Freda TAN Yi Cui

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Reflection

Blog/Journal

1) Twinword

Twinword was the first company we visited on this TSM trip. Kono, the CEO of the company introduced Twinword and its services to us during our visit. Twinword is basically studying and understanding of human texts. Kono also shared that his motivation of Twinword was to collect human knowledge from all over the world and provide human text understanding APIs. However, collecting these information and data will be a long and tedious process and even more so if we are going to do it manually. But what Twinword has done was to make the process of collecting these data more fun. They made use of word games and services to engage the users. While the users are learning something new, Twinword on the other hand is also capturing the data input by users, Twinword then uses these data to create APIs which understand and are able to predict what the human mind is thinking just by analyzing a few words. More information can be found in their website http://twinword.com/

These are some of the APIs made available by Twinword - Visual Context graph API for contextual understanding - Topic tagging API for document management - Category Recommendations API for E-commerce - Word graph disctionary API - Vocabulary Scoring and Test API - Word Association Quiz API

I feel that it is a really good idea to understand more about human minds through human minds. With such a data, Twinword will be putting themselves in a market where the information is much sought for. However, with such a great idea, there needs to be great marketing too. From what was observed, Twinword was very focused on its development side and may have neglected their business focus. They are a team of developers which may be why they did not see the big picture in the business perspective. Hence, I would suggest that the team split itself into the development team and the business team. Development team will focus on growing the application and business technically while the business team will focus on growing the business name and brand in the market.

2) Smart Content Center

Smart Content Center is a government funded organization and its objective is to set up a place to support and provide smart content-related start-up companies in Korea with things they may need in their start-up process. These start-up companies should have high potential with the aim of going global. They provide facilities like the incubating center for over 50 companies, content service test-bed room, content demonstration room, meeting room and OA room.

They provided support programs like the incubating program and the business development program. The incubating program was more for growing the business locally by providing them with consulting, networking and market-trended information. They also provide collaboration opportunities for the start-up with the local smart content-related institutions. As for the business development program, they focus on helping these start-ups growing globally by providing them with globalization support like technical infrastructures and marketing activities.

From what I heard, this is just one of the many incubators and accelerators for start-ups in Korea. I do feel that Korea has a growing start-up scene and many perks and support provided to help them grow.

3) Korean Broadcasting Station

We visited KBS and had a tour around the broadcasting station. Places we visited in the station included the various studios (some that has live filming going on and some are just the setups) as well as their props room.

KBS is the leader of broadcasting in Korea. As the key public service broadcaster in Korea, KBS has changed and developed over the years to better suit the nation and provide communication channel for diversed views. They strive to connect with the audience through the production of audience oriented, high-quality public services. More information can be found on their website http://english.kbs.co.kr/

4) Ideabove

Ideabove was kind enough to host us on labour day! Being in charge of our visit to Ideabove, I had the chance to talk to and lias with Ian, CEO of Ideabove. Ian shared with us the application that his company was working on, Liste.fm. Listr.fm was an extension from Bonosound. I learnt that due to some rights and intellectual property issues, Bonosound couldn't be used out of Korea and that is why they worked on Listr.fm to cater to the overseas market. He also mentioned that it was passion that kept this startup going. Throughout these 3 years, Ideabove met with lots of challenges and set backs but it was because of his passion and love for sharing music that kept it going. His team was also made up of people who had a passion for sharing if music and have worked or developed a music sharing related application before.

Listr.fm makes use of a cloud based music sharing platform idea to make sharing of music between friends more fun. Ian mentioned that they included gamification elements in this application to entice their users. Users are able to create their playlist and share it with p3ople. People can rate and vote the playlists and even use these playlist created by their friends. Studies made by Ideabove has shown that people usually trust their friends and would take recommendations from their friends more hence I believe this idea will take off in times to come.

Ideabove is currently expanding and setting up another office in Singapore. Ideabove can consider expanding more into the south east Asia countries too.

