No related posts.

Last things last, many thanks to the Edelman and LinkedIn APAC team for the invitation and providing me the opportunity to present my experiences with my favourite social network. You can check out my LinkedIn profile here too.

No related posts.

The way I set up the talk is talk about why we search for extra dimensions in the motivation to find the theory that will unify the four forces of nature: strong & weak nuclear, electromagnetism and gravity. Then I discuss the two different models of theories invoking small (Kaluza Klein) and large extra dimensions (Arkani-Hamed, Dvali and Dimopolous, Randall-Sundrum) and how we can seek them out in the cosmic microwave background radiation, particularly in polarisation signals.

Here are my thoughts from the people who have asked questions on the talk. Perhaps, physics is an osmotic subject where I have learned more and thought about the subject deeper than before. As of today, I have come up with a few different ways to invalidate my original hypotheses on how extra dimensions can affect gravitational waves with theories invoking large extra dimensions. I also answered a question about how I think about modern theories. My thinking about dark matter, dark energy and extra dimensions follows the analogy in the past where ancient philosophers created an elegant theory about the planets and sun moving around the Earth and constructed the epicycles model to force the observations which contradict the theory. In some sense, these things which we cannot explain and the way we invoke extra dimensions, dark energy & matter are the “epicycles” of today. In any case, it also made me remember why I am so deeply passionate about theoretical physics and how I have made a short and modest contribution to the long string of work by other physicists in the field. I am also thankful that I have someone by my side who came for this talk where I can share my joys and passion about my subject for the first time.

No related posts.

Related posts:

1. The Chronicles of a Mobile-Web Economy
2. 3 Reasons Why Google is launching the Chrome OS
3. FourSquare in Singapore: Impressions, Muses and Hacks

Here are my five principles so that it can provide some perspective for those who are thinking of doing a new start-up and how to go to market in the fastest speed:

1. “In my beginning is my end” by T.S Eliot: Traditional entrepreneurship text books seem to preach in a way where it is more important to pursue idea rather than the business of the idea. While I have been teaching this approach by following a traditional curriculum, I reversed the approach when I worked on Chalkboard with my co-founder, Saumil Nanavati. We started from the exit strategy and worked backwards all the way to the idea and conception. We also identified the potential risks and challenges in the mobile industry pertaining to location based services and mobile advertising on a whole. It is also important to think about Plan B, and if you don’t reach your exit strategy, the important question which most people have forgotten to ask, “Can I turn this venture into a sustainable business running on proper revenues?”.
2. Make something Customers Need: It is important to have an sanity check on whether you are building a product for a customer or for yourself. Probably, most aspiring entrepreneurs know this mantra but prefer to fall in love with the idea. Ultimately, it is important to create a product about 70% ready and go to market to see if there is customer traction. In the early days of Chlkboard, we actually tested our hypothesis on whether our customers will need our product. We did this by offering customers free trials and also continued gathering feedback from them on what works and what don’t work.
3. Less is More in Product Development: Don’t be afraid to kill features. In the design of the first prototype of Chlkboard, we thought a lot about whether users should register a username and password so that they can use our system. In the end, to shorten the time to bring the beta product to market, we dropped the normal way of registration and used the OAuth method of signing in via twitter. It made the registration process easier for those who have a twitter account. In fact, it also lowers the resistance if we made them just keying in a few short details we need to get them on the ground running.
4. Iterate & Pivot based on feedback & analytics: This is the part where we gather the feedback and pivot if our initial product has failed. Thankfully, it did not. We focused more on listening to them on what they want. Originally we thought we made the product simple by having one twitter to one location for the advertiser. Instead, we learned later that some shop retailers will like to send promotions via one twitter account. We immediately took action and got the feature ready within a week. We also collected analytics to help our advertisers to understand their customers through the help of heat maps and number of impressions.
5. Firehose Strategy – Open the Floodgates: When we opened the Chalkboard API to 3rd party apps developers, it sent us from 30K to 400K within a span of two months. While being open, we also manage to see how apps developers can use our data and deliver the ads in the best possible way such that it is not offensive or intrusive to the end-consumer. The firehose strategy has been practiced by successful companies like Twitter and FourSquare and it helps them to know which products they do and do not need.

In essence, looking at the success of Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare, the pace in which they are working is shortening by half within the past few years. Facebook took about 4 years to hit their 1st million users, Twitter within 2 years and FourSquare in 1 year. They all opened up their platforms and allowed creative developers to make interesting applications. It is also important that they slowly retain control and create an economy around their platform. While it is still early to talk about where Chalkboard is going (given that it’s my latest venture), it is important to remember one rule in entrepreneurship: you have equal chances of success or failure depending on how well you systematically eliminate risk and overcome challenges.

