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Japanese mobile auction site for women wins at KDDI Demo Day [Photos]

Rick Martin 2014.01.27

Last week KDDI Mugen Labo held a demo day event for its fifth batch of incubated startups. Our readers may recall that we previewed this batch of five startups back in September, which included: Photo curation service Zukan Personal finance app Dr. Wallet Mobile auction app Smaoku (Smart Auction) Bike parking service PedalRest Streaming lecture service Aoi Zemi These five startups pitched their services on stage at the Hikarie event hall in Shibuya at the demo day event, showing the progress they’ve made over the past few months. In the end it was Smaoku that was awarded the top prize of the day, with CEO Daisaku Harada impressing the crowd in attendance with his mobile auction app for ladies. Our readers may recall that we interviewed them last October. Smaoku, while it is not a mobile flea market app, continues the recent Japanese trend of mobile C2C commerce services that we have seen over the past year. Other notable startups in this space include Mercari and Fril to name just a few. Smaoku, Harada has said, will leverage the game-like feeling of auctions in order to stand out from the crowd here in Japan. In his presentation, he explained that…

Last week KDDI Mugen Labo held a demo day event for its fifth batch of incubated startups. Our readers may recall that we previewed this batch of five startups back in September, which included:

Photo curation service Zukan
Personal finance app Dr. Wallet
Mobile auction app Smaoku (Smart Auction)
Bike parking service PedalRest
Streaming lecture service Aoi Zemi

These five startups pitched their services on stage at the Hikarie event hall in Shibuya at the demo day event, showing the progress they’ve made over the past few months. In the end it was Smaoku that was awarded the top prize of the day, with CEO Daisaku Harada impressing the crowd in attendance with his mobile auction app for ladies. Our readers may recall that we interviewed them last October.

Smaoku, while it is not a mobile flea market app, continues the recent Japanese trend of mobile C2C commerce services that we have seen over the past year. Other notable startups in this space include Mercari and Fril to name just a few. Smaoku, Harada has said, will leverage the game-like feeling of auctions in order to stand out from the crowd here in Japan.

In his presentation, he explained that the amount of money they have transacted on Smaoku has been growing exponentially over the past few months. As you can see in one of the graphics from Harada’s presentation (see all his slides below). Back in November they were just transacting in the tens of thousands of yen (hundreds of dollars). But that grew by about four times in December to amount to millions of yen, and in January it grew again by five times to be in the tens of millions. These numbers, while admittedly rather vague, are still pretty encouraging.

I was also a little curious about their upside-down hanger logo. Daisaku explained to me that it sort of reflects the experience they want their users to have, turning their frowns upside-down in a similar way. I thought that was kind of cute, certainly a memorable image anyway.

You can check out a few more photos from the event below. We should note that photo curation service Zukan.com won the ‘Audience Prize’ at the event. But we look forward to hearing more from all five of these young startups in the next year or so. So stay tuned!

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This Japanese startup changes how people relate to music

music
nana

Junya Mori 2014.01.24

Akinori Fumihara, Founder/CEO See the original article in Japanese On January 13th, Japanese social music platform, Nana, held a collaborative music festival called Nana fes vol.1 featuring Joysound at Minami Aoyama in Tokyo. On that day around 120 users, mostly in their teens or twenties, got together for the event. It was broadcasted online by Twitcasting, and in total 10,000 users tuned in live during 4.5 hour event. For those not familiar with the service, Nana lets its users share and mix their audio with other users on its platform, all with voices and sounds recorded through smartphone microphones. More than 5000 songs are posted on Nana everyday, with the average time for a user to stay on the site amount to 230 minutes per month. The monthly number of plays has surpassed 3.5 million, which shows how actively people are using the app. We had a chance to hear from Akinori Fumihara, Nana’s founder and CEO, about this event idea: Since Nana’s launch, we have regularly organized offline meetups for our users. But as a music service provider, I have been wanting to hold a live music event for a long time. I set the concept as a culture…

Akinori Fumihara, Founder/CEO

See the original article in Japanese

On January 13th, Japanese social music platform, Nana, held a collaborative music festival called Nana fes vol.1 featuring Joysound at Minami Aoyama in Tokyo. On that day around 120 users, mostly in their teens or twenties, got together for the event. It was broadcasted online by Twitcasting, and in total 10,000 users tuned in live during 4.5 hour event.

