Key Performance Indicators

It is strange when reading the web and you come across funky connect the dots type of reads. I spend a fair amount of time in Vietnam and have been watching the market closely. I also read Daring Fireball a bunch and appreciate his blend of tech and news. It was a treat today to check his blog to see a link to a Vietnam iPhone app. The app is called CatPaint:

http://catpaint.info/

Strange but true – I guess the weird stuff wins in the nascent Vietnamese iPhone market. As far as I know there is still not an official carrier but the hacking on iPhones in Vietnam is legendary. Even hardware based unlocking as shown here. You see a fair amount of iPhones in Vietnam – even stored dedicated to selling, unlocking and servicing them.

Playing with iPhones in Vietnam I have not seen anything real killer but you will see useful apps related to finding places and people. I like this model and think it has legs – one of the ones I have been following is diadiem which has an iPhone version. There is also Thodia but I don’t think they have an iPhone app yet. Something to watch for.

Lots going on in Vietnam. I was just at Barcamp Saigon and met a lot of cool people. Lots of follow up needed. Hope to be back next month.

Tonight I will be at HackerspaceSG and will write more about the local scene soon!

Some photos from Barcamp Saigon:

The goal was to get to all my countries before the end of the year – tough to do any thoughtful 2010 planning without getting to the places you are making plans for. Check my TripIt for stats. Going from no-flying to flying means I am a peon on Star Alliance again and hoping to get some love before the end of year cutoff.

I was in Manila for a week and did the rounds. Podcast interview here for all the groupies. Manila was an interesting market since it feels like it should be happening more than it is but the startup scene is very small. I think this has to do with the local domination of telecoms, the lack of an angel network and a quiet hacker scene. Very different from being in Singapore or Malaysia where the Government is throwing money all over the place trying to get things going. I need to dig more in Manila and see if we can help get things like Barcamp going.

Speaking of Barcamp – I am in HCMC right now for Barcamp Saigon. Looks to be a cool event! Hoping to dive a little deeper into the Vietnam scene this weekend.

Since I am in Vietnam let’s talk FaceBook – quite the backlash over the new privacy stuff. It is quite the reversal from what FB originally started as. For me, as the site keeps growing, FB is getting less and less useful. The signal to noise ratio just keeps climbing every month. Everyone is trying to use their personal FB accounts to be the next social marketing star. It gets old fast. I think niche networks might start to get more interesting as FB gets less useful.

Seems simpler plays liek Foursquare and gowalla might get more interesting because they help you with what to do and who to do it with. All this could change of course if FB gets more local and makes location based programming easier but for me – I am starting to delete friends on FB more than I am adding them.

Another possible entrant to the location/review game in Singapore. Will be looking it more soon. Seems similar possibly to Koprol. This is an interesting space since the big guys will focus on Europe and Americas while regional guys will try to build something in their home countries. I am waiting for one of the regional guys to try and take the whole region as a defensive play for when the big boys come to town. Question is will they since getting the local info is not easy.

Another possible biz idea for one of these players is rather than being the end user builder there might be a chance to be the pick and shovel dealer for all the various players trying to build social/location/yelp sites. Someone could be the guy offering all the location data and some sort of promo/ad engine around it. Then the other guys concentrate on building the interfaces, social model and grow the user  base. Right now all these guys are struggling with getting local info and building sites. Might be tough.

I think that is it for now. Gotta bunch of work to do but I need to get better with the blog.

cya

ps. Good to see one of the winners from Open Hack Day with his site up and running. If you are into twitter and Indonesia then you will dig this site: http://twiterus.com/

After open Hack Day Jakarta – I went straight over to Vietnam for another week on the road. HCMC (Saigon) for a few days and then Hanoi to close it off. Met a bunch of startup and some of the local VC players. Thanks to the IDG guys for showing me around a bit.

Given freedom of speech issues news type sites are not the order of the day in Vietnam – unlike places in Indonesia where news, community and user generated content are huge.

However there is some cool stuff going on.

For a local map player trying to go the Yelp model check: http://diadiem.com/

For more of a review based site check: http://www.thodia.vn/hcm

Then there is the Moore group building some community stuff and infratructure for other online players: http://moore.vn/en/

For financial stuff there is: Vietstock.com.vn

Football betting: http://www.yeuthethao.com/

Popular women’s site: http://www.webtretho.com/

Leading jobs site: http://www.vietnamworks.com/

Online dictionary: http://vdict.com/

Music and entertainment: http://yeuamnhac.com/cbeta/index_new.php

Also, given the VN FB mess, this local social network site is growing: http://www.zing.vn/

Also – can’t leave out the big kahuna in the online game space: http://www.vinagames.com/

I am sure there are more – was a busy week.

The internet is in pure growth mode but the sites seem to be very locally focused with mostly no English interfaces. I have yet to meet any players who profess to wanting to grow their sites/companies outside of Vietnam. Not sure this is smart or not – it could be the move for now but I think big ideas will need to target the SEA region – not just Vietnam.

In Manila this week, then Thailand and then back to Vietnam.

Location stuff a topic everywhere I go.

carry on!