Related posts:

1. The Government should let the hotel open a bak chor mee stall

A couple of things which I like to elaborate as we did not manage to steer the conversation during the class if you have heard the slidecast:

• Online vs Offline engagement: One of the lessons which I wanted to steer the students to think is the issue of how to merge the online and offline worlds in terms of user engagement, discovery and interaction. We discovered that the success of social media tools did not come from the platforms trying to gain users by online invites. Instead, their approach also utilized an offline strategy. RenRen (formerly Xiaonei), the facebook clone in China, adopted a direct marketing approach by offering offline incentives such as free food and drinks to draw classes from universities and schools to sign up to the social network. In a similar social media marketing conference which I spoke as a panelist recently to brand-marketers & small-medium enterprises, I explained a similar approach used by the Right Spin (a PR company) who created the HTC flash mob event in Raffles Place. Basically, they got a group of people who burst into dancing that caught the public perplexed and at the same time, uploading tweets, photos and videos into various social media platforms that spread the word around quickly.
• Facebook has beaten CyWorld for the South Korea in early 2010: A new datapoint emerged in the beginning of Jan 2010. Facebook, in a very stealth way, has just displaced CyWorld to be the top social network in South Korea. This is probably the first crack in the East Asian bloc where a foreign social network has successfully toppled the incumbent. What is the reason? One probable reason is that a lot of Korean users are playing social games or tapping 3rd party applications on an open platform which CyWorld has not deployed out yet. I probably wanted to pose the question: is the beginning of a domino effect that may hit Japan soon given Mixi and Gree are in dead heat for the 1st place?
• Can the micro-transactions model work in Western based social networks?: We know that Facebook is now on the verge to deploy a beta-tested version of micro-transactions in the platform. The question as posed in the discussion by one of the students during my talk: does reverse engineering of an idea from the East will work in the West? I probably think so, given that Silicon Valley have been holding a lot of conferences of virtual goods and currency and talking about these models which are successful in the Far East. In fact, with the help of the mobile smartphones like the iPhone and Nexus One, it may be the beginning of an era where Western social networks may successfully monetize in their own homeground.

Related posts:

1. Building Online Communities & Social Networks: Strategies, Tools and Trends in Chinese
2. The Importance of Being Social – A Talk on Online Social Networks
3. Top 3 Social Networks in China after QQ

While I have given a guide for developers on different apps stores which constitute one third of the talk, I have also discussed the strategies and pitfalls which one should be mindful of. Here are three main strategies which one should think about:

• Focus on one platform before scaling it up: It is important that the developer selects one platform that his app will gain the most traction. The first step is to create the app, get the alpha or beta users to test drive it and work on all the kinks and issues with the app. Once the app gets online and in a stable version, then scale the app into other apps store. Foyage & BuUuk started with one app store and subsequently moved to another.
• Don’t put your eggs on one apps store basket!: Being sexy is not the way to go. The best way to see if the app you create is in demand on a platform. The important thing is to contest in the blue ocean of apps. For example, Gravity is the only twitter app with US$7.95 on Nokia Ovi store when it started and hence they made a killing for being the highest paid downloadable app as compared to the many twitter input apps in iPhone diluted by the intense competition.
• Understand the App Store Cycle & Support: Publishing the app is the first step, but growing the app is next. It is important to make sure that you get the reviewers to help you with the ratings and reviews about the app. It is important to churn up press on relevant blogs for that app depending on the platform. For example, I usually find out a lot about Nokia Ovi store apps thru All About Symbian.

Related posts:

1. Why Mobile Matters & How to Take Advantage of it
2. 3 Reasons Why Google is launching the Chrome OS
3. FourSquare in Singapore: Impressions, Muses and Hacks

I broke down the talk into four parts. First, I presented the definition and ideas behind online communities, and explain why I use online social networks because I can also put online games under third party applications. After that I followed by discussing the trends that is happening in Asia and presented my conclusion on the general trends of social networks in Asia (similar to my talk in TEDxSentosa) where I conclude that the underlying economics such as micro-transactions complements the language and culture barrier as to which network dominate in which culture. Following on, I presented the first case study on CyWorld to the students and broke them up into discussion groups. After the first case study and discussion, I continued with the tools and business strategies on social networks, and presented some short case studies about online advertising and virtual gifts from various sources. The last part of the seminar is on the second case study which I talked about Facebook and compare it to QQ which has successfully monetize in her own local market.

