Apps and Facebook Timeline Apps.
Facebook Open Graph
I was at F8 Singapore Developer Conference last October, 2011 when Facebook introduced the Facebook Open Graph to the entrepreneur and developer community here in Singapore. The Facebook Open Graph was a move to increase engagement between third party web sites, pages and in particular, apps (Facebook apps and Timeline Apps) to the already well established community on the most popular social network. It was fascinating to see how companies can leverage on this to increase user activity on their sites and third-party apps with a range of verbs beyond ‘Like’, ‘Share’ and comment through the integration with Facebook. Since the announcement of the new Facebook Open Graph, many companies have created Facebook Apps that can be added to user’s timeline. This means that every activity of that the user does on the app or the company’s site will be updated in real-time on the app activity feed on the user’s Facebook timeline, news feed and ticker.
Facebook apps and Timeline
It was all good in the beginning when early adopters such as news sites (Yahoo news, Huffington Post, the Guardian and Washington Post Social Reader) created third-party apps. People could see what their friends were reading and if interesting enough, they will be prompted to click and read the article.
Initially, I found the feature very useful in providing latest news updates through the newsfeed updates of what my friends have read. But, personal experiences proved to be short of enjoyable. News app vendors would update my passive activities on my timeline, newsfeed and ticker. I use ‘passive’ here as reading an article isn’t so much of an active activity as compared to clicking on a ‘Like’ button or commenting on a post. But as more and more companies jump onto the Facebook App bandwagon, the Facebook integration move appears to have to backfired.
Privacy of Internet Activity Compromised
It is in the recent months that the effects of Facebook Open Graph is finally manifesting. In addition to news apps, other third-party websites like Spotify, Social cam, Dailymotion and even Quora have jumped onto the Facebook app bandwagon. I am pretty sure more companies will be inclined to creating app versions of their sites with Facebook’s push of the new App Center.
My Facebook experience has been very enjoyable thus far. But, this experience has recently been compromised by the invasion of privacy brought about by Facebook apps. Timeline apps, to be more specific. Here’s why:
1. Ridiculous information retrieval required
The app vendor, be it for Facebook app, game app or timeline app, can set the information access required and types of activities that the can be posted on the user’s behalf. Before agreeing to use an app, these information are available to the user for a permission to access.
Game apps are good examples of Facebook apps that intrude into user’s privacy in terms of: 1. Information access and 2. manipulating user’s Facebook account. Take The Sims Social for example, the following is what the app requires:
“This app may post on your behalf, including your high scores, achievements your earned and more.”
I am sure that all Facebook users are too familiar with their friend’s game app posts appearing on their news feed. Some hardcore Facebook gamers even have their walls flooded with game app posts. Personally, I view my Facebook profile as a mini online representation of myself. Thus, I would only want wall posts that I would like myself to be associated on my timeline. More importantly, such posts are often viewed as spammy. Thus, I recommend the following tip for readers who are facing the same problem as me:
Opt for ‘Only Me’ when Facebook app gives the option of letting you choose who can see posts that the app makes for you.
2. Passive activity outside of Facebook are updated on Timeline
Before the introduction of the latest Facebook Open Graph, only active activity such as a ‘Like’, Share or a comment on third-party sites outside of Facebook will be reflected on the newsfeed and wall. But now, passive activities such as watching a video on Dailymotion or reading an article on the The Independent are also being updated onto my timeline activity in real-time.
App vendors should understand the difference between consuming and contributing to an internet content. When one views, listens or reads an internet content, the person is not doing it for anyone’s benefit. However, when a user performs an active action, say ‘Like’ or comment, he is giving the content contributor affirmation and is completely aware that the activity performed is linked to Facebook and thus, will be reflected on the newsfeed and timeline.
Lately, I have also tried avoiding being tracked of what I read on the Facebook news app by googling the title of the article in the internet. This method has worked pretty well until recently – See the next point.
