Japanese Tweets Likely Makes Another World Record On Twitter

As expected, the opening of year 2012 on Japanese Twitter was a full stream of new year's greetings. After entering into 2012, Twitter, both site and API, went down by heavy load.

According @dfnt, on unofficial Twitter traffic counting service Tweet Counter showed that the peak tweets at the midnight January 1, 2012 in Japan Standard Time was 16,197 tweets per second.

The same Tweet Counter counted 14,594 tweets when Japanese made the latest official record on an anime movie "Tenkuu no Shiro Laputa"("Castle in the Sky" in US), which was authorized as the record by Twitter official 5 days later. The official number was 25,088 tweets per second.

So, although it is unofficial statistics, as the same measurement says the New Year's Eve tweets were 10% more than the Laputa tweets, Twitter's 2012 began with the largest tweets ever. We will see Twitter's official number soon, and that will be much higher than the numbers recorded in 2011.

Anyway, Happy New Year from Japan! though most of you are still in 2011

Japanese Tweets Likely Makes Another World Record On Twitter

Goodbye 2011, Welcome 2012

2011 will be over in just a few hours, last year was an exciting year for digital, internet, web, mobile and startup scene in Indonesia. In addition to appearing new startup, the year 2011 also marked with several falls of startup and slowly-moving startup.

In this article I want to give a brief overview of some of the interesting things that happened during 2011 in the world of technology, especially startup, and try to propose 4 + 1 predictions that will happen in 2012.

Event, Investor, Community

Beside the dynamic growth and the fall of startup, the one that catch my attention is the technology events that related to the growth of startup. A part of the various events that become a routine event or a new event which presents various updates, these various events are also supported by major brands, such as Nokia or Samsung and Lenovo which also held an event later this year as they are associated with innovation – entrepreneurial that is attached to the startup as well. Not to mention the events are associated with developers, such as events from RIM, Nokia, Blaast, Yahoo! and Google who is targeting the developers or the startups.

There are also regular community based events such as FOWAB, Station, Bancakan, Startuplokal, Subali and various other events which still exist, although there are some events which are not regular as before but their presence still remains to support the startup ecosystem.

The growth of incubators, accelerators, various programs associated with startup (workshop, boot-camp) and also the investor itself -  VCs and angel investors are also taking a significant role in 2011. Local investors and Asia, as well as U.S investor presented and approached various startup to make exploration of investing. Some of them managed to make an investment, but some are not and there are also who are still seeking.

When talking about community, Hackerspace also appeared in various regions; after Bandung, now it appears in Yogyakarta, Surabaya, Malang and Bandung Digital Valley owned by Telkom which officially launched this December. I also heard that hackerspace will popup in other cities. A little note for hackerspace, I would like to see at least one year (assuming the contract period for buildingsoffice space) for their development, whether it will survive, thrive or not.

The events and investors growth should be able to co-exist. Beside announced winners, technology event often provide a pitch session where investors can participate and chose the service or startup that has been attractive to accelerate in service or business. Although certainly not all startup require investment, but at least the event/pitch session could be a way for the investors to see and find startup. In 2011, seems this process isn’t running to its potential, let us see in 2012.

The Learning Year

Aligned with the investor’s growth, 2011 also marked with the startup funding, ranging from game studio, blog ad networks, payment service, network media, social media services, and various startup from various segments.

The increment of the investment amount is predicted with the estimation of the growth that comes from investors such as various program acceleration, workshop, bootcamp, and some events which present independently.

Rama once said in a discussion, that 2011 was marked with falls of startup, in 2012 will also be more and more. Frankly speaking I agree with this; however the important thing is how to study the factors that make they falls or less developed; to analyze it and then formulate another strategy for 2012.

2011 was a startup learning year. The lessons can be seen from the falls, the one who managed to get the investments or the one who survived without any investment. In 2012, there should be more data that can be used as a reference. Despite many falls, others will come with more mature preparation, thus industry can grow.

Macro factor

The important thing to watch are the industry and macro economy, GDP, growth of internet users, the growth of middle class people, and the strategy of large companies in Indonesia that hold the key developments in the ICT area, information that related to this several example must begin to be learned. When we are talking about business, everything is related, and can be mutually connected to the opportunities.

I almost always sceptical with things associated with the government, but strategy policies and regulations issued by the government remain to be a source of information for developing a startup, for example: internet network plan, regulations related to e-commerce, and other things also must begin to be addressed. Nowadays ICT industry grew rapidly, the government would also concern about this. I hope the government can implement policies that support it rather than impede it.