For those not familiar with the service, Nana lets its users share and mix their audio with other users on its platform, all with voices and sounds recorded through smartphone microphones. More than 5000 songs are posted on Nana everyday, with the average time for a user to stay on the site amount to 230 minutes per month. The monthly number of plays has surpassed 3.5 million, which shows how actively people are using the app.

We had a chance to hear from Akinori Fumihara, Nana’s founder and CEO, about this event idea:

Since Nana’s launch, we have regularly organized offline meetups for our users. But as a music service provider, I have been wanting to hold a live music event for a long time. I set the concept as a culture festival for Nana users by Nana users.

I always wanted to help create “Sunday artists”, those who work during the week and then work on the music projects on weekends. The user experience at a live concert is different from singing on the app. And I always wanted to offer that kind of different opportunity, so this festival was my first attempt to do this.

Build confidence, relationships

One user in particular was especially fascinated with Nana, gradually gaining confidence in his singing by joining offline meetups. That led him to even sing at his company’s event, and now he is even thinking about doing street performances.

Fumihara wants to continue to be this kind of catalyst for singers and musicians:

Many people have musical talent, but I think many of them don’t think highly of their own skill. But if there is a place to show their works, they can get feedback about it. And by allowing users to post their work easily on Nana, it creates opportunities for real talent to be recognized.

Nana users are quite loyal to the service, many of them calling themselves ‘Nana-min’ (min means people in Japanese), or describing the collaborative process as ‘Nanaru’. Some Twitter users even list their Nana account link on their profiles, many of them create Twitter accounts just because of their activity on Nana. The two services are very complementary, in fact.

Fumihara thinks there are two main reasons for the site’s popularity, the first being that many users are teenagers, and often they don’t have friends with whom they can discuss their favorite music.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t have anyone close to talk about my favorite music with. Finding people to have a music session with was even harder. Nana users are very happy about collaborating with others, and once they collaborate, they get to know more about each other. They make a very strong bond over Nana.

I want users to see music as an activity that’s very easy to start. It should be easier to get involved with music without taking it too seriously.

Nana is currently available only for iOS, and an Android app is now under construction. Nana plans to continue holding music festivals too.

Combining online and offline, Nana wants to create a future where people can “sing with the world”.

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Couples app Between is now Japan’s top social networking app [Video]

Between
VCNC

SCORE 1,260

Rick Martin 2014.01.24

Kei Kajitani is the Japan general manager of Korea-based VCNC, heading up the company’s efforts to promote their couples app Between here in Japan. After the app’s recent 2.0 release back in December, it appears to have picked up some steam in a number of markets around the world, including Japan where it is has ranked as the top social networking iOS app since Wednesday. He tells me that since that update they have acquired more than 600,000 new downloads in the span of less than a month. Between was given a featured banner position in the App Store in 94 countries, giving it a great boost in global visibility. The app surpassed 5 million users last month, with the majority – or about 60% – coming from its home market of Korea, and about 10% in Japan and 10% in China. Kei adds: [In addition to increased] exposure, our active rate increased significantly due to product improvement. Our average user now stays for 17 minutes per day, where it used to be 10 minutes per day last year around this time. During Christmas time Between was decorated with a festive Christmas theme (see center image below) and that resulted…

Kei Kajitani is the Japan general manager of Korea-based VCNC, heading up the company’s efforts to promote their couples app Between here in Japan. After the app’s recent 2.0 release back in December, it appears to have picked up some steam in a number of markets around the world, including Japan where it is has ranked as the top social networking iOS app since Wednesday.

He tells me that since that update they have acquired more than 600,000 new downloads in the span of less than a month. Between was given a featured banner position in the App Store in 94 countries, giving it a great boost in global visibility.

The app surpassed 5 million users last month, with the majority – or about 60% – coming from its home market of Korea, and about 10% in Japan and 10% in China. Kei adds:

[In addition to increased] exposure, our active rate increased significantly due to product improvement. Our average user now stays for 17 minutes per day, where it used to be 10 minutes per day last year around this time.

