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Missing the Asian connection in social media

By Ben Hwang ⋅ August 4, 2008 ⋅

Interestingly enough, when it comes to social networks, the ones that take off in the United States doesn’t necessarily grasp hold in Asia. While the obvious reasoning is that different markets and different strategies, why is this? TechCrunch explores some of the reasons but we’ll explore some more that they don’t touch upon.

While partnerships, and mobile web are definitely players in the problems of the Asian markets, there are a couple other pretty obvious things that escapes most English driven markets.

Dual market launch - If you’ve noticed when Twitter rolled out that immediately in close behind, China was rolling out different types of Twitter clones. Fanfou being one of the first, but also ones such as QQ backed TaoTao. Immediately, the hit that made microblogging popular in the US and Europe also had its market share taken away in Asia because it didn’t launch there. Here, it wasn’t a matter of translation or culture but a matter of first to market. And the first guy to market always has one of the greatest advantages.
Translation. And we’re not talking about technology differences. Plain ole’ word for word translation. The moment you launch a product where you seem to be using Babelfish or Google Translate for the text is the moment you lose to any native speaking copycat. Not only does it come across as amateurish, but most native users won’t use something that can’t communicate better than a preschooler.
Culture. This is a huge issue regardless of what industry you play in. Why? Each culture takes on technology differently and how you term something in your native tongue might be an insult in another. Thus, there needs to be careful planning when the user interface is created with localization teams involved throughout the entire development process. If the localized team can’t understand why the product itself should be in the market, then what makes you think that anyone else in that market would?

While there are many other things involved in global mediums, these are just a few of the reasons behind failed business launches in Asian markets. It might seem like petty basic things, but sometimes it’s the most basic of reasons that takes your product and flushes it down the drain.