Powerset, one of the 'Alt Search Engine Service' launched this week.
I don’t know whether Powerset will become great company or not since they have unveiled their true product just few days ago but I’m really happy to see their service. (Surely I’m not stock holder of Powerset and also not anti-google people.)
I can imagine about their great effort and endurance to make their idea as a ‘real thing’ for several years.
‘Make something as real one’ – how fascinate it is!
Original Post : A Korean microblogging service sees two of its users getting married
Me2day, just like Twitter, seems to follow the right path. The only concern I have is, compared to Twitter, Me2day's core users could be too small in numbers because the service is only offered in Korean. In fact, that's the same kind of limitation that works against our company as well. Which is why we should have "globalize or die" mentality
As it is mentioned widely in certain marketing theories - Purple cow, Blue Ocean and etc. - 'different market conditions' can give great chance to business - the 'differentiation'.
Moreover, some 'cultural specialties' protect some start-ups because English base star-up teams can't make efficient strategies to Korean market.
(Yeh, that's right. They may don't need Korean market. But don't consider that kind of views in this article.)
But anyway, small IT business market size (or user pool) in Korea gives certain limitation of growth (or chasm) to start-up ventures - this is exactly what I concern about in these days.
Globalize or die strategy is very desirable thing to Korean IT start-up teams including my company, but I'm afraid that it's really not easy to Koreans make and maintain successful web service targeted to global market.
I learned that from my full time job - global targeted community portal.
Conclusion
We have to understand SW(+OT) of us. We have to know about ourselves first.
Though with these inevitable things people or team dreaming about great company should keep challenging to our goal.
'Good to Great'
회사나 사업을 단순히 돈을 벌기 위한 수단으로 볼 것이 아니라 어떤 목적성을 가지고 존재하는 것이라 본다면.. 조직(=회사)에 우선되어야 할 것은 철학입니다.
가치관, 철학을 좀 쉽게 – 혹은 좁게 - 생각하면 마케팅에서 이야기 하는 value proposition이라고 할 수도 있겠네요.
사람도 가치관을 세운 다음에야 비로소 일관되게 어떤 일들을 추진해 나갈 수 있는 것처럼 조직도 그 존재 목적부터가 명확해야겠지요.
실제로 가치관과 철학이 명확한 회사가 돈도 잘 번다고 합니다.
구글은 ‘링크 = 돈’이라는 전략을 가지고 있습니다. 그래서 링크를 수집할 수 있는 모든 행동(=사업 영역 유지 및 확장)을 합니다. 지메일, google analytics 등도 모두 이런 링크를 최대한 많이 수집하기 위한 서비스들이지요. 이런 전략의 뒤에는 어떤 철학이 숨어 있을까요? 그들의 페이지랭크 알고리즘과 그에 관련된 논문들을 살펴보면, ‘정보가 많아 질수록 좋은 정보를 어떻게 찾느냐가 중요해지고 웹에서 좋은 정보는 많은 링크를 가지고 있다’ 정도로 그들의 철학을 요약해 볼 수 있을 것 같습니다.
그 외에도 많은 매력적인 회사들(특히나 강한 브랜드 파워를 가진 회사들)의 성공을 면밀히 살펴보면 이런 철학이 얼마나 중요한지 알 수 있습니다. 비단 기술 기업 뿐만이 아니라 이미지가 중요한 패션 브랜드들도요.
'좋은 서비스를 만드는 좋은 회사는 좋은 철학을 가지고 있다'
아 물론 여기서 좋은 철학이란 ‘시장에서 잘 통하는’이라는 의미를 가지고 있습니다.
철학. 당신이 만드는 서비스의 – 혹은 회사의 – 철학은 무엇입니까?
그 철학은 사람들에게 어떤 가치를 줍니까?
당신은 그 철학을 구현하기 위해서 어떻게 일하고 있습니까?
창조적인 일을 하는 사람들은 한번쯤 생각해보아야 할 질문인 것 같습니다.
"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do."
"All honor's wounds are self-inflicted."
"The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell."
"No man can become rich without himself enriching others."
"To die rich is to die disgraced."
"Here lies a man who knew how to enlist the service of better men than himself."
"Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself."
The International Herald Tribune had a good article recently about the search market in South Korea
. It points out that local search company Naver.com has more than 77 percent of all Web searches originating in South Korea, according to Internet market research company KoreanClick. This is largely due to user-generated content - specifically Naver's "Knowledge iN" real-time question-and-answer platform, which gets "an average of 44,000 questions a day". Second in the South Korean search market is another local product, Daum.net, with 10.8 percent share, followed by Yahoo's Korean-language service with 4.4 percent. Google has only 1.7 percent of Korean Web searches.
The IHT has more info on Naver Knowledge iN:
"Naver has so far accumulated a user-generated database of 70 million entries. Typical queries include why North Korea is building a nuclear bomb, which digital music player is best, why people have hair whorls and what a high-school boy should do when he has a crush on a female teacher.
Lacking the full-time editorial oversight found on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, some Naver entries are of dubious veracity and attract vigorous rebuttals. But many respondents, keen to build and maintain an online reputation, do careful research to provide useful answers."
Interestingly, this has some similarities with the approach of Viewpoints, the online reviews company profiled yesterday by our own Phil Butler. But what also struck me about Naver's approach is that it is essentially what Yahoo is attempting to do, with its heavily-promoted Answers product. If you look at just about any Yahoo content site, you'll see an Answers section displayed prominently.
Of course, the Q&A format hasn't escaped Google's attention either (nothing gets past Google). The Mountain View company is experimenting with Google Answers in Russia. Also, as SearchEngineLand noted, Google has tried making its UI more attractive in Korea in order to get more market share. If this kind of experimentation (Q&A, UI innovation) sounds familiar, it's because it is precisely what our network blog AltSearchEngines talks about every day :-)
Pic c/o SEL
Of course Q&A won't be the answer for every market - Google is very entrenched as the number 1 search engine in the US and most other english language markets. But the South Korea example does show the benefits of a) localizing your product, and b) actively using and promoting 'next generation' search methods. Also don't forget that as mobile phones begin to be used more in the US and similar markets, user-generated content and personalization will be used more by Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and other companies.
I do think this is Yahoo's best chance of making ground on Google, because they are strong in both user-generated content and mobile. Although as yet Yahoo Answers is nowhere near as compelling a product as Naver is in Korea.
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Interesting & meaningful article.
'But the South Korea example does show the benefits of a) localizing your product, and b) actively using and promoting 'next generation' search methods'
“Successful business strategies results not from rigorous analysis but from a particular state of mind. In what I call the mind of the strategist, insight and a consequent drive for achievement, often amounting to a sense of mission, fuel a thought process which is basically creative and intuitive rather than rational. Strategists do not reject analysis. Indeed they can hardly do without it. But they use it only to stimulate the creative process, to test the ideas that emerge, to work out their strategic implications.”
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