Freda TAN Yi Cui
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
5) Value Creaters and Company
6) Memebox
7) Flitto