3. Websites that auto-login visitors with Facebook
Dailymotion, Yelp and The Independent. These are just some of the many sites that auto-logs users in with Facebook connect.
Auto-login to The Independent with Facebook
Once logged into Facebook, user activity on the site would be documented onto timeline and newsfeed (this is based on the type of timeline verbs that the app vendor has incorporated) without the user’s prior consent.
These underhand methods of not informing users about their integration with Facebook really creeps me out. It’s like having our every action watched by the web. (maybe I’m exaggerating a little here). But, more often than not, there is an increasing self-awareness of what I am doing online and whether I am logged into to the third-party website with Facebook.
Looks like opting for manual sign up on a site instead of logging into Facebook will not be much of a solution to avoid having online privacy compromised.
Privacy issues re-looked
I am guessing these third party apps are getting the hint that their users do not welcome the idea of having their internet activity being tracked and publicized. For instance, Yelp makes it transparent to users that they are logged in through Facebook Connect. Yelp also teaches users how to opt-out of Facebook Connect and instant personalization.
So, here’s the deal. I have developed a love-hate relationship. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying I hate Facebook. Facebook has served me well in connecting and reconnecting me to the people I have come in contact with over the years as well as keeping me updated with current affairs. App vendors, however, should be more transparent about their Facebook integration and also choice of timeline verbs to avoid having people undergo that off-putting experience i went through.
Hugh Mason (Co-founder of JFDI Asia) Speaker at Echelon 2012
A successful entrepreneur, mentor and investor, Hugh Mason co-founded The Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI.Asia). It is an incubator that connects people, communities and cash to form innovative digital companies. JFDI’s customers are early stage investors and its focus is on mobile applications made in Asia, for Asia. He will joining the panel on Incubation at Echelon 2012 alongside Danny Wirianto, Antti Ylimutka, Vincent Lauria, etc.
Following a degree in Physics, Hugh became a science TV producer on the BBC’s live primetime science show, Tomorrow’s World, that commands eight million viewers daily.
Shortly after, Hugh founded a successful independent TV production business, Invincible Films. His company won awards, including a British Academy Award nomination, that was making over 150 documentaries about science and technology for Discovery Channel, National Geographic and many other international broadcasters.
In 2001, Hugh co-founded Pembridge Partners in London to provide finance and advice to marketing, media and technology businesses. Pembridge raised or directly invested USD50 million. Hugh also mentored over 300 innovative ideas people and companies.
He relocated to Singapore with his young family in January 2009 where he co-founded JFDI.Asia, a seed accelerator that takes groups of new digital entrepreneurs from startup to seed investment in 100 days.
Hugh’s first book, Brainfruit: Turning Creativity into Cash from East to West, was written with Mark Chong and published by McGraw Hill in November 2011.
Hugh is passionate about generating and executing ideas, translating strategy into economic growth using Transactional Analysis. He adds most value around the strategic- and people-issues that often seem to hold back teams from achieving the success they deserve.
Hugh Mason (Co-founder of JFDI Asia) Speaker at Echelon 2012
Hugh Mason (Co-founder of JFDI Asia) is one of the awesome speakers at Echelon 2012. This tech conference is a two-day, double-track event on 11 and 12 June 2012 with over 1,100 delegates, a demo pit of up to 50 regional startups per day and various workshops. Get your tickets now!
Baidu the leading Chinese search engine seems to be determined to enter the smartphone market. The company was said to release a new mobile operating system Baidu Yun next week with a hardware vendor to jointly announce a device based on the OS.
Rumors said that the partner is ZTE (a leading Chinese telecom equipment provider), although Wang Jin, vice-president of Baidu only revealed that they are working with a “global manufacturer”.
Earlier last year, Baidu released a mobile operating system called Baidu Yi, which is modeled on Google’s Android system and later cooperated with Dell’s mobile devices.
