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
- How do I communicate with friends who don’t read Vietnamese with Yahoo! 360plus?
- No option to return to Blog Homepage but only Master Yahoo! 360plus Homepage
- No feedback option
- No FAQs
- Font size not consistent in Firefox
- Translation
- 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.
- Some formatting HTML tags don’t work. i.e. headings
- Only jpg images are allowed.
- No auto-invite option.
- Javascript not supported
Improvements from Yahoo! 360
- In Firefox: Enter gives paragraph break, not line break as in Yahoo! 360 (like that of WordPress)
- Favorites are displayed directly in the blog page.
- Person tagging in the entry (like that of Facebook)
- HTML for comment (like that of WordPress)
- Extraction (like that of WordPress)
- Edit time for entries (like that of WordPress)
- Draft (like that of WordPress)
- Categories (like that of WordPress)
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Tags of this article: 360,acquisition,blog,blogger,cyworld,facebook,faceviet,hongkong,How to better Communication,How to better Wordpress writing,innovation,internet,language,localization,market,myspace,opera,social-networking,vietnam,vietnamese,vinagame,web-2.0,yahoo!,yobanbe.
Last update April 26, 2008
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April 26th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
[...] arsenalist wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptYahoo!’s competitors. 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 … [...]
April 27th, 2008 at 1:16 am
very quick review. thanks Tai
September 6th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
[...] 360plus started of in April 26, 2008. [...]
October 3rd, 2008 at 4:27 pm
[...] fact, Yahoo!’s recent blogging platform for Hongkong and Vietnam imitated different features from Facebook (friend tagging), WordPress, Windows Live Spaces or [...]