More Vietnamese Internet players are joining the Facebook cloning bandwagon, and there are 15 billion reasons they may end up like their Chinese counterpart Xiaonei.
Coming earliest to the field should be GuongMat.com, an exact Facebook clone from design to functions to everything. It is rumored GuongMat is put up by an oversea Vietnamese. GuongMat’s advantage is its clean and intuitive interface and easy to use Facebook functions like photo and message. However, that’s all what GuongMat have on its face. With these assets, GuongMat might have 240 million improvements ahead before becoming a Vietnamese Facebook.
Tamtay.vn is the second guy entering the field. Actually when entering Tamtay, you should expect a buffet of web 2.0 mess, from video clips to photos to everything you can imagine. The only thing why I categorize Tamtay as a Facebook clone is its recent redesign to look exactly like Facebook. Tamtay is in a serious identity crisis, and until their management can pronounce concisely in one sentence what business model it is hatching, another 240 million improvements should be worthless.
Interesting enough is new comer FaceViet, which will launch amid fanfare from this November 20. Khoa Pham assembled a very interesting feature on FaceViet through his interview with FaceViet’s CEO, so I would not elaborate more on this. From my point of view, FaceViet has a cool name and a pretty design, taking its dark red as signature color (although this makes the site too feminine). I would say this is a very smart identity move, as it is exactly opposite to Facebook. Key functions of FaceViet are news feed/mini feed, photos, events, super wall etc. FaceViet’s clever product strategy should make it one of the first to earn Vietnamese Facebook clone marquee.
It is rumored VC Corp, one of Vietnam’s leading web 2.0 players with popular Baamboo and Sannhac services, is also busy preparing a Facebook clone. This might create a lot of difficulties for FaceViet, as VC Corp is well known for their technology capabilities and smart marketing concepts.
The face off between Vietnamese Facebook clones therefore will just intensify in the coming time, but it is easy to see a future between the two horses: FaceViet and VC Corp. FaceViet have assembled a group of passionate and well-educated management team. It has done some early good work in brand identity and technology platforms. Meanwhile, VC Corp’s people have a team of very experienced managers but not just simply theoretical knowledge. They well know the pulse of the market, and is a deep pocket player as well. One more thing that FaceViet can not match VC Corp is VC Corp’s unrivalled reach through its key web properties. My prediction is that VC Corp will soon surpass FaceViet in terms of customer acquisition and become the No. 1 Facebook clone in Vietnam.
A subjective prediction it is, but any winner in this red sea battle will find it in another challenge: how to find the vitality for its Facebook clone. I would stand by my viewpoint that Facebook is uniquely a US phenomenon. Any attempts to replicate Facebook in another culture and country are risky enough. All Vietnamese Facebook clone should look to neighbouring China to find heavily VC-backed Xiaonei, the most successful Facebook clone ever in Asia, as a good example. Vietnam, like China, has its own cultural context and any attempts to replicate international business model with “top-down” approach rather than from “bottom-up” demand analysis should have to pay a considerable price tag.
Maybe in one years’ time, all my predictions will be proved utterly wrong. In that case, forgive me for a viewpoint that has taken Vietnamese culture, context and consumer insights too far in business strategizing.
Very interesting analysis. Thanks Harry for a thoughtful post. I would agree that the competition now is between FaceViet and VCcorp “future to be announced product”. (The other websites make me feel like a pretty coat but no spirit inside)
VCcorp is surely one of the power horses in Vietnam with IDG backed-up, and they have the manpowers that they need: management team, engineers, PR, web alliances. etc.. I haven’t seen their product yet so I will not say anything more than this.
On the other hand, FaceViet adopts the facebook model in the full extends with well-designed website, easy to navigate user interface and as you said “a group of passionate and well-educated management team.” In this industry, we all know that the people is what drive one good idea into a successful product.
Will a power horse win or will it be another hi-tech Cinderella story? I will have my eyes wide opened and seriously can’t wait to see when the battle settled.
I totally agree with you two about FaceViet and VC Corp. If* VC Corp. is going to make a clone of facebook ( I use if because we are not sure whether they are going to make one or mayb with all the fund they got from IDG , they may acquire faceviet) then we will have 2 horses race.