5) Value creators & company (VCNC)

VCNC was established a few years back and they have been growing and expanding fast since then. Our visit to VCNC was hosted by co founder of VCNC Mr Edward Lee. He shared about the application they developed called Between. Between is a mobile application for couples. They allow couples to have closed and intimate chats and conversions. Pictures and videos can also be sent to each other and they can personalize their wallpaper etc to create and retain memories between couples. I do feel that this application is very applicable and well received in Korea given the Korea couple culture. However this couple culture is not as prevalent in other countries like Singapore, China etc but that being said, it doesn't mean people may not embrace this change. Like what Edward had mentioned, VCNC hopes that they are able to bring about a change in dating and couple culture. They hope between is a standard that couples will always engage in so guys may be asking the girls "why don't you use between with me." and it actually means "do you want to go out with me"!

Besides explaining the featured of the application, Edward also gave an description of their company culture and company direction. The office has a very vibrant and friendly feeling and it was mentioned that they respect and hear what each of their workers have to say. Transparency between workers is very much needed through the organization. He explained that given that they are a start up, all opinions matter and they will find ways to find their niche areas.

VCNC generates their profits through 3 ways 1. Users to buy cute stickers to use in the application 2. Advertisers requesting to put up advertisements in the application 3. Mobile commerce

With current expansion plans to target family as well and target the Japanese market, I believe VCNC will be able to bring their name far and wide.

6) Memebox

Memebox taps on fashion and popularity of cosmetics in Korea. The idea of Memebox was to create boxes of cosmetic products with a set list of products in the box. The boxes are not customizable. They are grouped according to their use. For example, a Memebox for hair will have a lot of hair products in them (conditioner, hairspray, leave on conditioner etc) In my opinion, this uncustomizable and ready made boxes of comestics and beauty products is a good idea because not only does it streamline production process to bring the goods to customers faster, it also prevents the chances of leftover inventory. They made use of the drop shipping idea to deliver goods faster to customers and not using a physical store front. This definitely helps to save slot of inventory cost.

Memebox's team is split into the business side and the development side. However, Memebox is more focused on the business and marketing side because given the competition and the environment the business is striving in, making their product more marketable and popular is important. They made use of popular YouTube stars to help influence their followers and market their products for free. Therefore, in terms of marketing cost, it was kept really low. In terms of development, Memebox recently just launched a website which made online purchase of their boxes faster and more efficient. I have learnt that we can engage in social media marketing to keep cost low. Given that start ups are often lacking of capital, reducing the number of facilities and inventory warehouses will save on holding cost, transport cost and handling costs too. Also the reason for their success in their product was because of their successful marketing strategy to get famous YouTube stats to help advertise for them. But different markets react to different marketing strategy. The US market will probably react better to YouTube stars advertisements but for places like Singapore, the usage of Facebook would be more well received then the other marketing platforms.

7) Flitto

Flitto is the last company that we visited in Korea. Flitto is an online crowd sourcing application for people to help in translation of words as well as for people to use this application to obtain the suitable translation they need. Users are able to receive translation through text, images and even audio. Mr Simon Lee, one of the co founders together with Ms Min Hee, head of Global Sales and Marketing hosted us for this visit.

The idea of making use of crowd sourcing for a translation service is really smart. Firstly, no one person will be able to know all the languages in the world well hence making use of people's language ability from all over the world is definitely a cheaper and more feasible way of going about this translation service. Secondly, crowd sourcing allows people to help translate the incoming translation as and when they are free, so in a way, people are like translating during their free time or when they have nothing else to do! They can even earn some cash by doing this during their free time. Thusly, having a person instead of a computer reply these translations makes it more personal.

Flitto also hopes that it can become a self sustaining platform and hence they introduced certain gamification elements and incentives into their application as well. By asking for a translation or helping people to translate things, users will earn points and once the users have accumulated enough points, they can cash out and exchange these points for real cash. In thus way, it creates and incentive for people to keep going back and use the application.

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