About the developments of the Internet, Aulia wrote a very interesting article about where is Indonesia’s position in the growth of Internet users and market opportunities that may arise from our population. You can read it here and here.

Frankly speaking, we also can’t ignore about social media in Indonesia. 2011 is also the year of social media in Indonesia, besides the user, the various activities that develop with the help of social media continues to grow. Events associated with any social media have more and more presented.

The advertising business that uses social media is also more interesting, and of course, the use of social media for advertising would be more mature in next, and the measurement tools also would be growing. Although digital advertising is still small compared to conventional media, but the growth of mobile users, the internet users and supporting device will continue to develop existing business.

Prediction 2012

Here are some points that I think will become a trend in 2012. The trend could mean the more services in the segment or the additional information about what might be growing and in demand during 2012.

Several points are based on data and analysis that I read, some more are from thinking and instinct (perhaps a bit of assumption) about what I feel and think.

This is a list of 4 + 1; hopefully it can be a source of inspiration and additional information.

1. User Generated Content (UGC)

Although for some reason I don’t like the UGC-based services, but in the reality people in Indonesia likes this services. Well, I’m referring to UGC-based services. This service uses the ways or methods of UGC for expanding their services. Some examples that appear in 2011 are BisTip, Sribu, OrderKaos, niche social networking and various other services.

Another factor that could be considered is how the user’s interest to obtain income using the UGC-based services. The more and more people access the internet. They are also trying to find income opportunities and needing additional income channel opportunities. Freelancers are increasingly growing. For example, in BisTip, or Sribu, users can use the site and earn additional income.

2. Mobile Games

Although game is not synonymous with mobile, but I see in Indonesia, mobile and gaming are two combinations that are difficult to separate. A lot of mobile users are looking for the latest gadgets. Games on the other hand, despite social media that has always attracted Indonesian users.

Many investors are looking for a mobile game developer or studio to get in their portfolio. Game has become a global trend, especially to those who are into the mobile realm. On the other hand the awareness to make the studio also higher. Game developers in Indonesia (including programmer, artist, producer, music director, etc.) have an outstanding quality. This will also trigger the emergence of local game.

In 2011 the support brands like Nokia could also spur the growth of the gaming world. Many success stories will emerge this year (I hope). It could be an attraction for local developers to make games or set up a game studio. Not to mention the success story or opportunities from the developers who developed games for iOS, Android, RIM – BB and Blaast that was already soft-launched this month.

Speaking about the brand, I heard Samsung will also be more aggressive again to approach and ask the developers to provide their applications in the Samsung ecosystem (especially Android) next year. This would be interesting because the gaming applications have heavier level of competition but it has fewer barriers to be known by the user. Games are more attractive to users.

Not to mention the upper and middle-class people behaviour and maybe even below that has begun to buy a tablet, especially parents who want to provide a play-tool for their children. The game intended for children also have a great opportunity.

3. Entertainment – Videos and Music

One more segment that never seems to be abandoned by users Indonesia is entertainment: video, music, audio visual. DailySocial wrote some articles on music. I also agreed with what has been expressed in those various articles. Music is still wide open to conquer by, even though it’s not easy. However with the right strategy, it will have a chance to succeed.

Music also seems to seek new form and way to market in a form of RBT – SMS (Ring Back Tones – SMS). Although for me the more important is how to create an ecosystem, integrated service that is easy to use but has a value added service that can add the consumption behaviour which has been owned by the user. Music lovers have their own behaviour, digital downloads that are developed must be in accordance with their behaviour while it’s also educating potential new users. The process should be easy to enjoy music and not difficult for user from the purchase, save and listen or even enjoy music in their several device. The mobile device must also be included as consideration in developing a music service.

For me video service might be also having a chance to be a trend in 2012, or at least it will grow. Market share for this is still wide open; for example Viki invited filmmakers Indonesia to provide film in their service. I also once wrote about Buttonijo services that also provide video for purchasing purpose.

A part of internet speed and piracy factor but with the right strategies and tactics, the Internet could be one of medium to showcase video works or even video selling-based products. The opportunity is still quite large.

4. Niche Commerce

2011 also became an interesting year for growth and development of e-commerce. The player with the support of large banks or funds also entered this segment. This is including some with network in the world or Asia.

I see that for startup; e-commerce trends that will appear is not just about social commerce, the word ‘social’ seems to have become the ‘default’. I see that e-commerce is entering a specific segment – a niche that will grow, especially fashion that targets young adult or young designers.