According to the performances in the Street, Baidu seems to be faced with a bearish trend. The future growth seems to depend on its attempt to grow business in the mobile space. While facing stiff competition from several well-established companies each specializing in different product and services, it is still uncertain a simple smartphone offering will help the company to increase the market share.
The piece was written by Charlie Sheng, a nerd born in the 90s with interests in tech, innovation and art.
Drecom [J] Has released the new social game application “Monster Arms” for the American App Store. The support language is English so unfortunately it can’t be downloaded from Japan.
“Monster Arms” is a real time strategy card game where you make an original deck and collect character cards while completing missions. It has social components such as battling with other players to get treasure, or teaming up to challenge against bosses.
China indeed has a fiercelycompetitiveonlinevideomarket. Last month it was reported that the number one video site, Youku acquired the number two video site Tudou. Shortly after, news broke out of the newly formed alliance between Tencent’s v.qq.com, tv.Sohu and Baidu’s iQiyi. A big reason for the flurry of M&A activity has been the difficulty to make profit due to rising operating costs, forcing some players to succumb to stronger players. To win in the long run, companies must achieve profitability and notjustburnmoneyformarketshare. To become profitable, these video sites must dramatically reduce operating costs.
In operating an online video site that supports thousands of simultaneous videos being watched, two major costs are contentlicensesandbandwidthcosts. According to Bloomberg, Youku incurred a net loss of 49.6 million yuan ($7.9 million) in the fourth quarter of 2011. Bandwidth costs rose to 109.7 million yuan, or 35 percent of sales, from 34 percent a year ago. Content costs were 20 percent of revenue in the quarter, up from 17 percent in the same period of 2010.
Knowing that bandwidth costs make up a large and growing proportion of costs, how do video sites reduce it? One young ambitious Beijing start-up called CloudAcc has the answer. In fact, they have proven that their technology can reduce bandwidth costs by 50%; a dramatic saving that can push video sites towards profitability. This reduction in bandwidth expenditure, allows companies to re-invest the money into more value added services like buying popular content.
Traditionally, individual viewers watching an online video receive data from only one server at a time in the Content Delivery Network (CDN), paid for by the video site. When millions of videos are being watched daily, this often puts high demand on the CDN servers, resulting in lag and poor user experience for the viewers. The sheer quantity of videos being streamed from the CND server is also expensive for the video sites.
CloudAcc’s unique technology changes that by using in-browser P2P or Peer to Peer technology. Similar to BitTorrent where an individual file is broken up into parts and made available for simultaneous download from separate peers, CloudAcc’s technology enables a viewer to simultaneously download parts of the video file that she is viewing from multiple sources, such as the server and other people watching the same video within the network. The benefits are twofold, for the video sites and the viewers. For video sites, there is an overall decrease in the amount of data streamed from CDN servers, hence, video sites get to save money. For viewers, since there are more sources for the video, they get a more stable download. Also, instead of being stuck with progressive download, where a video must be downloaded linearly from second to second, CloudAcc’s in-browser P2P technology also enables parallel downloads, hence reducing the instances where viewers experience buffer or lag.
To illustrate this with an example, if I started watching Big Bang Theory on tv.sohu.com at 10 p.m. and another viewer opens her browser to watch the same clip at 10.05 p.m., part of the data in my five minutes of video will become available to her. Effectively, she now can get data for her video from Sohu’s servers and me. Should I decide to stop watching and close my browser, she’s unaffected since she can still receive data from the server, or some other peer in the network who is also watching the same video on his internet browser. As a feature of parallel downloading, even if the viewer is currently watching the second minute of the video, she could be downloading the third or tenth minute, or any video segments that she has yet to see.
The graph below illustrates the difference between the amount of streaming that is supported by CloudAcc’s in-browser P2P compared to normal CDN.
The concept is simple but brilliant! CloudAcc has totally flipped the relationship between the number of simultaneous viewing and bandwidth on its head. Traditionally, the more people watching, the more bandwidth needed. But now, with the in-browser P2P technology, the more people watching the same video, the less bandwidth is needed.
