VietNamNet Bridge – Though Vietnamese social networks have attracted numerous users, they still cannot turn the great advantage into business opportunities.

In late June 2012, Facebook, considered the biggest social network in the world, reported that the advertisement revenue of the network in the second quarter of the year reached 921 million dollars, an increase of 28 percent over the previous quarter. Of this amount, 7 million dollars came from the Vietnamese market.

Vietnamese social networks have the power of the crowd…

According to DoubleClick Ad Planner of Google, the three social networks which most attracted users in Vietnam in June 2012 were Facebook, me.zing.vn and yume.vn. Of these, Facebook attracted 8.2 million Vietnamese visitors while the two domestic networks attracted 6.8 million and 1.9 million, respectively.

Vietnamese social networks seem to be superior over foreign ones in terms of the user attraction. Of the six firms which have the highest numbers of users, VinaGame is leading with 15 million visitors.

The second and fifth positions belong to Yahoo and Facebook which had 12.6 million and 8.2 million.

The three other positions belonged to VCC, FPT and VTC. Of these, VCC had 11 million visitors, FPT 9 million and VTC 5.1 million.

Analysts have noted a new tendency that social networks now tend to target their specific communities.

According to Tuan Ha, Managing Director of VinaLink, up to 20 types of social networks out of the 28 types existing in the world have been present in Vietnam. While Facebook is considered a general playing field for all, Yume is the land for young people to create their works.

A report released by the Vietnam Internet Center showed that by the end of June 2012, Vietnam had had nearly 32 million of people using services on Internet. One of every two people in Vietnam accessing to Internet uses VinaGame’s services.

…but still cannot grab business opportunities

With millions of page views a month, social networks in Vietnam can serve as an effective information communication channel. A lot of foreign and domestic enterprises have set up their own pages on social networks in order to provide updated information and have interactions with the community.

The reports all show that most of the Internet users in Vietnam are the youth, enterprises have been using social networks as a tool to build up their brands and polish their images.

Vuong Quang Khai, Deputy General Director of VinaGame, said that ZingMe social network attracts the users aged from 18 to 25, who could be the potential clients for many products and services, from hi-tech products, fashion to telecom and entertainment services.

However, though Vietnamese social networks have high numbers of users, the networks’ developers still cannot turn their advantages, including the high numbers of visitors and used time on social networks, into money.

Being the social network which has the highest number of users, but Zing Me still cannot attract advertisement orders.

According to the E-commerce Association, the Internet advertisement market in 2011 was worth 70 million dollars. However, there have been no exact updated figures about the revenue for every social network, because the watchdog agencies still do not have effective tools to control the operation of the firms which do not have offices in Vietnam.

VP, an expert who spent many years to make research about the Internet advertisement market, said in Vietnam, social networks have been living on many different sources of income. Meanwhile, if they work independently, they would not be able to survive for one year.

Thu Uyen