It is very interesting to see who will come on top. We all know that VC Corp. got fund from IDG but who is behind faceViet.com? We do not know yet.
Like you two, I will keep an close eyes on both.
Peace
We’ll never know what will work on the net until it works. One thing for sure, the game place is getting crowded — the first one who could reach 1M subscriptions (just refer to current Y!360 user number in VN roughly) would be likely to win the match, I guess.
From technical point, it’s not so difficult to create something like faceviet. You might forget the fact that ttvnol.com had been popular in the schools since 1999…, ThangVV has alot of experience of school community development. So VC’s has a big advantage to dominate the market.
@thanhdn: Can’t agree more! VCcorp has more advantages in developing one community.
@Hong Quang: 1 million would be a too big of a number, you think? I would say anybody has 500K would be good to go.
According to recent news (rumor), VCcorp is not going to be a the biggest guy in the game anymore. Another giant from oversea (either China or US branch, still confirming) is developing another clone and will push it in the market by end of 2007. It is so funny that I hear people talking about this almost everyday, even within my company.
Hi all. You all seem to forget that on the Internet the best product will eventually win. Marketing or financial power will not be a key factor to success. Also, Internet is about whole new thing, so any experience will bring no advantage to you. Sometime experience even make harm to you because it keeping your from accepting new idea, inventing new thing or new way of thinking.
So I think that everyone except FB is on equal footing in this game (in fact FaceBook has huge product advantage to all other FaceBook clones)
@Hoang Tran: I also hear from my friends that a number of other players are lining up to join game, in the wake that Facebook clones in China and Germany are collecting some $100 million each.
@Tanng: The best product stems from the combination of excellent marketing insights and relevant technology platforms. All founders of greatest tech companies are at the core marketing genius (thinking of Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Mark Zuckerberg & Co. itself). Any disruptive innovation is at core a marketing phenonmena through satisfying unmet demands based on mix-matching current technologies (not the new ones). Financial resources will allow scaling up, which is not less important. So while I agree with you that product is most important, marketing and financing capabilities are also a must in any success. Even Facebook had to get some good financing deals to go this far. Other factors equal, VC and VinaGame with more bucks and more people have more probability to succeed than others.
@Tanng: I did not see any core tech with VCC products, many see VCC just had Marketing or/and financial power (Dantri, ttvnol and Vincom)
interesting post
i believe GuongMat.com has been online for only a few months. Seems like tamtay.vn is the first FB clone?
Hi HarryD. Financial resource and marketing power could make more harm than benefit, because it may kill innovation spirit. Do you think that Yahoo, Microsoft or Google have less money and power and FaceBook? But they all still fail.
When resources are scared you have to:
* Optimize your technology so your application run fast with less resource. Make it scalable by technology not by money.
* Doing smart marketing not silly PR and advertising like TimNhanh.com and Zing are doing now.
* Streamlining your service, keeping only core features thus not allowing your product derail from the core value.
When you have too many resouces you may
* Get everything bloated: service, server, community, …
* Overhyped and mislead by alexa and google analytics success, not measuring your success by customer satisfaction and enthuasism
* Raising too much expectation from customer, thus risking over-promise
* Distract your service from the core.
* Not trying to get excellency from your team, your technology, your product.
My 2 cents is marketing and money may have some impact, but their importance is reduced to nearly zero. That is the beautifulness of the Internet.
In Vietnam biggest disadvantage of small company may be legal problem. Vinagame has smart and dirty practice that use legal system to attack small player, which may kill their competition in one night.
@nam: I am not sure if you know what you are talking about? Tamtay.vn is a great place for R rated video clips. Their marketing strategy is “Sex sells no matter what”. And I am not blaming them because it works with the Vietnamese internet users. But do I want to have my high school bros and sisters go in there to learn something? Hek no!
@X man: VCC is big in financial because IDGVV is backing them up. Doesn’t mean that IDGVV is their best buddy to go with them all the way to the end. VCC needs to focus on what they do best which is Baamboo right now and Sannhac later. I personally know a group of guys in Europe is working on a product that would compete with sannhac.com. Sannhac.com is a good product but VCC is pushing them too slow because they think there would be no competition. Wrong thought!