Barely over a year old, CloudAcc has achieved impressive success. Understanding the value of cutting bandwidth costs in half, many of China’s top video streaming sites have already adopted CloudAcc technology. In one case they saved a company US$1.4 million in monthly bandwidth costs, while also lowering the instances where viewers experience buffering from 10% down to 5-7%.
The revenue model is to charge for bandwidth and CloudAcc offer is 50% cheaper than other CDN providers like Dnion and China Cache. For companies like Youtube or Hulu wanting to use CloudAcc, it only requires one week and two engineers to set up the service.
CloudAcc also has a classic start-up story that makes them more interesting. The two co-founders, Xuan and Sen were both top computer science graduates from China’s top universities, Tsinghua and the University of Science and Technology China. While both studying for their PhD at Yale University, they began hacking in their dorm rooms just to experiment if they could make in-browser P2P streaming work. After six months they cracked the code and built a P2P technology that can be realized in-browser without any additional installations other than a Flash player. Stumbling upon a huge commercial opportunity, they quit Yale, turned down lucrative offers from Google and Facebook and came back to Beijing to start CloudAcc in January 2011. After much resistance from their parents, they have now raised US$2Million from IDG and have built a fifty person team of the best Chinese computer engineers.
In Japan, by far the world’s biggest market for mobile social games, social card games (social card battle games or social collectible card games) are the most popular genre at the moment. (Note: I am based in Japan, a hardcore gamer, and a consultant focusing on the social gaming industry).
I estimate that during the last 12 months, around 50-70% of the top 20 games on the leading platforms in Japan, GREE and DeNA‘s Mobage, have been social card games.
I understand your question to be if Japan is ahead of the curve and if this popularity can spill over to other markets, i.e. South East Asia.
There are some pointers that indicate this is already the case, at least in the United States. It appears to be both DeNA’s and GREE’s strategy is to see how things pan out in the US before tackling other markets like South East Asia.
So let’s first have a look at how things look like in the US.
Example 1:
In the US App Store, a social card game called Legend of the Cryptids, has peaked at the No. 13 spot in the free app chart on May 13, 2012 (source in Japanese: http://gamebiz.jp/?p=60182).
Legend of the Cryptids is what I would call a typical mobile social card battle game (created by a Japanese company). It has since fallen in the free app chart, but it still holds a respectable position (No. 62) in the top grossing ranking in the US App Store right now (May 16, 2012).
Example 2:
GREE’s first American social game, Zombie Jombie, mixes Japanese and Western game elements and has been very successful – as a social card game.
It was released in the US App Store in March 2012 and peaked at the No. 3 spot in the ranking of the top free apps. Zombie Jombie fell out of the charts quickly, but right now, the game is the No. 16 in the top grossing app ranking. It boasts over 1 million downloads overall.
Example 3:
On Google Play, a social card game developed by a Japanese company and offered in the English Mobage network, has been topping the top grossing rank for about 4 weeks now (source: http://www.insidemobileapps.com/…).
The title, Rage Of Bahamut, is a typical Japanese mobile social card game.
I personally think that these initial success stories confirm my hunch from last year that games belonging to this genre do have a chance outside Japan, not only in the US but also South East Asia.
Gameplay-wise, there shouldn’t be too many differences between the taste of Japanese vs. non-Japanese players in the case of this specific genre. If created in the right way, this genre can produce games that are very addicting and hard to put down, regardless of the player’s nationality or cultural background.
There are physical card games that have been doing very well in the global market for years, with Magic The Gathering being just one example. The gameplay and general structure is, in parts, very similar to mobile social card games.
If your question is if Japanese games belonging to this genre can be successfully ported to other country markets: I think that in this case, the titles must fit a certain design to appeal to a mass market in the US or Europe. The three games mentioned above don’t use manga-esque artwork but rather appeal to Western design tastes – I am doubting that they would be as successful otherwise.
