Reflection

Day 1

We started the first day of our TSM trip super early; reaching the airport at around 7am after an entire night of flight. Despite the lack of sleep, all of us still managed to remain hyped up for our first company(even though 80% of the class KO-ed on the bus ride to the company).

Twinword

The first company that we visited for this entire trip is Twinword, a company that collects information on how people associate certain words to a certain concept. With the technology they are employing, they are able to link words that are used in similar context together, selling the list to search engines to improve their search functionalities as well as refine the targeted marketing algorithm. The first 30000 users will be able to access this service free of charge while the company has to pay 0.01 cents for each subsequent user.

Twinword is a super interesting company as it not only have websites which allows users to practice their English under different academic categories; they also provide APIs to allow companies to use their services, effectively capturing the business to business and business to consumer market.

Despite being very strong in their business to business aspects with them supporting multiple search engines, I personally feel that Twinword can focus more on the business to consumer portion, expanding their market share by collaborating with the local Junior High and High School. This can be done by marketing their application as the number 1 app that will allow students to improve the English vocabulary rapidly. As the world is getting more globalized, it is highly important that every individual knows how to speak English, and parents as well as schools will be willing to pay for the service if it is proven to be helpful.