Web 2.0 Asia

Cyworld "Minilife", aka Cyworld 3D, is about to start closed beta service. They are accepting up to 500,000 closed beta users (about 2% of their current user base of 22 million). Cyworld Minilife is a Second Life-like virtual 3D social network service, and is expected to launch in June this year. So far I'm not that impressed, but will deliver updates anyway.

In Korea, you can check out the gas price on the web in advance before you fill up your car. The government-operated site, Opinet, offers a near real-time price comparison service for the nation's gas stations.
 


For those who are always on the move, this feature will soon become available on mobile and in-car navigation. So the age-old "future scenario", where we drive our cars around and find shopping and price information around us in real time, doesn't seem too distant to finally become reality.

It's been some months since I wrote an open letter on this blog, proposing the first-ever Asia Web Conference (the final name of the conference is TBD).

Since that post, I've been talking to bloggers and web experts in Asia, in an "under the water" fashion. And within some weeks (early this year), we had kickstarted the project - here's a brief update.

We now have the following people as the organizers for the Asia Web Conference:

• Angus Lau (852 Signal, Hong Kong)
  
• Benjamin Joffe (Plus8Star, China)
• Bernard Moon (Silicon Moon, US)
• Lu Gang (Mobinode, China)
• John S. Kim (Paprika Lab, Korea)
• Tangos Chan (China Web 2.0 Review, China)
  
• Chang Kim (Web 2.0 Asia, Korea)
  

If you follow blogs about Asian web industry, you should be familiar with these names already. They are some of the best and brightest guys, I'm sure.

As you can see here, we need oranizers from other countries - most notably missing is Japan. If there's anyone reading this blog post from Japan who's interested in making this conference happen, come aboard! Just roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty, it will be fun.

For the last several weeks, we've been exchanging various ideas about the conference via Google Docs (which we're still doing). We recently put together the possible list of speakers and sponsors, and we now have 54 A-list potential speakers on our list. Of course this doesn't mean we'll have all 54 of them on our conference, but I'm sure we'll get some of the best speakers you can find in and out of Asia in our conference.

The central theme of this conference will be "social". We used a couple of criteria when we decided the conference theme: a) the topic should be about an area where Asia has unique strengths, b) the topic should be important/trendy enough to attract participants/speakers/sponsors, and c) it should be where each Asian country has its own market-dominating player, so that some nice cross-country comparisons can be made. We came up with "mobile" and "social" as two best possible topics, and we finally chose "social". Social isn't such a terribly narrow topic either, but the topic shouldn't have to be too restrictive either, we believe.

We still haven't decided on the venue. Well, we didn't even decide which country to hold the conference in, for that matter - I'm still rooting for China but there's the Olympics logistics issue, and the visa requirement doesn't help either. I'm also looking at Korea too, part of the reason being I'm kind of being the main guy pushing this and Korea is my home turf where I can get some help from companies and even the government more easily.

As always, what matters most is the money side. We should find sponsors and come up with the financial plan. To do that, we need big-name speakers, and to do that, we should finalize the venue, dates, and the program, and to do that... well, there's still tons of work to be done.

But in any case, I still firmly believe that the Asia Web Conference is very much in order, as the world's internet industry increasingly sets its eyes on Asia, both for market opportunities (ie. China and India) and for inspirations (e.g. the digital "craziness" of Japan and Korea). Heck, I personally met two big-name Silicon Valley CEOs within three days in Korea!

This was just a brief update, and I'll keep you posted as we go along and get more updates. Of course, if you are interested to be an organizer/speaker/sponsor, don't hesitate to contact me or anyone listed above.

Here's the video of my interview with Myspace co-founder and CEO, Chris DeWolf, and also with Travis Katz and Sung Lee, both VPs at Myspace. (Sung is heading up the Asian operation of Myspace.)

Do you know what keeps Myspace CEO up at night? The fact that there are local competitors in every country, and that he has to keep track of about 30 of them.



As a tech blogger, this was really a golden opportunity for me - Well, it's not like you get to interview Myspace CEO every day, right?

The interview went very smoothly. I'm not necessarily saying this was a good thing though. In retrospect, I think the interview could have carried more "sting", with perhaps more jokes and curve balls (ie. hard questions) thrown. To defend myself a bit, somehow the settings were not entirely conversational - I suspect this was because at the end of every sentence we all had to wait for the translator to translate the entire paragraph.

By the way, it's worth noting that more and more Silicon Valley CEOs are visiting Korea. Interview with Chris marked the second time I met a big-name Silicon Valley CEO during the span of three days (the first such meeting was with Max Levchin of Slide.com.)