For example, Blibli has included local brand products for young segment, thent here also Localbrand.co.id. In the past distro (distribution outlet) or local brands have their own sites, but now there’s an emerging marketplace that provides a variety of products in one place. Fashion is one product that may not be dead expired, thus the growth of these services can continue to appear.

5. The emergence of a New Startup

This final point reaffirmed several things that I wrote in my early writings, 2011 is year of investors, incubators, workshop program, bootcamp, etc. It‘s added with various events and competitions. Next year the winners will begin to go into the test, the ‘honeymoon period’ will soon be over and they will be confronted with the actual conditions that exist in the industry. Some of it may get fund, and others may developing their own business. Thus, 2012 is an exciting year to record, analyze and study about the conditions of the local digital industries especially startup.

–

That is a glimpse of my writing about 2011 and what I expect in 2012. I certainly don’t recommend that you trust 100%, it is not good. It’s only as a source of additional information which may be an inspiration. And of course, the comments field is open to a good discussion.

It also became my last article in 2011, thanks for a great year, applaud for the founder, developers, investors, users and other parties that participated startup ecosystem and develop the IT industry in Indonesia, see you and Happy New Year 2012.

Thanks to @errithethird for his ilustration in this article.

Top China Stories Today

VANCL Losing More Than $95M in 2011? VANCL is said to lose more than US$ 95 million in this year while the online apparel site lost an aggregate of over US$ 39 million in the last three years. Lately a rumor broke that the company incurred a heavy loss worth over US$ 317 million. Chen Nian, founder and CEO disclaimed the rumor in the wake of VANCL’s raising of US$ 232 million in Series F round of funding.

VANCL generated US$ 19 million, US$ 47 million and US$ 190 million in sales in 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively. Earlier this year, Chen once bragged that VANCL will record RMB 10 billion (US$ 1.58 million) in sales.

Douban New Homepage Highlights Recommendation: Douban, the hipsters’ heaven announced today to revamp its homepage in the coming weeks with a  focus on contents recommendation while Duoban Shuo, (豆瓣说 or Douban Talks) as a service will be discontinued.

Douban’s move highlighted the service’s moving closer towards algorithm-based recommendation feature while stepping away from inappropriate noisy-making social features, in a time when everyone is talking about Sina Weibo and social media, the step takes courage.

Sohu Weibo to Sign Users: Sohu Weibo said it will sign contracts with all users to protect their contents posted on the service. Sohu will help promote any book, film and TV series that comes from Sohu Weibo posts. That’s what Charles Zhang said Sohu Weibo would be growing at explosive pace next year?

Saapaa.com Shutting down: After nearly two years in operation, Saapaa.com, the Chinese Swoop announced to close down as of today. Similar to Swoopo, a bidding fee acution site where purchased credits were used to make bids, Saapaa provides items at lower-than-cost price that everyone can bid for.

Lashou Debuts Coupon Program: Lashou, the Chinese group buying service launched its coupon service hui.lashou.com lately, covering Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Dongguan, Shenzhen and Xi’an for the time being and is expected to branch out into more cities.

Related posts:

1. HTC Considering Buying WebOS; 360buy Goes Public Due To Short On Money?
2. Virtual Gaming Items Marketplace 5173 Going Public; Xiaomi Mobile Losing Paint Already; Ku6 Pivoting Towards UGC Model
3. Tencent Teams Up With HTC To Launch QQ Phone; Baidu Online Recruiting Site Baijob.com Up

Alibaba to Launch Open Platform Serving Group Buying Players

Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce giant announced this Wednesday the Open Strategy for its group buying arm Juhuasuan, which just got spun off in this October. In next year, Juhuasuan will be launching an open platform which other industry players could leverage for better traffic and broader audience. Meituan, Gaopeng and Manzuo are among the first batch to go onboard.

The site will also be moved to an independent domain name – juhuasuan.com – from the current ju.taobao.com.

Alibaba revealed some data regarding Juhuasuan’s operation in 2011, here’s some highlights:

Launch: March 22, 2011

Spin-off: October, 2011

Transaction volume: RMB 10 billion plus (US$ 1.58 billion)

Daily Uniques: 12 million

Users: more than 10 million

Funding: RMB 1.2 billion (US$ 190 million)

Offering Local Business: in 41 cities

Winter Sets in for Group Buying? Alibaba Doesn’t Think So

With an unbroken string of news like shutting down service, retrenching from blind expansion, shedding off headcount, counterfeit products and the list can goes on and on, with all those unfortunate news, it seems to many that the spring has long gone and winter is about to set in.