During Christmas time Between was decorated with a festive Christmas theme (see center image below) and that resulted in many users sharing screenshots of their homescreen, thus letting friends know about the app as well.

In addition to competing with general messaging apps like Line in Japan, Between faces some local competition from Pairy, a Japanese couples app developed by Timers, a startup backed by NTT Docomo Ventures. That company raised 100 million yen (almost $1 million) from a number of Japanese investment firms, including NTT Docomo Ventures.

While VCNC’s user base is still very heavily skewed towards South Korea, the company will continue its overseas push, having raised $2.8 million last January for just that purpose.

The company has a new demo video for their app as well which you can check out below.

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Japan’s AdInnovation partners with Digital Advertising Consortium

Masaru Ikeda 2014.01.24

Tokyo-based AdInnovation, the startup behind mobile ad analytics solutions AdStore Tracking and Hitracking, announced today that it has partnered with Digital Advertising Consortium (TSE:4281, DAC for short), raising an undisclosed sum of funding from the latter. We were told that AdInnovation became an equity-method affiliate of DAC through the partnership. Since its launch back in 2010, AdInnovation has been providing white-label ad performance tracking solutions to many Japanese mobile ad agencies. They raised $1.6 million from several Japanese investors back in July, and recently launched a new performance analytics tool called Hitracking. DAC is a media representation company focused on digital advertising and marketing, founded back in 1996 by several Japanese ad agencies including Hakuhodo (TSE:2433) and Asatsu-DK (TSE:9747). It leads this industry in Japan, followed by Cyber Communications (TSE:4788, CCI for short, founded by Dentsu) and CyberAgent (TSE:4751). Through this new partnership, AdInnovation will explore opportunities in cross-media marketing, providing their clients advertising and marketing services using TV or other mass media as well as internet marketing. In this space, while Japanese media representation leaders like CyberAgent and Adways (TSE:2489) have their own tracking tools respectively such as Camp and PartyTrack, DAC had got nothing like this kind of…

Tokyo-based AdInnovation, the startup behind mobile ad analytics solutions AdStore Tracking and Hitracking, announced today that it has partnered with Digital Advertising Consortium (TSE:4281, DAC for short), raising an undisclosed sum of funding from the latter. We were told that AdInnovation became an equity-method affiliate of DAC through the partnership.

Since its launch back in 2010, AdInnovation has been providing white-label ad performance tracking solutions to many Japanese mobile ad agencies. They raised $1.6 million from several Japanese investors back in July, and recently launched a new performance analytics tool called Hitracking.

DAC is a media representation company focused on digital advertising and marketing, founded back in 1996 by several Japanese ad agencies including Hakuhodo (TSE:2433) and Asatsu-DK (TSE:9747). It leads this industry in Japan, followed by Cyber Communications (TSE:4788, CCI for short, founded by Dentsu) and CyberAgent (TSE:4751).

Through this new partnership, AdInnovation will explore opportunities in cross-media marketing, providing their clients advertising and marketing services using TV or other mass media as well as internet marketing. In this space, while Japanese media representation leaders like CyberAgent and Adways (TSE:2489) have their own tracking tools respectively such as Camp and PartyTrack, DAC had got nothing like this kind of tools in their group companies. The partnership indicates DAC’s strong intention that they wanted to obtain such a tool.

For those interested to learn more about their solutions, you can meet with them at AppsWorld North America (February 5-6, San Francisco), Casual Connect Europe (February 11-13, Amsterdam), and SXSW Interactive (March 7-16, Austin).

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Fabbit: A new incubation center set to open in Kitakyushu City, Japan

Junya Mori 2014.01.23

See the original article in Japanese An incubation center is set to open this spring in Kitakyushu City, in the south of Japan. The facility, when it opens, will be one of the biggest incubation centers in the country. It’s called Fabbit, and as you can probably imagine from its name, it is aimed at startups that digitally fabricate physical products 1. It aims to be a hub that will connect entrepreneurs and creators in a wide-range of fields like graphic design, illustration, video editing, and figure making. Its core concept is to provide a place to learn, meet, and create. The project is led by two companies, nomad inc. and Apamanshop Holdings. Digital Hollywood University will provide educational content, Tukuruba inc. is involved in designing the space, and ABBAlab offers support for digital fabrication and investors. It’s expected that Fabbit will play an important role in Kitakyushu City’s plan to promote developing startups. In addition to its collaborative workspace, Fabbit provides equipment and tools for 3D fabrication so that members can do their own work in the space. There’s also the ‘Fabbit library’ where people can find a variety of books on technologies and design. The facility also includes…

See the original article in Japanese

An incubation center is set to open this spring in Kitakyushu City, in the south of Japan. The facility, when it opens, will be one of the biggest incubation centers in the country.