So who should I interview the next time in Korea, Google founders maybe? :)

Nurien Software finally announced they raised $15 million from investors in the US and China:

(Via Venturebeat) ...The company lets users create their own avatars and then socialize in a variety of topic areas. Its service has been in development for three years. Investors include Beijing-based Northern Light Venture Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and QiMing Venture Partners...

I said "finally" because I knew about their funding from a while ago. Tim Kim, VP/co-founder of Nurien who pulled this deal after pitching to virtually all major VCs in the Valley (and many in China), is a friend of mine.

This is actually not the first time Tim raised a big round of venture financing from Silicon Valley investors. He played a key role in Realtime Worlds' $50 millon second round, which was announced not too long ago. The thing is, Tim and his company were initially part of Realtime Worlds, a UK/US-based game publisher, but they had spun out to found Nurien and went through a fresh round of venture funding.

People say it's nearly impossible for non-Valley companies (except for those in China and India maybe) to raise venture funding from the Valley investors. But maybe it is possible - here's the guy who did it, not once but twice.

Of course, Tim wouldn't have been able to raise $15 million without a killer product. What Nurien provides is, in essence, a 3D platform on which various activities, such as dancing, chatting, fashion shows, and gaming, can take place. Perhaps a video is worth a thousand words - Go check out their intro video, which will blow you away, and you'll immediately get what they are up to. (Cannot embed the video, so I'm instead providing the link.)

KT (Korea Telecom) announced it will start offering a $3-per-month unlimited wireless internet access plan for the users of its "NESPOT" WLAN hotspot service.

This means that the iPod touch users who have Skype account can practically use their iPod touch as a phone (via Skype), at only three bucks a month. (Plus your Skype fees, of course, but those won't be huge).

Well, given the ubiquity of NESPOT coverage, at least in Korea, who needs an iPhone when they can use iPod touch + Skype + $3/month NESPOT?

(Tipped by Joyce Kim) Rain, a Korean popstar, is yet again getting the most votes for this year's Time magazine 100 Most Influential People list.


Joyce calls Rain "...the biggest guy in Asia, like Michael Jackson and JT rolled up into one. Mega mega star in Asia..." (Who's JT by the way? Oh, a quick googling tells me it must be Justin Timerlake - he comes out on top). 

Rain received the most votes last year - Notice (the venerable) Steve Jobs was at a mere #11.


Is Rain really the most influential person of the world? Is he really making this world a better place to live? I don't know about that. (For his fans, I'm sure he is.) But the vote clearly shows that, when it comes to online voting, no one really beats the internet-savvy Koreans. Although most Korean fans of Rain might not understand English, they won't have problem recognizing how to push Rain to the top on the online voting. They'd do the same even if the sites are in Russian.

Joyce's service, Soompi.com, encourages its users to go vote for Rain - If you happen to be a Rain fan (which I highly doubt given the audience of this blog), here's the link for you to show some love for Rain.

Neowiz, a major internet company of Korea (providing games, chats, and other services), launched a web startup incubating/investment program called NeoPly (Link in Korean).


Neoply is a venture incubating program that provides backend infrastructure and mentoring service to promising web startups. Neoply is similar to an already existing venture support program by Softbank Korea, called Litmus (My previous post about Litmus is here).

I think Neoply carries significant meaning as it's being worked up by an established, first generation web company. Sometimes the best people who can guide fledgeling startups are actually the ones who had been there, done that. 

Meanwhile, Litmus announced a partnership with Korea's #2 portal, Daum. With this partnership, Daum will provide technial (and other sorts of) support to Litmus startups; Also, some of those startups might even be able to deploy their product on Daum service properties such as blog or Daum Cafe (Web BBS service). This will be a boon to the startups, as often what they need more than money is the initial market traction.

Auction, Ebay's Korean operation, announced that the personal data of over 60% of its total users had been hacked by a foreign hacker.

This means that the personal information, such as IDs, password, social security number, and even (for some users) credit card information, of over 10 million people have been hacked and leaked to someone who might do what God only knows with those personal data. As an auction user, I'm quite concerned myself as well.

This one's a quickie: Cyworld added some new features to its minihompy service in Korea.

Multiple templates: Cyworld now offers multiple templates for those who use their minihompies primarily as a photo album or a review blog.


Image editor: Cyworld provides a Picnik-like flash photo editor.


Bigger screen real estate: As users increasingly grow uncomforable with the confined space of Cyworld minihompies, Cyworld now offers an increased screen space.