However, Shao Xiaofeng, secretary-general of Alibaba remarked that

“Group buying is not in winter, and not the case in the next three years.”

According to iResearch, the Beijing-based think tank that in 2011 China’s group buying business will have a cumulative transaction volume of over RMB 19.8 billion (US$ 3.1 billion) while Juhuasuan will claim 50% of the market share. Probably that’s where Shao’s confidence comes from.

Shao Xiaofeng, secretary-general of Alibaba. 

Photo Credit: TechWeb

Related posts:

1. Alibaba Spins off Group Buying Platform with Big Ambition
2. Gaopeng Accused Over Counterfeit Tissot Watch
3. Meituan Snags up Former Alibaba VP as COO

Japanese Carriers Begs Not To Use Cellphone For 2 Hours Around New Year’s Eve Midnight

Telecommunications Carriers Association with all 5 Japanese cellphone carriers NTT Docomo, KDDI au, Softbank Mobile, Wilcom and e-Access(who runs e-Mobile) issued release on December 21 [J], ask their users not to call or e-mail around and after the midnight of 2012's new year's eve.

"Rabbit's last, and dragon's first request" line is from Chinese Zodiac, as 2011 was a year of rabbit and 2012 is dragon.

How active Japaneses' greeting after the New Year's eve may be already known by the incident they recorded the Twitter's world record last year.

Docomo's SP mail glitch in December was reportedly caused by too much traffic on regular media, though some online tech media point out that it is the fault of the system design (Docomo uses IP address to identify mail users). For carriers, asking their customers not using cellphone might be the cheapest preparation.

via Hatena Bookmark News [J]

Japanese Carriers Begs Not To Use Cellphone For 2 Hours Around New Year’s Eve Midnight

Twitcmap – Twitter-based Masssive Comic Market Directory

Twitcmap [J], run by a illustration sharing community Tinami [J], is a web service to try to make a huge map of the world's largest self-publishing comic fair "Comic Market" [J], which is held twice in a year in Tokyo, in a user-generated style with utilizing Twitter.

Comic Market official says that there are over 35,000 circles set their booths during 3 days convention. On this Twitcmap, over 11,000 of them registered their booth location, with their circle name, illustration, description and Twitter account.

If you log in and register your circle, you can find location of other circles which you follow on Twitter. As those small circles socialize each other, and give each other small helps such like lending hands when their friends circle have too many purchaser lining up, this kind of directory is useful.

The 81th Comic Market is running from 29th to today at Tokyo Big Sight.

Twitcmap – Twitter-based Masssive Comic Market Directory

The best of 2011

We are now less than 24 hours to 2012 and it’s a really good time to reflect on some of the lessons learnt throughout the year. Yup, 2011 has been an eventful one for e27. We did our first ever Satellites for Echelon, had a great time traveling around Asia and meeting new people and saw Facebook, Akamai and Research In Motion starting to pay more attention to Asia.

To cap of 2011, I thought I’ll summarize some of the interesting lessons that would definitely be useful to carry into 2012. Here they are with some of my own thoughts on them.

To attract foreign venture capital, one must first have a vibrant local angel/investor community

This was talking to TiE Global Chairman, Ashok Rao, and investor Anil Khatod who explained that how foreign venture capitals gauge the attractiveness of a tech startup community is based on how active the local investors are. Take for example India, where a lot of successful, local entrepreneurs are reinvesting their money into the local tech startup community and has drawn the attention of many US-based investment firms who have since set up local offices.

Running a startup is not about success, it’s about minimizing failures

Probably the best advice of the year came from Amobee’s CEO, Trevor Healy. This probably holds more weight in our Asian culture where failure is heavily frowned on. At first, I didn’t understand how important this idea was, until I gave it more thought. My opinion is that if you run a startup focusing only on succeeding, you end up getting let down because doing a startup is hard and you have a high probability of failing. However, if you drive your startup with a more pessimistic outlook on your chances, but make every possible effort to minimize failures, you tend to be more driven, careful and satisfied with small wins that allows you to move on. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. At the same time, entrepreneurs should not only be judge by their successes, but also by the amount of failures they have managed to skirt, intelligently. Failure is unavoidable at times as sometimes the situation may not be favorable, the important thing is that you did your best to get out of a sticky situation.