Key Learnings

• Perspective of Global and Local Companies with respect to expansion: I used Cyworld and Facebook because they are good examples of a local company trying to expand to the West, and a global company trying to penetrate into a local large domestic market, for e.g. China. The two case study discussion sessions are centered to push the students to think about the objectives, the business models and strategies and what lessons can be learnt from CyWorld’s failure in Germany.
• Should CyWorld not expand in Europe and US while just focus its efforts in China during 2005?: I have come to a different conclusion after looking at different articles and comments from pundits about CyWorld. In fact, this will be reviewed in greater detail from the book that I am working on currently. Here is a quick hindsight about the situation then? During 2005, CyWorld expanded into China and gained about 1M users within a year. At that point of time, other than QQ (which has not incorporated social networking features), the rest of the social networks (51.com or Xiaonei – Renren.com) have not emerged. If they did not attempt to go into the western market so early, and instead focus on China first, will they have gained a first mover advantage? In fact, if they have paired up with China Mobile like the way they did in South Korea, they might have perhaps prevented the rise of the Chinese social networks which emerged later.
• Facebook to China?: It looks like a bad idea from now, given the government regulation. In fact, we did an analysis on which facebook features can be incorporated for the version that can be launched in China and how to circumnavigate with the authorities on content regulation. One important feature that Facebook might have to give up going to China is that they cannot have video shared links. During my recent trip to China, while interviewing the senior executives from 51.com and Kaixin001, they told me the platform omitted video shared links because of possible government intervention, and hence they prefer the users to go to the video content sharing sites such as Youku and Tudou. For an alternative view on not expanding to China, you should read my friend Gang Lu’s thesis on why Facebook should give up China.

Thoughts on Lecturing and Conducting a discussion in Chinese

• Presentation requires a shift in language and perspective: The easy way out to prepare a presentation given that I have a lot of material in the subject is to do a translation. It’s not a very good strategy. Working with a mainland Chinese entrepreneur based in Singapore (one of my incubatees), I decide to adopt a different approach and that is to start from thinking about how to present the whole talk without reliance on some slides in English. Unlike the English language which narrates ideas in a short and crisp manner, Chinese is a metaphorical language. I also try to reduce words on most slides where the visual representation can be helpful to help the students to understand what I am saying.
• Putting more time in the discussion sessions: Since Chinese is a metaphorical and descriptive language, presenting thoughts about a topic and subject takes a longer time. Of course, if I have to conduct future sessions, I will focus on devoting less time on slides but more on getting more students to discuss the topic of interest.

Even for myself, there is a lot to be improved. I have also learned a lot from the Chinese students I spoke to. In fact, I did not know that Xiaonei (RenRen now) started getting users by distributing paper flyers to schools and offering free coca cola to student classes which sign up on the service. It is a very offline way of doing marketing back to the basics. It also provided me some thoughts on the book which I hope to churn out the first draft soon.

You can see my presentation or download it here:

Acknowledgments: I thank Peter Du in helping me to prepare this talk, mainly with the translation and preparation for the talk. Many thanks to the staff and the NTU MSc students in technopreneurship who have attended this talk and the lively discussion that ensued during the presentation.

References:
[1] Nielsen, “Global Faces and Networked Paces” – A Nielsen Report on Social Networking’s new Global Footprint.
[2] Benjamin Joffe, CyWorld and Tencent Sample Reports.
[3] TechCrunch, A look at Facebook Reach Worldwide.
[4] eMarketer, Focusing on Social Networks.

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Being Social – A Talk on Online Social Networks
2. Three Tales about Social Networks @ SMU
3. Top 3 Social Networks in China after QQ

Thoughts on Social Networking from Offline to Online

Here is an idea that I would like to share with all of you here today: the concept of social networking in human society from offline into online. The question I like you to think about: What has really changed in social networking from offline to online and how it impact our lives?

Since no man is an island unless you are stranded alone on one, the concept of a network naturally comes to mind when you interact with people. Many of you here will know that I dabble in online social networks. Prior to that, I have delivered a seminar entitled Business Networking in NUS Business School many times or I should call it, offline social networking. The talk comprises of the positioning, the techniques and how one should prepare before the session, do during the session and follow-up after the session. In fact, some interesting insights may be drawn from this offline activity. Let me take you through five simple steps in how an offline social networking session resembles the online one by looking at the analogy when you attend a networking party.