It’s called Fabbit, and as you can probably imagine from its name, it is aimed at startups that digitally fabricate physical products 1. It aims to be a hub that will connect entrepreneurs and creators in a wide-range of fields like graphic design, illustration, video editing, and figure making. Its core concept is to provide a place to learn, meet, and create.

The project is led by two companies, nomad inc. and Apamanshop Holdings. Digital Hollywood University will provide educational content, Tukuruba inc. is involved in designing the space, and ABBAlab offers support for digital fabrication and investors.

It’s expected that Fabbit will play an important role in Kitakyushu City’s plan to promote developing startups.

In addition to its collaborative workspace, Fabbit provides equipment and tools for 3D fabrication so that members can do their own work in the space. There’s also the ‘Fabbit library’ where people can find a variety of books on technologies and design. The facility also includes a large space for events and seminars, equipped with a screen, projector, and sound system.

Digital Hollywood Studio, a place where users, can learn web and app development, will have a presence in the facility as well.

The representative director of Nomad Inc and Tsukuruba Inc, Osamu Ogasawara, told us a little more about the project:

fabbit is sort of a re-creation of an event with Taizo Son held last Feburary in Kitakyushu city. The event was called fabit Summit, and at that time we discussed about Monodukuri (the culture of Japanese manufacturing) with Iwasa-san from Cerevo and Ishida-san from Campfire. […] That event gave me lots of opportunities to connect with people involved with local startups, people from facility provider Apamanshop, and representatives from the Kitakyushu city office.

So Fabbit is a place to meet, learn and create with local people who share a common interest. I’d like to build a place that brings people together by providing educational programs for digital fabrication, access to equipment like 3D printers, and a shared library that offers membership to users who brings their own books.

Tukuruba CEO Hiroki Murakami and CCO Masahiro Nakamura elaborated on the design of the space:

Nakamura: “When designing fabbit, I aimed to renovate the place by taking advantages of the existing frame and room layout. […] Kitakyushu city has a strong connection with modern Japanese culture, with places like its Manga Museum. And I expect the openness will do good to the incubation.”

Murakami: “People from wide-ranging fields like 3D design, figure making, graphic design, and illustration can meet up at fabbit. Members can share knowledge and with the help of educational content from Digital Hollywood, the place will have great value. It’d be exciting if fabbit could represent a sort of a futuristic school. Kitakyushu city has history as an industrial area, so it would be interesting if it can create a new industry.”

Editor’s note: It’s actually ‘fabbit’, but for readibility purposes, I chose to capitalize it. –RM ↩

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Japan’s Yesterscape improves its time-machine app, enables web upload of old memories

Rick Martin 2014.01.22

One of my favorite startups to write about last year was Kyoto-based Qooq Inc. As you may recall, this is the company that operates a so-called ‘time machine’ application, Yesterscape, which lets you view images of the past through your smartphone camera. So for example, you might take a picture of your parents in front of the Eiffel Tower in France this year, and then revisit it five years later and see the same picture through your camera thanks to this augmented reality app. While this process works great for images that you’ve taken on your smartphone, what about old images that you might have taken before you even had a smartphone? What about photos your parents or grandparents might have taken? How can we input those? Today Yesterscape has taken a step towards solving that problem, now providing a web interface that allows for the uploading of photos from your PC. The interface still needs some polishing, but I managed to upload a picture of my great-grandparents, and pin it in time and space as best I could using the Google Maps and Streetview interface. The latter was a bit tricky for me on a PC, determining the direction…

One of my favorite startups to write about last year was Kyoto-based Qooq Inc. As you may recall, this is the company that operates a so-called ‘time machine’ application, Yesterscape, which lets you view images of the past through your smartphone camera.