Don’t be blindly in love with your idea, be ready to adapt and change

Anuj Khanna Sohum of Affle had this advice to give during an interview with e27. A lot of times, entrepreneurs think they have the best idea in the world. Somtimes, like Mark Zuckerberg, they are right. Most of the times, the idea requires some tweaking to get it there. There’s a thin line on trusting your instincts against strong criticism and objections that your idea will work, and listening to the feedback and making the necessary changes.

So, we hope all our readers have enjoyed the content that we have covered throughout the year. We will be looking forward to more exciting times in 2012. If you have any leads on something you would like us to cover, or want us to find out more, do drop us a note at tip[at]e27.sg. Our blog is also open for guest posts. We have been engaging some key individuals throughout the region to help bring their knowledge to our readers and are actively searching for more. Do enjoy the last of 2011 and have a great countdown to welcome 2012. We’ll see you then!

The future of Angry Bird – Hello Kitty: Part II

Continue from our last story about Angry Birds and its developer, Rovio.

The 52nd game

Rovio was started by three students from Helsinki University of Technology (currently Aalto University School of Science and Technology), Niklas Hed, Jarno Väkeväinen, and Kim Dikert. In 2003, they participated in a mobile game development competition at the Assembly demo party sponsored by Nokia and HP. They won the competition and Niklas asked Peter Vesterbacka, who was HP’s representative, what they should do afterwards. Peter said, “You should form a company and make many mobile games.”

So, the trio started making games. Firstly, it was for other companies. “We learn a lot using others’ money.” And then, they made they own. Finally, in December 2009, they launched their 52nd game, Angry Birds and became famous world-wide.

Startup Sauna

“Angry Birds is not a overnight success,” said Peter. He encourages young people to try and may one day, just like the trio in Finland and found their own dream come true. Today, Peter consults young entrepreneurs via a startup organization called, Aaltoes, or Aalto Entrepreneurship Society in full. It is one of Europe’s largest and most active entrepreneurship community. “We gather the most talented students and researchers to create more startups and build international connections in and around Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland,” said Antti Ylimutka, one of Aaltoes’ Board Member.

Based in Finland, where Sauna is favourite pastimes for locals, Aaltoes’ startup event is called Startup Sauna. According to Antti, they are expanding the tradition to Asia and will have a Startup Sauna event organized in Shanghai Tongzhi Uninversity.

Angry Birds next stop – Shanghai

Rovio is also expanding to Asia. And it will setup an office in Shanghai, the first one outside of its headquarter in Finland. “China is our second largest market after America, and it is growing fast,” said Peter. Out of the 500 million downloads Angry Birds has recorded, 100 million was from China. It is expected to hire 50 people, doing everything from developing games, to marketing, to doing animation, finding manufacturers to make physical goods, etc.

“Next year is the Year of Dragon. We will make an Angry Birds special edition for Year of Dragon,” said Peter, “In fact, we have done special edition of Chinese theme before – it was for the Mooncake Festival. It was a global distribution. Just image, for the first time 10 million of people outside of China have heard of the Mooncake Festival. We have even launched Angry Birds Mooncakes.”

In the future, Rovio will incorporate more Chinese favour in its products. “We want to be local. We are happy to learn,” said Peter, “We want to be more Chinese than Chinese companies.”

Related posts:

1. The future of Angry Bird – Hello Kitty: Part I
2. Dianping: Mixing the Secret Sauce of Reviews, LBS and Group-buying
3. Eight Chinese Instagram-like Photosharing Apps

Insync’s cheeky public re-launch

Echelon alumni Insync has been making big improvements, albeit quietly, since they last open for public sign ups. And, they seem to be ready to open their sign ups to the public, again. This time, with some cheekily designed home page.

If you are interested to find our more about Insync, do check out SGEntrepreneur and James Chan’s reviews on the latest version of the product. In short, Insync is like a desktop application for Google Apps that makes accessing and finding things like Google Documents much easier which can be done on your desktop, Mac or Windows. Enough said, why don’t you head on over to check it out? In the mean time, below are the three designs that I have seen so far. Watch out Dropbox, Insync is trying to steal your love, cheaply :D

Livestar Securities Erased All Database By Human-caused Mistake, Orders Went Away

Livestar Securities Co., Ltd., a Japanese online brokerage service issued a released to apologize its trouble started around 10 a.m., during trading time on December 27.

Livestar Securities web transaction service was completely inaccessible over 4 hours from 10 a.m. to 2:05 p.m.

In their announcement, the trouble was caused by an outsourced company removing all data on its database server "artificially". And unknown amount of orders issued by the trouble time were lost.

Livestar Securities Erased All Database By Human-caused Mistake, Orders Went Away