When Yahoo! 360 closed down, I ebullient promoted WordPress and Blogger to all who wanted to find a good blogging platform.
People with professional intention stayed with WordPress & Blogger.
But one thing I had predicted and feared has come true. Those who write personal slowly & silently migrate to the uninspiring, plain and boring 
Notes application on Facebook.
What’s the moral?
- Convenience of distribution
- Social graph matter
- Behaviors and preferences are dynamic and can be changed by a superior product
- It is when one thing becomes a daily trivial consuming good that it grows powerful. Think Facebook. Think Microsoft. Think FMCG.
What many users had been complaining for the past years but they turned out users of Notes
WordPress
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360, blogger, blogging, consumption, convenience, distribution, facebook, fmcg, How to better Wordpress writing, platform, social-graph, yahoo!
- They regain focus by releasing the new search with local search.
- They put on the negotiate the crucial contract with Microsoft to prolong the search war saga.
- They trim off “bad Yahoo!”.
- They save costs on R&D by cloning Tumblr for their new service Meme.
- They regained email market share with new improvements to Yahoo! Mail.
- And they impose higher alpha than expected.
Welcome back on track, Yahoo!
Uncategorized
| alpha, clone, mail, meme, microsoft, price, r&d, search, share, tumblr, yahoo!
Theoretically, it is sensible for a Profile to be the center of a wide range of social features and the social platform. Just why Yahoo! has Yahoo! Profile for its Open Strategy.
Nevertheless, major updates have been realized in Yahoo! Mail.
Firstly, the front page now includes updates from a user’s connections.
Then applications start to appear in Yahoo! Mail.
It is reasonable too why Yahoo! Mail is an ideal destination for such updates. People will more likely login their inbox than in their “profile”. Plus, Yahoo! Mail being the top email service is still Yahoo!’s ace in communication. Think about profiles, why would one want to login their profile while they are having a Facebook?
After all, it’s a bit confusing as to what kind of updates I expect to see in Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Profile. Nevertheless, should Yahoo! concentrate their efforts in just one. If so, may I suggest Yahoo! Mail?
Yahoo! Meme, the tumblelog service originally launched in Portugese, rolled out its English interface.
This won’t pose a threat to Twitter, but to Tumblr.
Especially in Vietnam, where Yahoo! Messenger still plays the center role of communication on the internet. If Yahoo! integrate Meme and Messenger, definitely the adoption rate for Vietnamese users will be high.
Frankly, Yahoo! Meme can’t be compared with Tumblr in product innovation and features, but network effect plus simplicity give Yahoo! a good starting point.
Let’s hope Yahoo! Meme can stand the load of millions, unlike its crippled elder sister Yahoo! 360.
If you’re interested, follow me at meme.yahoo.com/taitran
Introduction
Why Zing is better off in its competition against Facebook
It had been an underlying assumption before mid-2009 that any attempt to enter the social network market in Vietnam would have involved a direct competition with Yahoo! 360 - the king that once was.
Zing, a division of VinaGame, used to have yobanbe, zingcity under its portfolio in this competition.
After the demise of Yahoo! 360 in July 2009, Facebook has been rapidly conquering Vietnamese users as predicted nearly one year ago.
Facing this threat, Zing positions itself as a local counter force against Facebook’s invasion with their pitch Zing Me.
This article points out how the competition with Facebook would make Zing a better player than it was in its old fight with Yahoo! 360.
| The fight with Yahoo! 360 |
The race with Facebook |
| Product level |
- Yahoo! 360 has never been a good product. Every feature of Yahoo! 360 was in the middle of the road: incomplete, buggy, unmeticulous.
- So then, one of the few reasons to explain why it dominated the Vietnam market was network effect: Yahoo! Messenger automatically drew users to the blogging service in 2006.
- When Zing was competing with Yahoo! 360, there were almost nothing on product level to compete.
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- Facebook is totally different. It is currently the strongest, and the tribal leader.
- A competition with Facebook would be a straight battle for Zing Me in terms of product. Zing Me can extend to the fullest their product capability.
- Plus, Zing Me can simply clone or localize some features of Facebook, and they have already done for some.
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| Market penetration |
- It is estimated that Yahoo! 360 was having over 1 million users.
- This is small compared to the number of Internet users in Vietnam and the growing young generation.
- While competing for market share was hard enough, all players could have done better if the pie was larger.
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- Facebook has come to dispel some old beliefs about social networking. It is fully armed with a whole range of weapons under its portfolio to the young and curious users in Vietnam.
- The result is that more people, who previously were ignoring blogging and commenting, are being lured into other things that Facebook has to offer: peer-powered games, peer-pressured quizzes. The direct effect is that the social network pie is enlarged for all.
- This would in turn benefit all players in the industry, including Zing Me. Growing while fighting has never been this sweet.
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| Business model |
- Yahoo! 360 consumed Yahoo! resources.
- Playing around with it lead to few feasible monetization idea.
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Conclusion
This article inevitably compared different products in a bit clumsy way, but the point is to prove how Zing would benefit from its competition with Facebook, rather than the old fight with Yahoo! 360. The result would be that Zing’s capability would be strengthened and the market would in turn be enlarged as a side effect of the battle.
My best luck to Zing Me.
P.S
If you’re interested, you may want to add me on Facebook and Zing Me to keep track of my progression with both.
On Facebook: Tai Tran
On Zing Me: Tran Tuan Tai
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