So for example, you might take a picture of your parents in front of the Eiffel Tower in France this year, and then revisit it five years later and see the same picture through your camera thanks to this augmented reality app.

While this process works great for images that you’ve taken on your smartphone, what about old images that you might have taken before you even had a smartphone? What about photos your parents or grandparents might have taken? How can we input those?

Today Yesterscape has taken a step towards solving that problem, now providing a web interface that allows for the uploading of photos from your PC. The interface still needs some polishing, but I managed to upload a picture of my great-grandparents, and pin it in time and space as best I could using the Google Maps and Streetview interface. The latter was a bit tricky for me on a PC, determining the direction and angle of the photo, data that you don’t need to worry about when adding photos with the smartphone app. You can see a sample upload interface in the screenshot below:

The new interface enables users to bridge both space and time to pin a photo, something they can’t do with the app, as founder Hide Nu explains:

I have heard some users say that they want to upload picture taken somewhere far away, perhaps from an old trip or from a past home. The new interface will allow users to upload their pictures via the web instead of actually going to the location. With this they can easily place their important photographs in time and space. To make Yesterscape a common architecture in augmented reality for photograph in the near future, we have to have a convenient tool to [handle] old media.

He also explains that for some companies or organizations that have many historical photos, they will offer a special account with a customized interface for free.

Interestingly, they have also added a function where users can import a Sekai Camera KMZ file to import their photos and data from that now defunct augmented reality application. Our readers may recall that Sekai Camera closed down last month, perhaps a service that consumers were not ready for when it launched five years back.

It may be possible that the world is still not yet ready for Yesterscape. My guess is that the app is not overwhelmed with users just yet. But now that smartphones have made (networked) photographers of just about everyone, maybe by the time the world is ready, Yesterscape will be prepared and can be waiting for them [1].

The idea of preserving our history is a notion that everyone should be enthusiastic about, and I hope that especially here in Japan, a place with such an incredibly rich history, that Yesterscape can find some support.

You can check out a brief intro to Yesterscape from the company’s CTO, Oscar Peredo, below.

With more compact and DSLR cameras getting wireless capabilities, I’d say that there’s lots of long term potential for an idea like this. ↩

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Japanese investment firm Venture United forms $11 million startup fund

United

Junya Mori 2014.01.22

See the original story in Japanese. Venture United, a Japanese startup investment company, announced today that it has formed a fund worth 1.2 million yen ($11 million). The fund’s investors include the country’s state-run SME Support, Fusion Communications (a telco owned by Rakuten), SBI Securities, ad agency Hakuhodo, and Digital Advertising Consortium. Venture United and its parent company United, the company best known for homescreen app CocoPPa, have already invested in many startups, including Lifenet Insurance, Enigmo, Unoh (acquired by Zynga back in 2010), and Nobot (acquired by Mediba, a KDDI company). We spoke with the company’s chief venture capitalist Satoshi Maruyama to find what entrepreneurs and service sectors they are planning to invest in. We expect to invest in entrepreneurs with a big vision, typically those who want to change the world or create a business that can work in the global market. As smartphone use has grown, broadband internet is available to us anywhere. So our communication might be more active. So the sectors where we will look for potential investees will be commerce, O2O (online-to-offline), and omni-channel retailing. Following this strategy, we invested in Whyteboard, the startup behind the mobile flea market app Listor last April. We…

See the original story in Japanese.

Venture United, a Japanese startup investment company, announced today that it has formed a fund worth 1.2 million yen ($11 million). The fund’s investors include the country’s state-run SME Support, Fusion Communications (a telco owned by Rakuten), SBI Securities, ad agency Hakuhodo, and Digital Advertising Consortium.

Venture United and its parent company United, the company best known for homescreen app CocoPPa, have already invested in many startups, including Lifenet Insurance, Enigmo, Unoh (acquired by Zynga back in 2010), and Nobot (acquired by Mediba, a KDDI company).

We spoke with the company’s chief venture capitalist Satoshi Maruyama to find what entrepreneurs and service sectors they are planning to invest in.

Satoshi Maruyama

We expect to invest in entrepreneurs with a big vision, typically those who want to change the world or create a business that can work in the global market.