@tanng: I do agree with tanng that VCC and Vinagame can be a b*(ch and kill a smaller start-up in a few days by all the tricks that they used before. It is an open market and people do what they need to survive, (ethical or not). The legal problem is the BIGGEST problem anybody have to face when they do business in Vietnam.
I love this quote:”My 2 cents is marketing and money may have some impact, but their importance is reduced to nearly zero. That is the beautifulness of the Internet.” Money might not be able to reduce to zero but marketing effort can be.
Have anybody noticed that most of the users in faceviet are fake. I have tried to send messages to many people and nobody ever replied. Another weird thing is that most users don’t even have a photo or are not associated with any particular group.
I understand the need to get the first few thousand users and many social network inflate their numbers by registering fake users, but this seems to be overwhelming because most of the users on faceviet are fake. Can anybody confirm that?
Also with so many bugs as of current version and the design is almost an exact copy of the original facebook, I wonder if faceviet just bought a cheap facebook clone script on the net and use that as the base to their site.
I searched around for a little while and found a few sites that offer php scripts that can create a facebook clone.
Here is the list:
1/ http://www.influxive.com/isociety/index.php
You can test ride it with
username is tomchen@ima.com
password is admin
2/ http://forums.phpfox.com/showthread.php?t=11747
This is supposed to be a mod for phpFox, social network software that originally created to look like myspace clone.
There are plenty others facebook clone scripts, but most of those are really badly coded. I hope that Faceviet is not based on one of those because they will have problem when they need to scale up and handle bigger traffics.
It doesn’t really matter what now, since the “big guy” is on its way to crush FaceViet and VCcorp
Make a good comparison:
VCCorp has financial power, coders and more than that back up from its others web propertities = technology + financial + political power. However, what’s VC core business? Baamboo, and they don’t really want to lose that market to somebody else, do they?
FaceViet has a good team and a working product, so ? Not enough!
The “big guy” has been pushing rumors all over the place that it will bring one of the best web 2.0 application that nobody has ever seen in Vietnam.
I think the coding is not something important because what if you have Google or Yahoo script (http://ddth.com/showthread.php?t=143323) , faceviet ( http://freecodevn.com/for@um/showthread.php?t=34312 ) script, would you ever be able to scale up your search engine to be as big as Google or Yahoo ? No, no and no.
My point of view is once this market getting to crowded by tens of competitors, all we can do is pray and enjoy the show. Because it is going to be fun, and it is going to be dirty.
Interesting debate. I see much of our concern so far is whether these copycats will succeed. But how about Facebook reactions. With so many clones it must have done something. An effort to localized facebook had been secretly launched (http://nus.facebook.com/translations/). Will these clones useful for finding oversea friends who are on Facebook? Apparently not.
However, much of Vietnamese population don’t know about Facebook so the cake is still big for them.
I would like to let Vietnam locals to know more about all these copycat phenomenon, will love to see your blog and continuing debate on mottramdo.com
FV is a joke! they bought php script for a few bucks and claim fv to be the next big thing? come on get real? i just dont understand how people with MBAs are that naive
fv is now using a different script which is a lot better but still a light weight php script and there is no way they can scale up
Lol, following the line of comments, I can see Nam is working for tamtay.vn
This kind of attitude and closed-minded personality is what keep technology in Vietnam so behind with the rest of the world.
I personally don’t see the need to move anywhere else since my 360 is still working and Yahoo doesn’t seem to close it, but tamtay definitely lose my account
Both guongmat and faceviet bought cheap php script online to copy facebook. Those 2 are exactly the same
Faceviet and guongmat both are located in US and VC Corp’s sites are in vietnam.
@AnKim: thanks for sharing the info, but please keep those “clean” from porn or political links otherwise I’ll have problem with censorship circle.
Just thought I’d throw another new site into the game, http://www.thegioiban.com. Hosted in the States, has a clean crisp FB style, but not many members. Might only be a matter of time.