Vietnamese social networks seeking new sources of income

VietNamNet Bridge – In order to avoid a direct confrontation with foreignsocial networks, such as Facebook, LinkinEd, Cyworld or MySpace, Vietnamesesocial networks go their own ways to earn money to exist and improve theircompetitiveness on the Internet content market.

Hula Shop on Zing Me
Social networks can be compared as sweet cakes, but it’s not easy to obtain thepieces of the cake, since too many difficulties still exist.

Zing Me pours money into e-commerce

On November 21, Zing Me, one of the biggest Vietnamese social networks,announced that it is injecting money in the e-commerce sector in order to createmore advantages to its social network which now has 8 million users, mostlyyoung users.

Zing Me said that it carries out the social e-commerce project in order to helpindividuals and institutions involved in the distribution sector, expand theirbusiness scope by developing customers on the social network.

Vuong Quang Khai, Deputy General Director of VNG, the owner of Zing Me, saidthat in the near future, Zing Me will apply the online store service app, to beintegrated on Fan Page, which will help stores to introduce and maketransactions directly with customers.

Khai said that the advantage of VNG in e-commerce is that it is managing acommunity of 8 million users. This will help online stores access a big numberof potential customers. Besides, VNG has Zing Pay, an electronic payment portalwhich can replace other payment methods.

At present, VNG is providing an open platform which allows individuals andbusinesses set up online shops as they want. Besides, VNG is also supporting theshops to advertise their products on Zing-brand information channels, such asZing Mp3 or Zing News.

To date, 23 shops have been operating on Zing Me, including Hula Shop. NguyenQuoc Anh, the owner of Hula Shop, said that the return on investment (ROI) fromZing Me is the third biggest one among the investment channels.

Meanwhile, VNG said that online stores on Zing Me is now the application whichbring big business potentials to clients, and that social network applicationsare bringing the highest revenues to the company.

Also according to VNG, in 2009, only 10 apps ran on Zing Me and they did notbring revenue. However, in 2010, it had 20 apps already, while the turnover was30 billion dong. VNG hopes that by the end of 2011, it will have 60 apps and theturnover of 60 billion dong.

Making money from ads

ComScore has listed 10 most popular social networks in Vietnam, namely Zing Me,Facebook, Yahoo! Pulse, Tamtay.vn, Banbe.net, KST.vn, yeulaptop.com, Cyworld,Yo88.com and Twitter. It is clear that social networks are the choices of manyVietnamese people, which means that Vietnamese social networks have to competefiercely with the foreign networks to survive.

In order to survive and develop, in early November, P.A Vietnam introducedBang.vn, a social network that helps users earn money by exchanging pointsthrough the web page.

Huynh Viet Phuong, P.A Vietnam’s Director, explained that any one, who joins thesocial network by accessing to the page, watching products and ad pieces,sharing images and music, will get Bang scores. The points can be used to buy adbanners, introduce their products, send ad messages to other members, post adpieces. For example, in order to set up an ad banner, one needs to have at least1000 Bang scores.

Currently, P.A Vietnam is still running the beta version before the officialversion will hit the market on January 1, 2012.

They fact that P.A attracts users by offering online ad opportunities is reallya new way of doing business in Vietnam. However, this is considered a wise movewhich helps attract more users and bring turnover.

However, Joe Nguyen, Deputy President of ComScore South East Asia, emphasizedthat the key issue that makes the success of social networks is the content,while in order to create good content, businesses need the support from thecommunity.

Source: TBKTSG