Before the discussion on the fate of the business intelligence service Intellasia has a chance to cool down, another media assault (UPDATE: Nguoi Lao Dong has pulled down the original news, so there’s only the Google cache) has been launched upon the Baamboo, a rising star among popular Vietnamese music sites. Just as the international business community in Vietnam as well as other news services showed remarkable support for Intellasia, the Vietnamese IT community seem to empathize and support BaamBoo. You can say there’s no such thing as bad PR. Well that’s perhaps true but the issue is much more significant, especially for young entrepreneurs. Political risks might not be as prevalent as technical challenge or consumer hype or head-to-head competition. Yet, once it hits, it hits very hard.
August 29, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Skimming through all kinds of back and forth arguments in DDTH makes me understand your point.
Just a some thoughts…
Baamboo has underestimated the political concern when the service (found by HK-based company, i believe so) tries to copy Baidu’s initial business model in VN : a media search engine. It may end up with a revenue model eventually (i.e. ads) but for now the service is targeting the right market, isn’t it? I’m not standing on Baamboo side but my point is the site is picking up the trend at the right moment but the managers, founders, operators, or whatever it is, underestimates the censorship policy in VN.
Google’s given up its market share to Baidu partially because the local search engine gave a bow to its government for content censoring. For Baamboo, this little problem is not so critical that the company can learn and grow better.
Again, I’m just trying to be neutral when it comes to censorship matters.
Cheers
August 30, 2007 at 12:00 am
Hi Tran:
Thank you for your insights. First, I didn’t know that Baidu started out as a media search engine – thanks for bring it up. Do you know if it also lets users play right on its sites? Or is it purely search?
About Baamboo, your prediction is right on, as evidenced by its recent response (see my new post). I also agree that businesses nowadays must play by the local rules if they want to operate. As you might be aware, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have recently signed agreement with Chinese government in terms of censorship. If they repeat the same practice in Vietnam – because they “learned the lesson” – that will put tremendous pressure on the emerging local players. They won’t have time advantage to get solid user base like Baidu.
Best,
Khoa