Technology As Innovator

VNExpress replicated a Reuters’ survey on “The time when people find themselves most happy” here.

On both Reuters’ and VNExpress’ surveys, men are found most happy going online.

They are actually happy online when they response to the survey more than 2.5 times than women do.

Some points to note when reading this statistics:

1. It’s from a survey on a VNExpress, Vietnam’s number 1 online newspaper. Readers from other news don’t see this poll. [Addendum: this poll being on an online newspaper helps attributing the dominating portion of "news" in the result. I thought this deduction was too obvious but certain response proved me wrong]
2. Readers using a RSS Reader who are more tech-savvy don’t see this poll
3. The poll only asks for the most usage from voters, no multiple-choice. Consequence: the result doesn’t reflect the actual time people spend on web
4. Perception: some voters might confuse “activities that take most time” with “activities that add most values”
5. Readers interested in other columns might totally skip this article, let alone scroll down, click and fill in the capcha to vote
6. The survey is not done officially but is only a side poll on a very different article
7. Many people might have voted on “News” to show their support for VNExpress, like the behavior of bookmarking Google
8. I’m quite surprised Online Game was not in the list
9. If VNExpress’ intention for this survey to show that Social Networking is depressing Porn, they might have failed because
   • Porn percentage is 2.4 times that of Social Networking plus Blogging
   • No historical data (i.e. the same survey in 2007) were shown to indicate that Social Networking is really growing over porn
   • Even if (I say if) percentage of porn surfing in 2008 is less than the volume in previous years, absolute number or ‘quality’ of porn surf might not have decreased because obviously there are more Internet users in Vietnam than in previous years
10. Is FPT spreading the good words on social networking to pave the way for its new Social Network? If yes, I wonder why the article misses Online Game - one current FPT business - though.
11. While the scientific validity and reliability of this survey are highly questionable, it can be read in certain ways that prove certain arguments.

Yahoo! just released Yahoo! 360plus Vietnam, the blogging platform-social networking hybrid that is expected to replace its Yahoo! 360.

The Vietnamese version is developed based on its HongKong counterpart, and many R&D activities are done in Singapore.

Additionally, Yahoo! is planning to open its office Vietnam, rather than managing remotely from Singapore like currently.

Overview functionalities

Generally, it takes current features of Yahoo! 360 and merge with functionalities that are common across many blogging platforms.

The server(s) is still located outside Vietnam.

No real innovation has been observed.

It’s worth mentioning that in recent years, Yahoo! has focused more on branding, while Google on products and Facebook on user experience. Result?

About Vietnam market.

There are now 20 million Internet users in Vietnam, most of whom are young people under 25.

The Vietnam market is the 5th largest market of Yahoo!

Vietnamese Internet users depend heavily on Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! 360. The number of Yahoo! 360 accounts is approximately 2 millions, comparing with 5 millions users of this service worldwide.

Yahoo! is trying hard to maintain its user base and seek to acquire even more by launching its new platform.

Yahoo!’s competitors in Vietnam

Social networking

Facebook is increasingly spreading in the English-speaking, tech-savvy communities.

yobanbe from Vina Game

tamtay, a MySpace clone

Vietnamese cyworld

faceViet, a Facebook clone

Blogging

Some, frustrated with the buggy 360, have switched to other blogging platforms including blogger, opera, multiply. A small number of techies endorse WordPress

The local ngoisaoblog service

***

Addendum: my initial feedbacks to Yahoo! 360plus Vietnam team.

Improvables

1. How do I communicate with friends who don’t read Vietnamese with Yahoo! 360plus?
2. No option to return to Blog Homepage but only Master Yahoo! 360plus Homepage
3. No feedback option
4. No FAQs
5. Font size not consistent in Firefox
6. Translation
7. I choose two-column theme with the hope that width of the main column will be larger. However, my assumption was wrong, as width is still fixed.
8. Some formatting HTML tags don’t work. i.e. headings
9. Only jpg images are allowed.
10. No auto-invite option.
11. Javascript not supported

Improvements from Yahoo! 360

1. In Firefox: Enter gives paragraph break, not line break as in Yahoo! 360 (like that of WordPress)
2. Favorites are displayed directly in the blog page.
3. Person tagging in the entry (like that of Facebook)
4. HTML for comment (like that of WordPress)
5. Extraction (like that of WordPress)
6. Edit time for entries (like that of WordPress)
7. Draft (like that of WordPress)
8. Categories (like that of WordPress)