1. The invite to the party: You are invited by the organizer to attend the party. In the online world, you are sent an email from either the online social network owner or your friends within the network.
2. Registering to attend the party: You register your name and get the name tag to walk into the party. In the online world, you register your username, password and provide profile information to the network. There is only one distinct difference here which is the ability to stay with a pseudonym or be totally anonymous.
3. You walk into the party to meet and interact with people around the party: You can introduce yourself and make friends with people, or you get an introduction to another person via a friend that you know. In the online world, you can do exactly the same, by checking out friends profile, and then connect with people who are linked to your profile. In most cases, the online social networks of today will suggest people that you might know by examining the list of friends within three degrees of separation.
4. You share information and discuss issues with people within the party: When you are engaged in a conversation with people in the party, you naturally share information and discuss issues with people depending on their interest. Usually, you establish a degree of affinity with the person or stranger that you talk to. In the real world, you know that you cannot be best friends with everyone, so you will have the tendency to put your relationships within your social circles of preference. However, in the online world, the story is slightly different. You are connected to friends of different affinity all at one go. With privacy controls these days, you are able to decide what information you like to share with others and what you won’t share. The sharing of information and discussion of issues goes in the forms of shared links, comments on forum discussions, status messages similar to Facebook and Twitter via the activity feed. The activity feed in most online social networks today offers any user a clairvoyant view to what is happening to his or her friends even if they have lost touch for many years. I have not met up with my secondary school classmates, but since we are connected on Facebook, when I see one of them just become a father, my natural instinct is to send a congratulatory note to them.
5. You leave the party and follow up later with the people you meet in the party: The party ends and you will decide who you want to follow up. You can do that via email or in the older days, by telephone or letters. Of course, in the online world, you log off and if you feel like coming back to the social network, you log on again. The analogy of the networking party goes further than just a group of business associates gathering. For example, during Barack Obama’s inauguration as president, a lot of people gathered in the online, sharing links and information about the event via Facebook. So, in some sense, that can be an interpretation to an event.

So, what has really changed from offline to online?

• The scale of reaching out to people within your social circle is much larger: In the past, you might have to make many phone calls to friends to tell them some happy news, but now you can do it all at one go by sharing the information online. If the information is news worthy, your news may go viral and reach out to a much larger audience within a short span of time. Just as the ability to share information in a network becomes so fast, the same goes for the misinformation, but here’s my retort to those who is worried about that: On the Internet, you can easily spread lies but you can never stop the truth. That ability to scale gives the local populace the ability to galvanize quickly for any causes, as we can see both China and Iran have to find ways to stop their people within Facebook to coalesce.
  
• Interactions on Online Social Networks are beginning to mimic those that are offline to online: You can now engage in an activity with a few friends and strangers in a game of Texas Holdem or join a third party application to play quizzes similar to how the engagement in real life looks like.

You may think that some things have changed from offline to online but some things don’t change. Online social networks are fragmented because our post-modern world prefers a pluralistic viewpoint, particularly in Asia. I like to highlight three observations to you:

(i) Online social networks in East Asia are controlled by local players, e.g. Korea and CyWorld,

(ii) Online social networks in Southeast Asia and India are dominated by western-based players such as Orkut, Hi5 and Facebook, and

(iii) all local based social networks seemed to have problems expanding outwards despite garnering a strong local following.

Most pundits will postulate that language, culture and socio-political conditions are the causes to the first point but failed to explain the second point. Some other mechanism must be at work. While working on a book project with Michael Netzley and Nicholas Khoo on social media and web in Asia, I have found an interesting argument with the data that might be able to tie up all three observations that complements with language, culture and socio-political conditions. The argument is the underlying economics in these countries, i.e. how people in these countries makes economic transactions. I like to share this fresh out of the page insight with you today.

In East Asia, micro-transactions thru mobile or prepaid cards are dominant and the social networks in these countries utilizes these features to entice users to come back to the social networks. As a result of that, the social network will customize more and more of their functions for the local populace, and in the end, the social network becomes integral to the society because of this mass customization. The mass customization will successsfully monetize the social network but make it difficult for the social network to expand outwards. That will explain why some countries in Southeast Asia have no local players because these prevailing micro-transaction mechanisms are not preferred. In fact, India and Malaysia are beginning to warm up to this form of microtransactions. Hence it helps us to explain why online social networks in Asia are fragmented in such a state.

I look forward to come back some day to tell you about the completed framework in our book project and thank you for your kind attention.

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Being Social – A Talk on Online Social Networks
2. Building Online Communities & Social Networks: Strategies, Tools and Trends in Chinese
3. Three Tales about Social Networks @ SMU

The main ideas behind the talk are explained earlier via a blog post I have written entitled: Firing of BPL Football Managers and Maximal Efficiency. The reference for the research paper I have published with my collaborators in Cambridge: Toke Aidt, Bernard Leong, William Saslaw and Daniel Sgroi, “A power law distribution for the tenures of Sports Managers“, Physica A, 370(2):697-703 (you can request the research paper from me via email or twitter). The twitter comments for the talk can be found here. (Photo below taken by Meng Weng Wong)

My presentation for the TEDxKL conference:

Related Links:
[1] Niki Cheong, An Afternoon at TEDxKL

Related posts:

1. Firing of BPL Football Managers and Maximal Efficiency
2. Non Sequitur Economics