Social networking sites in Asia received some mixed news last week, when Internet research firm GlobalWebIndex released a study of how social networks have performed in the region from Q2 2012 to Q4 2012.
Twitter has experienced tremendous growth among several countries in Asia Pacific, contributing significantly to its status as the fastest-rising social network in the world. Strong performances in Hong Kong, China and South Korea has helped it offset declines in Vietnam and Taiwan. Read more
When Psy horse-danced his way into our hearts and minds last year with the phenomenally catchy Gangnam Style, it wasn’t just a welcome party for the pudgy 35-year-old pop star. The song, while tearing down the glitzy shallowness of Korea’s mighty K-Pop industry, may have ironically increased its appeal.
But don’t be mistaken: K-Pop was already huge before Gangnam Style became the most watched, and perhaps most parodied, YouTube video ever. According to Billboard, the industry grossed nearly USD 3.4B in the first half of 2012, or just under 20 percent of the American music industry’s takings. That’s a 27.8 percent growth from the year before.
The hallyu phenomenon– literally translated ‘Korean Wave’ — is a unique product of a hyper-connected era where an obscure cat video from Japan can gain millions of views from across the world. YouTube has certainly helped popularized K-Pop to people who would otherwise not have access to it.
The genre’s dominance has spillover effects not just for the entertainment industries of film and television, but also fashion and cosmetics, travel and tourism, and even the food industry. It is impacting Asia’s consumer technology sector too, and I’m not just talking about Samsung. Read more
LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network on the Internet, has reached 200M members, it announced today. It claims that one new member joins the social network every 2 seconds, a staggering number that adds up to about 15.7M a year. Indeed, since November 1, 2012, it has added around 13M members.
The company adds that it now has about 160M monthly unique visitors, making it the 23rd most visited web property in the world, according to comScore. 37M of LinkedIn’s users come from Asia-Pacific, with Indonesia becoming the 3rd fastest growing country in terms of members on LinkedIn. Read more
Company
Rocket Internet is a Berlin headquartered company that is well-known for cloning successful online startups (usually from the US), replicating them elsewhere, and turning them into million-dollar businesses. It was founded in 2007 by the Samwer brothers — Alexander, Marc, and Oliver, who have together created and sold a number of successful Internet businesses before starting Rocket Internet. Most of their businesses are e-commerce related.
The company tends to hire MBA-trained executives and management consultants to become ‘founder’ and ‘managing director’ of its businesses. However, unlike startup founders, they do not hold as much equity or have as much decision-making power to shape the direction of their companies. They are primarily executors who could be fired for underperforming.
Rocket Internet has polarized observers in the startup and technology community for its practices. Critics pour scorn on the company for blatant copying, mischaracterizing its ventures as startups, an over-aggressive and results-oriented corporate culture, and rapid turnover rates. At the same time, it is widely admired for its rapid execution ability. Read more
Filed under ProfilesTags: Asia, Asia Pacific, Australia, China, E-Commerce, Hong Kong, india, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar, new zealand, pakistan, Philippines, Rocket Internet, RocketInternet, Samwer Brothers, Singapore, South Korea, taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Web
East and West have combined forces in a bid to give online retailers in Asia a more comprehensive platform to sell stuff. In this case, the partnership involves NetSuite, an enterprise cloud computing company from the United States, and AsiaPay, an e-commerce service provider headquartered in Hong Kong. Read more
Filed under Mobile, News, Retail, WebTags: Asia, Asia Pacific, asiapay, China, E-Commerce, m-commerce, netsuite, paydollar, Philippines, suitecommerce
Seven years ago, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the Partnership for New York City started asking what New York had to do to remain competitive on the world stage. That resulted in the Cities of Opportunity report. This year just saw the release of the 4th edition. This time around, they ranked 26 cities around the world, with a third of them located in the Asia-Pacific region. Curious as to whether your city is one of the chosen ones? Below is a run down of the Asia-Pacific cities that made it into the list. Read more
Ad network platform Komli Media is expanding their users reached by acquiring Singapore-headquartered Aktiv Digital.
Headquartered in Mumbai (India), Komli Media is also present in Singapore, New Delhi, Bangalore, London, Melbourne, Sydney, New York, Palo Alto, and Toronto. Their current scope of operations include: Brand Solutions, Performance Network, PostClick, Ethnic Marketing, Indoor Media, and ViziSense. Read more
After LinkedIn‘s IPO (some say spectacular, some argue otherwise), the professional social network is opening an office in Singapore to be their Asia Pacific headquarters. While we already know that LinkedIn Japan is also in the works, the Singapore office seems more firmed up with Arvind Rajan, LinkedIn’s managing director and vice president for Asia-Pacific and Japan moving here. Read more
Founded in 1992, TiE is a global, not-for-profit network of entrepreneurs and professionals dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship and today counts over 14,000 members in 54 chapters across 13 countries. Its flagship event, TiECon is held yearly and billed as the world’s largest conference for entrepreneurs. At this event, the top 50 technology startups under TiE50 – TiE Silicon Valley’s premier annual awards program keenly contested by thousands of technology startups worldwide – are announced. Here’s a look at the startups from Asia Pacific who are TiE50 2011 winners across the five categories: Read more
The Mobile Marketing Association Forum Asia Pacific 2010 (MMAF APAC 2010) took place last week in Singapore, after two days of intense debate, discussion and sharing of case studies. One thing is for certain, mobile has grown a lot and many are optimistic about growing its potential even further. Here is a short story of mobile through the eyes of MMAF APAC 2010. Read more
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