One example for this hypothesis is Spirit Force, which Tokyo-based Drecom rolled out in the US App Store last year: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/s…
This game uses extremely manga-inspired artwork and has not been very successful outside Japan (I am neglecting other factors like marketing efforts or PR but do see a causality here). Great for Japanophiles, but probably not the right way to go to appeal to a broad, global audience.
To conclude, I think that social card games – if executed and marketed in the right way – can catch on in regions outside Japan.
One development I don’t see for the future of social card games in the US or South East Asia is that this genre will be as dominant as in Japan: I think that the level of the popularity social card games are seeing is unique to this country.
E-commerce industry in Indonesia is definitely on the rise. We’ve been seeing a lot of payment gateway supporting the growth and also big name marketplace with big cash. But alas, the majority of people are still selling their products on Facebook. Yes, Facebook!
Facebook was never meant to be a place where people can sell their items but the Indonesian did it anyway. This also happens to Multiply, Friendster and even Blackberry Messenger Groups. Where there’s people gathering, there’s people trying to sell you something.
Let’s take a look at Multiply. The company pivoted from a social networking site to a marketplace because they’re seeing major growth of sellers using Multiply in many Asian countries like Phillipine, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
After the pivot, Multiply is now considered as the largest online social shopping destination in Philippines with over 120,000 sellers targeting about 5 million users. Seeing the huge market in Asia, they actually moved their headquarters to Indonesia and will be concentrating their e-commerce expansion in South East Asia.
Multiply is a big company that works in a big way, but let’s take a look at a smaller business unit: the actual people who sell stuff on social media. Most of the people I know that are selling stuff on social media are young moms. From the information I’ve gathered, they’re claiming to earn $1000-$3000 per month, which is about 10-30 times more than Indonesian minimum wages of $120.
The most popular social media to sell from is Facebook. It’s easy to upload photos and spread the product by tagging everyone you know. Raise your hand if you ever been tagged on a product your friend sells. I had that experience numerous times and it’s pretty annoying. But to my surprise, based on the comments I read, people actually buy them.
The second most popular is Blackberry Messenger Group (BBM Group). Simply because it’s so easy to broadcast message across hundreds of contacts and the ability to save an image to a group is quite a convenient. Blackberry users are BBM-addicts and the fact that more than 5 million Blackberry is already at the hand of Indonesian is another convenient factor to include.
Personally I found that selling on Facebook or Blackberry Messenger Group to be cumbersome. But it’s a lot easier for a lot of people if you factor that they’re already accustomed to the system. E-commerce system like tokopedia may provide a simpler and more direct approach at e-commerce but IMHO it still cannot beat the number of sporadic sellers in Facebook or BBM Group, nor can it defeat the amount of people (millions of potential buyers!) already using the platform.
The use of Blackberry Messenger as a sales tool is not exclusive for the personal sellers, some brands use it as well. We are seeing more and more malls using BBM as a platform to broadcast discounts. How about Brodo Footwear that uses BBM as a customer service channel. Brodo have 2 dedicated blackberry device with over 1500 contacts in total. They claim that more than 50% of sales happened in BBM! That’s quite funny considering they actually have an online store with a decent shopping cart system. Maybe people are just too lazy or prefer a direct communication to an actual person on the other end even if it’s just in a form of text chat.
Social media seller is an interesting phenomenon and like it or not, it is still a popular way to sell stuffs. It may be annoying as hell but until we actually have a platform easy enough to use and wildly adapted enough then people will keep tagging you with their products and broadcast you constantly on BBMs.
*untagged*
Aria Rajasa is the CEO of gantibaju.com, a clothing startup backed by a very strong designer community. His passion in entrepreneurship has gotten him to establish a number of companies in technology and design industries since leaving university.
Aria Rajasa is the CEO of