The saga between Nokia, FPT and Recording Industry Association of Vietnam (RIAV) broken out since last month made the Nokia guys a headache. We do not want to talk about who is right or will win the case here but the way Nokia and FPT manage online reputation. When people heard the case, try to search “FPT Nokia music” in Google the top result returned with Techcrunch post. Of course many local online newspapers copied and pasted the news but how Techcrunch cared about a small market such as Vietnam (in Techcrunch view). How Robin Wauters know from inside out of the case since he is not from Vietnam or based in SE Asia?
Nokia uses a league of ad agencies and PR firms worldwide, why they let it happened. Bad news always runs faster than the good one. In addition to blog posts, forum discussion, viral messenger you can find thousands of twittering the Nokia pirated.
It is time now for PR guys to learn the social media marketing rather than stick to traditional media even in a developing country like Vietnam.

Technorati Tags: FPT, music, Nokia, RIAV, TechCrunch

When conducting keyword research on steel market in Vietnam I found out a strangely irrelevant result of sponsored link on Google AdWords. It is a shop selling some fashion clothing and accessories for teens. Of course Google AdWords had removed its position since almost no CTR received. Be careful when setup your PPC campaign or you can lose your reputation.
Click for larger image.

Technorati Tags: AdWords, Keyword, Pay per click

The Google DevFest in Vietnam will be similar with Google giving introductions their APIs like the OpenSocial and App Engine APIs among others, and Social Network giants Friendster and Hi5 talking about their platforms too.

Venue: HCM University of Technology, A5 Building
Date: 4 November 2008, Tuesday
Time: 1pm to 10pm

What’s more, we will be having 5 Google Engineers coming all the way from Mountain View to join in the DevFest and to provide assistance to the developers. Grab this chance to mingle with them!

Here are the short profiles of the Google Engineers coming down:

Jason Costa
Jason has been a Technical Programs Manager at Google since 2005. He’s worked on several products at the company, including Google Analytics, the Google Checkout API, and OpenSocial. Jason likes to help developers find innovative solutions to complex problems, and believes in APIs & the open web. He graduated with a degree in CS from USC, and is currently working from the Google China office in Beijing.

Patrick Chanezon (blog)
Patrick has been a Developer Advocate at Google since 2005. He has built and grown developer ecosystems for OpenSocial, Checkout and AdWords. Previously he has worked on portals, blogs and syndication feeds at Sun Microsystems, AOL and Netscape. He’s the co-founder of the ROME - Atom and RSS utilities in java open source project and the OSSGTP (Open Source Get Together Paris) group.

Pamela Fox
Pamela is the Developer Programs Engineer for the Google Maps API. She graduated from USC with her CS masters, where she helped grow the video games department and dabbled in the 3d animation and linguistics departments. She enjoys helping developers innovate with the Maps API and combine it with many of Google’s other amazing APIs.

Conway Chen
Conway has been at Google since 2005 and is a member of New Business Development. Working together with product, engineering and management teams, he has helped introduce and foster a number of new product initiatives and is currently focused on doing the same within the Greater China and SE Asia region. Prior to his time working in business development, Conway was an attorney focusing on venture capital and private company representation at a leading Silicon Valley law firm.

Bruno Rovagnati - Globant
Bruno is a social networks guru at Globant as well as an expert on cloud computing. He joins us all live all the way from Buenos Aires, Argentina! Bruno has worked extensively with the Google Checkout API, and is an active contributor to Shindig - an open-source reference implementation of the OpenSocial spec. Bruno graduated from Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Maps, OpenSocial

I just stumbled upon a recruitment item from a job board site on digital marketing position. Nestle Vietnam is recruiting a Digital Marketing Officer responsible for implementing Internet based on consumer activities in line with the marketing objectives, coordinating with the agencies and suppliers to develop and maintain the Internet website (www.nestle.com.vn) related to marketing activities.
Now the destiny of a brand is not in the hand of the marketer and mainstream media guys but social media has its voice with increasing power especially after the melamine scandal. Marketers need to start conversation with customers through online communities. It is a good signal to the digital marketing industry in Vietnam.

Technorati Tags: Nestle

When we tried to check the results of a keyword “máy tính” (computer) on Google.com.vn, the sponsored links showed a URL of the leading chip maker Intel.com.vn but the landing page lead to a local computer makers. VTB is a local electronics assembler known for its subprime TV sets. By adding to the Display URL in Google AdWords dashboard, they tried to make Internet searchers think of Intel association so that the click through rate could be higher. However if VTB did not have a special partnership relationship with Intel the action could destroy its image and PR endeavor and potential customers might dislike. Conversion rate is much more important than pure click through.
Click the image to enlarge.

Technorati Tags: AdWords, Click-through rate, conversion, Google

HP is one of the IT giants grasp the power of blogoshere with its first campaign to promote its new notebook, HP HDX Dragon Entertainment Notebook. HP decided to hire a social media marketing agency Buzz Corp to run the campaign. Buzz Corp got in touch with 31 influential tech bloggers to reach out potential customers. At the end of the contest, the first five pages of Google results for searches on HP and HP Dragon were filled with links to blog posts praising the Dragon notebook during the contest, HP reports. There were more than 380,000 links to the 31 sites discussing the contest. Moreover, the 31 blogs garnered more than 25,000 contest entries and an average 150% increase in traffic. Traffic on HP.com increased almost 15%. And when it came to the ultimate goal of the blogger outreach marketing program, sales of the Dragon grew nearly 85%, the retailer says

Technorati Tags: Dragon, HP

Late last year Google welcomed Thai to their AdSense for search family, and now the launch of AdSense for content in Thai. If you’re a publisher with a Thai website, you’ll now be able to earn money for valid clicks and impressions for Google ads on your site. Get started by logging in to your account and visiting the AdSense Setup tab to generate ad code. Or, if you don’t have an AdSense account yet, review our program policies and then feel free to submit an application.

The announcement from Google AdSense blog. The next is Vietnamese or Indonesian?

Technorati Tags: AdSense, Google, Thai, Vietnamese

Technorati Tags: Charlene Li

On September 30th 2008, Tinhvan Media, a company of Tinhvan Group officially launched its search service dubbed Xalo (meaning Highway). After more than six months of testing, users now can search Vietnamese with seven main search features: Web, Image, News, Blog, Forum, Music and Classified. This VC backed search service plans to surpass other Vietnamese search services with target of more than 30% of search market in 2010. This number could translate into a big competitor to the incumbent Google search and leave Yahoo in the dust. It sounds like a mission impossible but they hope a peer of Baidu, Naver, Yandex for Vietnam . A pay per click system similar to Google AdWords should be in action late this year. Congratulations to Xalo! We hope search advertising would be a dispensable tool for local marketers.

Technorati Tags: Baidu, Google, Naver, Xalo, Yandex

Chrome browser released by Google in early September 2008 gained much buzz just after hot gadget iPhone. More than one week since launch the share of Chrome seems horizontal. These stats are based on a total sample for the period of over 450 million page views globally. All daily stats are based on the relevant GMT 24 hour periods. More details at StatCounter blog.

Technorati Tags: Chrome, Google