Comments on: Can Asia Flip Facebook’s Business Model?

By: In China: $184 for a Virtual Dragon - Thomas Crampton

In China: $184 for a Virtual Dragon - Thomas Crampton — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 05:48:55 +0000

[...] For those not aware of the growth of virtual currencies in China, they have become a shadow economy important enough to attract the attention of China’s financial regulators. As I have written previously, virtual items – avatar outfits, animals, decorations etc – are a major source of revenue for social networks in China and Japan. [...]

By: Friendster’s anti-Facebook strategy for Southeast Asia - Thomas Crampton

Friendster’s anti-Facebook strategy for Southeast Asia - Thomas Crampton — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:27:47 +0000

[...] move towards micropayments is interesting since because – as reported earlier on this blog – many Asian social networks make more money from transactions that they do from [...]

By: plus8star

plus8star — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:25:17 +0000

Thanks Thomas for your kind link

The story of GREE is quite an interesting one:
- It started off as a PC-based SNS competing with MIXI.
- It received investment from Globis in Japan at that time
- DeNA's service Mobile Game Town was doing a lot better than MIXI and GREE revamped its service to do MOBILE and FLASH GAMES with virtual goods instead of PC + Advertising.
- Now GREE is pretty much a mobile-only virtual-goods powered service

There are some important market catalysts for GREE's success on mobile:
1. 3G everywhere (over 90% penetration)
2. Unlimited data (over 50% of users have it)
3. Flash Lite on almost all mobiles (it started in Japan)
4. Competitor DeNA “taught” the market about such service
5. Early partnership with KDDI (Japan's #2 telco) to push the service on mobile
6. MASSIVE (and expensive, but with good ROI) advertising to grow the service in a second phase
7. Super-hit fishing game (with virtual goods: rods, baits, etc.) – GREE is currently suing DeNA for copycatting it.

Cheers
Benjamin

By: plus8star

plus8star — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:25:17 +0000

Thanks Thomas for your kind link

Cheers
Benjamin

By: Doug White

Doug White — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:20:31 +0000

I have always been encouraged by non-traditional revenue methods. It seems like the clear path more many is display ads, however, with a little imagination it seems evident that customer interest and profit can go hand in hand. It has always been my goal to move from advertising to interesting. We are starting to see this change in SMM.

Much success,