As smartphone use has grown, broadband internet is available to us anywhere. So our communication might be more active. So the sectors where we will look for potential investees will be commerce, O2O (online-to-offline), and omni-channel retailing. Following this strategy, we invested in Whyteboard, the startup behind the mobile flea market app Listor last April. We also invested in U-Note, and we aim to help them invent a new form of media.

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Fun Chinese photo app boasts 70M users, all without any marketing

Rick Martin 2014.01.21

MomentCam is one of the more unique photo effects applications that I’ve seen in a long time. Using just a photo of your face, it creates amazing faux hand-drawn portraits of you in a range of fun situations. The key to the process is the app’s facial recognition, which will usually place your eyes and mouth correctly before face-swapping your head onto many different designs. This process works best when you take the initial photo of your face from the front, because when you do so from the side, your ear or hair might get in the way of the processed composition. Currently there are are themed designs available including a set corresponding to the animals of the Chinese zodiac, but there are more available for download if you choose. The app also has a emoticon-creation function, turning your face into animated emoticons (like those below) that can be shared to various social networks or messaging apps (most based in China, since the company is based in Beijing). I managed to get a brief comment from the company’s co-founder Steven Huang about the success of their app so far. Amazingly, he claims that their progress to date has come without…

MomentCam is one of the more unique photo effects applications that I’ve seen in a long time. Using just a photo of your face, it creates amazing faux hand-drawn portraits of you in a range of fun situations.

The key to the process is the app’s facial recognition, which will usually place your eyes and mouth correctly before face-swapping your head onto many different designs. This process works best when you take the initial photo of your face from the front, because when you do so from the side, your ear or hair might get in the way of the processed composition.

Currently there are are themed designs available including a set corresponding to the animals of the Chinese zodiac, but there are more available for download if you choose.

The app also has a emoticon-creation function, turning your face into animated emoticons (like those below) that can be shared to various social networks or messaging apps (most based in China, since the company is based in Beijing).

I managed to get a brief comment from the company’s co-founder Steven Huang about the success of their app so far. Amazingly, he claims that their progress to date has come without any active promotions on their part:

Our app [has grown] purely on word of mouth. No marketing at all. Our users have reached 70 million around the world since it was launched in the China market in early July and opened to world market on October 22. Our user base is 45% Chinese and 55% overseas users.

The company has reportedly raised 20 million RMB in series A funding, so it will be interesting to see where they take their app from here.

If you’re looking for a fun new avatar to start the year off fresh, I encourage you to check out MomentCam over on the App Store or on Google Play 1.

I am a little puzzled as to why there are so many similar looking apps also by the name of MomentCam on Google Play. As far as I can tell from previous China-based reports, this one is the original. Although I’ve asked Steven about the duplicates and I await his reply. ↩

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Check out this beautiful app from Japan to help you split your restaurant bill

Junya Mori 2014.01.21

See the original article in Japanese In Japan people will often split the bill when they eat out with friends. But the default calculator app on your iPhone is a little over-complicated for this task, and it’s a little ugly too. But Kamakura-based design studio KSKT had made something better. Its app, appropriately named Split Bill, was made just for this purpose. And it’s beautiful. It is minimalist in its feature set, allowing the user to just add and divide a given amount of money. Its smart design uses color gradation in a manner that leaves a lasting impression. Split Bill is currently available for 100 yen ($0.99), in Japanese, English, German, Korean, and Chinese. KSKT has previously designed apps for many startups, many of which we have already covered here on The Bridge. The company designed for the iPhone app for e-commerce startup Base, the logo and iPhone app for photo book service Niiice, and the logo, website design, and branding for PocketConcierge. When I looked at Split Bill, I started wondering about what kind of benefit a design studio gets when it develops its own service or app, as opposed to designing one for a client. For example,…

See the original article in Japanese

In Japan people will often split the bill when they eat out with friends. But the default calculator app on your iPhone is a little over-complicated for this task, and it’s a little ugly too. But Kamakura-based design studio KSKT had made something better. Its app, appropriately named Split Bill, was made just for this purpose.

And it’s beautiful.

It is minimalist in its feature set, allowing the user to just add and divide a given amount of money. Its smart design uses color gradation in a manner that leaves a lasting impression.

Split Bill is currently available for 100 yen ($0.99), in Japanese, English, German, Korean, and Chinese.

KSKT has previously designed apps for many startups, many of which we have already covered here on The Bridge. The company designed for the iPhone app for e-commerce startup Base, the logo and iPhone app for photo book service Niiice, and the logo, website design, and branding for PocketConcierge.

When I looked at Split Bill, I started wondering about what kind of benefit a design studio gets when it develops its own service or app, as opposed to designing one for a client. For example, we recently reported on about design studio AQ who will soon launch a subscription coffee service. But they also do client work, and I assume these efforts developing their own products have an effect on their work for third parties as well.

When it comes to developing web-services or applications, your work is rarely complete upon launch. Updates, improvements and maintenance are typically needed after release. Perhaps when a design studio develops its own applications or web-services it can gain more insights on this post-launch phase of the product life-cycle.

If you are an entrepreneur looking to launch a web-service or an application, you might consider finding a designer (such as those mentioned above) that has actual experience operating web services. It will likely result in a better overall product.

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WeChat’s new mobile game GunZ Dash is a really fun rip-off

Rick Martin 2014.01.20

One of the more interesting aspects of the mobile messaging space, particularly here in Asia with Line, WeChat/Weixin, and KakaoTalk, is the games that they offer users. Given that WindRunner [1] has been a popular game on both the Line and Kakao platforms (see our past review from last February), it makes sense that China’s Tencent – a company known to occasionally copy from others [2] — would try to follow their lead. That looks to be the intention behind GunZ Dash, a new mobile game launched on January 7, the global/English version of its Chinese language game Tiantian Kupao released back in September 2013. In terms of gameplay, GunZ Dash is virtually identical to WindRunner, as you can see in our comparison video above. While it doesn’t surprise me that Tencent would release a Chinese-language copycat of a game, I’m a little surprised that they’d roll this title out to their global users too. But because WindRunner is such a good game, GunZ Dash is really fun too because it is a really quality copy. The Chinese version of the game has been among China’s top five grossing iOS apps since its release (see chart below), so clearly its…

One of the more interesting aspects of the mobile messaging space, particularly here in Asia with Line, WeChat/Weixin, and KakaoTalk, is the games that they offer users. Given that WindRunner [1] has been a popular game on both the Line and Kakao platforms (see our past review from last February), it makes sense that China’s Tencent – a company known to occasionally copy from others [2] — would try to follow their lead.

That looks to be the intention behind GunZ Dash, a new mobile game launched on January 7, the global/English version of its Chinese language game Tiantian Kupao released back in September 2013.

In terms of gameplay, GunZ Dash is virtually identical to WindRunner, as you can see in our comparison video above. While it doesn’t surprise me that Tencent would release a Chinese-language copycat of a game, I’m a little surprised that they’d roll this title out to their global users too. But because WindRunner is such a good game, GunZ Dash is really fun too because it is a really quality copy.

The Chinese version of the game has been among China’s top five grossing iOS apps since its release (see chart below), so clearly its copy-to-China strategy is a smart one from a business perspective. But it’s interesting to see a copy-to-China game now being marketed abroad. As far as I can recall, that hasn’t happened so much in the past.

But Tencent has marketed WeChat in a number of Southeast Asian nations, including Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand, so maybe those are the gamers they are trying to attract here. Tencent will continue to do well pushing its services in emerging markets especially, continuing to mask that its services are made-in-China.

So where am I going with all this? Speaking in very general terms, I guess I’m just a little discouraged that one of China’s biggest internet success stories is such a ‘me-too’ company. As big as Tencent is, not many in the international media pay attention to it, and perhaps that’s why they can continue to do this sort of thing.

Up-and-coming companies like Xiaomi are a little more inspiring for the nation’s entrepreneurs, even with their don’t-call-me-Steve-Jobs/ dressed-just-like-Steve-Jobs CEO.

Tencent and WeChat will no doubt continue to thrive. But I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan.

Developed by Korean gaming company WeMade. ↩
And by occasionally copy, I actually mean build an internet empire by copying everything it can. ↩

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